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[monicanudles]

I always say this time of year is the worst and the best. Usually I take the best to distract from the worst, but being away from home, comfort and friends.. this year it really sucks. I suppose even then it seems like on that day Newton’s Law comes into play and everything goes wrong. When I don’t want to be alone, I end up alone and undistracted. July, please end. 

[monicanudles]

I fucked up. 

I’ve lived in New England my whole life. I’ve never gone skiing/snowboarding. Taken a weekend trip to Canada or a day trip to states close by, other than NY. Hiking outside of the New Haven area. Whale watching. Kayaking. Saw a play at the Yale Rep Theatre. Went inside the Beinecky Library. I’ve only been to Cheesecake Factory twice! I’ve eaten at Loui’s Lunch and Pepe’s once. Never been to Sally’s.I barely went to Hartford. An hour drive used to be a grievance but now I see it’s nothing for a mini adventure. In North Carolina driving an hour means I’m still in the same state. I’m gonna take the fuck out of adventures in North Carolina, Myrtle Beach is almost less than an hour away. Richmond is about 3, Georgia is about 4-5. It’s easy to make a weekend out of that, especially with Airbnb around now. 

I also never really hit my friends up all that often to do things out of that fear of rejection and seeming.. I don’t know.. pathetic or desperate? Heyy, social anxiety! Also, never really lived. Quit being self conscious. Take more selfies. Dance more. Be more outgoing and step out of my shell. No one cares what you’re doing, they’re busy having more fun than you. I’ll try to be louder too, but I don’t think that’s something I can help, John. 

Why am I realizing all this in my late 20′s?!

[monicanudles]

So I haven’t updated in a minute. 

The sales job was a big no no. I went back later that week to get a run down of what they do, the whole day just started off wrong. First, I went on the tram going the wrong way so I was about an hour late. Then when I got there we ‘went out into the field’ and also got a little confused on directions there. Then we got to the store and he was told we couldn’t set up there, apparently the manager or owner changed their mind. So they set up in front of a bank and it was just slow and no action. What they were doing was selling keychains and badges. So they were those people outside the grocery store asking you to buy thing. I definitely didn’t want to be doing that or see how I could make money off of $15-25 badges and keychains. 

Thennn, on that Friday I got an e-mail from the call center saying that there was a change in management and they didn’t need as many people as hired so not to show up on Monday.

DIscouraging. But at least they’re paying me for 40 hours but I also can’t apply for work with them for a while, but that doesn’t matter because of how long I’ll be here for. I also have an interview with another hiring agency on Tuesday, hopefully they can find me something!

Last weekend I went to Werribee Open Range Zoo with George. There were so many cool animals. (https://www.zoo.org.au/werribee/animals) They had a sugar glider but they call it a sugar glider. And the kids were more fascinated by the wild rabbits on the safari than the african animals because they’re apparently not that common here. So weird, right? There also are no racoons! My favorites were the lion cubs, which were napping nice and close to the glass viewing area. SO fucking cute. Also, the hippos and giraffes, One of them was sassy as fuck, whipping her head around and sticking her nose up. So funny. I think my dream job would be to work in a zoo. As much as I agree they should be left alone in the wild, I also believe that without human interaction they wouldn’t be able to conserve their numbers. And no matter what, zoos are going to exist for now. If I could be part of a team working to nurture and care for those animals, I’d be a happy girl. But you know, college and stuff. Not my cuppa. 

Let’s see how Tuesday goes! For now, enjoying Easter weekend continuing to do more holiday than work, and also.. having the house to myself. The cousin and her kids have been in Sydney so it’s been nice and quiet. It’s also better because I can cook and clean the way I want and out shit away the way I want.. all this is making me realize I may not be a multi habited habit type of person. Or maybe just not here. Who knows. 

Ok Bye!

[monicanudles]

[monicanudles]

Arnold Classic

Last Saturday was the Arnold Classic, yay free shit! It was mainly spent standing in lines meeting people. George, his friend and I got there after 11AM which was later than planned which probably contributed to the long waits. We stood in line for him to meet RIch Piana, the 5% athlete and I stood in line for 2 hours to meet Heidi Somers. I got pretty apathetic, but it was worth it because she was so super sweet and took the time to have a conversation and take enough pictures. I thanked her for putting herself out there because us short girls don’t have many role models! She’s so much tinier in person than I thought she would be. Got a free shaker, water bottle and won a free meal.. got Portugese Chicken yummmy. 

Afterwards, went to a pretty dope house party with Owen. I got there a little late, but there were a bunch of bands that played. A really mellow band was playing when I got there and they were really good! And the guys who hosted  also play in a cover band together and were last. Australians know how to party, I’ll tell ya that. It’s funny though, because the stigma is that they drink a lot, but alcohol is so damn expensive. I got a Captain and Coke once, it was in a tiny cup and was $12. Woof. 

I had two job interviews on Thursday, one was for a Call Center for Flybuys (rewards card program) and another was a sales/marketing gig. The call center interview was a group interview which was weird, I wasn’t really sure how it went for me because I had the least amount of things to say and on my availability I left out the weekends, but I got an email yesterday saying they had good news! The sales interview was also interesting, the guy said it was more an initial meeting to put a face to the name, to see if that person has the potential and to talk about what the company does (Illuminated Marketing). I got a call back about an hour later inviting me back for training on Monday =). SO.. I landed my first two interviews and it’s definitely helped get my confidence back in being able to manage this experience. I can do this! I’ll see what the sales gig is like/all about. I wasn’t really feeling it, but after meeting the guy and hearing him talk about it, it didn’t seem like a bad venture.

[monicanudles]

Edithvale Beach

[monicanudles]

My weekends rule. Yours drool.

So this past weekend was spent at Moomba Festival on Friday (3/10) which was basically a fair along the Yarra River. George and I basically went for the food. I got a banana, strawberry and Nutella crepe. Holy crepe it was good <-- knee slapper. On Saturday I went to Adventure Park with my cousin, her friend Jamila, her husband and all their kids. It’s a waterpark in Geelong. It was pretty agonizing again at first, waiting for everyone to get ready, not leaving, walking back and forth deciding what to do.. but I managed to branch off with Aadvi (my cousins son, 9 y/o) and we floated on the lazy river for a while and rode a wee little baby coaster. Didn’t do much else.. but somehow all that took a while. But it was fun. Afterwards we went to Nando’s for dinner, which is a family style South African/Portugese restaurant. It was really good! We got grilled Peri-Peri chicken, which is their house sauce with fries and corn. Then Sunday and Monday George and I took an hour train ride to Edithvale and hung out on the beach since Monday was Labor Day. We were trying to see Mornington Peninsula but that was about a 3 hour train ride so we scratched that.

The beach was BEAUTIFUL. The water was clear, the sand was so soft.. I don’t know how I’ll cope with the beaches back home after seeing Australia’s, honestly. Each one I go to just gets better and better. The water was calm and it was hot out, swimming was definitely in order. Poor George wasn’t feeling too well though, so he didn’t go in as much. We went to Seabreeze Cafe on the beach as well and I had a Devonshire breakfast? but instead of tea I got a chai latte and I ate the scones like a sandwich which I got berated by George for. Apparently, you’re supposed to cut them in half, then put the cream and the jelly on top of the cream. My bad! It was delicious and going down the hatch the same way, either way. 

The job hunt hasn’t been successful. I either haven’t received any responses or received rejections from places like H&M, which is a little discouraging since I have 8 years in retail. I’m thinking places won’t hire Work and Holiday Visa holders as easily as it seemed. I have a friend who’s having just as hard a time and has been here since November, and will end up going north to look for work. I won’t give up and I won’t stress, it’s only been a month. But there’s a time when I’ll have to give up unfortunately because I’ll be running out of funds and I’m still paying on a car, a medical bill and not to mention the credit card I’m using here in lieu of cash monies. I don’t want to stress out about that either, so I’m thinking I’ll give it another month, because then I have to start a job hunt all over again back home and who knows how long that will take. I was supposed to come to Melbourne in November, but there was an issue with my flights and I canceled. So I was in North Carolina looking for a job, something miniscule that I wouldn’t be afraid to leave and burn a bridge if I decided to try for Melbourne again. I couldn’t find anything, I even tried a temp agency. It’s a little scary, knowing I don’t have a degree or any sort of professional training in anything. I know I could definitely pick up a retail job, but that’s not what I want to do the rest of my life, jump from small job to small job and be the little old Polish lady working the fitting room. I still don’t even know what I want to do for a career, and I mostly just want to be happy and comfortable which seems pretty unattainable these days. It’ll be upsetting leaving Melbourne (if that’s what it comes to), but at least I came here and tried and got to see some incredible sights. So we’ll see how it goes by the end of March.

This weekend is another exciting one, The Arnold Classic is on Saturday at the Melbourne Exhibition Saturday, and Heidi Somers aka Buff Bunny, who I follow on YouTube, is going to be there! She’s under 5 foot also, which I never realized until diving deeper into her videos. She gives me hope on being able to build a better physique! Just have to get on that building it part.. 

[monicanudles]

Great Ocean Road

3/3 - 3/5 - George had the idea to rent a car to take a road trip and camp along the Great Ocean Road, which was AMAZING and exactly what I imagined Australia to be. I drove the whole time, which was fucking bonkers to get used to. The car wiper blades and turn signals were even on the opposite side, so instead of signaling I pretty much just turned the wipers on a majority of the time, kept going for my seatbelt on the left side and shifter on the right side. We left on Friday after he got out of work and stopped at Castle Cove lookout, even though it was dark, to eat some noms. The sounds of the waves crashing just got me really excited for everything else planned, I’ve always wanted to see clear blue water and REAL waves. 

Then we went to see the Melba Gully Glow Worms. They’re the larvae of Fungus Gnats and they have a substance in their body that stores daylight. They live along the rock wall and there’s also a small waterfall (well it’s called Anne’s Cascade so I guess it’s not a waterfall). There’s no light pollution and you could see the Milky Way!! I wish I had a camera that could pick all of that up, because it was incredible and now I get to cross that off my bucket list! I did try using my actual digital camera and the thing died after like 5 pictures, even with freshly charged batteries which are clearly shit. The next morning, we checked out Melba Gully in the daylight and then headed off. There was a “Big Tree” which had obviously fallen over that they had as a sight, but there was an even bigger one so close to it! 

We first stopped at Gibson Steps, which was hands down my favorite place. You walk down 86 steps along the cliff face down to the beach, where swimming is not advised...  because the waves are amazing!!! They just got even more amazing as we went along! But the cliff face was also just fucking incredible, I have never seen anything like that in my life. I was just in complete awe of the place. I foolishly forgot to take a picture of the steps! But I’m sure a Google search will show them. There was a lot of beach to walk on, on the far right was an incredible cliff face, gigantic rocks on the sand and limestone formations in the water. 

Not too much further up the road was the 12 Apostles, which were 12 limestone formations. Now there are only 6, I believe, due to erosion. I would have loved to have been able to climb on top of one of them, or even just be on a boat next to them. I’m super curious as to what the area looked like a million years ago. A lot more tourists started showing up at this point. It was a perfect day for it. I managed to get sunburn on my shoulders though!

Next was Loch Ard Gorge, which was my 2nd favorite spot. There was a small beach, like the ones you see in pictures hidden away in between the cliffs. There was a cave to the right that we tried to go into but the tide was too high. If there weren’t more sights on the agenda I would have definitely stayed there all day. It was a piece of paradise I could have died happily at.

We stopped in Port Campbell at a cafe for some nourishment and then ventured over to The Arch, another limestone formation. The waves near that thing!! Again, amazinngggg, blue water, white foam.. I can’t get over it. I also saw my first wild Australian animal, an Echinda, which is like a giant hedgehog. It was so cute! It’s also known as a Spiny Anteater. 

At London Bridge you’re uptop the cliffs, and there are 3 different viewing platforms. It had actually been 2 bridges at one point, there’s a sign that says it collapsed on January 15, 1990 and two people happened to be on top of it and had to be rescued by helicopter. The sand there was dark and pure. There were no shells, no pebbles, nothing. The way the blue water foamed up on the sand just had me perplexed. It was perfection. You could see also little penguin footprints closer to the cliffs, so freaking adorable. 

 The Grotto was apparently a short walk, but it was a really long walk on a boardwalk and then down an asston of stairs. There were some rebels who were taking pictures on top of the cliff away from the stairs and also who went past the rock separation from the grotto. Naturally, we did the same. It was kinda tough to get pictures of it from afar, so why not? Also, house goals. I definitely plan on having a house with a grotto, behind it an amazing view of the ocean. The limestone it’s formed in is between 10-20 million years old. 

We chilled in the car at Peterborough Coastal Reserve for a bit before finding a place to camp at back in Port Campbell. We found a spot with showersssss... best shower of my life. I wish I knew we were going to find this place, because there were plugs and I definitely would have been able to blow dry my hair. My friend Matt likes to call me a princess, I really never realized how right he was until coming here ha! We also had dinner at 12 Rocks Cafe and Beach Bar. I got the chicken parm, which they call “parmie” and don’t serve with pasta.. but with ham and cheese on top. Nonetheless, it was delishhhh. I hadn’t camped in yearsss, so sleeping was pretty painful. I also definitely heard something scurrying outside of the tent in the middle of the night. George mentioned it in the morning and I just told him I was ignoring it, hoping it would go away!

Sunday’s weather was cloudy and rainy, but we were going to see 2 waterfalls so I think the weather was perfect for it. I also got really good pictures from it. We went back to Castle Cove Lookout to see it in they daylight, there were sooo many people there. We saw a wallaby while driving! But no koalas, which was a bit of a bummer. But they had chlamydia anyway, so whatever. 

Then to Carisbrook Water Falls, which was more of a cascade also, since the water didn’t exactly fall. Still beautiful. The we headed to Lorne and saw Erskine Falls which was amazing. The weather really gave me perfect pictures. We stopped at a restaurant called Bottle of Milk for burgers, I got a Hawaiian Burger and chocolate malt milkshake, which was pretty thin, but it was all mmmmm sooo goood. At the green across, there were wild cockatoos!! There had to be at least 10 of them. Apparently, they’re super common but I hadn’t seen any yet. 

Then we made the long, sad trip back home. 

I can cross a few things off my bucket list; seeing clear blue water, big waves and the milky way. I never thought I’d ever be able to. And if George never suggested the idea I probably wouldn’t have gone to see any of this or thought of renting a car to do so, so thank you George! It was all so stunning and I’m definitely never going to forget it!

[monicanudles]

[monicanudles]

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[monicanudles]

Hosier Lane Street Art, St Kilda Penguins, Altona Beach.

Sorry John, here’s an update!

The weekends have gotten more exciting and less boring as I’ve been doing things and keeping busy, weekdays too. I’ve got a hang of the public transit and even drove for a weekend.. which was not easy to adjust to. Thankfully, it was mostly back roads and not city roads. Melbourne City’s roads are a cluster fuck. 

2/25 - An English Bloke I met name George showed me around the city. First we went to Hosier Lane to see the street art which was awesome. There’s pretty much graffiti everywhere, which seems to be pretty accepted. The art was a mix between nonsense and political statements, there was even a Trump piece that used to be Putin. We also saw the St. Kilda penguins, which you can see at Phillip Island. They come home to St. Kilda after fishing all day. It’s currently mating season and they’re also molting. They call them “Fairy Penguins” because they’re so tiny and adorable. We also saw some Australian possums, which are adorable and not rabid looking. They’re also way too friendly, they’re obviously been fed by tourists for forever. We walked a lot through the city too, so I got to know the lay out a lot better. 

2/26 - I went to Altona Beach with my cousin and her kids, as well as her friends and their child, along with some other random child that doesn’t stop smiling at me and it’s creepy. It took HOURS to get her kids ready and I’ve kinda sworn off doing things with kids again.. except this weekend I agreed to go to the waterpark with them. We’ll see how that goes. Anyhow, Altona Beach was really nice, much better than anything in CT but it wasn’t Melbourne’s best beach. The water wasn’t a clear blue but it was blue and green! As soon as we got there I branched off and walked along the shallow and found some really cool snail shells and baby muscles.. so adorable. 

I tried uploading pictures but tumblr has a size limit. So, if you’ve got my Facebook you might have already seen them. 

[monicanudles]

White Night, CBD

This past Saturday we went to White Night (https://whitenightmelbourne.com.au/about), which lasts from 7PM to 7AM. There were SO many things happening! It took up the entire CBD (Central Business District) and all of the streets were closed off. One park was filled with giant inflated bunnies and flowers/grass, the streets were filled with displays such as ring with ballroom dancers, an electric canvas on two buildings, a giant light up jellyfish, a light show.. it was really neat. I guess it’s festival season and things like this will be popping up all the time in the city. I may have come at a really good time. Yesterday, my cousin's neighbor took me to the city via bus/train/tram and so I got to figure that out a little bit. There’s a language barrier so it was hard to know if I was understanding this shit right, and she’s also pretty new to it so it wasn’t the greatest learning experience, but at least I can get myself to the city now. We took the bus to Laverton Station, then to Flinder St Station. We went on the free tram, they use it as a tourist attraction and bring you around the whole city and an automated voice navigator tells you about the sights. We stopped at Collins St to see Dockland Park. She thought it was a different park but it was pretty mundane. But there’s a dock, duh, and a bay where the boats ride through and there’s a lot of business buildings. It wasn’t as busy as the rest of the city thought so it was nice. From there we took the tram again and walked up Elizabeth St. We stopped in a few shops, including H&M. It’s HUGE and fancy.. two floors. There is a museum, aquarium and the parks as well, so once you see those all there really is to do is shop so I don’t see myself venturing out there too much unless something is going on. I’m sure I have a lot more to figure out about the area though. Also, people walk really fucking aggressively! They’re constantly bumping into me or stepping on my heels.. There’s no need to be that damn close. And at first I was walking on the right side and switched over thinking it was me, but it didn’t matter, they don’t even walk on the left side. Its worse than New York, for sure. It was in the lower 90′s and not humid at all, I didn’t even get any darker. It was pretty brutal in the sun though, but my hair wasn’t frizzy at all so that’s kind of amazing! I haven’t really been looking for a job yet, I want to get to know the area better and get something with as little commute time as possible. I don’t want to start somewhere, keep looking and then find something better, especially because I don’t want to deal with the paperwork/taxes. I know at some point I can’t be picky but I'd like to have some criteria met! I also have no clue where to start looking just yet. Hopefully, I can also rent a car and that’ll broaden my options. 

[monicanudles]

Spoiled American

So I haven’t done too much just yet. Adjusting to the time zone was pretty easy. I wake up at about 6:30AM (2:30PM EST). My cousin took her neighbors and I shopping the day before yesterday. I thought it was just going to be to get groceries and essentials but we ended up at the Werribee Mall. I’m not a fan of shopping malls, especially with a group so that was mild torture, the mall was reallllly nice though, there was a part they added recently and it had an all glass ceiling. Afterwards we went grocery shopping and my God, it’s very different. The store was about half the size of any of our grocery shops and the selection was minimal at best. I seriously can’t believe how little there is. I had a hard time finding quite a few things. They don’t even have Sriracha! For some reason grocery shopping makes me really homesick - the same thing happened when I moved to North Carolina and I definitely cried in the middle of Wal-Mart. Probably because I couldn’t find my usual foods/comforts. I was feeling pretty homesick, missing people doesn’t help. Yesterday was much better. I stayed home and went for a run and found the main road, there’s like a huge field between the neighborhood and the main road and I feel like it serves as sort of a bird sanctuary. There’s magpies here and these cute little black and white and black and blue birds. They were so tiny. I think one is a Willie Wagtail and the blue is a Superb Fairy-Wren.There’s also doves which are right in the backyard, where my bedroom is. They go ALL morning along with the kookaburras, but I haven’t seen them yet. Today isn’t so great, maybe because I’m pretty bored. We were going to go to the beach but its super windy and chilly. Tomorrow it’s probably going to rain, the plan is to head to the city and walk around, which I would love to do, so hopefully it holds off. 

[monicanudles]

Day 1

I made it to Melbourne, Australia. FINALLY! After a grueling 25 hours and multiple mishaps. I’m about 3 months late, but here nonetheless. I’ll be posting a pretty lengthy entry about that whole ordeal soon. 

The flights went pretty smoothly, none of my bags got lost and customs was a breeze to get through. Qantas customer service was pretty great too. The meals were pretty large and weren’t all that bad for airplane food. I went from JFK>LAX>SYD>MEL. Somehow LAX wasn’t a layover but a plane changeover.. essentially the same thing. But that was better because it broke up at “22″ hour flight. The 13 hour flight from LAX to SYD would have been pretty miserable but I was luckily able to make myself sleep about 10 hours of the ride, without using Zquil! I arrived at MEL at about 11:45AM (7:45PM EST). I don’t think I’m jetlagged just yet, but after a nice meal from my cousin’s neighbor who came by to check on me, showering and putting a few things away, I’m pretty tired. I’m definitely napping. 

I’m also definitely never going to try vegemite. It smells like shit!

[monicanudles]

[monicanudles]