Hello, sorry for the insanely long absence from posting, but hopefully over the next week or so I can show you why! We left Canberra on the 1st of July and got back 2 days ago. Today is my first day of classes again, so I'm going to try to post as much as possible this week and next, knowing that it will get busy again soon!
Anyway, our time away went like this:
July 1-8 Melbourne
July 8-9 Sydney
July 9-11 Culburra
July 11-12 Sydney
July 12-20 Cairns
July 20-24 Sydney
July 24 Canberra
It was all a blast, we had every sort of weather system you could imagine short of snow, and while Melbourne was rainy windy and cold, Cairns was sunny and warm. Packing for 3 weeks, and only carry-on luggage, was something of an accomplishment!
I'm going to try to post photos chronologically, but I'll probably only do a few a day so that I can focus on getting back into school stuff as well. Maybe this weekend I can get a significant chunk done, so til then, I'll try posting a few photos a day. Here it goes!
Simon and I were really lucky, a friend of ours was driving to Melbourne so we went with him. The trip took about 7 hours, and it was neat to see more of Australia's countryside. We went through a solid stretch where there were koalas, but try as I might I didn't spot one. Next time hopefully!
The first dinner we ate was back to Sichaun House in Melbourne's Chinatown. It's so delicious! Melbourne definitely has the best selection of food in Australia that we've found so far.
So we arrived on Friday. On Saturday we went to an AFL (aka Aussie Rules football to us foreigners) game. The game is CRAZY, but so fast paced and really easy to get into. We went with Simon's friends and had a good rivalry going on between us. Definitely a game I want to be able to understand more.
By default I was cheering for the winning team, which was apparently a really big deal because the other team is #1 right now so this game was a major upset. Which made it all the more incredible! Later that night we met up with friends from school at a party that was totally free and we would have never known about if we weren't invited. Melbourne is crazy like that, there's a bunch of stuff going on in different spaces all over the city that you have to know about otherwise you'd never even realize something was going on. Course I guess that's the same with most cities.
The next day we didn't get up to too much, it was pretty rainy out. At night we met up with another friend from school to go for dinner on Lygon street, which is all Italian food. Simon was sure he saw a Greek restaurant but after a thorough search, we realized there's pretty much only Italian, so we went for dinner at Papa something's. The food was delicious, they had pasta, pizza, seafood, a whole bunch of stuff.
Ok, so that's it for post #1 but I swear more are coming! Til then, I'm off to get some groceries and do more reading for class.
Til soon! xx
Here are Simon and I at the footie game. I am celebrating the Bombers' victory, hence the scarf draped over the entire photo!
I can't remember if it was the next day or a few days after, but we went to the 'Shrine of Remembrance' I believe it's called. We spent an hour or so wandering through it, there was lots to see. 
This is a view of downtown Melbourne from the shrine. What makes me most happy is that the Aboriginal flag is displayed in the middle of the three flags that represent Australia. The flag on the left is the national flag, and on the right is the Torres Straight Islander flag.
Flinders Street station again. The building itself is gorgeous!
And this is a random shot, in one of the arcades there is a candy shop and they are regularly making candy there. Not sure what this will turn out to be, but it looks like mints or something!
