Day 260! It’s finally a warm day in Melbourne! After over a week of chilly days, today was nice and (dare I say) hot. I’m hoping this is an upward trend. Today also is hopefully my last day of unemployment for a bit, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty of free days still in the future to enjoy the city!

I’ve been feeling pretty tired since getting to Melbourne. It might be the time zone change or it could be the amount of walking I’m now doing, since I don’t have a motorbike anymore. But either way, I decided to sleep in a bit this morning.

I woke up at 9am, rolled out of bed, and got reday for my day. No one was home anymore, except me and the painters, and I was quite hungry. So I took Sam’s knowledge that he parted on me to make myself a proper Vegemite toast. Sam’s mom also told me to help finish the fruit so I had my first orange in some time!

My duty for the morning was to wait for a man to come collect a couch from their house. It needed some fixing and I was asked to hang around to let him in and potentially help him move it.

So I grabbed the book I’ve been putting off, The Hobbit, and sat in the dining room waiting for him to arrive. I waited and waited but he never came! I did almost finish my book though (finally). Sam’s mom made it home before the couch guy did and she said he in the end wasn’t able to come till later. Because of that I was relieved of my duties and went into the city to meet up with Immy.

Before I met up with her though, I made a pit stop at my favorite Indian buffet, Crossways.

I had two big plates of their chickpea and spinach curry and a very yummy cherry halava. As I’ve said, I’ll be frequenting this place, especially since I don’t have my own kitchen to cook in.

It was a gorgeous day out, so Immy and I decided to meet at a market. But when I started walking over to it she asked if I wanted to go play soccer in a park with the people from her hostel! That sounded like a ton of fun, so I turned around and headed that way.

The weather today was what I thought Melbourne would be like when I showed up. It was a warm spring day with a cool breeze! In the sun I’d actually say I was hot! A nice change of pace from the chilly days I’ve been experiencing.

I got to the hostel and Immy and her friend Charolette helped me sneak past the front desk and into the area all her friends were hanging out it at (the main part of the hostel is only for residents).

I hung out for the next half hour chatting with a large group of people in the kitchen/eating area. Most of the people were French and chatting rapidly in French. But I was able to catch bits and pieces of their conversation from my limited French knowledge.

But they did speak English with us too and there was a lot of fun chatter before we headed to the park.

There were 15 of us in total so we made 3 teams of 5 and played up to two goals per game. My team was Theo, Batis, Charolette, Samantha, and myself.

We had a blast running up and down our makeshift field on this incredibly beautiful day. My team started out a bit rocky but after the first game we hit our stride and didn’t lose a single one after that! Batis and I had some solid chemistry assisting each other on multiple goals.

Over the next two hours, we played a bunch of matches and finished off playing a juggling game in a circle (some people call it Barcelona, some call it Kick up, all the same game but the game everyone loved to play on Sairee Beach in Koh Tao). We then sat in the sun chatting before heading back to the hostel to hang out some more.

6pm rolled around and I was starting to get hungry. Immy had food she was going to make and I didn’t want to chance sneaking past the desk again. So I left Immy and my new friends and headed towards another familiar part of town.

I ended up going to Paramount Food Court for another cheap meal. I somehow found a vendor selling a $6 box of Chinese food, I couldn’t pass that up.

It was a simple dish of chicken with rice, but it was really good and filling… especially for that cheap!

In Thailand, I really enjoyed eating out because of how cheap it was… and also the quality of the food was insane. But so far in Melbourne, the more I eat out, the more excited I am to have a kitchen to cook in! Hopefully soon, but with how fun today was, maybe I’d think about eventually moving into a hostel.

After eating, I made my way back to Flinders Street to head home. This train stop already looks beautiful in the day, but at night I found it all lit up and stunning.

I rode the train back to Brighton and walked the 10 minutes back home. Jane and Lucy were finishing dinner and I chatted to them briefly… but I was super tired and ready to shower and lie down. So I snuck upstairs to have an early night.

I definitely gassed myself out running around so much in the park… but it was a ton of fun! I did tweak my shoulder a bit, hopefully that sorts itself out before my first shift tomorrow. I’m not entirely sure what to expect, but I know I need to be at the gelato shop at 1pm. I’m super excited and hope it turns into a regular gig!

We’ll see!!

– Elie