australia – Jaclyn Grace

Last Day

I can’t believe that IQP is finally over and today is my last day in Australia! Yesterday, we finished up project presentations and wrapped up everything at the office. It was definitely a sad goodbye, but I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such an amazing group of people.

After final presentations, we came back to the apartments to pack before heading over to an old WPI Professor’s house for pizza and drinks in celebration of being done! He rented out the rooftop of his building and we had a blast.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for New Zealand at 9AM. We will be spending 5 days traveling from Wellington to Auckland before heading off to Hawaii for 5 more days. I will try to update when I can!

xo,

Jaclyn

Australian Rules Football

This weekend has been very relaxed after all of the excitement of last.

Yesterday, we bought tickets for a pro Australian football game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

If you have never seen this sport played, I encourage you to search it on YouTube. It was nuts! The field is enormous and the players wear little to no gear, but spend the entire time violently tackling each other!

It was a beautiful day to watch a game with friends.

On a side note, I only have 3 more weekends left in Melbourne. I can’t believe how fast this time has gone by! While I am trying to take in every last moment, I am excited to see me family and friends again. I really miss all of them and wish they could be here to experience this beautiful place with me. I especially know my cousin Joey would love it 😉 (He may or may not have been waiting for me to mention him on here… Lol).

xo,

Jaclyn

Random Update

I am finally adjusting to the routine and starting to get used to everyday life here. Soon enough I am sure it will feel like home, though there are some major things I’m missing. I would give just about anything for a regular dunkin donuts coffee at this point! I have yet to come across any cafe, restaurant, or coffee shop here that prepares coffee like we do in the US. While I love the fancy lattes, lately I have been craving a regular coffee.

Here are a few things that I have been up to over the past few days…

Last night a few of us went to one of the first nights of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.It was a free show located at a little bar in the city.To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much out of this. It had been a long work day and I almost stayed home and went to bed early, but I’m so glad I didn’t. There were 11 comedians that performed for about 5 minutes each and they were hysterical. The purpose of this show was to advertise the rest of their performances throughout the festival, so they all highlighted some of their best jokes. This was the perfect week night activity for us and I’m hoping we can catch another show while we are here. Comedy

Today after work I had a few errands to run. First, I went to the post office as I had to get a passport photo taken for my internship. This is the building that it was in…

I am telling you that everything here is beautiful. I couldn’t help but compare this to the post office in my home town, which doesn’t quite measure up.

After that, I went to the library to send in my forms for work and was so surprised by all of the people sitting on the front lawn. People were eating, reading, and working on their computers. It felt like I was on a college campus.

One other thing that I have been doing is playing around with the GoPro that I brought. It is awesome! I have been taking tons of videos, but unfortunately I am having trouble downloading the software to edit/compile them. I can’t wait until I can do that and see the final product. 🙂 Here are a few random photos I have taken with it…

xo,

Jaclyn

Friday Favorites – Australia Style!

Here are a few of the things that I am loving most about Australia:

1. Greek Food

I neverhad true Greek Food before, and I am in love! One of my group partners was born in Greece, so we have had quite a few meals. One restaurant is right next to our work and we have made our way over twice. The first time I had “The Greek Burger.” It was a burger with eggplant, veggies, cheese, and an egg on it. It also had a Greek sauce called tzatziki on it, which is sort of like a mayo/sour cream mix.

This past Wednesday we went there and I had the “Open Souvlaki.”

It was chicken that came with pita bread, tzatziki, and a delicious Greek salad. I loved it. I am going to have to find a Greek restaurant back at home!

2. The night market

I talked about this before, but every Wednesday in the summer there is a night market full of food, music, and entertainment. We went again this week and I loved it just as much. Of course, I had another strawberry, nutella, and coconut crepe…

3. Artwork

The graffiti here is incredible.

We came upon these walking to dinner with one of our advisors the other night. I can’t imagine being able to paint something like this on such a large scale.

4. Tim Tams

I should probably be ashamed that three of my last four favorite things this week are related to food… But I’m not! These are delicious. Everyone who comes back to school from Australia raves about these and now I know why. They are chocolate dipped cookies with a chocolate filling inside. There are so many other flavors too- salted caramel, peanut butter, white chocolate, and so on. I am definitely bringing some of these home for my family to try.

5. Skyping with my best friend!

Victoria is in Santa Fe, NM studying abroad right now as well and we finally got to Skype on Tuesday! I’m so glad we picked the same term to go away and that we are going on another cruise together when we get back.. only 64 days until that vacation! I’m so glad you’re having a blast and I miss you tons!

I don’t know if this qualifies as a favorite per say, but tonight I went to an internet cafe down the road to catch up on some work and schedule my classes for next year. I ordered an iced coffee and a small pizza for dinner so that I could use their internet. This is what I received…

It had ice cream in it! I felt like I was drinking a root beer float rather than a coffee. You definitely couldn’t get one of these at Dunkin Donuts!

xo,

Jaclyn

Yarra Valley Wine Country

Today was my favorite day so far in Australia. We were picked up at 9AM to commence on a full day wine, chocolate, and cheese tour around Yarra Valley. Of our entire group, 14 of us went and we visited 4 wineries, 1 dairy factory, 1 chocolate factory, and a brewery.

The first winery that we stopped at was very low-key and laid back. I wasn’t feeling great this morning (thanks to a cold that will not go away), but I tried to enjoy myself anyways.

The man in charge of the vineyard there taught us the proper way to taste wine, which was interesting. He also taught us a lot about the different kinds of grapes that go into the different types. The one that I liked the most was a very sweet dessert wine.. the others I didn’t really like.

Next, we stopped at the dairy farm. We were able to sample 5 types of cheese and they were delicious. They specialize in goat cheese, but also had their own small bakery inside. I purchased some cheese called “Juno.” It is basically goat cheese in a garlic/olive oil coating. My friend Mike and I also bought a gigantic baguette to split. It was probably almost 2 feet long and we ate just about the entire thing on the bus ride!

The second winery we stopped at was my favorite part of the day. I have never been somewhere with such breath-taking views. I never wanted to leave.

It looked like the perfect setting for a wedding scene out of a movie. The guide actually told us that it is a $35,000 minimum cost to have your wedding there!

This place wasn’t as much of a wine-tasting place. Instead, everybody got to choose between 4 types of wine and have a full glass of one. I picked one that is created only in Australia and is rare in other parts of the world. It was a sweet red wine.

I hope that someday I am successful enough to have a lifestyle that allows me to visit places like this often. A lot of us were saying that as we sat on the back patio and sipped our wine. 🙂

We also got a tour of where they actually make the wine and learned all about it.

The third winery we stopped at provided lunch for us. I was a little skeptical, as our lunch on the Philip Island tour yesterday was nothing to write home about, but it was spectacular. I ordered the Spicy Baby Calamari Salad and it was perfect. We also got a glass of wine with our meal (which I hated) and a coffee.

The last winery we stopped at wasn’t the best. The woman running the place was extremely rude and would not give us the time of day. It was really disappointing but we tried not to let it ruin the great day we were having.

Next we stopped at the chocolate factory!

I don’t think I have ever seen so much chocolate in one place. When you walked in there were heaping bowls of dark, milk, and white chocolate chips that you could help yourself to as you shopped around the store. It was a really fun environment and the chocolate was delicious. I bought a marshmallow truffle.. it was a chocolate cookie with a giant marshmallow on top of it, dipped in milk chocolate.. yum!

Our last stop of the day was at the White Rabbit Brewery. Some people in our group got a beer to try out, but I passed.

Overall, we had a great day. The sun was shining, we had a great group, and we had a lot of fun! Now I am getting my stuff ready for the work week ahead and going to sleep.

xo,

Jaclyn