Grand Final day!

Saturday 27th September
AFL Final
Hawks vs Swans
Not to be missed

It must have been phenomenal to watch that game in the stadium but unfortunately seats were around $1,500 each! Maybe not…

Instead we found a few pubs to watch the match and although we didn’t see much of the actual match the atmosphere was great! Hawks had a clear win but bless the poor Swans they did not give up!

The award ceremony was fantastic – you can really see how much it means to each and every player!

Sarah, Olivia and I finished the evening with a feast fit for kings on the infamous Lygon Street, also known as ‘little Italy’

 

I love birthdays

In the run up/a good couple of weeks afterwards I give myself the perfect excuse for basically doing whatever I want… Because it’s my birthday.

It’s a fantastic mantra in a way, but in another way it’s also the worst. Why should I only do whatever I want because it’s my birthday? Surely I should do it at any time of the year simply because I want to?

Unfortunately life isn’t always as easy as that and many things often get in the way (uni, work, …money!) but I am setting a birthday resolution to do at least one thing a day simply because I want to. Not for any other reason than that – because quite frankly that seems like the best kind of reason!

Anyway… Birthday was fabbbbulous! Fijian party was a little less Fijian than party but it was a house filled with wonderful people I haven’t known more than 2/3 months but still wanted to shower me in gifts and celebrate the night with me! Big loves to all of them! (Of course the gifts were highly appropriate and either alcohol or animal related! Perfect!)
A fellow British party girl forced me onto the breakfast bar for my birthday countdown… Obviously I didn’t refuse

 

We were meant to spend the next day at the Mornington Peninsula Hot Springs but unfortunately it was full as silly old me didn’t book in advance… Luckily we found this out before we rented the car and drove the whole way there! After furiously googling for an hour we found a fantastic spa in Melbourne city and spent the day relaxing there

It was also one of the first birthdays I’ve had with a full day of sunshine! God bless the Southern Hemisphere!!

I thought the day couldn’t get any better but then I finally got to tick the ballet off my bucket list. I went to see the Nutcracker with my fellow former-dance housemate Carlota and we both sat in awe of the entire performance. It really was beautiful!

 

Birthday celebrations

I’m turning 22 tomorrow and in true English fashion I started celebrating early! Friday night we went to QC then onto Turf and Saturday night we went to the Crown Casino to win some big bucks…. Of course that didn’t work but we definitely had a lot of fun trying!

Sunday was a glorious day spent in bed relaxing and ultimately being lazy… Because no one wants to work on their birthday! (Or any day leading up to it!!)

Tonight we are having a Fijian house party to celebrate even further but on Tuesday when the beginning of my elder years kicks in I will be celebrating with a little more dignity and sophistication – a spa day followed by an evening at the ballet!

Getting back to reality

We’ve got back from Fiji and it’s cold, raining and we have lots of uni work to do…. But heck we’ve had 2 weeks off, another afternoon won’t hurt!
Instead we went exploring fitzroy for cafés that stay open past 6pm

The final goodbye

Today is our last day in Nadi – no one wants to leave, no one wants to say goodbye (and most of all no one wants to go back to uni!)

We have had a fantastic trip to say the least – it has been a non-stop adventure and laugh and I couldn’t have picked any better friends to have experienced it with.

We spent our final day shopping for souvenirs (mostly as we’d run out of money to do anything else) however we did manage to meet another Hotel(/this time Hostel) owner who drove us to the town – all 5 of us plus driver – in his tiny Polo car, let’s just say it was a slight downgrade from the last experience!

The net of safety

Mantaray Island Restort is just wonderful. That statement sounds awfully pretentious but it’s genuinely true! The staff are so friendly and make such an effort with all of the guests and the Restort itself is a paradise!
If only it wasn’t for the flaming mosquitoes!!! And not just them but the moths the size of my palm and the lizards that were everywhere! If it wasn’t for our beloved nets of safety I’m not sure we would have survived the night!!

6am wake up calls

Yes. I’m not even joking. This morning we had a wake up call at 6am to say the Mantarays were coming. For anyone who doesn’t know me I am NOT a morning person and wasn’t best impressed at being pulled out of bed by an excited dorm but as my Spanish housemates put it so very well…

we won’t remember the time we stayed in bed but we will remember the time we swam with mantarays

And it didn’t disappoint!! We saw about 6/7 (or maybe the same 2 multiple times) today as opposed to one sighting yesterday.

There is a massively strong current where they swim so you relax until you spot one then try to swim furiously against the current to keep up with the Mantaray but usually only actually manage to just about stay still against the current. The boat then picks you up at the end of the current and drops you off at the beginning to start again. Amazing!

 

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Stranded on a desert island

Today was our first full day on the Mantaray Island and we saw a Mantaray, a turtle and pretty much the whole cast of Finding Nemo… But of course that came with a few adventures along the way…

There were two dives in the day but as I am not a certified diver I couldn’t do the first one so instead stayed in the boat, it was probably one of the choppiest days of the year and within 5 minutes I had been sick over the edge three times. Unable to return to the island they instead left me on a stranded desert island on my own before returning to collect me later… I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder if I was about to experience my own castaway movie – luckily I didn’t!!

Anyway once on the boat I ‘manned up’ and went on the second dive. Within minutes of going under we saw a turtle and they are exactly how you expect them to be… Amazing! So relaxed and chilled out, whoever did their research on the characters for the Finding Nemo film did it well!!

Whilst climbing off the boat I managed to do a ‘duck and role’ resulting in me lying flat in the water… Forgetting I had my handbag around me! Thank the lord I didn’t have any valuables in there !!

You’ve got to love a good welcome

Especially if it is in the form of a song!!!

It’s a hard life but someone has to do it

Never have I ever thought kayaking would be so hard!
We definitely had one dodgy kayak which couldn’t go in a straight line! We also had a ridiculous amount of struggles when we reached a tiny island of approximately 3 meters radius only filled with sand… And rocks! Plenty of rocks which bashed around your ankles every time the waves came in! It was a huge struggle getting out of the kayak before the waves came crashing and moved it, of course everyone managed it except me who ungracefully got capsized by the kayak!
We spent a few minutes taking pictures of paradise before the waves got too much and we decided to leave. If we thought getting onto the island would be hard, getting off was even worse! Not only were the rocks too hard to walk over the water was too shallow to get a kayak over.. We eventually made it off the island to realise we’d lost the GoPro somewhere and would have to go back in a rush of panic to find it. Luckily all four of us plus GoPro lived to tell the tale!

We relaxed on the beach for the rest of the afternoon watching a beautiful sunset before the evenings antics began!