What a Day...

Today was a pretty frustrating day.

This morning we watched a really boring movie called "We of the Never Never." It was excrutiatingly boring with too many refrains of the same oboe line which was really distracting. I was also very tired and feeling sick and I didn't want to watch a movie, especially such a dull one. Needless to say, class was awful this morning.

After lunch, we went down to the Melbourne Botanical Gardens to learn about plants. I was kind of dreading the trip since plants aren't that interesting to me. We met a tour guide who talked way too much and meant well but really made the two-hour tour a tortuous one. It didn't help that it was rainy and cold.

Afterwards, Jamie, Derek, and I went to the Shrine of Remembrance, which honors the ANZAC (Australia/New Zealand Army Corps) veterans and enlistees from World War I. The Shrine was amazing. We climbed to the top of it and got a great view of downtown Melbourne. The inside was also beautiful. You walk in underneath a huge dome that has a small skylight cut into the top. Surrounding the walls are beautiful marble carvings of war scenes, and on the floor is a large marble plaque that has a quote that I can't remember, and now I feel bad. I took a picture of it though. Anyway, apparently on November 11 (Veterans' Day) at 11 am, the sun is at just the right angle that it flows into a crevice in the wall and encircles the word "love" on the floor of the shrine.

After a long (45 minute) tram ride back home, we had dinner and watched a film called "Rabbit-Proof Fence." It was seriously one of the best films I've ever seen, truly an amazing movie. It's about the half-caste Stolen Generation of the Aborigines in Australia. The movie really did make my day as the rest of it hadn't been so good.