On Saturday I went to Geelong, a mid-sized city about an hour south of Melbourne by train, with 3 friends. It was a beautiful day and we had lots of fun exploring.
I took these pictures of the countryside on the train. Spring is definitely on the horizon.
I kept my eye out for kangaroos, but sadly didn't see any!
Geelong is home to the National Wool Museum. Who knew such a thing existed? I have to admit, as lame as it sounds, I'm a bit curious about what's inside. We didn't have time to check it out, so I'll have to live in suspense until next time.
The pier!
While walking on the pier we spotted these rather large jelly fish-at least I think that's what they were. There were probably 10 of them swimming (floating?) near the surface of the water. I definitely would not want to come into contact with one of these.
We ate lunch at a cute restaurant at the end of the pier and then continued our walk along the water.
A palm tree forest!
Perks of having friends to take your picture-fewer selfies
These wooden posts were all over Geelong, decorated to look like various characters. We decided they had to be from an old pier or something. Katie (also American) and I struggled to think of the English word for these. Michelle, who is from Germany, said that there's a very specific word for the wooden posts on a dock in German. Culture lesson of the day! Anyway, these character guys were really cute and fun to take pictures with!
Here we all are next to "our" people. Basically, the one with the same/similar hair color :).
Pretty bridge that circled around the beach.
At one point near that white building at the end, two young guys stopped us and asked if we were "keen for a swim".
1) Australians use the word keen religiously but I still laugh when I hear it.
2) these guys were wearing underwear/shorts that were shorter than any shorts I have ever owned and would ever consider wearing in public. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but you get the point.)
3) it was about 60 degrees, so no, we weren't "keen" for a swim. But they complimented us on our cool American accents so that was nice!
We followed the walking path and then decided to cut across the grass to the Geelong Botanic Gardens.
Halfway through the grassy patch, it occurred to us that there could be snakes or some other horrifying Australian animal in the grass, so we jogged just to be safe. Spoiler: we all made it to the gardens alive.
Such a cute entrance to the gardens!
More garden pictures!
This is Sylvie, she's from Belgium and the bench was broken when she got there...she swears... :).
After the botanic gardens, we managed to get lost on our way downtown and ended up walking a couple miles before we realized we were going in the wrong direction. It ended up being quite a walk, and all we really wanted was ice cream. In a stroke of luck, the first shop we stumbled upon when we got back to civilization was a cute little ice cream parlor. I literally felt like we had come across the Promised Land. I ordered two scoops and realized my new friends were my kind of people when they thought that was completely normal and did the same. After all, what kind of person only gets one scoop of ice cream...?
We headed back to the city after that!
Pretty sun setting on the train ride home. Overall, Geelong was fun and worth the trip!
Billiard room off of the lounge. There is also a movie theater, two meeting rooms, a massage room, and a virtual golf course (Peter's favorite!), that I didn't get pictures of. I'll post pictures of our apartment as soon as it's a bit more put together, but this gives you an idea of where we live now! 
Lastly, dessert at Tutti Frutti, a frozen yogurt bar in the Emporium mall. It was delicious, and since it's technically yogurt, it doesn't really count as dessert. It's basically like eating a serving of vegetables. At least that's what I tell myself. Therefore, we stopped at Coles on the way home to pick up some wine and Oreos- a great ending to the day! 
