Sculptures in the Park

Friday night we attended a stand-up comedy show with four comedians representing Ireland, America and Australia. One of them, Andrew Stanley, did a hilarious reading of a 1970's romance novel with a hero named Slade (you must say that in your deepest, manliest voice to be effective). It made me blush. Several times. The show I really wanted to see but couldn't get tickets for was Josh Earl is a Librarian. I highly recommend going to his MySpace page for some great examples of his work, especially if you're a 30-ish library employee.

We did some exploring on Saturday, starting with the park along St. Kilda Road and going to the Shrine of Remembrance Memorial, a tribute to Australians serving in WWI. It is so large we can see it clearly from our apartment balcony and is quite stunning. You can read about it in detail here. There were still fresh flowers from Wednesday's Anzac Day parade inside the memorial, surrounding the Stone of Remembrance which states "Greater Love Hath No Man". At exactly 11 a.m. on November 11th, a ray of sunlight shines through the opening in the roof and lights up the word "Love"...which is the exact time and day of the Armistace ending the war. There is a wonderful view from the top of the monument, so of course I took some photos. Then we went to the Royal Botanic Gardens for a walk in the sunshine. I loved the camellias. We walked around the Ornamental Lake and saw some interesting birds, including a black swan. The garden is so big that there were whole sections we didn't see, but I have a feeling we'll be visiting again. One consequence of the drought here is that none of the fountains or water sculptures have water in them.

On Sunday we went to the Melbourne Aquarium. Besides getting to see alot of really strange creatures, like Leafy Sea Dragons , Sea snakes, and Moray Eels, which remind me of that creepy Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, we got to watch a "dive feed", where two divers go into a huge tank full of turtles, fish, sharks, etc to feed them in front of a room full of people. It was fabulous! The turtles and huge stingrays were incredibly hungry and trying to get all the fish. The turtles would chew on the yellow buckets containing the food and have to be shooed away, and the stingrays would try to cover the divers to get at the food. The divers had buzzers to alert each other when the sharks were nearby. We also saw coral, jellyfish, seahorses, and some lion fish.

Besides going to memorials, seeing deadly sea life, and studying, I've been learning some new recipes. My confidence in the kitchen is pretty low, so nothing too fancy yet, but I made a nice shrimp and asparagus risotto and also a delicious curry chicken/veggie dish. I'm going to try a spicy salsa meatloaf later this week.