Day 5 - Rugby and Irishmen

As far as clinic went, it was a day with "Prof" which meant it was supposed to be a learning day. Mostly we (Canadian friend named Christine and I) spent our time following either Prof or the registrar around. I did see a few weird skin diseases such as sarcoidosis and stuff like that. I also learned that America uses units that are apparently not used anywhere else in the world for things like cholesterol. Their upper limit of cholesterol is 5.0. I suppose they use mmol/?unit while we use g/dl? I don't know.

 The real fun of the day began when Christine (the Canadian) and I went to the rugby game. Apparently in Australia there are two types of rugby -- Union and League. I think the League version is more exciting and physical but the one we went to was Union, I believe. It was the Waratahs versus the Chiefs. Neither Christine or I had any idea of what was going on... I figured it might be somewhat intuitive but it really wasn't. It was almost like American football except when someone was tackled the ball was apparently still in play. Not quite sure on what the deal was with penalties and stuff. If you're REALLY interested, you can read about the game here..

I also tried my very first ever official "meat pie." It was gross. Basically imagine a chicken pot pie but fill it instead with beef and gravy. I took a picture of it:

We also took a picture about three times before someone was able to get it accurately... every time it was some new shenanigan! The guy taking it was very patient though. Props to him! Here's an accidental video so you can ever so briefly hear that ever charming Australian accent... haha.

  
I guess to further improve my blog, here are the three attempts at a picture:

 

 

  

Finally, a good one!

After the game, we went to a bar where we met these three Irish guys. Honestly I could only understand about 70% of what they were saying. Part of that was apparently my name meant I was more Irish than they were, and that any proper Murphy was immediately nicknamed "Spud" (for potato) because of something about potato soup during the famine (that was a part that I couldn't really understand). One of them was about to get Australian citizenship tomorrow and his friend could do a really good Australian accent! The funny thing was that both the Irish guy and the Belgian (from yesterday) both seemed to think that Australians were rather concerned with their appearance. I haven't really met enough of them to comment but it seems to be the going theme with outsider perceptions. At any rate, we attempted to take a picture with the Irish guys and we ended up having a bunch of strangers included in our picture!

 

The Irishmen were the two next to me and the last one on the top row (wearing the white shirt). Other than the my friend (Asian girl) I don't know the other three people, haha. 

After that, I took the train back home. I have to admit that around then I started to feel a little homesick for everyone and felt a little bit lonely. I know, it's kind of ridiculous to feel that way in a really awesome city but it's true! I miss America! I'll be back to normal in no time. :)