June 11, 2016
Vanderbilt’s bowling team is in the midst of a trip to Australia. Today senior Giselle Poss writes about the team’s Saturday activities.
Hey everyone! Today was another special day for us especially since we had the opportunity to bowl our first tournament abroad as a team.
We competed in the qualifying round at the Schweppes Melbourne Cup this morning which consisted of a grueling 12 games. Luckily, there were only three on a pair so the bowling moved pretty quickly. All of the women and men bowled together which is a bit different than most tournaments back home in the States. As I’m writing this, we have five of us in the cut for match play tomorrow morning!
After the qualifying ended, we got to tour the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and National Sports Museum. We learned that the grounds have been played on for over 160 years and additions have been built around it throughout the years. We tried our best to learn about cricket and its differences from baseball, but that proved rather difficult considering our tour guide told us it’s a game you have to grow up in to really understand. Besides cricket tournaments, these grounds also hold Australian Rules Football which is a combination of rugby and soccer. Teams from all over the world have played here and attract thousands of fans for each game.
Fortunately, we had some free time to explore the city on our own. Yesterday, our Melbourne tour guide, Mark, showed us some cool “laneways” throughout the city centre. These laneways have quite a few cool bakeries, cafes, and restaurants that are surrounded by street and wall art.
Kris, Jordan, Nicole, and I decided to have dinner on Degraves Street tonight which had a plethora of authentic Italian and Mediterranean food. The food, of course, was delicious and affordable considering tipping is not a norm in Australia. It was also really nice that the tax was included in the price so no extra math or splitting of bills to pay our meals was necessary.
Sending in for the night – have to get some much needed sleep since some of us will be continuing our Australian competition tomorrow morning!