Taaaaaaaar

Heeeeeeeeeeeels!

A lot of people have asked me when/how/if we watch U.S. sporting events while living abroad. The simple answer is "yes", that we are able to watch a few games here and there, but the timing of broadcasts are not always ideal since there is a 16 hour time difference between Melbourne time and Eastern Standard Time. During the Fall months (Fall in the Northern hemisphere), we were able to watch college football games on Sunday mornings, and since I wasn't working, I was able to watch NFL games on Monday mornings. All of this watching was done online, some live, and some on recorded broadcast that is available after the games are over. The free TV over here is actually pretty good, and they do show select NFL games every week, but we did not have a television for the first few months so we were doing all of our watching through the computer.

When the Winter months rolled around, we discovered that college basketball was a bit harder to watch based on the variety of game dates and times. However, we've been able to watch a few Carolina games this season, particularly the ACC match-ups. For the Tar Heel's first match up against the Dookies, I watched the heartbreaking loss live on a Monday morning since I was still unemployed. I then had to hide any emotion from Erik so that he would not know the result when he watched it after returning home from work on Monday evening. I watched the ending twice and that made the loss twice as heartbreaking! This time around, however, the game was on Saturday night at 7pm, which is 11am on Sunday for us. We actually had plans to meet some friends for brunch, so we stayed away from the internet and any type of social media until the game was over and started watching the game basically right after it ended in Durham. The beauty is that here we don't get any texts on our phones or score alerts on the television to let us know the end result. In fact, if we were to stay away from Facebook or ESPN for a few days, we still wouldn't see the result and could watch the re-recorded game a few days later. I really prefer to watch games live (I like to know that it's happening at the moment we are watching), but Erik doesn't seem to mind much. Needless to say, we were much happier about the end result of this game. The 'Heels certainly weren't flawless, but how good does it feel to get a win over Dook on Senior Night at Cameron Indoor Stadium in front of students who have been sleeping in tents for 7 weeks to see that game?!

We've had a nice week/weekend despite the rain that fell pretty much all day yesterday and several days during the week. I worked several different jobs once again and I have to say that I'm enjoying life SO much more now that I have a purpose! This week I have a meeting with a local college that has a Sports Therapy program, which is the closest thing I've seen to an Athletic Training Education Program that exists in Oz. I've expressed an interest in sessional teaching and the director was keen (yes, this is a commonly used word in the Aussie language...and it is the first word that came to my mind when writing...scary!) to meet with me right away, so I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say. We met up with one of Erik's colleagues and his family (wife and 2 young sons) yesterday. They are from Israel and arrived in Melbourne around the same time as we did, so it was nice to share stories and thoughts about the transition, though I give WAY more props to them because they made the move with 2 kids! Our brunch today was at Fruits of Passion in Kensington, which is on a tree-lined street of shops in a town just a few miles from where we live. We rode our bikes there and I'd say that it won't be the last time we head to brunch in that area.

Enjoying the Sunday sunshine!