Maureen On Tour

Afin de m’améliorer, je vais essayer d’écrire dès que je peux “in english”, si vous avez des questions ou si vous ne comprenez pas tout n’hésitez pas à me le dire…

Last Thursday, my friends and I went to the wine-testing session in Federation square near Flinders street. The principle is to pay an admission of AU$15 and AU$2 for the glass bond.

After then, you can test all the wines.

They served just a little glass. I prefer taste white and rosé wines so I focused on these wines. On display were Chardonnay, Pinot, and Riesling… I think I prefer French wines (maybe I am a nationalist consumer who wants to keep in her mind that French wines are the best in the world) but I grant that they have good wines sometimes (it is normal they have imported some French vineyards in the past… Am I proud? Yes, of course…).

It was a good experience and it was friendly. At the end of the testing, some sellers gave us started bottles (with the instruction to be very vigilant because it is forbidden) because we talked with them and said that some wines can be good competitors for French wines!

In this photo : Anouk, Ryan & me…

It is very weird because in France Australian wines are cheaper than here! To have a good Australian wine bottle, you have to spend between AU$20 and AU$50.

After that, we went to a Chinese restaurant, with Ryan (an Australian guy) and his friends, which accepted our own bottles. It was very cool!

On Friday night, I went to a Taiwanese party. I was invited by a Korean friend.

The dinner was prepared in a huge soup, which was divided in two parts: one spicy and the other no spicy. I tried both preparation but I think spicy food has to be eaten carefully because of my stomach.

My Korean friend prepared a special meal and I tried just a mouthful and my tongue was on fire!

This evening was nice and they showed me some Chinese games! They played with dice (battle or supposition) and with their hands (to guess if you will close or open your hands).

I was happy too because they said to me I used the chopsticks correctly!

On Saturday, I went to Melbourne Centre City and I did some shopping. With some difficulties I have found two Australian dresses (which mean short and soft dresses).

After that, I cooked a traditional French meal named Omelette for my housemates… But at the end, it seemed like scrambled eggs!

I went to St Kilda Beach on the afternoon to enjoy the sun!

In the evening, I went with my French friends to an Irish Christmas party in a lovely house with a nice garden. We ate some turkey, meringues and we had to vote for the best hot wines!

When the alcohol made all the people happy we danced an Irish dance! It seems easy but it is not! We have spent a really good time!

On Sunday, we had a lie-in! On this day was an example of the crazy weather of Melbourne!

Until 2.00 pm we had a beautiful hot day. So, I decided to go to the beach. When I arrived it was very cloudy but cool. And thirty minutes after there was a sandstorm and in two minutes the beach was empty!

Humours of the day

My friend “Fanny” has a strange first name here. Actually her name is a slang bad word (it is like “pussy”). And she can have some difficulties with that. For example, when she tried to log on in a website, it said “please no bad words”.

And it is very funny when she said her name to a person. We had a few cases: sometimes people ask if she can repeat again, or they pretend not to notice the similarity, or they can’t prevent a laugh…

Fanny is a very funny girl and she assumes with a lot of humour her name. So, we can easily call her “funny” too.

A characteristic

When I went at the supermarket the seller said to me “do you need some cash?”. In fact, if you want some cash, you can pay more by credit card…

A bad thing

We have to be careful with the tram outside (look each way when we cross the road and when we go out: to be sure that cars are stopped) and inside! This week end the tram is stopped violently and some people fell. One of them was very shocked and she had a fainting fit.

One of the man assisted her with the kiss of life.

Few minutes later, an ambulance came for her…

 Résumé en français…

Jeudi soir : petite dégustation de vin australien… Je vous avoue que je préfère les notres… Mais il y en a qui se défendent! Normal ils ont importé des pieds de vignes français ! Nous sommes ensuite allés dans un restaurant chinois, où nous pouvions apporter nos propres bouteilles de vin (négociée à la fin de l’exposition!)

Vendredi soir : soirée taïwanaise… Soirée sympa et bonne enfant…

Samedi : un peu de plage… et le soirée soirée de Noël avec des irelandais! Nous avons appris à faire quelques pas de la danse irelandaise!

Dimanche : rapidement plage, car j ai eu le droit à une tempête de sable…