tennistennistennistennistennis :)

Hello! I don't have a lot of time to post a full blog but I feel like I owe you all at least a mini-blog to let you know that I'm alive and explain what I've been doing over the past two weeks or so. As you probably know, the past week has been devoted to Australian Open TENNIS!! :) :) :) 

It's been my dream for a long time to come to this tournament and it's even better than I imagined. I'm having SO much fun!! Before I left California, I bought a 5-day grounds pass (which was really unnecessary because I don't think they ever sell out of grounds passes, but it made me happy knowing I had a ticket to the Aussie Open in my possession). The grounds pass gets me into the tennis center all day (from 10 am to whenever the tennis is over) and I can watch any match on any of the 21 outdoor courts. The only courts I can't get into are Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena. Sadly, Rafa only plays at Rod Laver, so I won't get to see him unless I want to pay $75 for a day pass to Rod Laver, which wouldn't be very smart because that now equals five days worth of money ... yep, feel free to do the math and you'll know what I'm workin' with for the rest of my trip. :) So no Rafa but of course I can still watch him on TV, and in addition to the outdoor big screens at the tennis center, there's a huge screen in Federation Square, downtown Melbourne. I watched the first set of Rafa vs. Bernard Tomic (18 y/o Aussie kid) there tonight and then went home to watch the rest. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched yet but it was a very good match. 

An even more exciting match was John Isner vs. Marin Cilic, which I watched today in Margaret Court Arena. Other than Rafa, Isner and Cilic are my favorite boys to watch. I went to each of their first and second round matches, and I was so excited when I found out they were playing each other today. I camped out at Margaret Court Arena as soon as I got to the tennis center this morning and watched the first two matches being played there so I'd be sure to have a good seat for Isner vs. Cilic. Again, I won't tell you what happened in case you tivo'd it to watch later, but it was an awesome, awesome match. :) Today was one of the best days of my entire trip. Tomorrow should be pretty good too. Beautiful Fernando Verdasco has been playing all his matches at Hisense (one of the ones I can't get into) but for some reason they have him playing at Margaret Court tomorrow, so I get to see him, as long as I get there in time to get a seat. He plays third, same as Isner and Cilic did today, so I'm going to spend the whole day there again and it should be no problem. Don't worry -- I'm putting on heaps of sunblock every hour or so. :) 

In addition to the beautiful tall boys, Isner and Cilic, I've also seen the following players: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Mardy Fish, Andy Murray, Tommy Robredo, Maria Kirilenko, Gisela Dulko, Philipp Petzschner, Santiago Giraldo, Ayumi Morita, Monica Niculescu, Jurgen Melzer, Tsvetana Pironkova, Iveta Benesova, Sally Peers, Robin Soderling, Illya Marchenko, Flavia Pennetta, Agnieszka Radwanska, Radek Stepanek ... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some but that's most of them. And today I saw Fernando Verdasco from only about 30 feet away and was able to get some decent pics. Here are those plus some others from the tennis.

or to view the entire album, go to the link at the bottom of this blog. :)


p.s. I know I completely skipped over the reef trip and I promise I'll come back to it when I have more time and a better computer to write from. For now I'll just say that the trip to the Great Barrier Reef was one of the best days of my trip, and possibly one of the best days of my life. It was amazing. My pictures turned out super lame so I won't even bother getting them online at this point, but there are plenty of pics of the reef online so you know what it looks like. It was fantastic. The trip to Cape Tribulation was wonderful too. Oh and some of you already know this but I would feel like I was cheating my blog readers out of a great and stupid story if I didn't report to everyone that I checked out of my hostel in Cairns and caught a shuttle to the airport and showed up A DAY EARLY. Yes, I booked my flight to Melbourne for Sunday but I thought I had booked it for Saturday so after arriving at the airport, I had to catch a shuttle back to town (thankfully the driver took pity on me and drove me back for free), get another night in the hostel (I couldn't find couchsurfing accommodations unfortunately, but the girl at the hostel did give me my own room. yay!) and basically do Saturday over again the following day: check out of hostel at 10 am, put bags in storage, spend 6 hours reading in and around the lagoon pool, go to airport. Good times :) Then I flew here and began my week of tennis bliss. :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=87920&id=1622315286&l=7fd6f1099b

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