On Friday morning, we got on an airplane from Sydney to Melbourne. The flight was a little over an hour long, and it reminded me of the trip from San Diego to the Bay Area. Upon arriving, we noticed a number of people wearing black and white striped outfits. At the time of this post’s writing, the Grand Final game for Australia Rules Football is happening right now just a mile away in the Melbourne Cricket Ground Stadium. Earlier today, we walked to the stadium and waded through the throngs of Magpie and Saints fans who are now eagerly cheering for their respective teams. If the Chargers ever made it back to the Super Bowl, would I be so enthusiastically dressed in blue and gold? You bet!

The previous evening, we had a screening that was sponsored by the Australia-China Friendship Society and the Confucius Institute. The film was shown at the Carrillo Gantner Theatre in the Sidney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne. The venue had a great projector system which showed the film in glorious HD. There was also an Elmo overhead projector, which I used to demonstrate our Autumn Gem Preview application for the iPad.

After the screening, a Chinese gentleman came up to me with an fascinating story. He told me that his grandfather knew Qiu Jin and present at the Datong School during her fateful last days!

Following the question and answers section, the executive members from the Australia-China Friendship Society took us out to dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Little Italy section of the city. I didn’t know that there was a high Italian and Greek population in Melbourne. Greek and Italian are two of the more popular languages taught in schools here! We enjoyed speaking and dining with John, Neil, Louise, Philip, Douglas Robin, and Anthony and appreciate their assistance in organizing the screening for their members yesterday!

Here are some photos from our first screening in Melbourne!