Anthony Ding

The first thing I did on landing was check my shoes. Good thing I did. Both soles had completely fallen off and were laying on the floor in front of my chair. Since I was still planning to use glue to put my shoes back together at some point and I felt it a bit rude to leave 2 shoe soles next to my seat, I picked them up and put them into a plastic bag I was carrying around in my bag. After going through immigration and grabbing my check-in baggage, I felt my shoes seemingly stick to the floor, that feeling of walking around on sticky ground you get sometimes in the cafeteria. When I looked down, I noticed that the entire bottom of my shoe was beginning to fall off, and it was only attached by a small section on the end.

This piece depicting a pokemon caught my attention, and it ended up being a big inspiration to what I made later in the day during the stencil workshop.

After quickly grabbing lunch at a food court Melbourne Central, we went to our stencil workshop. The idea was that we would first sketch out our ideas on a piece of paper, then trace over them with a transparent sheet of plastic. We would then cut out the lines we drew to create stencils. Spray paint could be used on these to create the sketch in just a matter of seconds. This is used widely in street art, since it allows the artist to create a piece very quickly and not get caught. The final result of my stencil is shown on the right. There are gaps in between some lines, as a completely enclosed space results in the middle of the stencil falling out, making a splotch of paint instead of everything inside.

On the 3rd day, we went kayaking across the Yarra river that we had passed so many times in the past days. Though I had only went kayaking a couple times before, I knew the general idea of what to do. Each kayak had space for two people, with the person in the back being in charge of steering using two pedals under their feet. I wanted to steer the boat, so I sat in the back. While my partner Tanay and I had a bit of a bumpy start, we both eventually figured things out with me steering better and him learning to stop splashing water all over me. While we were going under a bridge once, Tanay accidentally raised his paddle up too high and hit the bottom of the bridge. Since we had quite a bit of speed at this point he had to let go and drop the paddle. Somehow, I reached up and grabbed the paddle while it was falling before it hit me which is definitely the coolest thing I've done in the past 16 years. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience a nice change of pace from the museums and tours. We also got a very nice view of Melbourne from the river, and I took quite a few photos.

On the morning of the fourth day, we were given an opportunity to tour the Arts Centre Melbourne. We were shown all of their theaters which were interestingly all underground. In one hall in particular, tens of thousands of brass cups were installed into the ceiling in order to give it the feel of a traditional high-end European theater. However, this covered up the sprinkler system in the case of a fire, so 13 holes were drilled into the bottom of each cup by hand after they were installed.

After the theaters, we went to the Arts gallery to tour the Alexander Mcqueen exhibit, full of many outfits designed by him throughout his career. I struggled to understand these outfits, and while they were interesting to look at I don't think I was fully able of appreciating them.

This was the only part of the trip where we actually left Melbourne. Even though I really enjoyed Melbourne and all it had to offer, the sanctuary was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. While the ride there was quite long, we got to see a really nice landscape that I took many photos of.

We returned to the Art Gallery, but instead toured the rest of the gallery outside of the Alexander McQueen exhibit. Our tour guide informed us of all the pieces that the gallery was in possession of, and the constant cycling of the works on display. We saw everything from Japanese prints of naval conquests to figures painted by Picasso.

After returning from the Art gallery, we had about 20 minutes to change into semi-formal dress in preparation for the Mary Poppins play that we were going to watch. I noticed that different people had very different ideas of what "semi-formal" really meant. While Ryan and I both changed into long sleeved collared shirts with dress pants and khakis, some other people seemed to dress much more casually than what we thought was appropriate.

During the morning of day 7, we were given a choice of 2 workshops: the improv workshop and the costume design workshop. As I had taken improv and advanced improv at school and enjoyed it very much, I thought it would be a good choice for me to pick the improv workshop. Even though it went over basic improv elements that I already knew, I still had a great time and it was also nice working with a new group of people.

After lunch, we went to a place called Blindside. Though at first it seemed a bit weird with there only being 2 almost empty undecorated rooms, we were later told about the backstory of Blindside. it was first founded many years ago by a small group of artists in the hope that they would be able to present other artists' work without them having to pay for it to be shown. Blindside is a nonprofit group made up of mostly volunteers who do the reverse of most art exhibits and instead pay artists who's works are displayed. They always have 2 works on display which are changed every few weeks.

After Blindside, right around sunset, we went to the Moonlight Cinema to see the (relatively) new Avatar movie. I had already seen it before with my family during the Christmas break, but I was still looking forwards to it. To get there, we had to walk down a very long path. While walking down I started messing around with an app on my phone I hadn't used for years called "IGunPro." It was honestly a pretty stupid app, and it just let me put a gun on my phone screen and shoot it while also making gun noises. It's about as useless as it sounds, but sometimes its pretty funny to mess around with. After getting to the Moonlight Cinema, we were given a couple rows of beanbag chairs to sit in while watching the movie.

Since we were expected to pack everything the night before, I didn't have much to pack in the morning. We left first thing in the morning for the airport and quickly boarded our flight. There isn't much notable to say about the flight, but when we arrived, I had some trouble going through immigration and was forced the go through the much slower manual counters instead of the automatic ones. Ryan, Shaurya and Mr. Lawrence ended up being held back too, and we were in line for about half an hour. When we finally made it through, everyone else other than the sponsors had already left.