She's a Rainaic.

You've been holding back on me, United States.  All these years, you've been telling me lies and it's only just now that I've moved to Australia that I've been able to figure it out.

Let me give you a typical scenario:  it's the 4th of July.  It's RAINING (it does that) and oops, the fireworks are cancelled because you can't have fireworks in the rain.  I mean that's what they tell us right?  and you think one of two things:

1) "well naturally you can't have fireworks in the rain, how would you light the wicks?" (conveniently forgetting these things are all remote controlled now a days)
2) "well, naturally you can't have fireworks in the rain, how would you see the fireworks with all the clouds?" (conveniently forgetting CLOUDS ARE UP REALLY HIGH.)

but year after year, storm after storm, we believe that you simply cannot shoot off fireworks in the rain.  because that is what we've been told.

Well, prepare to have your world shattered as i present to you....fireworks.  IN THE RAIN!

okay, i'll let you in on a little secret.  I get it, US. Even though you CAN have fireworks in the rain, maybe it's not something that most people would really go for.  At least not in the winter.  It's cold.  And wet.  But it DOES make the fireworks look really neat.  So perhaps under a covering?  But in Australia's defense, they can really only shoot of fireworks in the winter, because in the summer, there's pretty much a total fire-ban because of all the wildfires.  Even though fireworks are awesome, burning down your entire countryside is decidedly not. 

Because Melbourne is tryin' real hard to get people on board with coming here in the wintertime (where it's really more like winter-light, than anything a new englander would be used to) they had a neat little thing at the docklands every Friday in July.  The docklands is a little baby waterfront, with some shops, a broken down ferris wheels (I make it sound so glam, right?) and some sick apartments.

View of the city from my future apartment

Since I had to work mostly every day while alyssa was here, i was trying to come up with night time activities (which are often few and far between if you're not planning on hitting up the pub)  So we thought this might be nice.  I hadn't really gotten to do much with Alyssa since she arrived on Thursday, but we did grab dinner in the city on Wednesday and she and Shawn hit up the zoo on Thursday while I was at work.  During the fireworks however, I'm not sure we assumed it would torrential downpour but with several umbrellas, we sort of made the most of it.  After all, if the street performers could withstand it without umbrellas (ellas ellas ellas), who am I to complain?

Hangin with Dame Edna.

Shawn warming himself like a hobo at a restaurant

After the fireworks, we headed to the casino for a nice dinner (an interesting journey in itself since they stopped running our tram, and upon taking another one had a bit of difficulty viewing the landmarks because the windows were so fogged up)  Dinner wasn't too bad, and the next day we were headed to Healesville Sanctuary for animal encounters.

waterlogged and starving

waiting for carbs.

*i cannot help that these videos only contain stereotypical Aussie songs.