A Little Something About Flemington

I’m learning a lot about where I live at the moment. Flemington is full of ethnic food places and some cafes. There are a few pubs also located throughout and maybe one or two clothing stores. There seems to be quite a few car repair shops, which I find very odd to have so many in one area. But otherwise nothing too much or super exciting, just the necessitates that any suburb needs.

It seems that Australia is primarily full of private schools with typical school uniforms, just like the ones you see in the movies. They all have the matching jumpers with black shoes and white socks. Well, I think I live by a public school, because there are no school uniforms, and it’s what I would imagine schools to be like in inner cities in the USA. Now this could be my ignorance speaking and me being naïve, because lets face it, growing up in Colorado you don’t get tons of diversity. Well I’m sitting in McDonalds now, waiting for some people to get on skype and it’s about 3:30 in the afternoon. About 20 kids come in, all of them part of different ethnicity, hanging out inside. I can kind of already see the different cliques. I’ve spotted the “cool” crowd, the queen bee and her followers, the quiet ones and the ones who think they are straight up gangsters. As they are all basically sitting by my table, I can hear basically all of the conversations. Keep in mind these kids look like they are in middle school….maybe freshmen in high school but that would be the absolute oldest. One kid, who is part of the gangster crowd and seems to have a lot to say to everyone, is talking about how he is suspended and he doesn’t care because he’s never going back to school, and if he does he’s going to raise hell and devise a plan. And how his friend is going to jail for stealing an ipod and stabbing someone. This kid has the ipod that his friend stole and his sister just found out and is going to tell mom and is turning all dramatic about it. Later he says how he wants to get a haircut like Chris Brown because he gets all the ladies. Then this same group of boys and girls start talking about rape and to whom they lost their virginity to and saying very vulgar things about women losing their virginity that it blows my mind. If I didn’t hear the previous convos about stabbings and such, I might have the guts to say something…maybe. These kids are soooo young… And they were talking about junkies and how one night 6 guys jumped him for no reason and is going to get his revenge. Where the hell am I living and how do kids think they can speak this way?

I also found out that there were 2 separate occasions where people were attacked on the tram that I take on a daily basis to work and the city. Around 12:30am some nights ago, two drunks attacked one guy because he wouldn’t talk with them. This happened on the tram right around where my house is. Fabulous. Then the second occasion was some guy stole a girl’s purse early in the morning. She apparently chased after him and was tapped by his truck. I know things like this happen all over the world, but I feel like I’ve never heard of it so close to home before. It frightens me a bit but it’s definitely a learning experience. It has definitely made me a little more conscious about my surroundings and gave me a reality check that paradise is not always the safest place in the world. It’s just like in Uppsala, where I have never felt safer in my entire life and would feel completely fine walking home by myself late at night. But even then, you would find things in the newspaper about people getting attacked or stabbed, and that still blows my mind.

Now my intention was not to scare anyone….ahem…mom. It’s just something that I observed today and found interesting, frightening, worrisome and eye opening. Something I’m glad I’m aware of now but not too worried about where I’m afraid to leave my home.