Cheers mates!

This is a little late, I know, but at least I’m doing a final entry this time, right?

I had a pretty sad farewell dinner on my last night in Canberra with all of my “family”. I also received a little Aussie care package from Stacey and Michael which included some Tim Tams, some of the “new” vegemite, and a few wheat bix to participate in the wheat bix challenge. The wheat bix challenge is similar to the Saltine challenge here in America, and it is supposedly impossible to eat one wheat bic in one minute. I’m pretty good at eating Saltines quickly, but it took me about two minutes to finish one wheat bic…

I left Canberra early the next morning to travel to Sydney. I met up with my friends as I walked across Sydney with my new Louis Vuitton bag, and for some reason I decided to do the City to Surf the next day.

Not a good idea.

I have to say that the 14 km “fun” run wasn’t so bad, but it did quite a number on my knees, mainly my left one. I think it was around four years ago when I went snowboarding one time and I got into a nasty wipeout. Well, I was actually just getting off a chairlift, but I fell down and my foot attached to the snowboard went in a different direction as my body, causing my leg to twist and something popped. I sat down for a while and was able to continue snowboarding for the day, but ever since then my left knee gives me trouble on the odd occasion. I’ve never gotten it checked out, but maybe I should one of these days…

I completed the city to surf in less than two hours (I don’t know my exact time yet, but hopefully I will soon), but I couldn’t really walk for a couple days after that. It felt good completing something of that magnitude, especially since I hadn’t been training, and I wore my medal proudly on my last day down under.

The next day I hopped on a plane and headed to the land of the Kiwi for my last remaining days outside of America. The first thing I noticed as I was flying over New Zealand was the cliffs along the ocean. I've never been to Europe, but it made me think of something I might see around Northern Europe or something. It was so GREEN too. The best way I can describe New Zealand is, imagine that Ireland and Hawaii had an illegitimate child which was raised by Australia. There are probably a lot of things wrong with that statement, but it was my first impression. It was relatively painless finding a bus into Auckland, but I wish I would have had more time to explore other places of New Zealand.

I met up with Sara and we went took a ferry to an island called Waihiki. We hadn’t had breakfast and thought it would be cool to have lunch somewhere on the island, so we waited until we got there to find a place to eat. We arrived sometime around 2 in the afternoon. There wasn’t any restaurants where we arrived, so we decided to explore a little. Being who I am, I had a coupon for a free wine tasting at a local winery, so we decided to see what kind of food we could get at the winery. We arrived around a half hour later and went to the restaurant, which unsurprisingly turned out to be way out of our budget range. We were starving but broke, so we ordered a $12 appetizer of a tiny bread roll for each of us accompanied by a small dish of olives. It was the most expensive/smallest lunch of my life. I was still really hungry when we left, but it was a funny experience altogether.

We then hopped on the returning ferry to Auckland and made our way to the sushi class. We were the youngest people there by far, but our sushi skills didn’t disappoint. It kind of felt like being in the audience of a cooking show (which I guess it kind of was, it just wasn’t being filmed), and the chef showcased all of his gear and cooking skills. Cooking classes are such a great way to cook, mainly because everything is already portioned out for you and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up.

Unfortunately the weather in New Zealand was apparently unsuitable for paragliding, so we couldn’t go… This kind of threw a wrench in our plans and we scrambled to find something else to do. We eventually decided to go to the Auckland Sky Tower, which is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere and do what was called the Sky Walk. The Sky Walk is basically a walk you do along a meter wide walkway around the perimeter of the top of the tower. Once you slap on the jumpsuit and arrive up at the top, looking down on the city of Auckland during sunset, you realize how high it really is. I think it is a bit higher than the Eiffel Tower, but the walkway you’re on has literally nothing below it (well, except the street way down below, obviously). You couldn’t take a camera up there and the pictures they provided were way overpriced, so you’re just going to have to take my word that it was beautiful/terrifying.

It felt like it went by too fast, and a ten hour flight and a bottle of Shiraz later I was back in the USA. I didn’t really sleep on the plane, and I didn’t sleep at all the first day I got back to try and adjust to the time change, and it actually worked surprisingly well. I’m moving into my new house and getting ready to help out with Orientation one last time. I’m not quite sure when I’ll write in this blog next, but I suppose a lot of it depends on what I decide to do after I graduate…

Thanks for following me, and if you’re reading this right now please leave some sort of a comment! It’s always nice to know I write for an audience greater than 3.

Cheers!

Goodbye Canberra

Well, it’s officially my last day here in Canberra. I said goodbye to everybody at work, I’m saying goodbye to my “family” here, and then I hop on the 7:45 am bus to Sydney bright and early tomorrow morning. Or as it is referred to in Australia, “stupid o’clock in the morning”.

I’ve done a fair amount of things here in my final weeks of Canberra. I went to a couple of footy games (rugby) and got to see the Canberra Raiders demolish the Brisbane Broncos with a score of 56 to 0. After every home game, the team players actually go to this one bar so that all the fans can meet them and take pictures and things. I guess I don’t go to many professional sports games in the states, but I’ve never heard of anything like that before. It was definitely fun.

I also caved in and went to the zoo… I hadn’t seen a koala since coming to Australia, and I couldn’t very well come home without seeing a koala. It just wouldn’t be right. I also completed another goal on my list before leaving Australia. I can successfully throw a boomerang properly. I felt like a big tourist taking my boomerang to a park to throw, but that concern quickly left me as I realized just how FUN it is to throw one! You get tons of satisfaction when it starts returning to you. It’s like a game of catch you can play with yourself (for those of you with few friends…).

Inevitably I’m taking more stuff back with me than I came with. Consequently, I had to get some other form of suitcase to fit everything. I was going to go buy a duffel bag at a sports store, but I found out the when one of my host mom’s daughters, Stacey, went to Indonesia recently, she bought a duffel bag there to carry things back with her. I talked to her and she said that she’d just give me her bag to use. I thought it was a great deal! Well, she brought it to our house, and it turns out that it’s a really big Louis Vuitton bag. Well… beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the right size and the right price, so it’s going to have to do. All that this means is that tomorrow I’ll be walking a few kilometers through Sydney carrying my backpacker’s backpack, little rolling suitcase, small backpack, and my newly acquired large feminine bag. You gotta do what you gotta do.

I’ve been recently semi-pressured into doing the “city to surf” run on my last day in Sydney, which is a 14 km run through the city to Bondi beach. Well, I’ve run once in the past 3 months and I’ve never run more than 4 miles at a time in my life, so it should be interesting. It’s apparently a HUGE run, with thousands and thousands of people, and some even dress up. I don’t mean they throw on a tux, I mean I’ve heard that people do the run wearing giant gorilla suits and stuff. Somebody at work told me some people dressed as salmon and ran the race from the finish to the start, doing the whole “upstream” thing. I thought it was clever…

After a few short days, I’m off to New Zealand. Unfortunately I’m only there for two full days, so I don’t get to venture too far out of Auckland, but I still think it’s going to be fun. I’m going to try and go paragliding, which is essentially parasailing without the boat, and you’re in control of where you go (assuming you know how to work the contraption). That will be my “extreme sport” down there. I also booked a sushi/tempura class at the Auckland fish market. It’s not a typical thing to do, but it’s sushi, so it’s ok.

Hopefully I’ll have some sort of internet there so I can do one final update before heading back to sunny California. But, unlike Semester at Sea, I do plan on doing some kind of final update regardless of where I am. Well, that’s the plan at least…

Close Encounters of the Roo Kind

So, I desperately wanted to title this “Close Encounters of the Turd Kind”, but I just couldn’t justify myself writing that, even though there were loads of “Roo Poo” everywhere. I mean, there was so much that I thought it was just naturally part of the ground at first.

My host family took me down to the coast near a town called Bateman’s Bay to their little home away from home. It wasn’t a very big house, mainly just one larger room, two small bedrooms, and a bathroom, but it was nice for what it was. It was only me, my host mom, her mom, and her daughter, so it didn’t feel too overcrowded.

I woke up the first morning and took a little stroll outside to see some wild kangaroos just perusing up to the backyard. I started to get excited because I had never been that close to a wild kangaroo before (or any kangaroo for that matter) and they showed me that if you just approach slowly, sometimes they’ll let you come close and pet them. Lo and behold, it was true. There was one Joey in particular that didn’t seem to mind me at all. It struck me as strange that their fur goes the other way, so it feels natural to pet them from back to front. I’ve got some pictures that I’ll try attaching too.

This is just a short update this time, so that’s all for now!

For some reason my computer at work doesn't play this video, so truth be told I haven't seen it yet. I think it catches the last part of the birthday song at the dumpling place.

Pictures:

I don't remember the name of this place, but it had cool architecture

Tiger beer at the dumpling place

The Canberra Casino at night

Sara and I in front of the Carlton Brewery

The elusive Batman Park

My 21st Birthday! (or what I remember of it...)

Good news: I survived my 21st birthday! (Well, at least I hope you consider that good news…)

My supervisor at work let me have Thursday off so I could make the long trek to Melbourne, which also happens to conveniently be the Swine Flu capital of the world at the moment. All I had to do before I left was start on my summary of the summaries I wrote on the articles (and a lot of the information I wrote about came from a summary of each article itself). So, so far I can summarize my summer as writing a summary of summaries of summaries. Say that three times fast.

I had to wake up around 6 in the morning of July 2nd in order to catch the early coach to Albury, catch another coach to Seymour, and eventually hop on a train to Melbourne. The coach left at 7:15 am and I finally got into Melbourne at around 4. Believe it or not, that was actually about an hour earlier than I thought I would get in, because I was able to catch an earlier train. I was originally supposed to meet my friend Sara at the station when she got off of work at 5, but since I had an extra hour I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I brought a little touristy book on Melbourne with me that came with a map, so I decided to see if anything nearby looked interesting. That’s when I saw it. I knew what I was going to do as soon as I got off the train. I was going to go to Batman Park.

Unfortunately, Batman Park is not as cool as it sounds. It just kind of looked like every other park, but a lot smaller. So I made my way back up to the station too meet up with Sara, and we went to where she was staying to make some dinner with her roommate.

Sara lives in a homestay with another student, Lindsey, who I met at the orientation in Cairns. She’s from Canada, and since it was between Canada Day and the Fourth of July, we decided to cook some kind of Canadian/American meal. It didn’t really come off as that though. We had some chicken, grilled peppers, tortilla chips, and guacamole. Not the most American/Canadian meal, but it was still good. I was really tired so we didn’t go out that night. I know it was the night of the 2nd, but I figured that since everything is a day later here, I could celebrate the night of the 3rd as when I “officially” turn 21.

The first course of action on my birthday was to go tour a Brewery. The Carlton Brewery required reservations to tour, so we had to book them in advance and rush over to reach it by noon. I was pretty much completely lost in Melbourne, but luckily Sara and Lindsey had their bearings straight (although Sara did put us on the wrong train on occasion…).

It was a fun experience touring the Brewery, and now I know a bit about how to make beer. I like Carlton beer mainly because they have trivia questions under every bottle cap. Thus, the more you drink, the smarter you become. Well, the tour ended after one and a half hours and MANY beer samplings later, and we were craving Indian food.

Usually Indian food isn’t that hard to find in Australia. It’s pretty diverse as far as international cuisine is concerned, but for some reason everywhere we went the only Indian restaurants we could find were closed… Go figure. After an hour of searching we gave up, ate at a foodcourt, and tried to find the Melbourne museum. There was some kind of Star Wars exhibit at the museum, and I wanted to go see that. Unfortunately, when we got to the museum we found out that it closes at 4:30. Conveniently, we arrived there at 4:40. Wonderful.

I may or may not leave some of the finer details of the night out… so let’s just skip ahead to dinner. Sara and Lindsey took me to this weird dumpling restaurant in Chinatown. It was really good, and really authentic. There wasn’t a waiting list or anything, but rather a line outside. The owner would run outside when a spot opened up and would find a party of the appropriate number and seat them. They also play this awkward “Happy Birthday” song for you when it’s your birthday. It’s awkward because the music plays throughout the restaurant, but no servers come acknowledge it’s your birthday, so whenever the song plays you never know who it’s playing for. Usually that’s fine, because not many people like to get embarrassed at restaurants on their birthday (I work at Joe’s Crab Shack… I know), but the song played 3 times we were their, and every time Sara would yell “It’s his birthday!” and point at me. But, I suppose that after the amount of times I’ve made people yell “I’ve got crabs!” on their birthday, I’m still getting off easy. A few bars, 5 hours, and a certain number of drinks I won’t reveal later, we arrived back at their house and managed not to wake their host mom.

The next day was a lot calmer. We went to visit the botanical gardens and took a private walking tour with this really nice old lady. Since we got a pretty late start, it lasted most of the day. They also took me to the “artsy” side of Melbourne to see some cool architecture and a street performer. Also, since it was the Fourth of July, I was able to talk to my mom and wish her a happy birthday while she wished me a happy birthday since it was still July 3rd in America. Our July 4th celebrations included finally finding some Indian food for dinner and going back to the house to watch the classical American film, “The Patriot”. Because the night before was so late and I had to get up at 6:30 in the morning to catch the train, we didn’t feel like going out.

So I woke up early and Sara actually took me to the train, since she thought I would get lost on my way there. In all honesty, I probably would have, as we had to take two buses and a train to get to the station. Lindsey was going to come too, but she felt sick. I said goodbye to them and made the long trek back to Canberra. I really don’t mind long travels on a coach or train (as long as I have a window seat), because I can look out at the scenery forever. All in all it was a great time, and I love the city of Melbourne. If you ever go to Australia, don’t just head to Sydney and call it a day. Melbourne is an incredible city that is not to be missed.

I haven’t done much since coming back. Last night my family here took me out to a pizza place for a “birthday” dinner. It was really nice and I got some cool souvenir gifts too. I’ve been spending most of my time trying to wrap my head around this video Lindsey showed me called “Imagining the Tenth Dimension”. If you ever have extra time and want to get your mind blown, look it up on youtube.

That’s all for now! I brought my camera to work, so hopefully I can upload some pictures this time…

It's been a while...

Yeah, I haven’t updated in a while, but things have been pretty slow around here…


My supervisor was gone for the past two weeks. She needed to use up her vacation time before the end of the financial year, which is June 30th, so she left me with the task of researching other areas of the world with issues similar to the Murray-Darling Basin. Well, I found a plethora of articles, and all I’ve been doing is reading them for the past two weeks and summarizing them in less than a page. It is HEAVY reading, and sometimes I’ll be summarizing things I don’t quite understand. You know you’re in trouble when you visit dictionary.com so many times you “favourite” it. But that doesn’t stop me. I’ve written papers on things I don’t quite understand, and if school has taught me anything, it is the fine art of appearing to know what you’re talking about. But in all honesty I’m learning a lot about water issues, terminology, and many other things Australian…

Canberra is very, very slow. Luckily, my host mom, Fran, was heading up to Sydney last weekend and I was able to hitch a ride to see some friends up there. We went up on Friday and came back on Monday. Before we left on Friday, I had enough time to get a haircut. The only problem was I was on my own and didn’t know where a haircut place was. No matter. I just hopped on the bus to the city center and hoped for the best.

Amazingly, I found a place within 5 minutes of getting off the bus. I had an hour before the best left again to go back to my suburb, so I thought it would be a good move to just go to this place as opposed to looking around. Well, as I walk in, I realize that it’s a Korean place. A haircut was $25 Aussie dollars, which is a little steep for me, but I NEEDED a haircut, so I went for it.

Some of you might know that I really don’t like getting a haircut. I don’t ever like my hair, and I never know how I want it cut. My apathy and indecisiveness usually frustrates haircutters, and it usually makes for an awkward experience. So I try to explain to him that I want it pretty short on the sides but a little longer on top (I’ve found that’s the easiest thing to say). He just nods and he says “Like that?” and he points to this black and white photo of a guy with a greasy 50s haircut. I really wish I could show you the photo, it was hilarious. I get a little nervous from his interpretation, and I tell him maybe a bit shorter. He just nods again and starts to cut my hair.

He went to town on the back of my head. He pretty much shaved it off so the back of my head is always cold. But once he was finished I actually liked the haircut. Maybe I was just relieved I wasn’t walking out of there looking like The Fonz (not like that would be a bad thing…)

So Fran and I drive off to Sydney with only one stop at a McDonalds. This was the biggest McDonalds I had ever seen. They had 13 registers and at least one employee behind each register. I felt intimidated walking up to the counter because there were about 5 people looking at me, and I felt like I had to choose my favourite one to take my order, but I didn’t want to offend the other four…

Well 3 and a half hours later we arrive at Fran’s sister’s house. It was a really nice house, and her family is really nice. They like wine a lot too… Do you ever have those conversations with slightly intoxicated people where they try to explain something to you that really doesn’t need explaining, and they proceed to tell you about 50 times using the same two sentences? Well, I had a conversation like that about toll roads for around an hour. Needless to say, it was riveting.

While up in Sydney I saw some of my friends, Emily and Katrina (they were the ones I met in Cairns. Because of their names, I simply refer to them as “the Hurricanes”). We tried to go to a rugby game, but since it was $69 we decided to just go to a pub instead. It was a lot of fun, although I ran down the street to get some Indian food before the match started. I tried to sneak it into the pub, but the security guard made me eat it outside. He was taking a smoking break and we got to talking about the US Economy. I’m convinced the economy is how it is because of the housing markets, banks, and whatnot. He’s convinced it’s because of the Jews. After that awkward meal I went back into the pub and enjoyed the game.

So I’m back at work right now (working hard, if you can’t tell…). I’ll try to upload pictures as soon as I can, but my internet at home isn’t really catered to things like that. This weekend I’m going to Melbourne, so expect another update within a week!

You can help me!

Sydney was awesome.

I decided to travel via greyhound bus because it seemed the cheapest option. $21 all the way from Canberra to Sydney. A four hour bus ride. Not a bad deal.

My dad knows a couple in Belize who own an apartment in Sydney. They usually rent it out on a weekly basis, but since nobody was occupying it this weekend they allowed me to use it (thankyouthankyouthankyou!!). It was such a nice apartment too. It has two floors with a kitchen and living room on the first and the bedroom and bathroom on the second. It was situated pretty close to Darling Harbor too, and about maybe a 40 minute walk to the Opera House (if you actually know where you’re walking…) so it was a pretty good deal.

I met up with some friends: Emily, Katrina (the two girls from Cairns), and Sara, who also goes to Chapman. I guess Chapman people just stick together. Anyway, we met up to go see the Opera house, and of course out of ALL the days to forget to bring my camera, it’s the day I see the Sydney Opera House. That’s just how things work. It wasn’t so bad though, because the other three brought their cameras, I just still need to steal their pictures.

The Opera House is different than I had imagined it. It’s a lot smaller than I thought, and it’s actually three buildings, not one big building. One is for orchestras, the other is for plays (I think), and the last one is a restaurant. It also has weird textured tile that you wouldn’t know just by looking at distant pictures of it. It was still pretty cool to see it up close, but unfortunately I didn’t get to go inside.

I had a big worry before I came to Australia. While on Semester at Sea I noticed the unimaginable lack of Mexican food around the world. There was one “Mexican” place in South Africa, but that’s the only place I can remember out of all the countries. See, I LOVE Mexican food, and I was worried that when I came down under I was not going to be able to satisfy that Mexican craving until I got back home. Well, let it be known that there is a little taste from south of the border down under. On my first night in Sydney we went to the grocery store and were able to cook a HUGE plate of nachos. I’ll try to attach a picture if I have one.

For the other two days I had in Sydney we went to Bondi Beach and then took the ferry up to Manly. They were both beautiful, and seemed like great places to live (if you have the big bucks…). There were some great beach trails and I climbed some of the rocks/cliffs along the beach. It was gorgeous. Manly was especially fun because they had a food and wine festival going on at the time, and everything there had the word “Manly” in front of it, such as the Manly Council, or the Manly Information Booth. You can bet I had a LOT of fun with that.

There was some kind of celebration going at night around the Opera House too. It was called Vivid, and I think it was some commemoration for an anniversary of Sydney, but I’m really not sure. People probably told me, I just don’t remember. What it basically was was a bunch of lights put around a section of the city in different artistic ways. There were some projections onto the opera house, a constantly changing color spectrum, pillars of light, weird artistic things like that. It was kinda neat, and again I think I have some pictures of that.

Well I took the bus back up to Canberra on Monday, the Queen’s Birthday, and had to get ready for work the next day. There was some sort of workshop that my supervisor was putting on, and I had to be there early to help her with it. This workshop was apparently a bigger thing than I realized, and I definitely felt lost and a little out of place.

This workshop brought together about 13 (distinguished, from what I could tell) people from different fields and areas to discuss the current state of climate change and water supply in Australia. The goal of the workshop was to determine what further areas of research would be useful and to ultimately develop an adaptation plan to save Australia from imminent doom a la global warming.

Everybody brought a different perspective into the playing field, and I was there to take notes. My job was to document what happened so that I could help formulate something in the end. I felt out of place because everybody there was at least twice my age, and my background knowledge on the Murray-Darling Basin and the effects of climate change on it were minimal to say the least. Although, everybody there was pretty impressed with my typing skills because I didn’t have to look at the keyboard. I guess they don’t have good typers in Australia? I didn’t have time to distinguish what information was important for notes, so I just typed out everything that was said. By the end of the workshop I had 19 pages typed out. Needless to say, when I got home I didn’t want to look at a keyboard for a while.

The workshop ended, I tried to summarize my notes as best I could, and gave them to my supervisor. As luck would have it, my supervisor is leaving on vacation for two weeks, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing now. Well, she gave me an assignment…

Here’s where you can help me out.

For the next two weeks I’m supposed to do research on other parts of the world that are going through similar issues. The issues at hand deal with a decreasing water source and how people adapt/deal with not having as much water. Things like that. So, if you know any place in the world that has some sort of problem with water supply (which I’m sure there are plenty), please let me know! I already have a few leads, but anything helps!

Cheers!

The week so far

Here’s a little update as to where I’m at now.

I woke up the next morning (Monday) at 7:30. I’m not sure why I did, as I wasn’t being picked up by my supervisor until 9, so it proved to be a little overkill. It was another awkward/hard to explain moment when my supervisor came to pick me up. I felt weird having to get picked up for work by my boss on the first day, but that’s life.

She is a really nice lady. As soon as we got their she gave me a little tour of the place and bought me some tea. We just had a little chat and I told her a bit about my life and what I kind of wanted from the internship. Even though it’s a government organization, everything is so relaxes. She told me that people usually arrive anytime between 9 or 10 and that people leave anywhere from 4 to 6. I have my own little desk with a computer and everything. It feels really weird. Kind of like I’m supposed to be important or something.

Now that I’ve worked for about a full week, I really can’t complain. A lot of my tasks right now involve reading and summarizing articles and reports, and I made a power point presentation for my supervisor to present at a workshop next week. I’m researching issues about the Murray-Darling Basin and how it should adapt to the climate change so Australia doesn’t die. It deals a lot more with environmental issues than economic ones right now, but she said this was only a temporary task until sometime next week.

She gave me a bike too, so that I can ride from home to work. I like to think that I’m not too out of shape, but riding that thing really takes it out of me. I can’t tell if it’s because the bike’s in a high gear, it’s a little small for me, or that the pedals are weird, but I have a hard time pedaling. I’m usually covered with sweat when I arrive, but luckily it’s been overcast this whole week so I can blame it on the rain. I think I’ll just have to bring a change of clothes all the time…

As far as things outside of work go, I haven’t had a quiet night in Australia yet. Monday night I went with Fran to her daughter Stacey’s house (she’s the fiancée of Mike, the guy with the Batman tattoo) and I had my first rugby experience. It’s actually a very fun game to watch. I am now a Canberra Raiders fan! It was a small game that night, but Mike invited me over to one of his friend’s houses on Wednesday to see the first State of Origin match. It sounded like fun, so I decided to go.

This is apparently one of the biggest games of the year. It’s a weird system they have for it. They basically choose the best members of the league and put them on a team, either for Queensland or New South Wales (depending on which state they were originally from) and they pit the two teams together in three matches. Fans go absolutely crazy for their team, and you definitely don’t want to get a die hard rugby fan angry. One of the best parts about that night was that they made NACHOS! I was really worried they wouldn’t have Mexican food down here in Australia, but fortunately all my worries have subsided.

So right now I’m about to go to bed after Kelley’s birthday dinner (one of Fran’s daughters) so that I can wake up tomorrow morning to catch a bus to Sydney. Since Monday is a national holiday, The Queen’s Birthday, I thought it might be a good idea to get some traveling in. I bought my ticket yesterday, and for some reason it was $20 each way if you buy the ticket one-way, or $30 each way if you buy it round trip. I’m not quite sure what the marketing idea behind that is, but needless to say I just bought a one-way ticket for right now.

So I’m off to Sydney with no idea what I’m going to do! But that’s always half the fun.

The other half is figuring out how I'm going to get cash...

So I met my new mum, Fran, and the two other inhabitants of the house: a little poodle named Maddie and a cat name Meisha, both of which are extremely friendly. I spent most of the night talking with Fran and getting to know what life is like down under. I told her about Chapman, my majors, Semester at Sea, yadda yadda yadda, you know the rest. Of course the topic of food came up since I’m going to be eating most of my meals here for the next couple months. I told her I that I’m not picky at all and I’ll eat anything that’s put in front of me and ask for seconds. She said that was fine and that she is doing the Weight Watchers diet, so I suppose I’m inadvertently now doing it too.

I forget how it first came up, but I found out that she is a part of a medieval club. A very, very, very, very, very, very intense medieval club. I’m talking about she sews her own medieval clothes and goes camping in a huge, round tent that can fit her whole bed (the one she actually sleeps in at home), her dressers, and still has room to spare. They have weapons training, which I don’t think she does, and there’s some sort of system where you can get knighted and stuff like that. She said that a family friend was getting knighted soon. It sounds a little weird… but I kind of want to see it. Don’t judge.

On my first full day in Canberra she took me out grocery shopping and to see the city. It’s weird how here they have grocery stores in the mall. I was talking to Sasha about that too, back in Cairns (when he was trying to find a liquor store) and he said that it was common to have grocery stores at the mall in Germany too. I guess not having them is just an American thing.
We went to a lot of the government sites and went to the top of a mountain that has a great view of the Australian Parliament building. For some reason they have an American war memorial here… I have no idea why. After a mini-tour of the city we went back home to have dinner right before going out bowling with the family.

We left for the bowling alley to meet two of Fran’s kids, Adam and Stacey. They are the two oldest and I think they’re in their mid-20s. While I was there I met my new favorite person down here, Stacey’s fiancée, Mike. Here’s the first time I saw him at the parking lot in a mini script form (because that’s how I seem to write everything these days…)

Thomas (20), young, vibrant, and extremely good looking, and Fran get out of the car and walk toward Stacey and Mike, also getting out of their car. Stacey extends her hand.

Stacey
(to Thomas)
I’m Stacey, how ya goin’?

Thomas shakes her hand with a firm, manly handshake.

Thomas
Thomas. Nice to meet you.

Stacey
How do you feel about tattoos?

Thomas
(caught offguard)
Uh… I don’t know if I would ever get one, but I don’t mind them on other people. Why?

Mike turns his back to Thomas and Stacey lifts his shirt up, revealing a partially completed Batman tattoo that covers half of his back.

Ok, so I might have gotten a little carried away with that and the formatting got messed up when I copied it over, but it was a classic moment at the time. I don’t think Mike had said anything, he just showed me this new lifelong sign of devotion to Batman he had gotten that day. I might have to say that that is the single biggest act of Batman dedication I’ve seen my whole life (AJ… I think you need to step up your game).

There are two things you should know about that story.
1) How ya goin’? Is the Aussie way of saying “Nice to meet you”, or “How are you doing?” It’s really strange and I’m not quite used to it yet.
2) A few weeks ago I heard a story about this last voyage of Semester at Sea where a student got a little intoxicated and while under the influence got a tattoo of a titger on his butt. Never in my life have I been tempted to get a tattoo until after I heard this story.

Well, I wasn’t very good at bowling. I actually got progressively worse, but I didn’t care too much. The night was fun and I got back home in time to rest for my first day of work.
Till next time!

Finding Nemo...

First thing’s first. I tried vege-mite. If you’re curious how it tastes, mix red wine with soy sauce and spread it on toast. I don’t recommend it.

I had to get that off my chest.

Well, I met up with everyone from Australearn, and I have to say that it is kind of a weird Orientation. You meet up with fellow students and get to know one another for two days, and then you go off to different parts of Australia, most likely to never see each other again. I wasn’t quite sure what the meaning behind all of it was.

As a result of all this though, it was a part of the Orientation to go to the Great Barrier Reef. Not a bad deal. We had to wake up at O’dark thirty (which I just found out the Australian equivalent of that expression is Stupid O’clock, which I like much better) to catch the boat for a two and a half hour ride to the reef. Keep in mind that it’s winter down here also, so it’s a bit chilly out on the water. We rode on a giant catamaran, and I thought I was cool because I was lying out on one of the nets in the front with my camera, just casually taking pictures and getting some rest. Then all of a sudden, out of NOWHERE, a big wave splashes from under the net and completely soaks me. Completely. I was soaking wet. I didn’t care much that I was drenched in cold ocean water because I was more concerned about my digital camera I was holding. Luckily, by some act of fate, my camera was in its case at the time and barely got any water on it. It was safe, but if it would have been out of its case, I would be singing a different tune. Regardless, I decided that it wasn’t safe to have my camera out, and that marked the end of my Great Barrier Reef pictures.

Fortunately, that was a wise choice. There were many other moments on the trip where I got completely soaked from waves. On the trip we stopped at two different spots on the reef. It was odd going to the Great Barrier Reef, because for some reason in my mind I pictured some sort of landmark or big distinguishing factor for the largest reef in the world, but as we pulled up it seemed just like any other reef. Needless to say the diving was incredible. There was so much life under the water that everywhere you turned you were likely to break up some school of fish. Sadly, I didn’t find Nemo, but I did get ot have a talk with Crush. I saw a sea turtle, which was the highlight of my dive. He was just cruising along, and sea turtles don’t mind humans as much as fish do, so you can catch up with them and actually pet their shell without them minding. It was awesome.

After the dive Australearn had a final presentation on the differences between Australian and American culture (and let me tell you, the language is very, very different), and then we were left to do as we pleased. I went out for a little bit that night to get some gelato with some other students. Remember how my debit card isn’t working? Well, it still isn’t, but I tried to pay for the gelato with it. When I bought my Skyrail pass, I didn’t have to punch in my pin number, so it let me purchase it, but for the gelato the lady needed my pin number. I punched in what my pin number used to be, and the receipt printed out with a big DECLINED on it. She must have not understood what that meant, because she just had me sign that paper and gave me the gelato. Maybe having a non-working debit card isn’t as bad as I thought! (errata: it is not actually that much fun to not have a working debit card. The cons outweigh the pros by a long shot).

The Orientation ended and I headed up to Canberra. It wasn’t that bad of a flight. I connected through Sydney, and as I was flying in I could see that Opera house from my window. You know how you have those moments when something in your life actually hits you? Well I think the moment I saw the Opera house was the moment I realized I was in Australia. Other than that my flight proved uneventful, and when I arrived in Australia’s capital city I gathered my bags and caught a taxi to my new home.

The driver was a cool guy: a local University student from Afghanistan. It’s always so weird when you see somebody who is not Australian with an Australian accent. I can’t even explain how weird it is, but once you see it, you’ll understand. He told me a little bit about the city, and dropped my off at my new house. I stood outside the door and waited for a minute to ring the doorbell. It’s such an odd feeling when you are about to see something that will become an everyday routine. I knew that what was behind that door would become a part of my life. I tried to take it all in while I had the chance, and rang the doorbell to meet the lady who was welcoming a complete stranger into her home for the next few months.

I’ll stop this entry right here, because I don’t want it to get too long (I know when things are too long, I’m less inclined to read them…). But rest assured that my new mom is quite the character.

Cheers!

Only in Australia...

Tonight, as I was walking halfway through the city of Cairns with my huge backpack, rolling suitcase, a German guy named Sasha, and a 5 liter box of wine, it finally hit me. I’m in Australia.

Alright, stop. Rewind. (Or hammer time, whichever you prefer).

I guess I should first and foremost explain what I’m doing here. I know that blogs and I don’t have a very reliable history together, as I never actually finished my blog from Semester at Sea. Yes, I realize that, and I also realize that I may not finish blogging about my time in Australia. That’s just the way things are. Why am I starting my blog back up? I don’t know. Maybe so I can kind of have someone to talk to. Anyway, the point is I’m starting this up again.

I also realize that the people (very few people) who read my blog last year may not be up to date on my life and therefore not know that I’m living in Australia this summer. I don’t know if they send out emails or anything telling people that I’ve finally updated my blog, but if so, then welcome back! After Semester at Sea I decided it would be a good idea to study abroad again, but not for a whole semester. One thing led to another, and now I’m doing an internship this summer with the CSIRO, which is a government agency in Canberra, the capital of Australia. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing there, but I guess I’ll know soon enough.

So, those of you who know me know that I’m pretty cheap. In my cheapness, I thought it would be a good idea to buy flights independently and save some money. Well there was a little mix up along the way and I got a ticket to Cairns 2 days earlier than everyone else participating in my program. So I was flying into Cairns on the 26th, but nobody else would arrive until the 28th, I didn’t think this would be much of a problem though. I’d just fly into Cairns and kind of play it all by ear. And yesterday when I flew in, that was still my game plan.

So, as the plane was landing into Cairns yesterday, I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn’t have any reservations with hotels or hostels, and I didn’t know how I was going to get around the city with all my bags. Well, as I was trying to get a ticket for the bus into the city, I see two girls and one was wearing, of all things, a Chapman sweatshirt. Funny how the world works. I introduced myself, and they already knew me (I guess that makes me a bad person). Well, they already booked a hostel in the city, and I decided to tag along for a little while.

As we were going to the hostel, this German guy starts to follow us around. It ends up that his name is Sasha and he’s been travelling for a few weeks and plans on staying in Australia for a few months. I end up getting a double room with him in a nearby hostel because we couldn’t find anything else. We got some vouchers from the hostel we were staying at for some free food and went out that night to claim them. On the way back to the hostel, Sasha was really intent on getting some wine to bring back to the girls. We found a liquor store and tried to find some wine. Being who I am, I tried to find the best deal. There was a 4 liter box of wine that was about half as much money as all the others, which I thought was a pretty good deal. I told Sasha, and he told me in his German accent, “You seem to have forgotten about the aspect of quality.” I felt pretty stupid after that. We ended up getting something else, but it didn’t really matter because we were all so tired that by the time we got back to the hostel the girls were already asleep, and we ended up falling asleep at 9 pm and not even opening the wine.

The next day came and we checked out of the hostel because it wasn’t that nice. We went out to find another place but left our luggage in the girls’ hostel so we didn’t have to lug it around the city. I tried to get some money out of the ATM because the cash supply I brought from America was getting low, but it wouldn’t recognize my pin number. I can’t get any cash right now. Perfect. Well, we found another place and the four of us took a bus up to the town of Kuranda, in the nearby jungle. The bus driver was pretty nice and was telling us all about Cairns and the nearby area. I asked him if he had any advice for me when I go to Canberra, and all he told me was “It’s bloody freezing there.” I guess I’ll take that advice to heart.

The jungle was great, although I have to say I’m a little disappointed in the weather up here. They call this area the sunshine state, but it’s been raining ever since I arrived. We hiked to a waterfall while we were up there, and in a weird way I have to say that it reminded me of Iguassu. I went to Iguassu towards the beginning of semester at sea, and this is pretty close to the beginning of my Australian experience. If this relation is any indication, then I should be shaving my head and kissing a fish in about a week. We took the famous skyline cable car down the mountain, which is about 7 km long. It was something else. Upon arriving back we got Chinese food from the night market, which has a GREAT food system. You just buy a plate and you put all the food you can on the plate. The more skilled you are at stacking food, the more you can eat. I think it would be an awesome system to implement in America.

So we walked back to the girls’ hostel, got our things, and Sasha and I started to trek halfway across the city of Cairns (with our wine) to get to our new hostel. And here I am with 10 Australian cents to my name, sitting in the hostel common room with Sasha, Tim (a South Korean with a lisp who is sharing our room), sipping on our wine and watching Step Brothers on a projector. And Sasha says hello! I meet up with the rest of the Australearn participants tomorrow, and then the program officially begins. We’ll see how it goes!