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…