I had a two-week break between the end of classes and my first final exam, so I decided to throw concerns about study time and money to the wind and have an adventure. First, I took off to Melbourne, from whence I went on a day tour of the Great Ocean Road and another of the Grampians. The basics of that adventure are discussed in the previous entry.

From there, I flew to Alice Springs, where I had a free day there during which I met some really cool people from Holland and rested up. Then, at 6:10 the next morning, I started my nine day “safari” trip.

The nine-day trip is really a series of three three-day trips: one around the red center and then back to Alice springs, one from Alice to Darwin, and one around Kakadu national park and surrounds that finishes back in Darwin. You could visualize it as two circles connected by a line. The guides and the vehicles change, but many of the people on the trip stay the same. Actually, me and some of my friends pleaded with our guides to let us stay together for the last three-day leg and managed to get our way, but I’ll talk more about these friends in a second.

During the trip around the red center, I learned a lot about the geology of the area, which is fascinating, as well as a little about the botany (fascinating to me at least) and a fair amount (although never enough) about the traditional culture. One thing I want everyone to know: Ularu (Ayer’s Rock) is NOT the only thing to see in this area! Although this is certainly a really cool geological phenomenon and an important cultural site, there’s also Kata Tjuta and King’s Canyon, which are less crowded and (I think) better hiking venues. Also, my irritation at the whole idea of climbing Ularu only increased as I learned more about the reasons why the traditional owners of the land don’t want you to do it, and why it’s still open. Apparently, when the government finally “gave back” the land to the people who had owned it for a good long time before white people showed up, they made leaving the climb open a condition of this “deal.” The thing is, bottom line, Ularu is a sacred site, the location of several important Tjukurpa (what we sometimes call “dream time”) stories, and it’s not appropriate to climb it. On top of this, the owners consider the climb to be dangerous, and several people have indeed died while attempting it. This is also deeply hurtful to the aboriginal people who own the land because they feel it is their duty to protect and care for anyone who visits their land – the deaths and injuries that have occurred during the climb are therefore regarded as failures on the part of the traditional owners to act according to their Tjukurpa. What I don’t understand here is why in the world anyone would still want to do the climb. It says “please don’t climb” on every pamphlet and billboard, including one placed right in front of the gate to the climbing path. So why would anyone ever still have a desire to do it? How can you look at yourself after you blatantly, flagrantly disregard the desires of the people who have welcomed you to their land? And this all comes back to what seems to be a major theme in this entire experience abroad: I have a lot to learn about the essential thoughtlessness of human beings. As depressing as it is, I think this is an important thing to understand. If I approach people as if they are thoughtful and considerate when this isn’t actually true, it will probably cause breakdowns in communication. It’s also causing me to think more carefully about my own actions, because I hope to do whatever small part I can to pull up the average thoughtfulness of the population. Of course, the discussion above is problematic because the land in the US shouldn’t/doesn’t belong to white people either. I’m basing my indignation on arbitrary systems of law which were set in place by the very invaders I’m acting so indignant about. So I also need to make sure not to reduce situations to black and white arguments. I’m working on it.

Whew. Anyway, enough of that… for now. Mwa ha ha.

I should mention that during two night of every three-day trip, we slept outside either in swags or in little cabins, and cooked communally in these super-cool camp kitchens Adventure Tours has set up at its camp sites. It was awesome.

So on the next stage of our journey, we headed out from Alice again and went north towards Darwin. This part involved a LOT of driving and only a few really cool things to see, but it was still a good experience and cheaper than flying. I spent most of the time in the car learning a little bit of German from and teaching a little bit of American slang and conversational English usage to my new German and Swiss friends, who I mentioned briefly before. I have lots of stories about them, but for now I’ll just say their names are Johanna, Silke, and Seraina, and I’m so glad we ended up on the same tour. If the whole Ularu climb thing strengthened my suspicions that humanity is essentially thoughtless and cruel, they did their bit to help counteract it. I think maybe I was raised in the wrong culture. These three girls were just so much more, well, like me, than any of the Americans or Australians I had met up to that point. They all seem to value consideration, politeness, openness, and emotional honesty – values I missed very, very much during my whole time in Australia – at least as highly as I do. There were even little things I discovered I had in common with them that I rarely mention in the US because people tend to think I’m weird if I do. For example, when Seraina and her family were staying in Sydney, we went out to dinner and ended up staying out pretty late. Seraina offered that if I missed my train, I could sleep with her in her bed at the hotel, because it was more than big enough for two people. At first, I kind of laughed, because if I’d heard that from an American I’d only known for a couple of weeks, even if I considered her a friend, I would assume she was joking. After I realized that she was being serious, I was so happy and surprised to discover my family isn’t as freakish as life in America has led me to believe. I sometimes share a bed with my sister, my mother, or my close female friends, but other Americans usually view this with at least a touch of uneasiness. I also got more hugs and kisses on the cheek during the week and half I spent with these three girls and the several days I spent with Seraina and her family in Sydney than I had during the entire rest of the trip (except when my mom was there). It was so nice! Australians, I think, even though they might pack themselves into closer spaces than we usually do in the US (like my example of people sitting across from me at my table) are still sometimes a bit stand-offish when it comes to actual physical contact.
In terms of actual sites and activities, the highlights of this stage of the trip were a cruise through Katherine Gorge, learning to do dot painting from an aboriginal woman with the English name of Angela, and swimming at a beautiful waterfall when we started getting into the Northern Territory.

Finally, we headed out from Darwin on the last stage of our trip. This part was even more amazing than the rest. For one thing, our guide was extremely experienced and probably one of the best guides I have had or will ever have, ever. He knew a TON about the land and its traditional cultures, and he just had amazing leadership skills. The best parts about this stage were seeing a ton of different styles of rock art and hearing the stories behind the paintings, and spending the whole last day swimming in a variety of beautiful water holes. Only one of these was actually on the itinerary – our guide took a vote about the other ones and we decided to take his recommendations over the schedule printed in our brochures. The one on the itinerary was okay but really crowded. The other two were AMAZING and we had them pretty much to ourselves.

Okay, if I go on much longer, this will cease to be a Cliff Notes version. This may or may not be my last post. I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading these sporadic updates!

- Hannah

Here I am in Alice Springs! I got in early this afternoon and I’ll be able to relax here (and maybe even get a little studying done) tomorrow before heading out on my camping/hostel-hopping trip across the outback. My hostel here is quite lovely. I’m sharing a room with seven other girls from across the globe, the room is very clean and has a cool tile floor, and we have our own bathroom which is also very clean and nice. The town itself is nice and small, and the main drag is really cute. Overall, not a bad place to chill out for a day and a half between busy days.

So, to backtrack and fill in some details about Victoria:

The Great Ocean Road was a long day of driving in a fairly steady drizzle, but I think it was worth it. The rock formations and the many beaches, each with its own character and type of sand, were fascinating. One of the coolest things about the rock formations is the way they like to remind us that they are temporary: there are actually only eight stacks in the “twelve apostles” because four have fallen into the ocean since the formation was named, and the “London bridge” now only has one arch and is no longer connected to the shore. Most of the rock in the area is limestone rather than sandstone, so that was also an interesting change.

It was also really cool to see the Victoria countryside. I was actually surprised how much it really does look like some kind of idyllic pastoral landscape. A lot of my pictures are of expansive, rolling, green hills. I can see why Europeans were so excited about it when they first saw it. Even though the conditions aren’t as much like those “back home” as those explorers thought, it does seem to give that illusion.

The Grampians were amazing even in the rain, but I was glad that it stopped raining by the end of the day. It started raining about five minute into our first short bushwalk. This was fine with me and with the cool Canadian woman I was walking with, but I felt bad for some of our fellow travelers who were from warmer climates and weren’t really dressed for bushwalking at all, much less bushwalking in the rain. Oh, well, no one melted. After that, we got to dry off by visiting an Aboriginal cultural center, which was really well thought-out and designed to bring the viewer through the history of the people of the region up to the present, addressing everything from Dreamtime legends to the “lost generations” of Aboriginal children who were kidnapped from their families as recently as the middle of the twentieth century, to the current challenges and disadvantages Aboriginal people face in Australia. By then, it had at least stopped raining although it was still overcast. We went to see this not very intense but very pretty waterfall, and then headed up to the “peak” that I mentioned before to look out over lovely rolling hills just before sunset.

I had a really interesting conversation with the Canadian woman I mentioned during our rainy bushwalk. She is a high school home economics teacher who is here for a year on a teacher exchange that works much like a student exchange. What was interesting was that she sees some huge differences between the Australian secondary education system and the model we agreed predominates in both of our North American countries. She’s actually very frustrated with the way high schools work here. Apparently, the kids are much less respectful towards their teachers to the extent that she feels like she has to raise her voice or even yell consistently just to keep their attention, a practice she says the other teachers take for granted. She says that her school is a slightly poorer area of Sydney, but that she has been hearing the same kinds of things from other Canadian teachers all across Australia. She was even more frustrated with the fact that each class is always graded on a curve. And not the kind of modified curve teachers in the US sometimes use, but an actual bell curve : 10% of students always get the equivalent of a D to and F even if the whole class is full of over-achievers, and 10% of students get an A even if no one ever turns in their homework. I don’t understand why they would choose to do things this way, and it seems like this may be the reason for the overall under achievement this teacher noticed. If all you have to do is not be the slowest person in the class, why bother pushing yourself to do your personal best? Does this system make sense to anyone reading this blog? Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Those are pretty much my adventures so far! I’ll be staying at hostels on two nights in the middle of my camping trip, so I’ll try to post updates then.

For now, I just want to let everyone know that my trip is going well. I've been in Victoria (based in Melbourne) for the past two days and have had adventures on the Great Ocean Road and in the Grampians. Tomorrow, I leave for Alice Springs, from whence I will embark on a nine day "safari" across the outback to Darwin before flying back to Sydney to take a couple of exams.

I've been staying in a youth hostel here, which has been a different experience and mostly fun on the short-term. It would be a bit too much craziness for me on the long-term though.

The Great Ocean Road and the Grampians were both beautiful and well worth the long drives and cold and rain. Today, it actually got pretty for us in the afternoon and we got to enjoy some really beautiful views down into the valley from the one of the highest "peaks" of the "mountains," which was all of one kilometer.

I'll try to re-create my longer entry later!

- Hannah

Things with the roommates seem to be going well after a somewhat rocky couple of weeks and an episode in which I probably could have conducted myself more respectably. The good thing is that I think we’ve all realized how important it is to communicate even about little things and go out of our way to be nice to each other, since we’re all stuck in our rather small and sometimes frustrating space together. It’s interesting and kind of funny to me that I came here to stretch my limits and experience living in another culture, and I’m doing just that, but the process has taken a rather different form than what I expected. I thought those learning experiences would be limited by the fact that I’m living with other Americans, but instead I’ve been learning about a facet of American culture that I’ve always sort of isolated myself from. And… I think I may be finally getting over the culture shock a little. The Americans in my apartment complex aren’t bad people even if they may sometimes be a little inconsiderate by my standards. But then, I’m probably pretty inconsiderate and selfish by the standards of some other cultures, and I suspect that I come across as obsequious to my roommates at times. I really appreciate the efforts they’ve all made to be understanding of what helps me cope in the wake of the aforementioned episode, and I’m trying my best to be understanding towards them as well. I’m amazed at what a difference it makes just to be thanked when I do something nice and to not come home to a stack of dirty dishes every day! I’m starting to understand how my mom felt throughout the time when my sister and I were both teenagers better and better.

School is still good. So far, I’ve gotten Distinctions and High Distinctions on all of my assignments, which I think Willamette converts to B’s and A’s, although actually Distinctions might be A’s as well, or at least A-‘s. Need to check on that. I just have to think in terms of letters and not percentages, because the scales are rather different. A Distinction is considered a really good grade, even if it maybe only 75-85%.

My other exciting thing is that I’m planning a trip to the Northern Territories! I have about two weeks between the end of classes and my finals (I lucked out and got them clustered together near the end of the finals weeks), so I’m going for a 10 day “safari” from Alice Springs to Darwin. It’s going to be me and up to about 20 other people riding in 4WD vans across the desert and camping in swags. Should be sweet. And we get to see Uluru and Kakadu, which seem to be two of the biggest attractions up that way. If anybody knows about Uluru, no, I’m not going to climb it. My understanding is that it’s a sacred site to the aboriginal people who live in the region and they consider it disrespectful to climb it (not to mention that it’s dangerous), but they’ve kept it open for climbing because there is so much pressure from the tourism industry. Seriously, it sort of amazes me that this is okay. Would Catholic cathedrals ever be subjected to that kind of pressure to let tourists desecrate their crosses, or talk loudly during mass, or whatever? Anyway, enough about that. The real point here is that I’m really excited about this trip but also a little nervous because it will be my first time doing anything like that on my own.

Okay, that’s probably enough of an update for now. You guys all rock my socks!

There is one big and very noticeable difference, which I think the US (and I’m going to refer particularly to the Pacific Northwest because that’s the part of the US I’m most familiar with) could definitely learn from. The greater Sydney area (which extends a couple hundred kilometers from the city itself) has an awesome public transportation system. Some of you might have picked up on this a bit as you’ve read my other entries. If I want to go to any part of the city, I walk five minutes to the train station, change trains in Chatswood, and get off within a 10 minute walk from wherever I’m going. Unless I’m on an extremely tight schedule, I don’t even really have to look up what time the trains are running, because they head out about every 5-15 minutes, depending on the train and the station. To get to the zoo, I took the train to the Circular Quay as stated above, walked a couple of minutes to the ferry docks, took a ferry to the back side of the zoo, and then took a free bus that regularly meets the ferry to the front of the zoo. Even out in the Blue Mountains, trains regularly stop at each of the small towns. Every bus or train I have taken here has been within maybe two minutes of being on time and fares are very affordable, especially if you’re a student and/or you get a weekly or fortnightly pass

The Seattle area supposedly has this big stumbling block to building efficient public transportation because the high water table and the fact that it’s built on fill mean that it can’t have subways. But I believe the water table is rather high here as well, and the trains only occationally go underground, and sometimes go over the streets rather than under them. Seems to me that where there’s a will (and well-managed money, and widespread public support) there’s a way. Besides, those excuses have no bearing at all on the bus system, which is also way more extensive, reliable, and user-friendly here than in either the Seattle area or Salem, OR.

In addition to all of this, the Sydney area, especially the city itself, is very walking/biking friendly. Pretty much every street has a nice sidewalk and a shoulder than can be used by bicyclists, and there are tons of paths, stairways, “lifts,” and pedestrian bridges over streets that make walking or biking probably more convenient than driving for getting around the city. If you need to go a little further than you care to walk, you can always pop on a train or bus to shorten the distance. In my suburb, there is this great bike path that I usually run on, and I always see people walking or biking along it carrying groceries or other stuff from the Macquarie Center. My home town, Shoreline, has attempted something like this by contributing to the Inter Urban Trail project, but it would be cool to see more areas in the US going a lot further towards increasing “walkability.”

For those who don’t know, she came to visit me during my two-week “fall break,” and we went on an awesome trip to Queensland as well as exploring Sydney and its surrounds.

So, first, exploring around here before heading for Queensland:

Mom got here on Thursday, so I skipped a few of my last classes to come pick her up (it was okay – lectures here are always recorded and available online). The coolest thing we did in the few days we had before taking off up north was out “beach day.” We took off on the train at a reasonable time in the morning to Bondi Junction. From there, even though a few of the locals we asked for directions looked at us like we were crazy, we walked to Bronte Beach, which was pretty quiet even on such a pretty day. The tide was out and we found a great little bank of rocks for tide-pooling, where we saw all kinds of cool snails, hermit crabs, small fish, and a bright orange sea slug! From there, we took this cliff-top path to the even smaller and quieter Tamarama beach and then to the bigger, more tourist-y Bondi Beach. The walk was absolutely gorgeous and so were all three of the beaches (see pictures on facebook).

Let’s see… we also did just a little exploring of the city and watched about half of the episodes of Firefly, which is an awesome sci-fi TV show with an old-west feel that was stupidly canceled before it even finished its first season. Tim was a sweetie and sent the box set of all the episodes with Mom.

Okay, on to Queensland: Wow! So many cool things!!!

Our first day, we just flew into Cairns and got our bearings. We were really surprised and sort of excited about how easy security was for this little domestic flight. There we were with our baggies of gels in one hand and our shoes in the other, and they just sort of looked at us like we were nuts and waved us on through. It’s nice to be treated like a trustworthy human. Quantas also treated us exceedingly well, giving us a full (pretty good!) meal, ice cream, and a first-run movie on our little 3-hour flight.

The next morning, bright and early, the Adventure Tours van picked us up to take us to Cape Tribulation. We didn’t really know what to expect, but this was definitely the best “travel day” I have ever had (well, with the possible exception of some of our road trip days, Tim). Our tour guide was named Ben, and he was a graduate student in Biology/Environmental Science when he wasn’t driving tour vans. On the way, he told us all about the ecology, geology and history (encompassing pre and post colonization) of the region. We stopped at a couple of cool places, and never felt rushed. We got to see a really cool wildlife park/zoo, body-surf a little rapid in the rainforest, go on an hour-long river cruise in which we saw a big crocodile among other wildlife, look out over a amazing view, and eat delicious home-made ice cream. We got to our accommodation some time in the late afternoon feeling like we had had a great adventure rather than like we had spent the whole day getting from one place to another.

Our accommodation in Cape Tribulation itself, the Cape Trib Beach House, is worthy of comment. Basically, it is a collection of adorable little cabins in the middle of the rainforest and right on the beach. They have “dorm style” accommodation for those traveling even more cheaply than we were, but we stayed in a little place with two beds and a bathroom. You could walk down the dirt path (and you would frequently see big orb spiders, cool birds of various kinds, and sometime feral pigs during the short journey) to the “restaurant,” which was a collection of tables and a kitchen and bar under a giant canvas canopy, open on the sides and overhung with trees and vines. From there, you could walk just a few more meters out to the beach, which was beautiful and pristine, bordered by rainforest and dotted with patches of mangroves. Cape Trib is out of the way enough (the last few Kilometers from Cairns are along a dirt road which apparently gets progressively worse as you head further north) that it isn’t crowded with just your average “tourists.” A lot of the other people there were “backpackers” (people traveling the world or parts of it while living out of backpacks) from all over the world. We had a really good conversation with girls from Switzerland and England about economics, politics, health-care, etc. over our first dinner at the beach house.

On our first full day at the Beach House, we were supposed to go out to the Great Barrier Reef, but the boat ended up needing repairs that day. We rescheduled for the next day because our travel agent had told us that this little boat, the Rum Runner, was way better than any of the bigger boats that went out of Cairns. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reschedule our “jungle-surfing” tour, which was supposed to be the next day, but it was okay because we got a refund for that and ended up spending the day just exploring the Cape Trib area on foot. We ended up walking about 10k that day, most of it on the beach, which you could pretty much take along the whole stretch of civilization in the region. We went inland each time our local map told us there was something cool to see, and we ended up spending time at the “Bat House” (a quirky, one-room natural history museum and conservation center including rescued flying-foxes), the Mason general store and water hole, and a few cool little nature walks. I also had a pretty exciting lunch of “chips, beans, and eggs” at a local take-away place, which is exactly what it sounds like if you speak Australian: French fries topped with home-made baked beans topped with two fried eggs. Yum! That night, we went on a night-hike through the rainforest with a really knowledgeable guide and saw all kinds of frogs, “dragons” (a kind of lizard), a giant centipede (seriously creepy), a snake, and a patch of phosphorescent mushrooms that look like some kind of fairy village in the dark.

So, the next day, we DID get to go out on the Rum Runner. Oh my gosh. Amazing. I don’t even know how to describe it. Anyone who ever gets the chance to see the Great Barrier Reef absolutely should. It was the first coral reef I had ever seen, but Mom, who has snorkeled some of the reefs in Hawaii, said that this was a totally different experience. We traveled a couple hours offshore on this little boat with 26 passengers and six crewmembers. Once we got out, we had McKay reef pretty much all to ourselves (a few small fishing boats showed up a ways away from us for a while) for about 3.5 hours, and they served us a really nice lunch between stints of snorkeling. Wow. I could have gotten lost out there. The coral is so big and everything is so bight and alive. You just have to go. There’s no way to describe it. To my D&D group: start thinking about “breath underwater” spells/items and about and forests of bright-blue, spiny coral taller than your characters.

Sadly, we had to leave to go back to Cairns that evening. I would love to go back to Cape Trib someday for a much longer time. I’ve fallen in love with the rain forest.
The good news is that we got to go white-water rafting on the Tully River the next day. It was an early start again, but well worth it. We headed back into the rainforest but in a different direction, and then spent all day on a very beautiful and rather wild river with experienced and knowledgeable guides. I’m not even sure how many class three and four rapids we did, but it was a blast. Our Swiss friend (from the Beach House) happened to be on the same trip and ended up in our raft, so that was cool too. Our boat didn’t even flip over (a few of the others did though), we had a few adventures but nothing really went wrong, and I got to jump off of a couple of really tall rocks!

The next day we wandered around Cairns, said a long and bitter-sweat goodbye to the rainforest, and headed back to Sydney.

Since we’ve been back in this good old eucalypt-dominated ecosystem, we’ve had a few perhaps smaller, but still pretty cool adventures. I had a practical session for my Biology of Australian Vertebrates class, but we managed to weave that in and work around it.

On Monday night, Mom and I stayed at this adorable hotel on “The Rocks,” a historical district in the city. We got down to the city early so that we could do a walking tour day. We saw a good portion of the botanical gardens, visited the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, ate lunch in Chinatown, and went to the aquarium. I think my favorite part was the Museum. For those who don’t know, the Hyde Park Barracks was one of the first buildings in Sydney and served first as housing for convict workers, then as a depot for female immigrants, and finally as a refuge for insane and destitute women. The museum is in the original building, which has been adapted and restored to show all of the major phases in this history. On Tuesday I had to do some “animal behavior observation” at Taronga Zoo, so Mom tagged along and we explored the zoo after I was done. Then we explored the botanical gardens a bit more before reclaiming our bags and heading back to my apartment.

We spent a few days laying low (learning about hair identification and giving a presentation on frog conservation for me), and then yesterday (Saturday) we had a Blue Mountains adventure. We took the several hour train ride out to Katoomba, which is a cute little town with lots of fun shops, cafes with delicious food, and a whole bunch of trails just a little way away. Since we got a late start, we were only able to do a short hike, but it was still really cool. We paid for our train tickets, but when we got to Katoomba we discovered that it wasn’t really necessary to do so, since they don’t have the little kiosks where you scan your ticket there. So I hope to go back with this friend of mine who also really likes to hike – a day of beautiful hiking, totally free of charge! Sounds like a good deal to me.

So now Mom is all packed and she heads out tomorrow. Classes start tomorrow as well. We’re both a little sad, but we’ve really enjoyed our time together. I’m just so glad that I got to share a little bit of my Australia adventure with her!

Alright, so I’m pretty much fully settled in now, I think. Life in Australia is starting to seem like, well, just life. It’s a good life though. I’m enjoying it.

The only really exciting “event” that I’ve participated in since the opera house was a tour of the south coast. It was cool and I was glad I at least got to see another part of Australia, but it was definitely too rushed. The coolest part was when we got to stop at this cool national park where there was a beautiful beach and listen to/participate in a presentation by a couple of park rangers who were members of aboriginal tribes. They showed us how to make rope (I’m still wearing a string of it as an anklet), showed us some edible and medicinal plants, demonstrated the steps in making a boomerang… it was a blast. Unfortunately, we didn’t even get to hear the whole presentation because we had to go on to the next thing! I think it would have been totally worth my money just to hear the whole talk and then spend some time on the beach. Oh, well, it was still a good day.

Other than that, I’ve been buried in papers. I wrote a research paper about human mating systems for Science of Sex and an essay about the tension between madness/irrationality and reason in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and some of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories for Goth Class, so the topics could have been a lot less interesting. Still, though, it was hard to convince myself I actually had to do school.

My running is still going well, although it looks like I won’t be able to race for silly bureaucratic reasons. Both Willamette and NSW Athletics seem to think I’m going to sue them if they let me race. Crazies. Anyway, training is going well. My coach has me doing a lot more hard speed work than I’m used to, and I can tell that it’s making a difference. Hopefully, I’ll actually have a kick for my senior year! We talked about it yesterday and decided that the next step is to make me sprint longer distances. I’m a little intimidated, but also excited.

My mom is going to be here in two days!!!!

- Track and field is called "athletics" and athletics as a general category the way we use it at home is called "sport"
- Athletics and cross country are way less popular and much less formally organized here. My university of 30,000 students doesn't have its own cross country or athletics team, and my teammates say this is because no one university in the area would have enough interested students to put a team together. My athletics team is made up of sprinters, jumpers, and distance runners aged 18-25 and is the only team for a pretty large area. There are about 10-15 people at practice on any given day. We also work out on a grass track because it is the only track in the (not huge, but not tiny either) city of Ryde.
- Things you hear every day in Australia but no in the US: How are you going? G'day; Mate; You'll be right; "Fillet" pronounced the way it's spelled; "Kabab" used I believe to mean any kind of grilleld food in a tortilla; Quite as in "it was quite difficult actually"; Have a look; different to (instead of different from)...
- Most espresso places will make you an iced late, but you often have to explain what that is first
- Australians add "r"s to the ends of words that end in vowels ("idear" is the one I hear the most, but they even do it just a bit when they say "Australia") but leave off or swallow the "r" from the ends of other words ("lecture" sounds something like "lectu-a")
- Of course, there's the whole day before month when you write dates (I've been trying to always date my lecture notes this way and am getting used to it)
- And the other side of the road driving
- Personal bubbles are smaller. I first encountered this when I grabbed some food at the food court at the mall durring my first week here. I looked around for quite some time to find an empty table, and the one I finaly found was the kind that up to four people could sit around, one on each side. Pretty soon, this older guy comes and sits across from me. It surprised me how uncomfortable I felt, and I kept feeling like I needed to make conversation or at least catch his eye, but he was just eating his lunch and had no interest in being friends. He finally left and I felt much better until a mom and two kids came and joined me! I'm finally starting to get used to this a little, but I have to admit I usually create a space by setting a bag down in the seat next to me, etc. if I'm going to be sittnig in a public place for long.

That's all I can think of just this moment and it is way past time for dinner. Hope this is at least a little entertaining!

Well, I won’t try to re-create everything that’s happened so far, but I’ll do a quick overview.

My apartment is pretty nice for what it is and I’ve gotten used to its more quirky qualities. I have my own room, I get along with my apartment-mates, and I’m only a short walk from campus. Unfortunately, they for some reason group all the exchange students together and even seem to group us by nationality, so I’m forced to be around other Americans a lot of the time. Strangely enough, I feel much more out of place among my fellow American exchange students than I do among the Australians I’ve had the chance to hang out with so far. It’s a different way of living than I would expect from students who should be some of the most conscientious and intelligent people their universities had to offer and should be doing their best to represent their country well, and it sometimes makes me a little worried about the future of the US and the world. I’m beginning to realize what a very small culture I self-select into at home. Those people who frustrate me with their lack of passion, thoughtfulness, and consideration for others aren’t just a few people out of many: they’re almost everyone. All the same, I’m trying to continue to breath, be nice, and look for the best in people.

The classes I’m taking here are:
- BIOL360 Biology of Australian Vertebrates
- BIOL260 The Science of Sex
- ENGL271 Gothic Visions: from Sublime to Suburban Gothic
- HIST109 The Making of Australia
(I should really call them “units” though because when they say “class” here they mean something more like what we mean when we say “section” and technically each lecture and tutorial for a unit during the week is a different class.)

I’m really enjoying my classes, especially English (or Goth class, as I like to refer to it in my head), in which I pretty much get to discuss my geek-dom and call it academic. I’m also getting some really good ideas to “borrow” for my D&D campaign.

The first exciting story: I went on a day hike a week after I got here that ended up in ambulances being called. The hike itself was amazing (lots of pictures on facebook), but our guide was just sort of an odd duck and, it turned out, not super qualified. He managed to get himself so dehydrated that he felt like he was going to throw up and got cramps in his legs to the extent that he didn’t think he could walk the last few kilometers. Personally, I think he was a big baby as well as an idiot, but that’s beside the point. I tried to force him to drink water and eat something salty, but he kept taking like two sips and then going back to whining and moaning. Finally, a few very patient people stayed with him while the rest of us hiked the rest of the way out to the street and called triple zero (911 equivalent). Everything was fine, but we ended up missing the last bus out of there and the school finally had to call and pay for taxies for all of us. The bushwalking club is no longer affiliated with the school gym and it’s “hike at your own risk” now. I don’t think the subsequent walks have been wildly popular.

The other exciting thing I did was that I went to this big benefit concert for the people affected by the bushfires and floods. It was a full 10 hours of music and they pretty much packed both the Sydney cricket grounds, where I was, and the Melbourne cricket grounds. I could have done without some of the people there who didn’t seem to have any understanding of or appreciation for the real reason behind the concert, but overall it was really cool.

Thank you to all of my supporters! I love and appreciate you guys more than I can possibly express!