Okay, enough on the Antipodes already!

Well, the last few days have been fairly uneventful, so although I have very little to say, I still feel impelled to write to somehow assist me in keeping my writerly skills intact (although I feel as though the nature of this blog has become more of a note-taking/observation space, and no place for the creation of art at all and yet, I press onward!) I have come to think a little more about what I said a few blogs ago about the strangeness of this place. And I think as far as what I have seen so far, the strangeness is more in the idea of Australia, and this distance of Australia from anything familiar, than anything truly bizarre about the place. So really, the antipodes has become just a concept in thinking about the place, not an experience that you go through in the actual place itself. But then...but then. There is this thing that Profe was telling us while we were studying in Mexico, and that is how difficult it is to cross cultures between two modern ones because on the surface they appear to be so similar, and yet, when you dig beneath the surface, there can be all kinds of differences. I think that is the true experience of Australia. It sounds so foreign that when you get here, you are surprised by how similar everything seems, and then when you start to know its quirks a little better, you realize how strange some things really are. And that is the true spirit of antipodes I think, that it sneaks up on you, catches you by surprise.
One other item of note, and then I will close out this rather pitiful entry...I was reflecting with Thryn last night on some of the things I had tried to blog about a few weeks ago when I was still in Omaha, about what a great group of friends I had in high school and how nostalgic I was for things to go back to the way they had been And she said something of what an amazing miracle that was, what a redeeming thing that God had put into my life. It is an amazing fact that even though I had all of this bad stuff going on in my life, I can still look back with nostalgia on that time because I had such an amazing bunch of people to laugh with me and keep me going. That really was my saving grace in those awful times. And it was like she was saying something that I had understood all along, but had never really put all the pieces together like that, so I really appreciated it. It really shows how God was working and sustaining me, even in those dark times.
So, those are my pithy thoughts for the day. Hopefully something remarkable will happen soon so that I can blog about that too...

Chicken Fried Rice

Today, there is not much of consequence to report. Yesterday was a lazy kind of day, yet wonderful too in its own way. I went to church in the morning at the Box Forest Wesleyan Church right next door, which was a fairly interesting experience. The thing I was first surprised by, when I went into the church, was how old the congregation was. Out of a room of about thirty people, only about 5 of them were under the age of sixty. It would seem strange to me to pastor a congregation of such unilateral makeup. The Sunday that we visited, a lot of emphasis was put on the need for enthusiasm in worship, how important it is to get excited about God. The pastor did a very funny drama about a person who thought that all you had to do for church was show up, and not engage. What made it so amusing is the way he played the character as an unashamedly loud, obnoxious, stubborn kind of person, humorously unwilling to listen to reason or connect the dots. The other interesting aspect was that the sermon was not preached by Pastor Ian, but by a woman. I’m not quite sure who she was, if she was a member of the congregation or someone with a more specific office. But I was intrigued by the fact that they would allow someone besides the pastor to give the sermon, and by the fact that it was a woman. Sunday night was great. Me and three other girls in our house conspired to cook ourselves some chicken fried rice for dinner. It was pretty funny because they (with the exception of Thryn) didn’t really know how to cook, and so they ended up asking me about everything and deciding that I was going to teach them this semester, so that by the time they got home, they would know how to cook. I told them they would have to call me Sensai. But we had such a great time cooking together and then eating together, with lots of joking around and poking fun at each other. We ended up all cleaning up the kitchen while singing “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” at the top of our lungs. This is the reason that I came to Australia, to have fun ALL THE TIME, but more than that, to build these new relationships and stretch beyond my comfort zone socially. The End.

(P.S.--Kathryn has brought it to my attention that the fact that none of my entries are broken by paragraph indentions is somewhat annoying. Well, in case you likewise are irritated by this, I would like to mention that I can't put indentions into this, if I indent in the posting it doesn't show up on the blog. Sorry. (Although, since as we've established, Kathryn is the only one who reads this blog, I guess it doesn't matter all that much...))

Take me out to the ballgame?

Well, I was very excited, I think, to attend my first footy game down here in Oz (for those of you unschooled in the higher forms of athletics, “footy” is the abbreviated version of Australian Rules Football, a game that is kind of a conglomeration of American football and soccer, with elements of basketball and volleyball thrown in. In Oz, sports, like the land itself, are something of a conglomeration.) The movie that we watched in Australian History really got me thinking about the place of sports here. It seems like in a land devoted to leisure, of course sports would come to have a kind of pseudo-religious context. And so it would seem; one of the sports commentators was noting how popular athletes are seen as something like young godlings down here, emulated by children and adults alike, and followed devotedly by their acolytes. He recounted how, when he was young, his dad would come into the room in the morning and throw some kind of ball at his head. He had to wake up instantly and identify what kind of ball it was that had been thrown, whether it was a cricket ball or a football or a soccer ball or so on. If he got it right, he dad would bring him into the kitchen and fix him up a nice big breakfast, all glowing with pride, and it would be a good morning. If he got it wrong, however, his dad would drag him out of bed and into the backyard and he’d have to do drills and practice his athletic skills, regardless of the weather. “But,” he said, “it was worth it, just to see the look on my dad’s face when I got it right.” (So immediately, of course, I’m thinking of how this paradigm of fatherhood affects how Christianity is perceived down here and how that does/should affect the way that the gospel is presented as well-i.e. a Father who is approving regardless of performance-but again, that’s another entry.) So, knowing the elevated position that athletics have come to have here, I was curious to see this enacted in an actual sporting event. Well, the first thing I noticed was how different being downtown on a “game day” was from being there at any other time. Throngs of people filled the street, the first actual crowds I’ve seen since coming, most of them sporting either the red and white of the Sydney Swans, or the brown and gold of the Hawthorne Hawks. But, as far as the actual game went, I was disappointed at the level of enthusiasm that was displayed most of the time. Sure, there were sections of the stadium that would go quite crazy when their team scored a goal, but overall it seemed to be just as blasé as any American sporting event that I’ve gone to. Towards the end, however, I was able to observe some funny things. First of all, there was a guy seated a few rows behind us, and about midway through the 3rd quarter, he started yelling out “SYDDDDDD-NEEEEEEEEY! SYDDDDD-NEEEEEEY!” to which another fan in the Hawks section over to our right just yelled “SHUT UP!” in reply. Well, the bloke a few rows up didn’t shut up, and the Hawks fan finally just got so frustrated that he too started screaming, “Yeah okay, go Hawks, we’re cool now aren’t we, yeah, go Hawks, woo hoo,” in a very mocking imitation of the other fan’s enthusiasm. Well, at length this got them both to shut up and the game continued. As we got into the fourth quarter however, the fan’s loyalties seemed to intensify, especially the Hawks’ fans. Their team was trailing significantly (about half as many points as the other team) and so, they began to be very keen-eyed for anything even resembling fowl play. Now, at the refs calls, they began to boo vociferously, and to shout negative remarks about the other team. Well, the game finally ended with the Hawks trailing significantly, which led to some very bruised feeling among the fans, which in turn resulted in some additional shouting matches out in the parking lot.
It was very difficult for me to get so enthused, however. First of all, because the match was so uneven, there was very little tension about who was going to win, which kind of took a lot of the fun out of it. Also, there was the small fact that the sun was shining directly into our eyes the entire game, and so even to see the field we had to shield our eyes, which got kind of tiresome as our arms grew numb from holding that position so long. Then also, there was the fact that the field was so very large, so that it was hard to have a good view, since much of the action seemed to take place on the opposite side of the field. So, actually I think if I could have actually seen what was going on, I would have enjoyed the game a lot more. But at any rate, it was an interesting experience (one of our profs pointed out last week just how nondescript of a word that is, so true, but ha, I will leave you with no other words in parting…)

Gellibrand Hill and etc.

Today we had our first outing of the trip, up to the park and Gellibrand Hill for a view of Melbourne, and also to try and imagine what the land was like when the explorers first “discovered” it. It was quite a fine afternoon all in all. The weather turned out to be gorgeous and we actually had our first chance to see some kangaroos. I was really surprised by how large they were, they stood at least as tall as one of us, or perhaps taller. The park itself was interesting. (Dr. King told us that the hill had probably been formed by a volcanic outcropping, and as a geologist, I can confirm his hypothesis. The boulders were usually composed of a pink or white kind of granite, with some longer, flatter deposits of what may have been basalt. Some of the granite also seems to have gotten some air into it during formation, because of the little pockets or holes that exist in it’s surface, though I’m not sure how that would have happened, since it must have formed beneath the crust. At any rate…) I think if this park area was actually what Australia used to be like, much of what has been said about it has been rather unfair. I have heard so much of what a barren and desolate place it is, and while it’s true that it’s no tidy English pastoral landscape, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at. The plains of tall grass remind me of Nebraska, but the branching jigsaw of the eucalyptus trees are certainly unique to this place. I can understand why the explorers would have found the land an alien place. It’s so open and windswept and some things do seem kind of off. Like the kangaroos, for example, they seem to be a strange combination of deer and manatees and jackrabbits and I don’t even know of anything else that has a tail like that. And they have an image of just being a cute and friendly little animal, but out in the wild they can be savage and strong fighters that could rip you apart, and then people think of them as a nuisance and hunt them like deer. It’s things like that, where you just don’t get what you’re expecting, that make this place seem so foreign and alien.

Polemic

So, today Thryn and I had what was probably our first rather unpleasant interaction with an Australian that we’ve had since coming here. We were at the bus stop, waiting for the 513 bus to get back to Kingsley (we should have been waiting for the 527, but that’s another part of the story) and I see a woman out of the corner of my eye walking behind me. She looks to be about 40 years old and has dark, thick hair that is down to her shoulders, and darker skin that kind of sags off of her cheeks. She walks around behind Thryn as well, and almost in passing, start talking to her. By the time I turn to face them, she has circled around to stand in front of her, and Thryn is asking her to repeat herself. “What?” she says. “What? Like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” the woman replies, “Don’t act stupid with me, I know what you’re up too, don’t play dumb with me.” She has a low, heavy voice that dripped with disgust. There seems to be nothing to do, so Thryn and I both set our faces like cement, staring without expression at the traffic that is zipping by. “Stupid badgers” the woman says, finally turning to leave, tossing back a few more phrases along the same lines as she goes.
The bus finally comes, and I’m desperately hoping that she will not be joining us on it. At first I am hopeful, because she seems to be making no move to board. But after we are already seated, she shuffles on and shows her card to the driver. As she shuffles her way up the aisle past me, she seems to purposely bump into my shoulders, dropping another “Stupid badgers” to keep us company on the bus ride. Thryn and I have only our frozen faces for defense, but inside I feel mortified, both at somehow having earned this woman’s disdain for no reason that I could ascertain and at what the other passengers must think of us and of this interaction.
It took us until the bus reached the end of the line at Gowrie station to realize that we were lost. I mustered up my courage, and marched up to the grate that kept the driver safe from his passengers. “We’re looking for South St,” I said, trying to sort out where we had gone wrong. But just as we started to talk with the driver, the woman was behind us again, on her way off the bus. “Don’t even listen to them, they don’t even know where they’re going,” she called out to the driver. “Get out of here,” she told us, “go do your business somewhere else. Stupid prostitutes,” she muttered, finally walking away towards the station. I worried suddenly that the bus driver might believe these half-coherent allegations she was making, perhaps kick us off the bus and refuse to help us. But it was painfully obvious that what she said was untrue, both Thryn and I were bundled all the way up to our chins; the way we were dressing could hardly be called provocative. Apparently the driver concurred, because everyone else seemed to just ignore her as well.
But then, a wonderful thing that happened. The bus driver was asking us questions, trying to figure out where we wanted to get to. He didn’t know where South Street was, but then the lady in the seat across the aisle called out some advice. An older man who seemed to know the area well also had some directions to offer. A crowd of people that I was acutely aware that we were inconveniencing had gathered; by blocking the aisle with our queries we made is so that no one could get either on or off. But the other passengers didn’t seem at all surprised or annoyed, and instead did their best to assist the driver with giving us directions. We couldn’t understand what was said in all that jumble, but the bus driver told us, “Just sit back down for awhile, ladies, we’ll get you where you need to go.” As we neared our stop, the woman across the aisle told us, “Just get off here and in about two blocks go right and you’ll be on South Street. You can’t miss it.” We got off the bus with copious thanks to those that had helped us and continued to make our way back home, having, in one night, been acquainted with both the best and the worst of Australian people.

Down Under Inside Out

One of the things I’ve been pondering recently is the nature and the foreignness of the land I now find myself in. While I was packing, back in those days when the pre-travel panic was building like acid in my stomach, I was thinking that another one of the reasons that I was so nervous about going to Oz was that it simply seemed to be part of another world, one with which I was altogether unfamiliar. In going to London, besides the fact that I seemed to remain largely dazed and oblivious during the time when preparations were underway, I just didn’t get as worried, and I think that comes largely from the fact that in some not entirely sensical sense, London is only London, just another city across the sea. I’m not sure if that’s an entirely accurate reflection of my feelings at the time, but London was a place that I was more informed about, England was a place that I felt like I had heard enough about to be prepared to go see. I didn’t have that in coming to Australia. I had expectations, of course, but what were they based on? Nothing but my own imagination. Australia is to us a very foreign land indeed, all the way across the Pacific, an unknown land that no one ever gives much thought to, except maybe when eating at an Outback restaurant or watching Crocodile Hunter. In our country, Australia is only seen in 2-D silhouettes, flat copies where the whole of life “over there” gets summed up in kangaroos, koalas, funny accents, Blooming Onions and “the Outback,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Really, things have to be a bit more complex than that.
I think it’s that kind of curiosity that has led me to do so much more thinking just in the short time that I’ve been here than I ever did in London about what this place is an means and what makes it tick. I’m seeking the sense of the place, focused on finding out what is Australia. Now granted, that wasn’t emphasized very much in London, probably because we weren’t so much studying all things English as much as we were looking at all things Western, which is so much bigger and grander than any one country. But I am appreciating my own intentionality in reflection this time around, and I’ll let you know if I ever find any answers.
One of the things we’ve been talking about in Australian Lit. is this very idea of being in the antipodes, which literally means “the place underneath our feet.” It encompasses the idea that if we went right through the center of the planet earth, we would come out in “Opposite Land,” a place that was the mirror image of ours in every way, like stepping through the looking-glass. Many Europeans felt that way when they came to Australia, and I think, in a vague sense, I understand why. This place does kind of seem like an opposite land; backwards, mixed up, changed around. The inside-out, upside-down down under. I’m not sure if I can be specific enough to explain why it seems to be this way, especially because it a hundred little things that make you stop and say, “Yep, things are not working like they used to.” Suffice it to say that I’m truly enjoying trying to figure out how things work in this crazy, backwards place. I look forwards, too, to perhaps coming back a bit more inside-out myself than I was when I came down here.

First Batch of Travel-Writing Notes, from Greater Nowheres

Well, at this point, I thought it would probably be beneficial for me to collect some thoughts on the reading I’ve been doing for my IS up to this point and to reflect on said reading for a bit. First of all, what is it that makes this book “travel writing” and not some other form of writing. Well, first of all the authors are in a place that is not their own place of residence, or even very familiar to them. That strangeness or unfamiliarity forms one of the fundamental tensions in the book. All along the way, the authors have to comport themselves as learners, those who are not particularly comfortable or successful in the setting they find themselves in. It is vital that the authors let us see their blunders, their weaknesses, because that is one of the reasons that this book is something that we can identify with the experience of traveling, that sense of being off-balance. Secondly, one of the main elements in the book is the authors’ experiences of meeting and talking too people. Basically, they seem to be very well connected in Oz, in terms of meeting people that send them on to meet other people and so forth. I don’t know how they manage, striking up conversations and knowing what to say to all types of people, to battered little bush-wives to burly fishermen and croc hunters. This, I think is a large part of what makes their book interesting, and that is something that worries me, because I always have such a hard time talking to people that I don’t already know. But honestly, so much of the content of the book is focused on the people they meet as they travel, so apparently this is a skill I may have to cultivate in order to become a decent travel writer. Another thing which kind of surprised me in reading this book was the authors’ use of past experience in the narrative where appropriate. When I think about it, it makes perfect sense that this would be an acceptable practice, especially because it helps the reader to understand why a particular incident is especially meaningful to the author, as well as humanize the author so they are actually seen to have a past, and not just be a talking head about random things in the Outback. But even so, I just never would have considered including things like that without having read it. I think the candidness of the authors’, as was previously alluded to, is one of the things that makes this book engaging and fluid in its presentation. But at the same time, it is important to note how much of the actual experience is left out of the narrative. It must be very important in travel writing to be selective, because there is just such a high volume of stuff that happens that you simply can’t put it all into a form that people will want to read it (speaking of forms, I’ve been brainstorming different kinds that I could work with, besides just this kind of straight-forward narrative one that I’ve been reading). So, that would be just about all the advice I’ve gleaned from Finklestein and London for the moment.

The best of times, and the worst of times

Well, in all fairness I think it is time to list the few things that are starting to really get on my nerves. First of all, I had no idea how cold it was going to feel while I was here. Dr. King told us that it would probably run in the 50's and 60's for the first month or so. I had no idea how cold that was going to feel, after 4 months of 100 degree or higher weather in Texas. Accordingly, most of my packing space was spent on fall clothing, so I have very little in the way of really warm clothes, and our house only has one small heater, and basically I feel perpetually frozen. This is starting to grate on my nerves. Secondly, I don't know if this is one of the byproducts of jetlag, or just the frigid temperatures, but I have not been sleeping very well at night. I think the biggest problem is that my bed is very, very squeaky, like every time I move, it creaks. Unfortunately, there is enough noise produced that it also wakes up Thryn, so she's not very pleased about that either. Furthermore, today when I went to take a shower, it ran out of hot water utterly and I ended up finishing in ice cold water. That is not a happy way to start the morning. Ummm...so basically, since all my problems have something to do with the cold, I anticipate that things can only get better from this point in the semester. I know this is a terribly whiny entry, but I thought just for the sake of fairness and in order to give an accurate picture of my impressions, I needed to provide a balanced view.

Now, with that being said, I was just reflecting on what an absolutely luxurious life I have here. So far, we have had no classes. Although that will change, when classes start, they will be held only three days out of the week. From what I understand, the workload in Oz will be significantly less than it was in Houghton. So far, all I have had to do is bum around the city, come home and write e-mails and post in my blog, and sit in front of our heater wrapped in a blanket reading one of my travel books for my independent study. Ahhhh...this is the life! And for some reason, this much leisure does not seem to bother me as much as it did all last summer when I was back at home. I am actually able to enjoy leisure time. Hooray! So this is the reason I must bring myself back to earth with reminders of frigid showers and creaky beds, especially when I am in the throes of delight over something as simple as hearing garbage collectors called garbos. Furthermore, Steve, the maintenance guy, just dropped a loud clangy piece of a dryer in the hallway and called it a "little rascal." This makes me smile. That's all the news from down under for today. I am going to read. :-)

More first impressions

Today was our first opportunity to really get to see any of Melbourne other than the little suburban area around the college where we live. It was quite an interesting experience. I’ve found that, quite unwittingly, I have come to have a great many expectations of what the city would look like and the kind of atmosphere it would have. Perhaps not very surprisingly, very few of those expectations were met. One of the first things that I was not expecting was how poor the neighborhoods out here look. It was so strange to ride the train through the different neighborhoods because the houses were a lot smaller than I expected them to be, the yards were not as well kept, factories were right in the middle of subdivisions, and people had sheds made out of rusty corrugated tin in their backyards. I guess one of the reasons I was so taken aback at the appearance of the neighborhoods is that from everything I have heard, Melbourne is a world capital of leisure, and leisure seems to me to require at least some degree of affluence. I didn’t see a lot of things that were conducive to a leisurely lifestyle either, like basketball or tennis courts, parks or swimming pools. I will have to do some more investigation to follow up with this hypothesis, but I was doing some reading that suggested that houses are not seen as the main indicator of a family’s status in Australia. If this is true, than I wonder what are the indicator’s of a person or family’s status? One of the other things that surprised me was the sudden switch and the complete difference between the outlaying areas and the city. The city really was very metropolitan and seemed to be on the cutting edge of fashion and culture, as evidenced by the fact that almost every store that we passed seemed to be selling expensive name-brand clothing. But the shift from suburbs to downtown seemed to happen almost instantly, right after we crossed the river. Also interesting is that the entire city seemed to be almost completely devoid of crowds, except for perhaps the Victoria markets. One can walk down the sidewalks in the busiest part of town and never use one’s elbows to navigate. The areas around Kingsley were basically deserted when we were coming home at four in the afternoon. I don’t know if it’s because this is supposed to be the winter season or because of the time of day we were out or why exactly that was the way it was.

One of the big new concerns that I’ve developed however, is that I will spend the entire trip comparing everything to similar experiences in London, and that everything will be found lacking. So far, I have enjoyed my time here, short as it’s been, but I’ve also drawn so many parallels between this trip and the London experience. I want this experience to be able to stand on it’s own, since really the experiences are completely different and can’t be held up next to each other for the sake of discerning which is “better.” I hope that this will go away in time, as I get to know Melbourne on it’s own terms and have some other basis of experience besides prior travels. But I have got to keep this issue in check, because I don’t really know of anything that can spoil an experience so well as discontent.

Dude, where's my country?

I just used that as the subject line on an e-mail that I sent someone, and I liked it so much I thought that I'd recycle it. I have been in Australia for 11 hours now. I still can't seem to get it into my head what a vast shift I have made. I'm in Australia. Australia is now where I currently am. You know, I think at least part of the cognitive dissonance is that when I was packing up and getting ready to head out, Australia seemed like such a distant and exotic location, in many ways so much farther away than London was. But now that I'm here, it seems like, on the surface at least, things are not so bewilderingly strange as I had expected them to be. I think my biggest promblem (no offense, Aussies!) is that I keep feeling like I am back in London. A lot of things are similar to what I remember of my time there. Milo, Cadbury chocolate, calling a shopping cart a trolley, using random terms of endearment with strangers. It all seems so familiar. But that could very well be a product of the fact that I am "jet-lagged" (said with derision because I don't feel sleepy at all) and because I have only seen the tiniest chunk of my new residence. I was quite afraid before coming, but I think that was the prospect of wonky logistics more than anything. Now I really find this place rather enchanting (hello, honeymoon stage!). The smell of wet eucalyptus in the rain (reminding me very much of my early years in California). The wonderful strip mall with the wonderful greengrocer who sells the wonderful produce (I am such a sucker for good produce). Our wonderful, wonderful house, which is so cute and comfortable and already seems homey. Okay, maybe it's true, this has got to be the jet-lag talking, because it is rare that I am so positive about anything. Other first impressions: this place is totally multicultural, which excites me, but in a way the very fact that I find it exciting show me what a novice I am and how untrained at dealing with people of other cultures. Stupid, stupid white girl from West Omaha. The houses here, at least in our neighborhood, actually seem kind of like a shabbier version of suburbia. They are also a lot more spread out than the houses were in England. The people, at least the ones I've met so far, seem to be warmer and friendlier than a lot of Americans I have known, they are all so curious when they find out that we're from the US, they want to know which state and what it's like there. And they don't seem to be intimidated by the fact that we're strangers. But honestly, most of my impressions now are very likely to be broad generalizations based on very little evidence, because I am still so new to this place. So I think I will stop generalizing now, and go have some toast and a cuppa.

Things that go bump in the night

Last night I had my first Australia-related nightmare. I was up at Houghton, in class with my friends and we were discussing a book or something. I made some really intelligent comment (hmph) right before class was ending. Then, as everyone was getting up to leave, I looked over and saw Thryn sitting in class with me. I was like, "Hey, we're supposed to be going to Australia." And she said, "Yeah, I'm all ready to go, aren't you?" because apparently we had both just come on a visit before we were heading out. But I was like, "Uhhh..." because I'd apparently forgotten all about going out to Australia at all. And I rushed off to call my mom and they told me that I could use the phone in the upstairs of the Luckey Building. And I ran up there and was trying to call her, but I couldn't get ahold of her and so I was stuck, needing to be heading off for the airport without a stitch of luggage. Okay, not exactly the kind where you wake up in a cold sweat, but it is a little nerve-wracking to be so close to the point of leaving and to not be sure that I packed the right clothes or what I might be forgetting and all of that. I'll be grateful just to get on the plane. You know, I think what I've been so afraid of all this time is not actually the semester itself, but just all the logistics of getting there and getting settled in. I just can't wait for this to be over. You know, I've already started thinking ahead to when the program will end. It's like, you have this experience ahead of you and you look forward to it for so long and then you're in it and before you know it, it's over and you're looking back wondering where the time went, feeling like you don't know where your life is going. I hate that part too. It just seems like every experience is too short. At any rate, I think I should try to quit now, to leave a good buffer zone of time in which I try not to think about Oz before I try to go to bed.

Grumpy jerk

I really need to stop posting in this blog late at night. Usually by the time I get to this point of the day I'm tired and my brain is fried and I'm in a pissy mood. Tonight the headache du jour is buying textbooks for Oz. I think I've looked at every copy of every book that I'm trying to buy that was ever printed. I ended up shopping at Amazon, and I'm still not sure that I made the right choice, since the shipping could take up to six weeks. So, basically the course could be over by the time I get my books. Now is the time for nail-biting and frantic prayers that my books will get here (or there rather) in time for me to actually read them for the classes. So, I've decided that everything will be much, much better once I'm actually in Australia. I hate these transitional periods even more than I hate the changes themselves. There's so much stress and ambiguity, I'd rather just be in one place or the other. So now I'm feeling sad and guilty about leaving my family, and not only that but I've lost just about all sense of why I ever wanted to go on this stupid semester thing anyway. So I'm just stuck, and I've been spinning my wheels for the past few days and getting nowhere. Especially as far as packing is concerned. You know, I had one brief shining moment when I actually saw to the end of the packing ordeal, and I realized that it wasn't such a big deal and it would be over fairly soon. That feeling was lost long ago in a haze of should I bring this, and can I spare that and Oh lord, that will never fit. I need to sleep, though I'm so much not a morning person that I won't actually be any more positive till about 11:00 tomorrow, though I usually get up at nine. My brain is a total fritter. Enough with the drama and anticipation already, just put me on the damn plane and let's get this over with already!!!

Scattered thoughts

Hello again, everyone (all three of you). The countdown is quite underway at this point. The only problem is that I don't seem to quite realize it yet. I don't think I'll even be able to realize it until I'm sitting on the plane. But I've been thinking about it a lot more lately, and I think it has helped me to be more positive, you know, imagining what life might be like there. I think also Thryn's absolute positivity ("WE WILL HAVE FUN ALL THE TIME!!!") has also added a much more optomistic spin on the future. I don't know what I would do if she wasn't coming with me; I'd be absolutely petrified. I've been a lot calmer the last few days, but I think that's because I've been getting a lot more done. That always helps to put one's mind at rest. But, hey, I finally got my haircut today!!! I realized that it hasn't been cut since about this time last year. It's very short now, the hairdresser cut off so much hair, that she took a picture of the pile when we were done. I think I set some kind of record. But, for me at least, a new haircut always helps to change my outlook on life. You know, I feel like every time I get a haircut or buy a new piece of clothing I have the chance to reinvent myself, and I always like to make the most of those opportunities. Yeah, so if you're a guy and you're still reading this, you're probably drooling with boredom at this point. Wait, let me jazz this up a bit--EXPLOSION!!! (yes, I deal in only the finest stereotypes, thank you very much) At any rate, I have no idea where I was going with that train of thought, so now, back to the topic (Australia, not hair). Well, I thought that at this point it would be advantageous for me to give out my address, which is as follows:
Shannon Callan
Kingsley College
21 South Street
Glenroy, VIC 3046
It is here that you may reach me with your many letters and adoring fan mail (all...three of you). I also wanted to give some various points upon which I would greatly appreciate any prayers that you can find time to offer. Again, they are as follows:
1.)That there would be cohesion and harmony in our group in Australia, both with the other people in the program and with the other students at the college. That we would be able to form supportive, loving relationships and form a strong support network for each other.
2.) That there would be opportunities and divine appointments for us to talk with Australians and others in order to deeply process the information that we're learning and to get insight into Australian culture and POSTMODERNITY!!!
3.)For stregnth and endurance and enough rest to last through the semester's work, both scholastic and otherwise and still be able to maintain a reasonable work/life balance.
4.)For safety for myself and the rest of the group.
5.)That all in our group would have a truly life-changing and rewarding experience.
Thanks friends, I truly do covet your prayers. (NEWS FLASH---The dog just chased a critter with a long tail (a possum?) up the fence and out of our yard, big news--) At any rate, I hope to be able to write again soon, goodnight!

Grrrrrowl...

Things are not right. It is late. I haven't posted for awhile. I have a vague sense of being off-balance, largely stemming from the worries about things that I have not taken care of yet, may not ever take care of; yes, naturally, it could not be possible to take care of all of these vital "things" in the time which I have allotted to do so, which is why they hound me with nagging little pinpricks on the outskirts of my brain. Then too, I seem to have run into a spat of depression, a place I usually visit after any sort of large life-event like a trip to my city of origin. An ugly place, filled with pet monsters of my own making, a place where everyone seems to hate me for no reason and I'm not so kindly disposed towards anyone myself. A place where my face grows hot with discomfort just from placing the order for the lunchmeat at the grocery store and my sister no longer wishes to carry on certain tuck-in traditions, a clear indicator that she has outgrown any affection for me. A place where I sit in the dark and write musty ramblings to the unforgiving void of cyberspace, in which I begin to feel sure enough of my relative isolation as to be careless with my confidentialities. It is here I can percieve that it is my own voice that tells me the stupid things I keep hearing inside my head, where I know that control is ultimately mine and yet I still can't seem to force the switch to the off position. This is not a cheerful night, as the astute observer will have already gleaned from my tone. I don't know exactly what it is that makes it so, and so it would seem that I have little other choice but to ride it out. I think my feelings about Australia at this point are verging on panic. I don't think I can do this whole thing again, even making it to the plane ride seems like a mini-Odessey. I feel incompetent, incapable and ill-prepared. Will I actually be able to buy my own textbooks (never mind that I have done this successfully already for four semesters straight)? Will I be able to tear myself away from my family? Will I be able to put up with my family until I have occassion to tear myself away? Will I be able to wake up again tomorrow morning, with lungs continuing to breathe and heart continuing to beat until I take on the next task in the long line of demands on my time that consitutes Day 6? Because that is all I can consider right now, breathe in, breathe out and repeat, indefinitely. Honestly, I don't think I could say what it is exactly that I'm so afraid of, it's just Everything, the circumstances which keep collaborating and then swarming out to attack me. Bah. I think I'm gonna go work on that breathing thing some more. (in, out; in, out; in...)

Thoughts with a side of headache

Okay, this is my second and will probably be my last post from Omaha. For those of you with a vested interest in my well-being,
I am actually having a most excellent time here, even though,
as I remembered, there is not a whole lot of stuff to do, and
even less if you are broke as we all seem to be. But at any rate, this trip has been really good especially because for once in my life I am finding myself able to live in the moment, which in
turn helps me to be content and happy with my surroundings.
I don't know how I have managed to do that, which means I don't know how I'll be able to repeat the attitude. As far as
Australia is concerned I am feeling rather nervous and freaked
out, as well as excited. I think I am feeling certain that by
the time I leave, I will not be "ready" to go, whatever "ready" means. Perhaps it is just better for me to be unready, to just plunge in like it's the deep end of a chilly swimming pool.
But, being the control freak that I am, in my perfect world I
would have somehow known some mystical technique of self-preparation and would have completed all of the necessary tasks
far before this point, launching me into personal inner tranquility. One of the things I learned in my cultural
transition class was that things go a lot more smoothly when expectations are set aside. But I feel like I don't know what
to expect, or what to think, or even if I'm coming or going most
of the time. Well, my little self, get comfortable in your confusion. I think it's going to stick around for awhile.

A Brief Jaunt through the Looking Glass

So, as promised, here I am in the big O, still posting on my blog. I am so faithful. This has been quite the surreal trip up to this point, what with the sudden revelation that such a trip would even be possible, the rapid ticket buying and the exceedingly early flight (up at 4 in the AM, thank you very much). Just being here is strange. In some ways, Omaha changes very little from visit to visit, which is a blessing to someone like me, who is resistant to change. But I always come expecting more differences than what I find. I keep looking around for people I might recognize from back in the day, expecting to see people who have aged a good fifteen or twenty years in the one year that I have stayed away. That is not so much the case, and the constancy makes this place very therapeautic. As I said in my last post, I think there will be much benefit in making this trip backwards before I move forward into this next adventure. Most of all, I love being here with my friends. There is such an amazing difference between being with people with whom you have this much history and being with anyone else. There are so many stories, so many of which I had forgotten until I came back here for the reminder. The glorious thing is, not only do I remember them, but I am surrounded by others who could hear the same one-word trigger and we all have a similar flood. Inside jokes, memories, interruptions as we all add pieces to our communal past. The funny thing is, it's not like I've even known these people all my life. I realized that almost all of the stories that we tell are from those four short years of high school. When I think of it, I am already halfway through my four short years of college, and I feel like there are so few stories to tell. I would blame this primarily on the pandemic workaholism that plauges Houghton's campus, (and partly on my really, really crappy memory) but Hope was telling me that somehow, in high school, the stars just aligned and we got some things right. The right mix of people, the right mix of characters on our little stage of Omaha, and funny things would just happen. Why don't we have that anymore? Are we just not weird enough in college? This, again, makes me rather paranoid about my prospects of enjoying adult life. Then also, there was the massive revelation that somehow I was looked at as the one with the "charisma" that put me as the nucleus of our social group(other's words, not mine). Me, charismatic? Yeah right. This definitely deserves some more reflection, since that is not the role that I have held in any social group before or since. Anyway, you want to know what the best part has been, even just over the past couple of days? We get together and we sit in parks, or in living rooms, or on the hood of someone's car, and we just laugh and laugh and laugh.