Sydney-Fling

Oh, fine little internet. Isn't it funny how you can just log on and fall in and doodle about for a seemingly unlimited amount of time and then something happens like a bird flying into a screen glass door and you're snapped back into reality, suddenly asking yourself, "Now what did I get on here to do?" Wretched little cybersnare.

At any rate, I will try at this present point in time to inform the general population of the universe about my recent trip to Sydney and the various and sundry things that happen there. Hopefully I can manage not to be too long winded, since I kind of hoped to do about 1/2 my research for my exegesis paper this afternoon and have only read one commentary (again, I blame the internet). Well, we spent just about all of Friday on the train, but then on Saturday we got up and managed to get out of our hosel (such as it was) fairly quickly and headed right for the Harbor. Most of that morning was spent at that indomitable edifice, the Sydney Opera House. I have to say, I have seen a fair number of famous buildings in my time, but I think from here on out I will have a very special corner of my heart reserved for the soaring lines and vaulted spaces of the SOH. It seems funny to most of us now to think of the controversy that surrounded the planning of this building, as well as the public scorn it was met with initially, before becoming the emblem not only of Sydney, but of all things Australian. It is, obviously, a very unorthodox design, but brilliantly executed and so sensible when you learn more about it. The design for those large and characteristic arches are drawn from a perfect geometric sphere, so the ceiling can be made almost entirely from concrete (great for accoustics) and yet not need any interior supports that would obscure the view of an audience. The curved ceilings of the concert hall, the intimate spaces of the playhouse, the Australian hardwood paneling, all of this was engineered for the purpose for which the SOH was built. Even the multitude of stairs, based of the idea of stepped Mayan temples, were fully intentional, indending to carry the idea of ascending away from the common world into the fantastic world of the theater.

And for me, that is the heart of the Opera House, not just a great feat of engineering, but a truly beautiful building. It sits out on it's own platform over the sparkling water of the harbor, admired from both sides and all angles (I should know, we saw pretty much all of them). The clean white lines hover over the waters, resting serenly as a gull on a rock. Yet the hard-edges and dramatic curves give it a sense of power, of calmly suspended motion, and if it ever springs back into the action from which it seems to be resting, the city better watch out. I love the way in which the building draws together the ancient and modern, curves and angles, movement and stillness, land and sea. There is something quite magical for me about a space entirely devoted to creation, to splendid music, the soundtracks of humanity, and to the creation of fantasy worlds, to the telling of our stories (because Medea, Twelfth Night, The Dollhouse, Death of a Salesman, and 6 Characters in Search of an Author are as much my stories as they are anyone's). Perhaps part of the design is meant to capture that wild and unearthly spirit of the Arts, the participation in the creative process, both grueling and divine.

We spent a great deal of time that day in and around the SOH; it rapidly becomes very difficult to tear yourself away. The rest of the day was spent happily exploring The Rocks district arts market, clambering over the harbor bridge, trying to dodge the crowds of brides that infest the area, having their pictures snapped. That evening we met up with a friend of Katie's at her college, they were having a fall party. It was a nice party, lots of food and the girls who planned it spent a lot of time coming up with games and entertainment for everybody. It was nice, but a little disconcerting since it was an entire party full of people that I didn't know, and I'm not the kind of person who likes to invest time and energy and risk my fragile self-esteem putting myself out there to make friends if I'm only in town for one night. But still, nice party.

The next day we were up and out bright and early to attend the much famed and controversial Hillsong Church! It was an interesting experience, just to see how my response to the whole idea has changed since my time in London. It was in fact, completely identical to the Hillsong church I attended while I was in London, as all Hillsong churches are entirely identical to each other. They are good for what they are, but I have more problems with the whole idea than I did a couple years ago. The worship is nice, but it really honestly is awfully concert-like, and sometimes I do feel like I'm being manipulated. Why is this the case when I'm on their turf, and not true when we sing Hillsong music at my home church or at school? I don't know. Also, I thought it was really funny that in a city that is as multi-cultural as Sydney, everyone on the worship team was Caucasian. The message was interesting too. A woman spoke on Psalm 103, about all the benefits that we have as Christians, about how we don't need to live in fear that life will be awful because God doesn't really love us or want us to have good things. A good message, but I was kind of nervous because the whole framework in which she put her message was our entitlement as the people of God, our right of access to the blessings of God. I don't really believe that the Christian life is a kind where we go around with our hands out all the time, demanding things from God on the basis of his promise. God knows that most Christians do not need their sense of entitlement to be further inflated. I don't want to be overly critical, because the individual points were excellent and well made and passionately supported, but I felt like the framework of the whole message was one that was so theologically unstable.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the beaches. I could write a whole other entry on Australian beaches, let me just say, this isn't your average American day out. The weather was beautiful, though not quite hot enough to make braving the icy water altogether worth it, so we didn't spend much time swimming. The beaches themselves were gorgeous as well though, and it felt good to lay out in the sun and just not have to think about anything for awhile, except maybe what our friends were doing in drizzly Melbourne or frigid Houghton. :-)

That night was one of paramount hilarity, but I think I could not possible make it make sense here, since we were so jagged from eating almost nothing but pancakes and candy for the past couple of days, so we generally staggered around laughing like drunkards and everything struck us as funny. We spent a great deal of time stumbling around in the dark of the Royal Botanic Gardens, looking for the fabled "Mrs. Maquarie's Chair." We may or may not have found it in the end, it was honestly too dark to be altogether sure. But we did come to a chair shaped bunch of rocks that had the name Maquarie carved in the back, so our reaction to the semi-failure of our little quest is best summed up by Misty's immortal words: "This looks like a frickin' chair. I'm sitting in it!"

Our last day in Sydney we took a train out to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains do, in actual point of fact, manage to look respectably blue. Something about a gas that's emitted from the gum trees that cover everything and hangs over the valley and horizons, giving a blue cast to every particle of light that ventures into the valleys. I love the Blue Mountains. The horizons are hazy and full of alluring and beckoning possibilities. The trees form a thick carpet over everything that can be see from the lookouts, displaying a myriad of green shades and textures. White cockatoos can be seen winging their way somewhere far, far below you. The Blue Mountains would be a place that I can see myself returning to, getting lost in those mists for a few years and discovering every nook and cranny of, eventually coming to fully own it and allow it to own some bits of me as well.

After we returned from the Blue Mountains, after stopping for a 60 cent soft-serve cone from Hungry Jack's (aka Burger King, for those of you who are stateside) we were back on the train for the 11 hour overnight push to Melbourne. And tomorrow morning...we turn right around again and leave for our weekend field trip to the Great Ocean Road. Yeah, it's a rough life, I can tell ya...

Biff

Okay, I know it's been a while since my last post and I do have so much that I wanted to talk about, but tonight my brain is just fried after not getting much sleep for the past two nights, so anything I wrote would be crap anyway. Please forgive my continued lack of communication. I will update any interested parties on the Sydney trip as soon as I am able.

The Big 5-0 (My golden post!)

Hey, this is it guys, the big post number 5-0. I feel like I should have a cake or something. Unfortunately, there is not much of very great import on which I can speak in this particular entry. This past Saturday we spent the day at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, which is like a kind of recreation town that tries to mirror what life was like in a mining town in the 1850's during the Australian gold rush. What's that you say, you didn't realize that Australia had a gold rush too? Well, let me tell you there was an Australian man by the name of Edward Hargraves who ran off to look for gold in California and came back without having had much luck. But he did notice that the climate and the plant life of the two places were rather similar, so he tried to do a little prospecting down here. That was where he got really lucky, and started the first Australian gold rush in about 1854. Good story, eh? Well, Sovereign Hill was actually pretty well done as a historical thing-jigger. The staff all dressed in costume and tried to talk as if they were really back in the 1850's. There was a man who stopped us in the street and asked, "Excuse me, but is that how young women dress in the colonies?" I think we caused quite a scandal, running around in men's denim trousers. We also got to go to a school house, where we had to practice our writing in old style font with pens dipped in inkwells. I think Pete must have been sweet on the teacher, he was asking her how old she was. And Katie, naughty girl that she is, was passing notes in class. The teacher made sure to warn us that there was no laughing or talking in her classroom b/c school is not meant to be fun! We also got to see a guy pour out a gold ingot into a mold, which would have been worth some insane amount like 50,000 dollars. I have to say though, when he pulled that red-hot crucible out of the furnace and started pouring the gold, all I could think of was the forging of the rings of power, it looked exactly the same. Nerd. We got to see British infantry march and fire off a salute to the flag (union jack, of course). The mine tour that we did was actually really interesting, they basically showed us all the reason why it was basically insane to go and work for one of the company mines. You could fall down the shaft of the "safey" elevator and plumet 3000 feet to your death. You could get caught in an explosion, flood or cave in. You could get silicosis from breathing in the quartz dust. Or you could get pneumonia from coming out of the intense heat of the mine to a freezing cold winter temperature. Sound's like a great job, right? Well, at the end of the tour we also had a train ride back out of the mine, which was kitchy but fun. Hope, I have to say that I was thinking about you all day, first from the gold thing ("I only wish that I could have had more gold!") and then this train ride reminded me so much of the Underground, they even had fake plastic guys standing around and a fake explosion/mine cave in thing. Oh Bad Bob, how I miss you, darlin'!

Ummm...yeah, but I almost forgot to tell you the best part. They had this old timey band playing outside of the post office and me and Katie and Diana went over and started bouncing around a bit b/c they were playing a catchy tune. So, I see this little Asian woman out of the corner of my eye and stop dancing, and she starts pulling on my arm, and starts bouncing around like we had been. I got the message. A moment of hesitation, then what the heck, I just started up my little hoedown again. She starts waving to her tour group and they're all taking pictures of us. Katie's laughing at me, but then the woman drags her over for her picture and she plays along too. Soon Diana, Katie and I are all in a picture together with this woman, and when she's done she motions the man in the red sweater who had been taking her picture over and he takes some pictures with us. We're posing like lunatics of course, kicking up our heels with these goofy smiles on our faces. By now we have attracted quite a sizable crowd of Asian tourists, all of whom are snapping pictures. Wow, I don't remember the last time that something so funny and random happened to me! (Cultural question: Why is it that Asian people seem to need to take pictures of everything?)

In addition to photo crazy tourists, they also had this creek where you can actually pan for gold (which the staff puts in every so often, but at least it is real gold). It was funny b/c I could see how easily it could become an addictive behavior for the miners. Like, just one more pan full of dirt, this'll be the one where I strike it rich. It was hard not to get gold fever, especially b/c I seem to have an aptitude for panning.

So there you go, my day basking in the golden glow of Sovereign Hill. I have to admit, I wasn't really looking forward to this particular excursion, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. Wahoobie.

On Being Nothing

So, today was the big trip to Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, which is what I am supposed to be writing about for my journal tonight (I really do have an academic purpose (albeit a small, minor one) for keeping this, in case you never realized). I will have to do this eventually, but not tonight. Tonight, I have many other thoughts buzzing through my head. Thoughts pertaining to all of the things I am not.

Some people who walk the planet today matter. Some lead fantastically interesting lives. Some sacrifice themselves for the good of their community or the world. Many, many more sit on their asses all day and push paper for some piece of crap,faceless corporate bueracracy. What kind of life would I like to have??

Sometimes I sit and ponder all the things that I cannot do well. I generally come at this from a positive frame of mind, more like an "all the things I can still learn to do" kind of perspective. But it seems generally to me that I am one of the accursed, a very average kind of girl with monstrously fantastic aspirations. Even as I sit and type this, I am in the exotic land of Australia, the bane of explorers and showcase for the strange, a place that should thrill me with its foreignness. OK, big deal. I live in America: I get up in the morning, make breakfast, go to class, talk to people, go back home. I live in Australia: get up in the morning, get yogurt and cereal for brekkie, go to class where the teacher has an accent, go home. WHERE ARE MY ADVENTURES??

It seems to me that the time of adventures has passed. Now people look at what I'm doing and say, "Ah, studying abroad, what adventures you'll have!" But as I have just outlined, not much has changed in the basic shape which my life takes, whether I'm there or here. These are the adventures of my life, riding into town on the train, going out for Chinese food, walking down to the bakery for a cake or pastie??? It seems like nowadays no one is crossing the deserts with a train of camels, no one is hacking their way through the jungle with a machete, no one is climbing to the peak of the tallest mountains to sound a barbaric yawp, no one is hacking through the ice to hunt for a seal to stave off starvation, no one is taking to the sea in a glorious and tall-masted ship to sail for parts unknown.

And who's to say that I should be the one to do any of those things? When it comes right down to it, I am a very small, very weak little girl who is not particularly good at much of anything. How could I sail the sea or cross the desert? There are some days when it seems like I can barely cross the street. And yet, in spite of my inability, the yearning remains, the desire to be something more than what I am, for my life to mean great and mighty things as it is lived out in great and mighty deeds. I really do want to be THE MIGHTY SHANNON! In fact, it is one of the terrors of my existence that I will grow up to be...(*squinch*) a soccer Mom, driving ungrateful kids hither and yon in a mini-van, cooking mulifarious cassaroles with cream of chicken soup while my fat and boorish husband guzzles beer in front of the tube. *Massive shudder* Perish the thought, take me now, Lord!!! Where is my damn machete, I'm outta here! (Honestly, I should not have gone there in such explicit detail, I am still convulsing with horror).

How to escape that dreadful, dreadful life that seems to prey upon the unwary? How to make a mark on this dizzy little planet, how to shake the stars and all the heavens with an act of valor, done worthily with a noble heart?

My nice little Christian sensibilities tell me that I should end these musings (rantings?) with some nice little statement about how I should just suck it up and be graciously, cheerily satisfied, that it's fine with me if I end up teaching a kindergarten Sunday school instead of speaking for presidents and kings. But I am not okay with that. I refuse to live that life. Perhaps those of us who are granted outlandish dreams are given them not so that we may be thwarted and tormented by them, but because a life of meaning really is possible. I want to live a life among the stars. I refuse to allow my fears to keep me earth-bound.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

I worked really hard all weekend so that I could just take Monday and go spend the day in the city doing whatever I wanted to do, to finally start doing some of the "Melburnian" things that I've wanted to do since I got here, but never quite got around to doing. So I got my camera, a bottle of water, and a map, and set out. I started out in Flinders Street station, the hub around which the city spins. It is a bright gold building, and could be considered rather garish if it weren't so lovably full of character. Right across the street I went on a photo spree in St. Paul's Cathedral (obviously not THE St. Paul's, but a fairly good southern hemisphere substitute). They have beautiful stained glass windows, like all respectable cathedrals, and I also got the chance to go around this little passageway and find that the quilty thing that I had stared at the time I was there for an Evensong service was not actually the front of the church! The front is being restored, but I got to have a peek at it and it is actually a beautiful marble mosaic. It strikes me though, that they would care so much about the beauty of their church that they would make this elaborate quilt-like facade to hang just while the restoration is being done. Evangelicals need to get back on the wagon in terms of art and worship spaces. Also, there was this group of school kids visiting the cathedral, and they would go around and take notes, they would kneel on the kneelers provided in front of whatever feature they wanted to take notes on. It was a striking image, a line of school girls with ponytails and bright blue coats all kneeling in a church for purposes that had nothing to do with prayer and reverence, but just academia. I think that might be why I found it so noteworthy, but then I'm still not sure.

Around St. Paul's you can find the statue of explorer Matthew Flinders, and in a separate monument, the statues of explorers Burke and Wills. It is ironic that these are the men who are given statues, since if you know anything about Australian history, their expeditions were all failures to one degree or another. Then again, if you know anything about Australian culture, you will realize that they have this tendency to make heroes out of their losers. And then, there is something oddly appropriate about good old Matty Flinders standing there year in and year out with bird crap all over his head...

After that I passed the Melbourne Town Hall (which I have walked past about a million times without ever realizing what it is) and the Melbourne Unity Building, which is an Art Deco monstrosity and looks like a skyscraper made from a golden lampshade, and went up Collins Street. Collins street is one of the ritziest addresses in Melbourne, and all the Swells were out in full force that day, pushing past me, jabbering into their cell phones, in their neatly pressed Italian suits and slicked back hair, all of it screaming "LOOK AT HOW IMPORTANT I AM!" I felt rather small and in-the-way as I strolled along, taking pictures of all the glorious Victorian facades I had admired for so long.

I continued on my walk up to Spring Street, where I saw the Treasury buildings and on to Parliament. I read that there was a riot which lead to a siege of the parliament building in the not too distant past, and if you look on the front of the building you can still see the gun slits that they made to allow those who were defending the building to shoot people without ever leaving the safety of its confines. And I looked and sure enough, there they were. History right there in front of me. I went on past the gaudy edifice of the Princess Theater, all fake gold leaf and hot pink signs advertising their production of Dirty Dancing, and on to the ornate arches of Chinatown.

Those of you who have recieved a card from me recently probably know that Chinatown is a place fraught with peril, but fortunately in the daylight it manages to behave itself rather well. I stopped at the Korean lunch box and ordered myself some noodles and...other stuff for lunch. I have no idea what the other stuff was, I just pointed to what looked appetizing and they dished it up (camel's hump,anyone?). But I made out like a bandit, the food was so cheap and good and I got to sit under a beautiful red laquered Chinese arch and eat it out in the open air with chopsticks. I then peeked into the Chinese museum and moved on from there to check out some of the shops. To be honest, they are mostly kind of kitchy, with statues of golden Buddhas and those lucky kitties with one paw raised (now they even have ones that wave that paw at you mechanically for hours on end) and junky jewelery, but if you look around, you can still find some beautiful treasures, and it's the hunt that I have always found most satisfying. The strangest place I visited was this place that looked like a candy shop, but instead of candy they had tons of different dried fruits, like prunes and plums and cherries and mandarins and lychees and mangos and ginger. Then, in another set of cases, they have a ton of dried fish products, including cuttlefish (which is like squid). The whole area smelled like the flake fishfood you would buy at a pet shop. The weirdest part was definitely the little bags of snacks that they were selling that definitely had a picture of a cartoon cuttlefish on it, to make it more appealing for the kids. Now eat your squid, honey...

It was also in Chinatown that I found this random little side alley that has all these signs down at the one end. They look like parking signs, but instead of actual parking sign content they have mottos like, "There is no forwards, there is no backwards;" "I have examined myself;" and "The best kind of man would be like water." I'm pretty sure they were Taoist sayings because of the content, but I'm not at all sure how they got to be there, since there weren't really any buildings in the alley besides restaurants.

Well, I did a little more poking around in some of the arcade shops, I found a wonderful art supply store and an amazing store which sold journals and albums and address books from Italy, but for a standard size, leather bound notebook it costs, drumroll please, $120 (gasp of horror!!!). But they were amazing beautiful and well made, and it was fun to look at them. It's actually pretty hard to find nice, not to expensive blank books in Melbourne, so if anyone feels inclined to buy me gifts... *wink, wink*

But it was a wonderful day, I went all over the city, I took a million pictures, I walked myself ragged and I just thought I would like to share the events of day with you, my dear friends. Thank you for your kind attention.

The Rubicon (just kidding, it's only the last post about break)

Okay, I am going to try to squeeze the rest of break into one last entry and still not have it be super long, so bear with me as I attempt the impossible. Well, first of all we found this amazing hostel to stay in in Adelaide which gave us free rice and free hot apple pie with ice cream and custard every night. There was a dear old Scottish man who owned the place named Peter, and he had been all over the world but had finally settled down to run this old hostel in Adelaide and he was the custard master. So every night while we were working on dinner, he would come in and putter around and fix the custard and pop the pies into the oven. And then about forty minutes later, he comes back in and sticks his head in the oven to check on the pies and with all the ire and righteous indignation one can imagine,this dear sweet old man says, "Shit!" by which he of course meant that the oven was broken and the pies, as yet, unbaked. Thryn and I had to focus very hard on our plates of rice in order to keep from laughing. But at any rate, we could not enjoy the company of Peter for as long as we might have wished to, because we were soon off from the pleasant green hills of Adelaide and on our way to Kangaroo Island. We had to book a tour in order to see KI, but I'm glad that we did, because it ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip.

KI is like wildlife central for Australia, so we got to walk on the beaches with the sea lions, stand face to face with a koala, and cuddle a baby kangaroo (that last part was a big bonus, Flinders Chase Visitor center had taken in a joey who's mother had been hit by a car, and we got to have a little visit. So soft!!!). We also got to see NZ fur seals, echidnas, wallabies, and one fairy penguin. Then the second day we got to go on this hike through this big rocky gorge that had a stream flowing through the bottom that was so clean we could drink out of it, even though the water was red. We also got to see tea trees, which is where tea tree oil comes from. My dad has always been a big believer in the merits of tea tree oil, so I was excited to see the source for myself. The rocks in this gorge were amazing, metamorphic layers all along the bottom with metamorphic rocks of all different kinds along the path, and pieces of loose limestone mixed in which had fallen down from higher up where the walls were sedimentary. They even had caves up along the ridge of this kind of gorge thing. It was a geologists paradise. Then we hiked all the way out to where the gorge meets the sea, but we couldn't go too far out because the gorge suffers from "freak waves." This basically means that you can look out on a wide empty beach about 200 feet away to the waves one minute, and the next minute, the water can be up and soaking your shoes. There's a narrow little opening from this beach out onto the sea, and a bunch of waves will all surge in at once and move up the beach as quick as lightning. It was such a cool place.

I think the thing that made the tour really worthwhile though was the fact that Toni, our guide, was so amazing. She was fairly young, and she had this amazing sense of humor that was really engaging and helped us to feel comfortable joking around with her right away. She was really interesting too, she knew so much about cultural things and she had travelled around quite a bit, as most people in Australia seem to have done. She was a regular naturalist, with all the different things that she knew about the plants and animals and even geology. She wanted to know what I thought about the gorge that we hiked through and how it was formed, so we swapped opinions about subduction zones and tectonic movement. Then the one night that we stayed on the island we got to sleep in this adorable little farmhouse with a little kitchen and a loft and a barbie in the front porch and kangaroos roaming around in the front yard. It was such a fun tour, I really love KI and I would go back in a heartbeat.

The last few days we spent around the bustling metropolis known as "Magnificent Quorn" (okay, so it's only Thryn that calls it that, and it's an incredibly dinky town, but we had a good time. We were exploring the Southern Flinders Ranges, which is an incredibly beautiful area north of Adelaide. We climbed a couple of mountains (Dutchman's Stern and Devil's Peak) and hiked through Warren's Gorge (aka the Valley of Bones and Flies). The hiking was great, because it cost us money for every little hiking point the hostel people drove us too, so we would basically just go to one and stay all day. We ended up spending a lot of time just out in nature, sitting on a big boulder and staring at an amazing view. There's something about that experience that is so purifying to the soul, you know? Devil's Peak was insane, it was so rocky and there was almost no trail, but I really enjoyed the challenge of climbing. At the top there was a kind of visitor's book where everyone who had made it would sign. The entries in there were pretty funny. My favorite was "Erasmus was here." Warren's Gorge was pretty crazy. First of all, the amount of flies there was absolutely insane. I don't know if they just prefer the low places or what because we were much more bothered by them that day than the other days. Also, there were many bones and dead kangaroos in this particular valley. And the day that we went through was particularly cloudy and ominous, and the place was so strange that it was quite portentious, I was definitely expecting a dwarf or a witch to pop out or for something of mystical quality to happen. The other great thing about "Magnificent Quorn" was that our hostel had a whole movie cabinet full of WESTERNS!! Which meant that one night, after a full day of climbing, we ended up chilling with, that's right, Gunga Din. Quality, quality film, although I will say that Cary Grant has THE worst fake British accent I have ever heard. Well, after such thrills, what can be left of an adventure except a tortourous all night bus trip back to the cozy confines of urban living?

And it is there friends, that my epic tale must at last come to an end, and so, once again, for the time being, I bid you adieu.

Still On Break...

Well, I’ll try to move through the rest of the break a little more quickly rather than take two pages just to do one day (although I think we can all agree that that was quite a monumental day…). The rest of the tour was pretty normal, the second day we went around to all the famous sites along the Great Ocean Road, like the 12 Apostles, London Bridge, the Grotto, and the Bay of Martyrs. Although, well, one funny thing did happen that day. We were on this random beach that didn’t really have any famous things on it, but I was trying to take a picture of the foam rolling in, all lacey and white. So I was quite close to the edge of the shore and this kind of rogue wave rolled in and so I started backing up really quickly to avoid getting my feet wet, but the sand was deep and sucked at my feet and I got bagged down so, Wabam!, over I went, falling right on my butt in about 3 inches of surf. I struggled to my feet pretty quickly, but the back of my jeans had already gotten soaked. So we rode to the next beach, the 12 apostles, and I had to sit in our van with my wet pants. But then I saw a chance while some others were going on this expensive helicopter ride and I asked our driver if I could get into the trailer in the back for my pack. And so, as I was rummaging around back there, he saw the forlorn state of my trousers and was like, “Geez, what happened to you?” And so I explained to him that I had fallen, but I had an extra pair of pants to change into and could he please leave the trailer open so I could go run and change? And he was like, “Well, if you wanted, you could just change here.” And I looked around, and he was right, there was no one around. So he just went around the other side of the trailer door and I changed pants in the lovely fresh sea air. Word.

So anyway, the third day started out as a bit of a disappointment because it was cold and rainy and so we drove around like, “Hey, that’s the beach that’s rated number 1 in Australia, anybody want to get out for a picture?” “Nope.” And we also had to miss seeing a petrified forest because of the rain, which sorely disappointed by. But it was also because we missed that that we got to see a composite volcanic cone, sadly extinct, but still really cool. The day finally cleared up, so we got to spend some more time looking at tide pools along the shore and it was nice and clear for our big barbecue dinner that night. The next day was comparatively kind of dull, but still pretty fun. We saw this giant lobster statue that Thryn was quite thrilled by and also a pink lake (beta carotene, don’t ya know?) and we stopped for lunch at the Coorong Wilderness place and had kangaroo balls (don’t worry, just meatballs made from kangaroo meat) and we had a little talk from a man who was descended from Aborigines and he talked to us about the plants in the area and what the Aborigines had used them for. But I think even though the day was enjoyable, I was pretty relieved when we finally pulled into Adelaide.

As for the next day, well, the less said, the better. We pretty much just walked around Adelaide to different travel agencies and spent massive amounts of time in the library on the internet trying to figure out what we would do for the rest of break. We knew that we wanted to go to Kangaroo Island and to either the Grampians or the Flinders Ranges, but transportation issues were just not working out, and we were either going to run out of money or spend the rest of our time in Adelaide doing pretty much nothing. So we were quite dejected most of that day, and then I think by the end of the day, even when we got back to our hostel, we were pretty sure that nothing good was ever going to happen again. But then that night Thryn started making a few more phone calls that night and things finally started falling into place. The day, as a whole however, was not a pleasant one. We like to call that one Black Wednesday.

The next day, however, made up for that by being rather fantastic. We met up with Susannah’s friend from camp, a girl named Eve. She was really a cool person, fun and outgoing and outrageous and warm and helpful and just generally awesome. We spent the day around the Adelaide Hills area, we got my first Aussie pie in Handorf, a little German town, we took lots of free samples at the Melba chocolate factory, we poked around this tiny toy store with the kitschiest ever souvenirs (not surprising, since it’s mascot was a giant steel rocking horse). Not only did they have this amazing piece of monumental art, they also had quite an aviary. So, naturally, we ended up dancing with a rowdy crew of sulphur-crested cockatoos, which are quite rhythmical, apparently. Then Eve took us back to her house to make stir-fry and noodles for dinner and we got to meet her family, and all was quite well with our souls, though they had been replete with abrasions from the turmoil of the previous day. More next time, don’t worry kids, we’ve crossed the halfway point!!!

Super long, but interesting... (1st Day of Break)

Okay, now to what everyone (all four of you; ah, well, actually I have no idea at this point how many people read this blog, for all I know it could number in the millions) actually wants to hear about, the break! I will warn you from the get go that I will not be able to write this whole thing all at one go because SO MUCH happened over the course of thos two weeks. It was really like having 3 separate breaks. So I will try to stick to the highlights, but still this will give me the ability to give a more detailed account of my journey. So, the first phase of our voyage was the bus tour that we took from Melbourne to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road. But, in order to explain this trip more fully, I will have to back up to before we even departed.

So, we were downtown about two hours before our bus was scheduled to leave because we needed to look for a book we were reading for class. Plenty of time, right? Well, then we decided to go down to St. Kilda for lunch and we had still about another hour before the bus was supposed to leave (for those of you keeping score we never found the book and had to give up). St. Kilda is probably about a 15 minute bus ride away from where we needed to meet the bus. So we ride out and are looking for a place to eat that will be cheap enough and finally just decide to grab some pizza. The thing we had not figured into the equation is the fact that it would take some time for the pizza to cook. So we sit and bite our nails while the pizza is cooking and as soon as we get them we rush out the door to find the bus stop. By this time we only have about 20 minutes left before the tour is scheduled to depart (and keep in mind that we had also never received the e-mail confirmation we were promised by the bus company confirming that there were seats for us at all). So we find a bus stop and look at the time table and discover that the bus will not even arrive until 10 minutes before we are supposed to leave. We don’t know if another bus that goes where we need to go will be stopping at some other stop and we don’t know where to walk to get back for our bus. We just have to wait. So we sit, again biting our nails, while the wind is tearing down the street, freezing us half to death. The bus finally comes and we wait through each agonizing stop, watching the minutes tick by. We get out already about five minutes late and start sprinting from the bus stop to our pick up site. Thank God, the bus was still there, but they told us as we arrived that one of the drivers had just been on his way to call HQ and tell them they were leaving without us. Now, I ask you, do you need any more proof that God’s tangible favor is resting on us?

But, at any rate, it was after we climbed sheepishly onto our little bus, mumbling apologies to the other passengers, that our vacation finally got underway (btw, I think it was this initial lateness that made it so that Thryn and I never got to sit next to each other the entire tour, since people tend to settle down wherever they first decide to park themselves in situations like these). The thing that you have to understand from the get-go is that this was no ordinary bus tour. You should go to their website (Wayward Bus tours), their very indie and organic and probably they all eat a lot of brown rice. But the whole point of the company is to have bus tours for people who don’t like the idea of going on bus tours. The “buses” are really more like large vans and the tour groups are no larger than 21 people. They tend to be younger but are definitely not all students and they come from all over the world. So we set our for our first day of amazing driving. The Great Ocean Road was designed to be like the Pacific Highway One in CA, so the first part skirts right along these cliffs on the ocean coast on a very windy road. The weather was not especially nice, kind of rainy and cold, but that fact made it so that about half an hour of our drive we were in view of the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen, Technicolor bright, a complete arch spanned out over the ocean. For a good portion of that time it was so bright that it made a double rainbow.

We stopped at a lot of really pretty beaches that day (great OCEAN road, get it?) with water that would roll up to the shore in crashing arches, the color of clear glass after its been worn down by the sand for a couple of years. But, describing all the beaches would slow down the narrative, so moving on to Apollo Bay, where we stopped for the night. We were sitting in the kitchen when one of the people on our tour came to ask us to borrow pepper. He paused when we gave it to him and said, “We’re making a fondue, would you like to come.” We must have looked quizzical because he went on to explain, “Well, we’re Swiss, right, so we wanted to make this fondue because it’s been so long since we had one and we’re really used to having it and we miss it. We don’t have the right stuff, the right cheese, the right wine, but you could come and taste it anyway, some Swiss fondue, eh?” Well, we said that sounded really neat and we might come over. So after we finished our dinner of pasta and weird tomato tuna sauce, we looked at each other and said “Wanna go?” “Yeah!” and off we went.

We walked over to their flat and knocked timidly on their sliding glass door. As soon as they saw us, they started cracking up with laughter, but waved us in. They introduced themselves, and then explained to us the ins and outs of fondue, all the while apologizing because theirs had turned out so hilariously poorly. They were sure that it was substandard, but I think we just thought, “Hey, melted cheese and bread, where’s bad?” Well, after we tried about a slice of bread, they pulled out a pack of cards and asked if they could show us a Swiss card game. It was pretty simple, a lot like playing spoons except instead of grabbing spoons we were supposed to slap the table. They explained that it was usually a drinking game, but that they didn’t have enough alcohol left, so we couldn’t play it that way. After a few hands, someone got the idea that instead of a drinking game, the last person to slap the deck would instead have to play another little game called “Truth or Action.” It’s basically a different name for truth or dare, just with a card game added. I think they could tell that we were a little leery, because at first the things they were asking were so benign, like hopping around on one leg and yelling, or saying where and when we were born. But then things got a little rougher, first they asked Cedric to eat a clove of garlic, and then they asked me what I thought of President Bush and then, well, then more questions were asked, although at that point the tide of the game had turned and Maud, one of the Swiss, was losing more hands and she just answered them in French (they all knew like 4 or 5 languages) so we were largely spared. We also had some interesting conversations about our respective cultures; mostly centering on the fact that we were disturbing their confident belief that life without alcohol is not actually possible. Christophe actually asked us, “How do people, like, hook up, or become couples?” We were like, “I don’t know, I guess they just talk about it.” Heads shaken in utter disbelief, understandable since apparently in Europe people can’t become couples, socialize, communicate honestly or basically exist without the saving grace of alcohol. Oh, the Swiss. But they were seriously very kind people, like even though they weren’t doing anything terribly scandalous, Christophe kept telling us that this was just the way that they were, but he knew we came from a different kind of culture so if anything made us uncomfortable we should just go ahead and say so. They kept saying, “Oh, you will go away from here tonight and have such a terrible opinion of the Swiss!” Actually, Maud came to find us after we went back to our part of the hostel just to apologize for the way they boys had acted and say that she hoped we had not been offended. She was so sweet and earnest, and we assured her that we had enjoyed the evening immensely. Very true, but also true that this encounter did forever alter my opinion of the Swiss. :-)

Sorry guys, they won't all be this long, promise...

Not quite what you want to hear about yet...

Well, even though the news is quite stale at this point, I have to say at least a few words about our visit to Healesville Sanctuary because I’m required to for our Engaging Australian culture class and also because I was just having an interesting conversation with Thryn about some of the things that I could say about it, so I thought I’d stop conversing and start writing.

Well, it’s interesting to reflect on how I feel about the experience after my break travels, because I’ve really changed the way I think about it a lot. I think initially I enjoyed the experience, in spite of the incredibly cold and drizzly weather. I liked the chance to have a close encounter with these animals that so represent the native Australian fauna. But when I think about the experience as a whole, I think it represents more about Australia than perhaps it ought to. I think the image that stands out most starkly in my mind are the languid eyes of the browbeaten kangaroos, lying around in their pens submissively allowing tourists to pat them while their pictures is taken. Or there was the Tasmanian Devil who paced manically around his cage, running laps with restless abandon. I think the kangaroos were the worst, they were so lackadaisical and their eyes said that they were heartsick. Oddly enough, it made me think of the way that Aborigines were portrayed in Greater Nowheres and Tracks, lying browbeaten and drunk in the middle of a dusty road or an old, dry creek bed. I think there is a common link between the two images, something about taking things that lived here for centuries free and on their own terms caging them, taming them, putting them on display so that everyone could ogle these “primitive” and exotic creatures. And now, well now they lie around in the hot sun and maybe just wait to die because they’ve been institutionalized and all their spirit is gone and tourists can come and pat them on the head and take their picture.

The other funny thing is the way that the staff of Healesville viewed their project. They seemed to be really defensive about the fact that it was NOT a zoo and the animals could either come to the keepers or not come of their own volition. Well, how does the bird show, where birds of prey are flown around a stadium after bits of meat. And why aren’t the koalas allowed to go up in the tops of the trees where they would live in the wild. They have to kept at eye level so the tourist can snap their pictures. I sympathize with their plight, because they have to balance the goals of educating the public with the goals of taking care of the animals, but they seem to be quite ready to defend their position as an advocate for the animals, rather than their wardens.