Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Home again, home again, jigitty jig

It's strange to be posting about my journey back to the U.S. Well, maybe not so strange. I moved out of my apartment 4 days ago and I've been sleeping at my neighbors. And I am no longer a happy houseguest- I've been dying to get out of there and happy to go back to the States.

Of course, I'm now delayed an hour and a half. My flight was supposed to depart Sydney International Aeroport at 2:40 p.m. and will now not leave until 4:30 p.m. How tedious! But I've only had one smooth journey across the Pacific Ocean and that was my first one. I've become pessimestic about my chances of everything going to plan.

I feel like I should have something brillant to say to sum everything that I've experienced in the last 5.5 months into a neat little package. Unfortunetely, I don't have anything so clever. The good news, I have about 24 hours on a plane or in airports to come up with something.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Leaves are falling in June

In the Northern Hemisphere it's not uncommon to experience sunny and warm weather in January. You can go to Florida or Cancun and have a sweltering Christmas. So, when I first got here in February, it was a nice change of pace to deal with the very hot Australian summer. I like hot weather. It means I can go to the beach!

Now, even in Florida leaves on trees don't turn colors and crunch on the ground in June. This is weird. Like, Twilight Zone weird. I wear a coat and closed-toed shoes every day. I had to buy gloves! Who wears gloves in June? The space heater is on high every night. I crave hot chocolate. It's winter! In June!

At least it doesn't snow in Sydney. Like ever. Then I'd really be flipping out.

Other than the twilight zone seasons, I've been chugging along. My knee is getting better! I have my last physio (that's Australian for physical therapy) appointment on Friday. I'm walking and running (in short spurts to catch buses that I almost miss because I don't want to get out of bed because it's cold) and doing squats to strengthen all the weakened muscles.

My studies are almost done too. I'm giving a presentation about my internship on Friday for university faculty and then my last day at ActNow is next Wednesday. It's strange. I feel like I'm just getting started and it's already over. I have been very thankful for this semester, though. Easiest finals week yet: no caffeine pills or venti lattes with three extra shots of espresso involved!

I'm going to have three and a half weeks of nothingness to bum around Sydney. I'm pretty excited about it, except everyone is going to start leaving pretty soon. I'm not excited about leaving. Not that I don't want to go home (which surprisingly, I do), but going home means I'm five weeks away from starting my last year of college. How freaky is that?

Monday, June 4, 2007

Real friends visit you on the other side of the world.

I HAVE A RIGHT ANKLE!!! It’s not swollen, it’s visible like my left one. My knee is still swollen, but not nearly as bowling-ball like. But I am walking rather normally, and can bend my knee past 90 degrees. I’m doing squats for my physiotherapy every day. I even walked on a treadmill today (I’m not running yet, but I was never much of a runner any ways). And I’m not moping anymore (and believe me, I was moping).

In other news, I’ve had a very eventful two weeks and even had a companion: Katy came to visit! Katy, for those of you who read this but don’t really pay attention anything I say, was my freshman year roommate at Mizzou (that's us making monkey faces at the zoo. And she graduated this month! She left Sydney on Monday but the week and a half she was here was full-on. I was actually kinda glad to see her go because I was so tired. But even if she is living in my apartment for the next few months, seeing as I’m alive and well and not dead, it’s not like I’m haunting it so I won’t see her for a while. It was really good to see her.

But, speaking of haunting, we took a Ghost Tour of the Rocks, which was one of the first areas of settlement in Sydney and was a slum through the 1920s. It was really interesting. A little creepy, but very fun. Our tour guide wore a long black overcoat and bowler hat, and had a definite flair for the dramatic. He was good at telling some awfully gruesome ghost stories. Like the story of Mrs. Greenway, who after being discovered in bed with a sailor with her husband, was strangled by him. Only the screams that children hear aren’t exactly said to be her dying screams. Or the cabin boy who was the first person to be hanged in Sydney, at Observatory Hill. Or my personal favorite, the ghosts of those shanghaied from the Watson Bay Hotel. It’s actually where the term shanghaied came from, because people shanghaied from the Watson Bay Hotel often ended up in Shanghai. And I walked the whole way, which was two hours, so I was very pleased with myself!

We also went to a show at the Opera House, which I’ve been waiting to do for years. We were bummed there wasn’t an actual opera on; apparently May is a traditional break in the opera season. We saw Ting Tong, a Walk With the Goons, which was about the madness of Terry Milligan, creator of the Goon Show on the BBC in England and a Monty Python writer. The Opera House made us buy the playbill (cheap bastards, considering how much I paid for the tickets!), but the show was quite entertaining. And it was a thrill just to be in the Opera House, although I suppose that it’s the thrill of being a tourist as well. We had coffee at the Opera Bar afterward, because Katy was still jet lagged, but it was a great night. Except for the fact that the zipper of my dress ripped open at intermission, and I couldn’t fix it until after the show. Of course that happens when I’m trying to be classy at the Opera House.

We also went to the zoo and saw the marsupials and Asian elephants (I am, as you can see, shorter than a baby giraffe), and we went to the Barracks Museum, which had lots of nifty things from all the convicts. We had a long walk around the Domain and the Royal Botanical Gardens. And it was warm and sunny all day. Which was really really lucky because it rained every day for a week before Katy arrived. We went bar hopping at the Rocks and at Darling Harbour. And Katy spent a lot of time running around being a tourist while I was at my internship and uni classes.

But the topper was Melbourne.

I have been wanting to go to Melbourne since the last time I was here four years ago and was obsessed with The Secret Life of Us (an Aussie television show set in Melbourne that I could gush about at length but is now, alas, canceled). We, inadvertently, booked flights to and from the wrong Melbourne airport. For future reference, do NOT fly into Avalon airport if you’re ever in the pleasurable situation of being in Melbourne. It’s in the boonies about an hour drive from the city. Fly into Tullamarie Airport! We were on the airplane, and saw the city and got excited.... and then flew over it.

Katy’s dad has a friend and colleague who lives in Melbourne, and he and his wife were really super to us. Alan picked us up from the airport in the boonies (and drove us back), and helped us get acquainted with the city and took us to Philip Island to see the penguins. And I didn’t even know Australia had penguins. About 900 of them came to their nests at sunset on Philip Island- and it’s quite a nice set up. There’s bleachers on the beach so you can watch them come out of the water, and then you can watch them wander to their nests as you walk back to your car. These particular penguins are the smallest variety in the world, and are about a foot tall. We think the stuffed penguin Katy bought for her sister is bigger than the actual ones we saw (JakeMonster is getting a t-shirt).

Melbourne the city is really great. It’s nightlife is a little intense. Me and Katy were feeling not-hardcore enough (about music) to truly go into the clubs. Maybe we weren’t wearing enough black or have enough visible piercings. But we did find a bar with very cute bartenders and excellent and expensive cocktails called Ginger on Brunswick St.

We stayed at a backpackers called The Nunnery in Fitzroy, which was actually once a nunnery. We chose it only so we could holler at each other “Get thee to a nunnery!” every time we were headed back to the hotel. We even got upgraded to a room with two single beds instead of bunk beds because they stuffed up our reservation (or we made the incorrect one, whatever). But it was very charming, they’ve done a good job of preserving the feeling of the place. Homey, but not to Catholic and scary.

And the shopping in Melbourne is definitely nice. There’s lots of very pretty boutiques that we could not afford- we had the most luck at Myer (which is like Dillards but Australian). I bought a coat as my major purchase. The Arcades are really fun, and I got an amazing hot chocolate in a shop at one. And there are TRAMS! It’s the most amazingly interesting form of pubic transportation- and one of the oldest tram systems in the world. The trams were really cool.

What, I dig the trams.

While I wish we could’ve had more time in Melbourne, some things can’t be helped. I can always go back. I think it’ll be the next Australian city I live in. Haha.

Katy, if I’m forgetting anything, let me know!

Monday, May 7, 2007

This is why I shouldn't be allowed to dance

Friday night I went to a party thrown at a friends house for the 20 April birthdays hanging about in our little community of crazy international students. I was dancing, and there may have been cheap wine coolers involved. And we were about to leave anyways, but I thought, one more dance couldn't hurt.

I have rarely been more wrong. Because about one minute in, my knee dislocated and I fell over. And that was the end of the party.

My friend Tam, while I was freaking out because my tibia was no longer in line with my femur and not underneath my patella, made me straighten my leg and pop it back into place. Someone got me ice. And eventually, I was helped off the ground and slowly hobbled back to my place. Which is where the cheap wine coolers come in because I'm fairly certain that they helped in my mobility that night.

And then I spent the weekend on the couch, with three cushions stacked up for me to elevate my knee (which was about the size of a small bowling ball), bags of frozen peas to keep it cool and my laptop propped on the cushions so I could watch the entire first season of The O.C. I'm a little ashamed of that last bit, but that show is like a religion: opiate of the people.

And that was how I spent my weekend! My knee is better, but stiff. And now only about the size of a softball. OK, maybe a little bigger.

I have a feeling that I'm not going to be going salsa dancing any time soon. Which, by the way, there's a really cool salsa club on Darling Harbour that's free entry on Thursday nights. We went for the first time the night before my knee dislocating.

Moral of the story: NO DANCING.

A small sidenote: my video about living on 40 litres of water for 40 hours is completed and up on the web (which is a little scary for me so please be nice.) You can view it by clicking here.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Missing Posts in Shots.

I am attempting to get back in every one's good graces by posting too many pictures of my latest adventures. I actually just worked on my feature story for class for an hour or so (about blogging, ironically) and it disappeared. Reminded me of Crash Different, because, excuse my language, the file was fucking gone. So I'm posting pictures. Or attempting to.

These first three are of the 75th anniversary of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was a really cool day. I got to walk across the Harbour Bridge with about 100,000 other people without any cars on it. Which And we got temporary tattoos. In lieu of a huge fireworks display, they opted for lighting up the Harbour Bridge at night, which viewed from Mrs. Macquarie's Chair is quite the sight.

My free trip to Byron Bay was awesome (see pictures below!). The overnight 12 hour bus rides were not. But Byron is a nice little hippie-ville on a great bay. Non-locals call it the berg of "thongs, bongs and sarongs." It's the most easterly point of Australia- up by the lighthouse it literally looks like the Edge of the World. I got to kayak on the ocean and there were dolphins about 10 feet from the boat. I also got to remember how awful of a surfer I am: I can catch the wave, but stand up on the board? I can barely stand up on dry land without falling over. Not that you didn't already know that.

OH NOOSA!! It was a really really great week. I've discovered that the best way to take pictures of myself is to take pictures of my feet, so there seems to be many photos of my feet covered in sand. Saves me the trouble of finding someone else to take my picture. So, I stayed with Rachel, my former youth exchange counsellor and her husband Phil and their nine year old niece, who was also visiting. Noosa has changed a bit, there's a 7-11 there now! And a real shopping mall (complete with Big-W, which is Aussie for Wal-Mart, ick). But I took their niece to the beach with me, and went for walks on the Noosa River (it's still salty and flows inland, which freaked me out when I first arrived) and caught up with host families.

I did go to the Rotary meeting (7 am Thursday morning). I forgot how early that was. OH! A note on those horrific school uniforms. Four years ago, everyone was so reassuring about them. "Everyone will be wearing the same thing, and it makes getting ready easier..." blah blah blah. NOW I heard more than once: "those uniforms from the Lutheran College are so unattractive!" I knew that. I had to wear it for a year. And I knew it was fugly.

So, tonight I'm off to an April birthdays party! Despite my feature story disappearing, I am trying to make a good evening of it. Hope the pics make up for my absence.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

I'm not lazy.

OK, that may be a lie.

I've been slacking. I should be writing about the amazing time I had at the Harbour Bridge Walk. Or about my free weekend at Byron Bay (which is where I'm going to go slack for two years after I get my masters degree). Or how about the night I was thisclose to going to Tokyo? But I am going to post this.

It's going to be featured on the main page soon!!

And yes those are my feet. I was shooting the photo illustration for the opinion piece I just linked above. Or attempting to. This shot was an accident. But I kinda liked it.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

School Daze

OK, so I'm exhausted. How about you?

I started my internship this week. Which means that my alarm goes off at 6:45 am, and I haul my bum out of bed at 7 am, and then I get on a bus at 8:10 am, and I arrive in Balmain at 9:15 am. I then research all day, with various other fun bits in between, and hop on a bus around 6 pm and depending on the route I take home get back to North Ryde anywhere between 7 pm and 7:30 pm. And this is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, except that Wednesday I leave the office at 1:45 pm because I have class at 3 pm. But the point is that it's freaking early in the morning and a long commute and we all know how I love being awake before 11 am.

I'm making this sound a lot worse than it is. It's not actually bad at all. In a way, I like getting up and doing something productive. It makes me feel like I'm not completely wasting my limited time here. Do now, sleep when you're dead.

And I like my internship. It's in a really cool suburb that has great Thai food and an amazing strip of shopping. And the bus ride gives me time to keep up with the readings for my two classes. Or, just listen to music on my iPod. Whatever. But please don't get me started on my classes. I sat though a lecture on the history of the computer yesterday for my multimedia class. Which is much better than what I'm sure I will endure on conducting an interview tomorrow. I should've signed up for 20th Century Australian Lit. Or something where I'd be learning something. OK, I shouldn't really say that. Did you know that the first computer took up three levels of a standard city-sized office building? I didn't. And I do need to take the writing class. I just don't want to because while I am capable of reporting I simply dislike to. And I am learning how to code HTML, which I suppose will eventually be useful.

I think I just need to stop being a J-School snob.

So, this weekend is not only every chick named Erin's favorite holiday, but also the 75th birthday of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It should be a pretty nifty day. The city is closing down the bridge to all traffic. But the thing is, they decided to sell something like 200,000 tickets to walk across it on the birthday and everyone's hacked off about it. I know I am, because I didn't know they were selling tickets and now I can't walk across the bridge on it's birthday. But I am going to go into the City and take lots of pictures. It should be pretty sweet.

We ended up having a huge pasta party last night. We invited a few people over for dinner last night, and ended up with about 15 people in our apartment! And we still have leftovers. But it was a good time. There's a small movement to institute Wednesday Night Dinners. Which would be amazingly fun because 1. big meals are cheaper, and 2. the bar everyone else goes that night stinks. And speaking of food, I found really tasty grapes for A$2.94 per kilo! Which is probably the most bang for the buck I've found around here. Things are expensive. I've been job hunting.

In other news, another one of my roommates is moving out. Apparently walking 10 minutes to class is too much of an inconvenience. Or I smell. Actually, I think Adam smells (he's the roommate who hasn't moved out yet!) So, if we don't get another roommate, it's going to be the two of us in a 4-person apartment, which isn't too bad at all.