Sydney!

Last week was such a whirlwind of new experiences! We left for Sydney last Wednesday arvo (afternoon). After a short plane trip we caught a train to Central Station where our hostel was located. My first impression of Sydney was that it was like Chicago or Washington D.C - but classier. The architecture of some of the old buildings is beautiful, as is the landscaping. Here is a picture of the famous Harbor Bridge. You can't see from the picture, but some people are actually climbing across the top of it! Seeing the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House finally made me feel like I was actually IN AUSTRALIA. The whole experience has been so surreal thus far, but seeing the actual buildings that were on TV during the recent Sydney Olympics finally helped it sink in.

The hostel that we stayed in was right next to Central Station, and was a reconstructed train station. Some of the rooms were even old train cars! I met some amazing people in the hostel who were traveling the world. I think aside from the city itself, my favorite thing about Sydney is how culturally diverse it is. I often felt like a minority - which was fine with me! Walking down the street I heard French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and accents that sounded German and Russian. I think I met someone from nearly every continent in fact (well except for maybe Antarctica).


This is the view from the top of the Sydney Tower.




The Australian Museum


We visited the Tower after a day of absolute random fun. I, of course, had all kinds of things planned for the day (shocking, I know) but as we were walking in the direction of the harbor, we kept stumbling across good fortune.


St. Andrews Cathedral looked small from the outside, but the inside was just spectacular. The stained glass windows, huge archways, and massive pipe organ were so breathtakingly beautiful that we whispered as we walked through.



After visiting the church, we walked past a Virgin Mobile store and a woman was holding a poster and yelling "Guy Sebastian is about to give a free concert!" Concert? Free? We were totally in. It turns out that Guy Sebastian was the winner of Australian Idol, something we have all enjoyed watching during our stay, in 2003. We loved his music - and him! He signed a CD for us "To Team USA, I hope you enjoy your stay in OZ!"



Our stay in Sydney was short, but next up was the Blue Mountains. A post about it is soon to come!

The Spider that Came to Class

This post is for my dad and Janet, who are both going to be stoked about this!

It is already very difficult to pay attention during class here at the Australia Centre. An obsessed crow already tries to get inside the window by repeated flying against it and squawking at the top of its lungs. A group of 30 -40 kids who are staying in the centre come down to the lake to launch sail boats at least a couple of times a week during lecture. There is always something crazy and distracting going on. The fact that a spider casually crawled in, took a seat on the desk in front of me, and proceeded to listen to the lecture for an hour didn't really surprise any of us.
Here is what spidey looks like

I need to research to find what kind of spider this is. He was awfully well behaved during the lecutre on marine oil spills. It was mostly the students who were a little freaked out by him, not the other way around.





























We ended up letting spidy go in some bushes outside of class. So, if you're ever in the Lennox area, keep an eye out for him. He'll be the one thats oddly very educated about the Exxon- Valdez.

The Pancake Place

Sunday I went to what is lovingly referred to as the "pancake place." Here is the story: There is a song that Jack Johnson sings called "Banana Pancakes." Well, it turns out that Jack Johnson himself owns a house in Lennox Head and ate banana pancakes at this particular restaurant. The place is within walking distance from our cabins, so my friend and I walked down for brekky. I couldn't tell you the name of the place, its tiny and only has outdoor seating. But this place is just adorable. Everyone brings their dogs, which run around unleashed with kids. The front area is littered with kayaks, surf boards, towels, and bikes. Its the kind of place at which one could sit and people-watch for hours.

Here is a picture of the view from our table. If this wasn't good enough already, the food at this place is FANTASTIC. I'm telling you, its the best kept secret in Lennox. The last time I was here I had a chicken sandwich with avocados (avos) and pineapple and I think it changed my life. Today, however, I knew it was time for the banana pancake experience. Before I even go on, if you are on a diet, stop reading now. In fact, just go ahead and go get a snack because there's no way you can see this and not get hungry. Alright, here they are:

This glorious concoction consists of banana pancakes covered in maple syrup with homemade vanilla ice cream on top. In the back there is some famous Aussie bacon whichb is, as I have already mentioned, delicious. So that's how I started my day: enough saturated fat to notably shorten my life. Needless to say, between this and the other amazing aussie food, most of us have gained a couple of pounds. I say its totally worth it!

SCUBA Act II

We went on our second SCUBA adventure today. Luckily the visibility was much higher today - 15 meters this time. (I keep wanting to write "metres" - aussie style) It was also much warmer/calmer conditions. We were in the water by 8am. Strapping the gear,tank and various gauges is always the hardest part of the experience. There must be close to 50 pounds worth of gear by the time we are ready. Each piece has a designated place: the regulator (what you breath through) comes over your right shoulder. The gauge that shows how much air you have left and at what depth you are at gets strapped at your waist. On our left wrists were compasses. Masks and snorkels on our faces, boots and fins on our feet. Underneath all this is a wet suit that honestly takes a good 15 minutes to fit into. The tighter the better when it comes to these things, apparently. The suit is always too short for me (surprise there) which means I am in a constantly bent state while wearing it. To top it all off, we wear hoods that come around our faces that make it look like we are more likely to be shooting into space than to be diving.

So, after suiting up and gearing up, you put your back to the water and flip over the side of the boat. Gravity does the rest. I was the first one out this morning, so I waited by the buoy (pronounced in aussie, "boy") for the rest of the crew. The decent is always a little scary. It gets gradually darker and colder as you pull yourself down on a rope, constantly plugging your nose and blowing to equalize the pressure on your ears.

We aren't actually scuba certified yet, so we still have to practice skills while we are underwater. We did a full mask fill first: You fill your mask with water and then blow air out your nose in order to clear it of the water. We do this so if for any reason our mask would get flooded with water, we wouldn't panic. Then, we worked on achieving neutral buoyancy - which as you can imagine, is difficult. You do this by inflating or deflating your BCD jacket. Anyway, enough of the boring stuff. The cool part comes when we are swimming around and the instructor, Jack, starts excitedly pointing to something in the distance and then telling us to get down low. I look over and see a nice little school of parrot fish... I smile and nod, and then Jack points again. I look over just in time to see a fin a good meter high swimming through the school of fish. It was another gray nurse shark. This puppy had to be 3-4 meters long. We watched it swim with this school of fish, not trying to eat them, but just swimming. We later learned that the fish actually hang out with the shark for protection from other predators. A shark that big would not normally try to prey upon a fish so small - it would be a waste of energy to chase it. It would more likely hunt larger prey (like American college students?)


So as we are watching this shark and swimming closer, I forget to look immediately where I am swimming and nearly put my hand directly on a wobbygong carpet shark. These guys hang out on the bottom and are generally harmless (the scar on Jack's leg begs to differ though). None the less, it gave me quite a start. We saw quite a few nurse sharks this morning as well as lots of colorful fish. We are diving again tomorrow, I can't wait!
This is the view of Julian Rocks, the area we normally dive. This is a small island about half a mile off the coast.

The "Break"

I put the title of this post in quotation marks, because to say that you had a vacation while you are already in OZ seems a little counter-intuitive. This last week, we didn't have class in order to give students an opportunity to travel. In order to save money, and because I can't think of a place I would actually like more than Lennox Head, I stayed at the camp with five other students. On Wednesday, I took a bus into Ballina, a neighboring city, in order to volunteer with Coastcare. This group looks after the beaches by planting native vegetation, taking action to prevent erosion of the beaches, and eradicating invasive species. I worked for a few hours cutting back Bitou bush that had been sprayed with herbicide a month or so earlier. It was rough work, and we all ended up with scrapes and bruises. I was especially impressed with the 60 year old man named Ron who worked with the five of us. He seemed to be working harder than the rest of us! I mentioned this to the leader of this operation, Lee, and he informed me that Ron is 88 years old! I think there must be something to this bacon and cane sugar diet.

Thursday, I returned (after getting lost and touring most of East Ballina) to help out with a group of school children who had come to help plant native wattle in place of the Bitou bush. The kids were typical 8-9 year olds. When they found out that I was American, they were sure that I must know Miley Cyrus personally. They worked hard in the heat, and most seemed to enjoy being outdoors for once. I found from the teachers that the children don't often get to take breaks from the classroom to go outside for trips like this. Considering that the school is walking distance away from some of the most beautiful and biologically diverse land in the country, this is unfortunate. Environmental education in Aussie is sadly lacking in the same way it is in the States. When I individually spoke to the kids about what they learned about in school regarding the environment, they had mixed reactions. Some impressed me with their knowledge of erosion of beaches, littering and other issues. Some of them said they had never even heard of global warming. My favorite answer regarding global warming was, "Well... its like when you litter... and then all the penguins... they die.... and that's bad cause they're cute!"
I will say that these kids were remarkably well-behaved and hard working. It was a pleasure to spend time with them, and I hope to get to do it again.

Tenterfield Trip

Our "Australia Life and Culture" class takes various field trips on Mondays. The 19th of September, we left for our first overnight adventure to beautiful, exotic Tenterfield, NSW. Alright, maybe not exotic - this little town was like Mayberry crossed with Texas. We left on Saturday the 19th of September. Now let us remember that this was the day after my friends and I went out for my birthday. I won't go into detail, but lets just say that the three hour bus ride that followed a long night of bar hoping was rough on a few of us, to say the least. Anyway, we survived and arrived at the Golfer's Inn Motel by lunch.


After lunch we got back on the bus and headed for Bald Rock, the largest Monolith in Australia. The climb up was over and around huge slabs of granite. This is where a famous bushranger (a cowboy up to no good) named Thunderbolt had his famous hideout. He waited among these rocks and in caves for unsuspecting travelers to pass by. He would then steal whatever he could manage to take including gold, horses, and stagecoaches.

The view from the top of Bald Rock is stunning. No picture could adequately capture it.




Yay! We made it! The girls on the trip took a group photo.
Here we are taking a break with our fearless leader Lyn.

After descending Bald Rock, it was tea time! Ah, tea time in Australia, one of my favorite things. Tea time usually takes place once in the morning and once in the evening. "Tea" can be in reference to anything from the literal drink to snacks, or even to dinner itself. During this particular tea time, we replaced those spent calories with two foods that truly make me want to move here: First, damper. Damper is a completely carb-filled, white, processed-flour bread that is simply delicious. We slather it with butter and then Cocky's Joy, a syrupy, sticky-sweet spread that is essentially cane sugar. In addition to this we ate Anzac biscuits which are coconut cookies, also fabulous. The tea is similarly smothered in milk and sugar.

After this, we headed off the the Doctor's Nose Winery for a wine tasting. Most of us had never done a wine tasting before - some of us weren't even allowed to drink in the States yet. (Drinking age is 18 here.) It was great fun. We tasted several different wines, all made in from the grapes in the fields surrounding us. I even got a special birthday port with my name on it as a surprise!

The next day we woke to an Aussie brekkie (breakfast) of eggs, toast and bacon. Another pause to talk about Aussie bacon: Aussie bacon will make even the most stringent vegetarian throw down their hummus with abandon and chow down.

Anyway, back to the story. We went to Billabong Blue to fossick for sapphires. This consisted of shoveling a bucket of dirt through sieves and then washing the remaining rocks. Most of us found small sapphires or other gemstones.

Lunch was shared with community members from a Christian missionary called Danthonia Christian Community. The group consisted of people from all over the world, many from the U.S, who were temporarily living in this community. The group shares everything, and is not paid for the work they do in their sign-making business. The group is almost completely self-sufficient and most of the lunch we ate came directly from their land. (Little did we know the sandwiches we were eating were actually kangaroo, not salami.) It was an interesting experience to say the least.

After this we toured Tenterfield's many historical buildings and met the Mayor of the town. We saw the place that Sir Henry Parkes gave his famous speech urging the states to federate. There was also an old railway and museum, and several other old shops and businesses. It was very similar to what we would find in an American pioneer village or museum. The two countries have similar stories during the Industrial Revolution.

I'll end with bits from our teacher, Lyn Lockery's poem about the trip:

"We left the coast for country life,
a chance to get away.
To climb Bald Rock and fossick too,
up the Tenterfield way.

We walked right into Thunderbolt's cave,
the tank traps passed us by.
Bald Rock was really awesome,
with views that made you cry.

The Doctor's Nose was a special spot,
some tried to crack a whip,
found new friends with Peter and Jan,
got the taste of grapes on our lip.

At Deepwater we passed the 'Wee log' (where you relieve yourself after a long day of driving)
we headed for Billabong Blue,
sapphires and zircons gleefully found,
then damper and a trip to the loo.

Danthonia Christian Community
met us with friendship so kind,
showed us how they made their signs,
then a lunch, the best you could find.

We toured the town with Val as a guide,
learned Tenterfield's history with glee,
heard of Parkes and met the Mayor,
then we all returned to the sea. "