Jared's One Blog

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July 27, 2004

Finally Lookin' Up

Well I'd say that things are finally looking up a bit for me down here. I think I've maybe finally found a student group here on campus that I feel really comfortable with, and where I feel like there's real potential for some friendships to develop, which would be an answer to prayer for me. But more on that later. :-)

Back on Sunday morning I went to church at Hope Church Melbourne - Waverley Center, in nearby Glen Waverley. It's a much smaller church (150-200 people) than the church I attended on Saturday night, and I'd say I liked Hope more than WCF. Hope Church was still a bit charismatic, but not quite as much as Waverley Christian Fellowship was, and there seemed to be more of an emphasis on the Bible at Hope, which is good. They also have a potluck lunch after the service every Sunday, but I couldn't stick around for it this time, because I had to go to Lucky Chan's Seafood Restaurant in Melbourne for some "yum cha" with a few of the other kids who came to Monash through IFSA-Butler, along with Jodee, our IFSA coordinator here in Melbourne. It was some excellent food, and also quite a bit of "firsts" for me, including chicken feet (pictured), cheese oysters, bok choi and mango jello (only it's called jelly down here). Jodee & I liked the chicken feet, but Meghan, Sharon & Krista were all a bit weirded out by the texture, which was basically like kinda fatty skin, only with lots of bones right below the skin. It was in a good sauce though, trust me. It was a good chance to catch up with the Butler people, as I don't see much of them now that classes have started and they've been making their own friends and stuff. Oh, and in case you're wondering what "yum cha" is, here's an explanation. Yum cha is essentially a Chinese restaurant, where the waiters wheel around various dishes on different carts, and you just take what you want when they go by. Basically, it's a buffet, only it's brought to your table. Pretty cool if you ask me. Yum cha is pretty popular in Melbourne, and Lucky Chan's, I'm told, has the best yum cha in town, so Jodee took us to the right place. :-)

Monday was a fairly ordinary day. Went to class. Went to the Matheson Library with the intention of reading a bit, but wound up dozing off for most of the time (I should've known not to pick a soft cushy chair!). Went to another class. Came back to my room, read a bunch of articles online, and a couple of the daily newspapers up in the common room. Watched "Gladiator" on my computer. Yeah, fairly ordinary day, not too much excitement. Although I did get a letter from home, with a card signed by my parents, brothers and their families, and my Grandma. Thanks everyone! If any of the rest of you feel like sending me some mail, go right ahead. ;-)

I finally got to sleep in this morning! I'm gonna like this no-class-on-Tuesdays thing, I can tell. :-) But in the course of chatting with Mike a bit online (and then on the phone), I found out that his mom will be having an urgent and risky 12-hour surgery on a valve in her heart on Wednesday at North Memorial in the Twin Cities. So please keep Sue in your prayers. And Mike's gonna be having some surgery of his own on Thursday, to repair damage to his nose from when it was broken in a basketball game a year and a half ago (only the idiot doctors he was originally seeing for the longest time said that nothing was wrong). But this surgery should rid him of the asthma and allergies that he's had since then, along with giving him his full sense of taste back, which will be good. So keep Mike in your prayers too. Basically, pray for the whole Mathison family, as they go through these next couple weeks in particular, with preparing for, undergoing, and recovering from, surgeries.

At 1pm today I went to a Christian Bible Talks, a weekly Bible study put on by a group here on campus called Christian Union, which also has branches on several other university campuses throughout Melbourne and Victoria. It was a good talk, they were continuing a study of Philippians which they'd started last week. After that a few of us went down to The Den (a cafe beneath the Matheson Library) and hung out for bit, which enabled me to get a chance to know a few of them. And then at 5 the students in CU came back together and broke into small groups for more study of the same passage that was talked about in CBT earlier in the day. And after that there was another small-group session, called "Two ways to live," the goal of which is basically to equip us to be able to present the gospel message effectively. And then we all had supper together after that, which was nice. I was impressed by Christian Union (people, message, doctrine, etc), and felt more at home in that group than I have in any other so far here at Monash. And I actually started to make a couple friends too, yay! They also have a church service/Bible study on Sunday nights for those of us who live in the Halls here on campus. I'm looking forward to being involved in CU while I'm down here, and getting to know those people better. So that's basically why I say things might finally be looking up for me here. :-)

Oh, and I almost forgot, there were some links that I wanted to pass along from articles that I've read in the past few days, partly to give all of you back in America a sense for what's going on down here. Down here in Australia there's lots of talk right now about Michael Moore's propaganda film Fahrenheit 9/11 (I refuse to call it a documentary, because it's not), and people's reactions towards the film seem to be split, much like they are back in America. To get a vibe for what the Australian media thinks about it, check out these articles from the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age. Also check out these articles about the movie from the Washington Post, and be sure to read Christopher Hitchens' marvelous column on Slate. That one is definitely a must-read. I have an entire folder of bookmarks labeled "Michael Moore's Lies" in case anyone wants more on the subject. :-) Switching topics, I don't know if it's a big story back in the States or not, but a story that's getting a lot of attention down here is the genocide that's going on right now in The Sudan. There's criticism down here of the US being hesitant about getting involved, especially after the humanitarian case that was made for the war in Iraq, but there seems to be even more criticism about how the United Nations appears content to let another Rwanda-style genocide happen while it does nothing. It's just further evidence of how the UN is a broken and completely impotent organization. And I don't know if this has made the news back in the States or not, but yesterday an Islamic terrorist group made threats against Australia about strings of car bombings and "pools of blood" in the streets. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer responded to these threats yesterday, and rightfully chastised the Spanish and Philippine governments for caving to these terrorists, which did nothing but embolden them to take more hostages and murder more people. Well, that's naturally created a big brouhaha, with those short-sighted and cowardly governments condemning Australia's remarks and protests going on and all that. So that's kind of a big deal down here right now. And switching topics yet again, the notion that John Kerry is a Red Sox fan is a complete farce. When asked for his favorite Red Sox player, he named a guy that's never played for Boston! That, and before he threw out the first pitch at the Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway on Sunday night (at which the cheers were at least equaled by boos), he even had to be briefed by his staff on the names of the current players, who the manager was, where they were in the standings, and yet he claims to be an avid Red Sox fan! Kerry is a total and complete phony.

Posted by Jared at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2004

Fair Dinkum Aussie Tucker

Today was definitely a day for new experiences. This morning I went with around 20 of the (mostly Maylasian) kids from OCF on a trip up to Dandenong Ranges National Park. I'm still struggling trying to learn all their names, especially since some of the Asian/Chinese names are so strange to me. But on the way up there, we stopped in this tourist town in the Dandenongs called Sassafras, at Miss Marples Tea House. There I ordered a couple of fruit scones, with some wonderful raspberry jam and whipped cream. Delicious! (A scone is probably close to what we'd call a biscuit, only with the shape and consistency of cornbread -- it's hard to describe.) After that we made our way actually up to Mt Dandenong and the observatory/scenic overlook there, only there wasn't much to see. Just dense fog (it had been raining most of the morning until then too). Occasionally a portion of the fog would clear, allowing us a marvelous glimpse of the city below for a few seconds, only for it to be shrouded in fog again. Oh well. I'm sure I'll be back at Mount Dandenong again sometime when the weather's better. On the way back we stopped in Olinda, the town right before Sassafras, at a cool restaurant called Pies In The Sky. There I had a curry beef meat pie, which was excellent. Several of their meat pies have apparently won gold medals in Australia, I guess they are to meat pies what Louie's Finer Meats in Cumberland is to sausage. Meat pies and scones are very traditional Aussie food (which explains my title for this post; "fair dinkum"="genuine/Australian," and "tucker"="food/cuisine").

This evening after we got back, I went with Samantha and a couple other people from OCF to their church, Waverly Christian Fellowship in Glen Waverly. It was a charismatic church, I'd never been to one of those before. It wasn't totally weird, but it was definitely different than what I'm used to. It's also a huge church, with a few thousand members, and they're just finishing up their new $7 million building. After church I went out to eat with them at Rock Kung, a Chinese restaurant in Glen Waverly, where we all split some roast pork and roast duck. It was my first time having actually semi-authentic Chinese food (the Chinese food in the States isn't really Chinese food at all), and my first time ever having duck. It was quite good, although unlike American Chinese food, the meat in Chinese food down here has lots of bones and fat in it (in fact, it seemed to be very little meat). And let's just say that tonight I utterly failed at using chopsticks. I can't figure out how to use those things to cut something, or separate meat from fat, sigh. I ate my entire meal at the sushi bar a week ago using chopsticks, but I just couldn't do it tonight.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to another church in Glen Waverly, I'm probably gonna sample quite a few churches around here to try to find one that I like. After that, it's into the city for me, and my first experience at a yum cha restaurant! I'll explain what yum cha actually is once I experience it first-hand, because right now I only have a vague idea (more Chinese food).

Here are some interesting links I've found in the past few days. From the Washington Times, there is new scientific evidence that -- gasp! -- the sun could actually be the cause of our planet's half degree of warming over the last century. Who would've guessed it, that that massive ball of burning plasma at the center of the solar system just might have an effect on Earth's climate? I apologize for my sarcasm. In another weather-related topic, satellites have confirmed the existence of freakishly huge rogue waves -- some 10 stories high -- in the open ocean. They've long been the stuff of legend, and have capsized (or nearly capsized) many a large ocean liner over the years. And for a bit of humor, check out this awesome Flash movie, which rips on both Bush and Kerry equally, entitled "This Land." It really is pretty well done, and quite funny!

Posted by Jared at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2004

Heroes of the Pacific

Well, most of this week has been fairly dull actually. Tuesday was a good lazy day, with not having class and all. I spent a few hours doing laundry though. Like Gustavus, Monash has free washers & dryers for its residents (score!), but the dryers here at Monash totally suck. It usually takes a minimum of around four hours to get a load dry, sometimes as much as seven (I managed it in four). Apparently what some people here do is throw a load in the dryer before they go to bed, and then it'll hopefully be dry when they go pick it up when they wake up in the morning. I have a feeling it might be faster to just dry stuff on the clothes-horse that Monash supplies in all our rooms... After all those adventures, Tuesday evening I went to the Roberts Hall Trivia Night. We were broken up into four teams, and they had four 10-question rounds, interrupted by four "challenge" rounds, where a member from each team had to go up and do some strange activity. For instance, what I ended up doing was a blind taste-test (given a sample, we had to identify what it was). I correctly identified maple syrup and black licorice (I figured that one out just from the smell, yuck!), but failed to identify mushy moist fruit cake or worcestershire sauce. Most of those tasted bad enough, but with a blind taste test I was anticipating much worse.

On Wednesday in between a couple of my classes I went to the market (Monash has an open-air market for all sorts of goods and wares every Wednesday and Thursday right outside the campus centre), and bought the "Dune" trilogy by Frank Herbert in a one-volume hardcover (but it's kinda old, the cover says that it's "being prepared for a Christmas 1984 release" as a major epic motion picture, hehe). It was marked $10, but the guy sold it to me for $9, woohoo (that translates into about $6-7 in the US)! What a steal! Of course, now I'm gonna be obsessed with reading this book instead of reading my textbooks, so it's probably a bad thing, but I'll manage somehow. I've been meaning to read "Dune" for a year or two anyway, mostly on Carl's recommendation. :-) Wednesday evening was the Roberts Pasta Night, with a free cooked meal, yay!

On Thursday after class I walked down to the Cole's at Pinewood (a good 20-minute-plus walk from Halls) for some groceries, as I was running out of food. I really didn't do much else yesterday, apart from finishing getting my photo albums ready for upload, along with updating some other pages on my website.

This morning as soon as my Fluid Dynamics class finished, I hopped on the bus and then the train, and headed for South Melbourne to make a quick buck. Here's the deal. Back on Tuesday while I was doing laundry, I saw a flyer in the Roberts Common Room that said, "Wanted: American males for voiceover work, starting week of 19-7-04 and continuing for ten days, call xxxx for details." So I called the number, and they told me to come down to their studio in South Melbourne midday Friday (today). I thought it was gonna be sort of a job interview-type thing, but actually what they were doing was having quite a few American guys come in and read the dialogue lines for different characters for a new X-Box game called "Heroes of the Pacific" about World War II that's due to be released in North America sometime around Christmas or February or so. They had me read a bunch of stuff, and recorded me for the lines for "Wingman Hank" (one of several "generic" wingmen in the game; most of Hank's lines were while he and his squadron were in a mid-air dogfight against the Japanese) and then for an air traffic controller (whose lines come in a completely different mission than Hank's lines), running things either from a tower on the ground or from a command center on an aircraft carrier, I'm not quite sure which. Since the majority of the lines were in a combat situation, I had to shout nearly every one of them, which took a few tries to get used to. But they seemed quite pleased with what I did, which was a relief. And I even got paid $50 for doing it! Both of those characters are definitely very minor characters, but I had a total of around 40-50 lines between two different missions in the game! I just may have to buy myself a copy of "Heroes of the Pacific" when I get back to the States, hehe. And maybe an X-Box too. :-)

Anyways, after the voiceover session, I went to an internet cafe over by Flinders Street Station, and spent two and a half hours uploading some brand new photo albums, so now there are links to five new albums on my Photos page, beneath the 'Australia' heading. And in addition to re-doing my Contact and Schedule pages to make them use the same template as the rest of my site, I also made a brand new Movies page, complete with two short (10-second and 20-second, respectively) movies available for viewing! So check all that out! All this is what I was spending several hours on this week instead of going out and meeting people. ;-)

I came back from the city to go to Overseas Christian Fellowship here at Monash, which is a group of all foreign students. Actually, I was the only non-Asian there, as most of the students seemed to be from Maylasia or China. I met some cool people there, so that was nice. They had some worship and supper as usual, but since it was "welcome night" for the new people like myself, they just had some games (and a skit, which was mostly in a language that was a very strange mix of Maylasian & English, so I could only pick out every fourth or fifth word, making it just a bit difficult to follow what was going on), so I'm gonna go back at least once more when they actually have a Bible study and see what that's like. I'm gonna try to also visit the other Christian groups here on campus to try to get a feel for them, and which ones I want to keep going to. But some of the kids from OCF tonight invited me to go along with them on a trip tomorrow morning to Mount Dandenong, an hour or so east of here, so that should be fun. It beats sitting in my room all day!

Posted by Jared at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2004

First Day of Class

On Saturday we had our last activity for Monash Orientation, a trip to a wildlife sanctuary in Healesville, about an hour north of Monash. IFSA paid for our $20 tickets, otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone, but I'm really glad I went. It was kinda cold (upper 40s), and raining off and on, but that was good because most of the animals were out and about; apparently in warmer weather many of the animals don't come out during the day. And apart from the obligatory kangaroos, koalas, wombats, emus, wallabies, deadly snakes and Tassie devils, we also got to see quite a few other animals, including lyrebirds (with elaborate tail plumage, and also one of the finest songbirds around, as they can imitate upwards of 15 other birds, plus car alarms and things of that nature, hehe), helmeted honeyeaters (a yellow bird about the size of a grosbeak back in the States), lorikeets (very colorful parrot-like birds), dingoes, platypusses (platypi?), Australian pelicans (pictured) and more. It was fun getting to see a different variety of animals than I'd seen at the wildlife sanctuary in Ballarat last weekend.

I didn't do much else Saturday after I got back, other than working on my photo stuff. You'll notice some of the fruits of my labor in my last few posts, going back through the July 4th post, as Josh kindly helped me figure out how to use this program called Ecto (which I've been using for awhile to write my posts) to also upload a few single pictures to spice up my posts a little bit. Each of them is linked to a larger version of the photo too. I'm still unable to post entire photo albums from on campus here at Monash at this point, but I'll try to get some albums ready to go, and then head down to an internet cafe some day in the next week or two and put them online. I'll probably even have a couple of short videos available for download too! No promises, but I'll try to work on getting those ready to go on the net as well.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. Around midday I called Mike for a bit while he was at his Saturday night shift working at the radio station. After that I went exploring around the campus to find out what buildings all my classes were in. All the buildings were locked though, so I wasn't able to scope out where the rooms were. What's bizarre about classes here at Monash is that they meet at a different time, room and sometimes even a completely different building, depending on what day of the week it is. That's a very noticeable change from back home, where each class meets at the same time and same place every session. Just as an example of how different things are down here, my Fluid Dynamics class changes buildings that it meets in on Thursdays in the second half of the semester. Very bizarre, and a bit dodgy if you ask me, but I'll get used to it. Then in the evening was the Roberts Hall Welcome/Welcome Back BBQ. Even though it was dark and about 45 degrees they still had it outside, and they even had ice cream. Nothing beats free food!

Today was my first day of class in the second of my three consecutive "spring" semesters. It was pretty much the normal first day stuff, just going over the syllabus and stuff. I had two classes today, then I have none tomorrow, but four on Wednesday, two on Thursday and one on Friday. After a couple of weeks each class (except Australian Landscape) will also have a weekly 2-hour tutorial or lab, I have one each on Monday, Wednesday & Thursday, which will fill up my schedule a bit more. Today after my Large-Scale Weather & Climate class I signed up to join MWACS, the Monash Weather And Climate Society. I know, it sounds kinda nerdy, and it cost $5, but I'm excited to get the chance to meet some people with similar interests. And I'm starting to meet a few other people from my res hall too, so that's nice. Some are from Australia, but some are also from places like Japan, Maylasia and Singapore. Did I mention that this is an incredibly culturally diverse school? Anyway, one of the Australians I've met (Andy), was explaining to me the rules of cricket today, and it actually sounds like a reasonable game. He's also trying to convince me to barrack for the Geelong Cats of the AFL ("footy," Australian Football League), instead of other area clubs that are doing well this year, like the Melbourne Demons or St Kilda Saints. (Since I'm only here for a semester I'm wanting to pick a team that's doing well this year and is also from the Melbourne area, which leaves those three as my options.) There are several students here in Roberts Hall that barrack for Geelong (pronounced juh-LONG), so I'm probably gonna end up choosing them (the Demons are still in the running though too). Some of them are planning on heading over to Geelong (a southwestern suburb of Melbourne) in a couple weekends for the big match against league-leader St Kilda, and I'm hoping to make it to that too. Footy really is an awesome game, and I'm looking forward to learning how to play it eventually down here too, in addition to going to a few games! And it's cheap too, tickets to most games cost only about $15.

Other than that I haven't been up to too much. But I found a couple interesting articles today that I'd like to pass along. First, from The Australian comes an op-ed that reminds people who are critical of Bush's foreign policy decisions (some of which admittedly haven't been exactly stellar), that President Clinton's foreign policy was absolutely atrocious (eg, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, North Korea, Al-Qaeda, etc). In other news, don't go to Bucharest, Romania if you need testicular surgery. You might lose some other body part when the doctor undergoes a "fit of madness." And it appears that the Terminator is borrowing a page from the SNL skits about him, calling the Democrats in the California legislature that are obstructing the passage of a budget bill "girly men." Go Arnold! I admire politicians (like "The Terminator" and "The Body") who aren't afraid to speak their minds, who are willing to risk offending a few people who are way too uptight anyway.

Posted by Jared at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2004

Marvelous Melbourne

Monash Abroad Orientation is finally over, and thanks goodness too, because I was starting to get a bit of information overload. At least they had a wonderful free pancake brekkie for us before they had a bunch of people talk at us for a few hours. But on Tuesday evening a few of us (Sharon, Caroline, Meghan, Vanessa & Krista) made our first trip into the city (it's about a 10-min bus ride, followed by a 30-min train ride to go from Monash to the city center). Melbourne sure is a marvelous city! It's a very pretty city, and there's so much to do and see. There are so many choices of things to eat too! A short walk from the Flinders Steet rail station there are tons of eateries, including everything from Subway and McDonald's to Indonesian, Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine, plus so much more! So we just wandered around for awhile, poking our heads into shops here and there, before eventually making our way to Big W (the Australian Wal-Mart) to get some stuff (I got some TimTams, hehe). I'm gonna love getting myself familiarized with the Melbourne city center.

Wednesday was registration, and it took a good four hours for me, blah. Of course, part of that was because I suddenly decided to change three of my classes. I had been registered for Contemporary Australia, Australia & its Regions, Friends & Phobias: Australia, the USA, Europe & Asia at War, and Experiencing the Australian Landscape. I kept the Landscape class, but I chucked the other three (even though I wanted to take them), in favor of Fluid Dynamics, Large-Scale Weather & Climate, and Climate Change & Variability. I think I'll have a more enjoyable schedule by immersing myself in atmospheric science classes. Then in the evening we all went to the Monash Abroad Welcome Dinner at this fancy restaurant ZINC, located at Federation Square downtown. Tickets to get in were $30, but IFSA paid for it, yay! The food was very good too, although not nearly as much as I was expecting, and there wasn't any dessert either. I wouldn't pay $30 to go back again, but oh well, it was still fun. After that we went out and explored Melbourne a bit more, including finding this cool jazz club called the Purple Emerald that we were at for a little bit.

By Thursday we were all tired of always spending so much money eating out all the time, so a few of us went down to Cole's to pick up some groceries. Food's fairly expensive down here, but at least groceries are cheaper than restaurant food. I guess I'll be living on sandwiches and cereal for awhile, but that's perfectly fine with me. And I did manage to nab some EasyMac too, it's such a new product to Australia that when I asked one of the clerks if they had any, she gave me this confused look and asked what EasyMac was. How can Australians, especially poor college students, have been living without EasyMac until now? Ditto goes for Miracle Whip, it's also pretty new to Australia and kinda hard to find. And I tried some Vegemite again at the snack session for new students here in Roberts Hall, and it wasn't as bad as the first time I tried it. If it's spread really lightly on toast it's actually kinda okay. It's still really salty though.

This afternoon a few of us decided to head in to Melbourne to walk around and shop a bit. We wandered all around the city center, mostly on Swanston, Flinders & Bourke Streets, and the six of us ate supper at this cool sushi bar. I still didn't order sushi (I got ketsu don instead), but Vanessa gave me one of hers so that I could finally taste sushi to find out if I liked it, since I'd never had sushi before at all. It actually wasn't too bad, I might have some again another time. After that we made our way over to the Crown Entertainment Complex on the Yarra River, and it's super cool. Outside there are these huge torch/cauldron things that sporadically shoot up these ginormous balls of flame, and it gets surprisingly warm a long way away. Inside it's a big mall, casino and cinema complex. Vanessa, Meghan & I went to see "King Arthur," which was a really good movie (Sharon, Caroline & Krista decided to wander around Crown and go to the casino for a little while instead). The plot was a bit predictable, but isn't every movie nowadays? It was still cool seeing all these battles with the Romans, Celts, Saxons and Arthur's knights, set back somewhere around 400-500 AD. Movie tickets at the Crown are $14.50 though (around USD$10-11), so we won't be going there for movies again, even though it was the nicest theater I've ever been in.

I got lots of cool night photos of Melbourne tonight down around the Yarra River, and I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and go to an internet cafe sometime so that I can upload some photos to my website, as it's looking doubtful that I'll be able to do so from Monash, argh. And I already ran out of my internet quota (I've hardly been doing anything so I don't know how I maxed it out), so I had to purchase more tonight. I really really hate the way Monash does internet services. So far I'd say that that's my biggest gripe about Australia. It's making me love Gustavus internet (or even dial-up with Chibardun back home) all the more. But on the plus side I finally managed to get MSN Messenger and iChat working a couple days ago. Slowly but surely I'm getting more and more stuff running. I think I'll get over some of my internet depression by having a couple TimTams now. :-)

By the way, thanks for the comments you've all left on my blog, and the emails I've gotten. I really do appreciate hearing from you all.

Posted by Jared at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2004

G'Day from Down Under!

At last! I finally have internet again! I don't have everything working yet, like email (Apple Mail specifically, I can still check GAC via webmail, which is kinda crappy because my address book is in Apple Mail only), iChat (but AIM is working, which makes it even stranger), and MSN Messenger will not work at all for me while I'm down here, unless MSN comes out with a Mac version of it that supports getting out from behind a firewall. Grr. So if you're on my MSN list and reading this, chances are I won't be able to chat with you for the next six months unless you sign up for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). So do me a favor and sign up with AIM, and then let me know your screen name. :-) Anyways, back in the days before I had internet access down here, I wrote up a couple posts. Here they are in order, starting with the oldest. This'll be a bit long. :-) Hopefully sometime in the next few days I'll get around to adding a few pictures to this post to spice it up a bit (and changing the top four pics to an Aussie theme!).

Friday, July 9, 9:30am

Well, I’'m finally in Australia! Oz is such an awesome place! We’'ve been at orientation ever since we arrived on Tuesday morning, and right now it’s Friday morning and we’'re heading to our farm stays. And believe it or not, but this is the first time since Sunday afternoon in the Los Angeles airport that I’'ve even opened my laptop. I think this is one of the longest stretches I’'ve gone in quite some time without being on a computer, hehe.

Back on Sunday morning I had to wake up around 5am CDT to finish getting ready, so that we could leave by 7 and get to the airport by 9 for my 11am CDT flight. I called Mike at the radio station on Sunday right before we drove out, and he put on “"Down Under"” by Men at Work and “"Pianoman"” by Billy Joel with a little send-off on the air for me. Thanks Mike, you rock the Fox! So then we got to the airport and it was time to say goodbye to my parents for five months, until they fly down to Sydney in November.

The Northwest flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles was jam-packed, but otherwise fairly uneventful. After we landed in LA just before 1pm PDT and I managed to find the international terminal, I had the opportunity to just sit there for the next ten hours! Woohoo, that’s just what I’ve always wanted to do! But it was alright, I read a book for awhile and found a couple people to talk to that were also flying to Melbourne.

By the time 11:30pm PDT (LA time) rolled around, we were ready to begin our wonderfully long 15 hour flight to Melbourne. The flight was very long, but thank goodness Qantas is like the best airline ever. It was very comfortable, the food was excellent, and each seat had its own video screen! They even had free drinks! With dinner I ordered my first-ever legal drink, a Foster’s, appropriately enough. Too bad most Aussies dislike Foster’s (and rightfully so). It wasn’t that bad, but I’'m definitely planning on trying a Victoria Bitter (called “VB” for short, which the Qantas people said was way better) before I have another go at a Foster’s. All in all it wasn’t too bad of a flight, but we were all very glad to get off the plane a tad before 8am on Tuesday, July 6th. But let me just say that baggage claim is the bane of my existence. In the midst of spending over an hour going through customs and quarantine, I found out that Qantas had sent one of my bags to Brisbane for some reason (my other bad made it to Melbourne though). Oh well. They ended up tracking it down and delivering it to our orientation site that night though, so it wasn’t a huge inconvenience.

Once we all got through customs and quarantine (the Aussies are extremely concerned about foreign seeds, soils or bugs getting in), we were whisked off to IFSA-Butler orientation, at the Xavier College campus just outside of Buxton, a small town a couple hours northeast of Melbourne. The countryside scenery was absolutely beautiful the whole way up there. But as for Xavier, saying that it’s a college campus might give the wrong impression, because it’s actually an outdoor education center. It had a very “summer camp” feel, with a big centrall lounge/dining hall, and then three or four buildings for dorms, that was it. But it was in the middle of a forest of giant eukalypts, and very near Cathedral Range State Park. Tuesday and Wednesday were both cold, rainy and just plain miserable outside, but fortunately Thursday was bright and sunny, and in the upper 50s. Not bad for the dead of winter.

Tuesday they didn’t have much scheduled for us, which was good because we were all exhausted and wiped out from jet lag. I think I was the last one up, and that was only because I forced myself to stay awake until 9pm. Most people were having lots of trouble even making it to 7 or 8. We all got our free cell phones in the afternoon though, but the downside is that there wasn’t any reception way out there in the woods. On Wednesday afternoon we took a hike for a couple hours in the Cathedral Range State Park, even though it was raining pretty good for most of the hike. But on that hike we got to see a bunch of wildlife, including one wallaby, three kangaroos, a wombat and a koala! It was so cool! We all drank from a river along the way too, and it was the coldest, cleanest water I’ve ever tasted! On Wednesday evening we had an Aboriginal culture session, including a demonstration on the didgeridoo. It was all incredibly interesting, but we were all still horribly jet lagged. I bought an authentic boomerang from him too, one that’ll actually return! I gave up trying to stay awake by 10pm. Thursday morning we went rock climbing out in Cathedral Range! Let me just say that I have a lot more respect for rock climbers now after having done it. I was having lots of trouble on my first go, the rocks were cold and wet and I couldn’t find any grips. I wanted to give up probably three or four times, but they wouldn’t let me, and I actually made it all the way up to the top! My second go was on another section of the cliff, and that one went much more easily. I’m still all scraped up and sore from climbing though. Thursday night we had a big bush dance in the lounge for two-three hours, it was fun but extremely exhausting! Other than all that I’'ve spent quite a bit of time playing ping pong with the other study abroad students, it’s been a fun time.

And that brings us to this morning. We just left Buxton a bit ago, and we’re on our way to our farm stays. All eight of us Monash students are gonna be at the same farm, but the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University (both in Perth) students will be split up amongst the other few farms. I’'m almost out of battery power here on the bus, so I’'ll write more later!

Friday, July 9, 8:30pm

All eight of us from the Monash crew arrived at our farm today. We’re staying at the Holcombe Country Retreat near Glenlyon, a small town about an hour northwest of Melbourne. It is such a nice place, and our hosts John and Annette are treating us so well! We’re definitely getting spoiled by all the wonderful food, warm beds and space to roam (not to mention a tennis court!). This afternoon John drove us all around the area. We went to the nearby scenic town of Daylesford to visit its Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens, and stopped by some mineral springs in neighbouring Hepburn Springs. On the way back he drove us to Mt Franklin, an extinct volcano (one of a group called the “Seven Bald Volcanoes” around here), for a bit of a scenic overlook of the area. But it’s really cool to be able to get to know the other Monash kids finally, instead of being with a huge group of students going to universities in Perth as well. The eight of us are from all over; CJ from St Thomas (Minnesota), JR from Boston (unfortunately JR is confirming all the stereotypes about Americans - loud, rude, obnoxious, not watching his mouth - ARGH!), Sharon from Texas, Meghan from Kansas City, Caroline from Chicago, Krista from Oregon and Vanessa from Alaska. We’re all super-excited to get to Monash on Sunday and experience Melbourne, but we’re also very glad to have the chance to be at the farm right now and relax for a couple days. Tomorrow we’ll be going to a wildlife park somewhere, and who knows what else John and Annette have planned for us.

Monday, July 12, 11:45pm

Back on Saturday John and Annette took the eight of us to Ballarat, a city of 90,000 about an hour from their farm (and an hour northwest of Melbourne), and we went to the Ballarat Wildlife Park. It was pretty cool, we got to see all sorts of kangaroos, plus a few emus, koalas, Tasmanian devils, and a good deal of dangerous Aussie reptiles. After that we had a picnic lunch (the temp was only about 50-55 F, mind you) next to Lake Wendouree, across from the Ballarat Botanical Gardens. We poked our heads in some shops on the way back (everything is more expensive in Australia than in the States, some things much more). Back at the farm on Saturday night we watched some footy on the telly. I'm really coming to like AFL (Aussie rules football). It's a fast-paced game, much more so than American football, the scores are higher, and best of all, there are no TV timeouts for commercials! The TV still crams in a 30-second commercial after a score, but action on the field doesn't stop for television, which I think is bloody marvelous. The NFL could learn a thing or two from the AFL. And John and Annette kept asking us all if we thought "Georgy" was gonna win in November or not (almost all Aussies we meet are constantly asking that). Even though they don't care for Bush a great deal, they're still glad to have a strong alliance with America, because they're very nervous about Indonesia possibly trying something against Australia in the coming years. It's very interesting to hear people's takes on world affairs from a different part of the globe, we're definitely getting a different perspective.

Sunday morning it was time to leave the farm. None of us wanted to leave, it was such a relaxing time, and John & Annette showed us such amazingly wonderful hospitality (not to mention all the super-delicious food we could've ever wanted!). But we met up with the other Butlerites in Kyneton (John and Annette's farm was about halfway between there and Daylesford, since Glenlyon probably is too small to show up on most maps of Australia), and rode the bus to the Melbourne airport (so that the other Butlerites could fly to their unis over in Perth), and then the eight of us rode on to Monash University. At the airport Jodee gave me all of the stuff Karolina left for me (thanks Karolina!!), so I had quite a time trying to carry everything to my dorm. I'm living in Roberts Hall, which has a fairly similar setup to Wahlstrom Hall back at Gustavus (ants, 2-3 single rooms and a bathroom every half flight, arranged in stairwells, but only one common area for the entire dorm, way in another wing of the building), only I'd give Wahlstrom a slight nod over Roberts in terms of nice-ness. How's that for a ringing endorsement? :-) It's actually not that bad, I just need to find where a bunch of stuff is here first. After getting stuff unpacked, and getting invited by a couple of the RA's to watch "All Saints" (the Aussie version of "ER"), I spent a good deal of time last night trying to get my computer connected to the internet (with mixed results, as mentioned way at the beginning of this really long post, back before Friday's entries).

Today was the first day of Monash Abroad orientation. Lots of info/materials, a campus tour, and a free lunch, but it was all marred by having to stand in line for THREE HOURS to get our pictures taken for our Monash student ID's. Grr. But this afternoon I also got a back account set up at Commonwealth Bank, so that I don't have to carry around traveler's cheques anymore, and so that I can pull money out of an ATM down here for no fee, yay! After all that business, Sharon, Vanessa, Krista and I all went down to K-Mart to get some essentials (like laundry soap, etc). K-Mart here is a bit better than in the States. (For a fun fact, Target is a very upscale store and very expensive down here, as we found out a couple days ago.)

The Monash campus is extremely huge, especially having come from Gustavus. We've met some students that have been here for a semester or year (or more) and still don't know where everything is. Monash is the largest university in Australia, with 22,000 students on this campus (in Clayton), and over 40,000 overall in three countries (eight campuses in Australia, plus others in South Africa and Malaysia). Tomorrow will be more orientation, and hopefully in the afternoon/evening we'll venture into the city for the first time!

Photo albums from orientation and the farm stay will hopefully be upcoming in the next few days if I get a chance, as will an email to a bunch of people with my cell phone and room phone numbers, plus my mailing address. If you want to make sure you get added to my email list, just drop me a line to my GAC email. I'm still trying to get settled, but it's definitely sinking in now that I'm in a very different place! I'm in Australia!! Woohoo!

Posted by Jared at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2004

Australia-bound!

Well, this is my very last post that I will make from the United States of America in 2004! My bags are packed, and I'm ready to head to the airport in the morning! Here's a brief summary of what I've been up to during my last few days here in Wisconsin.

Wednesday was pretty much spent sorting through all the stuff I'd moved home from college, and putting into boxes down in the basement what I knew for sure that I wasn't gonna try to take with me to Australia. Thursday I actually started the packing process a little bit. Thursday night my parents friends Bruce and Joan and their daughter and son-in-law Alison and James stayed overnight at our house. Bruce & Joan have been pastoring a small church in western Minnesota for four years, but will be returning to their home a couple hours east of Melbourne in August. James is a youth pastor, and he and Alison live in a suburb of Melbourne, just a half hour from Monash University! So I'll be seeing quite a bit of them while I'm down there, going to church with them and the like. It'll be so nice having someone down there that I'll know, and that is willing to show me around down there, and perhaps even willing to take me to a few Aussie rules football matches!

Friday the 2nd I was busily preparing for several of my friends that were coming over. Mike came at around 2pm, and we bummed around a bit before people got here; I even taught him how to drive a stick finally! On our way back through Cumberland from his house, we happened to see Dave, Megan and their friend Dan walking down Main Street, so we pulled over and surprised them a bit. :-) Then we all walked down to the grocery store to get some stuff, and on the way back we saw Brendan & John stopped at the four corners. What luck! So we all got to my house around 5:30 or 6, and Jolene showed up by 6:30 I think. We wanted to go swimming, but the swimming raft needed some pretty major repairs before we could put it out on the lake, oh well. At least we got it out there by 8 so that some of us could go for a swim. Meanwhile Dan caught a very nice 26.5" northern, and I think they caught another northern a bit closer to dark (they grilled the fish for supper, Dave wasn't gonna eat anything if they didn't catch anything, hehe). Andrew and Amanda showed up too, right before our late supper of grilled brats from Louie's. Mmmmmm...

Dave, Megan, Dan, Patrick and Lew all left a bit after supper for Dave and Megan's cabin up by Siren, and Andrew and Amanda left a bit later. That left Mike, John, Jolene, Brendan and myself to go down, make a fire, tell stories and just hang out for quite awhile. It was a blast. Mike and my GAC physics friends seemed to get along really well, which made me glad. He and Jolene seemed to get along especially well too. ;-) Brendan went to bed around 3, and Kevin finally showed up around 3:30. He could only stay for 15-20 minutes though. :-( Mike and I were wishing he would've been here for most of the night, but at least he showed up, I guess that's what counts. But the remaining four of us were up till after 4:30, hehe. Definitely a night well spent. :-) We all rolled out of bed around 10 this morning for a late breakfast/brunch, and then everyone left between 1 and 2. That's when it really started setting in that I was about to leave for six months, when people started leaving, starting with Mike... I'm gonna miss everyone so much, but I know I'll be able to see everyone again before I know it.

After everyone left I ran over to the bank in Rice Lake to get some traveler's checks, and then it was time to resume packing (sigh). That's basically what I was doing most of the afternoon and evening, apart from an hour tonight when Kevin actually stopped by! He gave me one of his senior pictures, and I burned him a couple CD's. We played a few games of pool while we were waiting for the CD's; he won the first two, but then I won the last two! Kevin's extremely competitive, so losing to me even once was a bit hard for him to take, hehe. But I finally beat Kevin in pool! Woohoo!

At some point I'll get around to posting some photos from this weekend's activities, but I don't have time to do so before I leave. My flight leaves Minneapolis at 11:22am, so we have to be driving out of here by 7, in order to get to the airport by 9. I won't get a chance to post to my blog again until I'm in Australia, most likely not until after we're done with our week of IFSA orientation and finally arrive at Monash for another week of orientation there on July 11. I'll try to email everyone once I get internet access again with my address, dorm phone number and cell phone number. If you'd like to be included on my emails from Australia list, just drop me a line to my GAC email account, I'll check that one frequently the entire time I'm in Australia. Well I better get some sleep now. I hope I didn't forget anything in my bags. I'm gonna miss you all! See you in 2005!

Posted by Jared at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)