I drove home to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, and brought with me a carload of stuff to leave there until Christmas/New Years. Then I drove back to PA after Thanksgiving, to pack up the rest of my stuff and tie up some loose ends on campus and whatnot. I got back to State College on Monday evening, and then on Wednesday morning I drove out again, so I was only back for about 40 hours.

Even with taking one carload of stuff to Wisconsin, I still had to leave some things behind last week. I put everything I possibly could into my car, but some things just wouldn't fit (bedding, pillows, laundry basket Vikings waste basket, tower fan, cooler, liquor, kitchen stuff/food, skis, winter boots, work boots, PSU lawn chairs). It really was packed to the gills, and weighed down pretty heavily. I honestly thought I'd be able to fit everything in, otherwise I would've taken some stuff to Goodwill. Oh well.

I packed some boxes in my backseat Tuesday night during a very brief pause in the heavy rain, but unfortunately I forgot to close the rear passenger door on my last trip of the night. I didn't discover that little detail until morning, and it'd been raining steadily all night and morning. The boxes and upholstery on my passenger side were soaked. ARGH. I had no choice but to pack more stuff in and soldier on, however, as there was no time to take stuff out and dry it.

By the time I had everything loaded into my car, the steady rain had switched to heavy wet snow, so at least I bid farewell to a snow-coated Pennsylvania, making it even prettier than usual (road conditions improved markedly once I reached I-80). So on Wednesday I drove about 10 hours (with only two stops) to the western suburbs of Chicago, where I spent the night with my friends Ryan & Sarah. On Thursday I drove another 10-11 hours from Chicago to a motel in Kearney, Nebraska (where I was introduced to the fast-food joys of Runza on Ryan's recommendation; apparently Runzas are a Nebraskan delicacy, haha). On Friday I drove the remaining 6 hours or so to Gunbarrel (northeast Colorado is even more desolate than southern Nebraska).

I went on a big shopping trip to Target and Safeway yesterday to replace all the stuff that I had to leave behind and stock my pantry. My wallet shed several tears, I think. I don't have any bedroom furniture yet though, so I haven't been able to unpack very much yet. I'm hoping to acquire some this week -- I can hardly wait to finish unpacking and make my room feel like home.

In the meantime, I figured the best way to feel at home was to cook something: some tex-mex chicken hotdish from my Minnesota cookbook. It was a good way to learn where everything is in the kitchen (and to discover in the middle of prep that there wasn't a can opener!). That just came out of the oven, so I'm going to dig in!

First day of work at NCAR tomorrow! I'll post some photos of the house in a post later this week, hopefully.

I've got some time on my hands while at this conference, so I can catch up on a bit of bloggish activity.

I haven't been to very many concerts before (I'm not including high school or college band/orchestra/choir concerts, I've been to plenty of those). But in the last month-plus I've added two more to the list. Both were epic: Muse and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Here's a list of the concerts I've been to:

1. Weird Al Yankovic, Aug 2003, Minnesota State Fair. Yep. Weird Al. At least I'll always have a fairly unique answer to the icebreaker question of "what was the first concert you attended?" He put on a good show though, and changed costumes between nearly every song. Several of my roommates at Gustavus were huge Weird Al fans, and I went with them.

2. Minnesota Orchestra, Jan 2005, Orchestra Hall (Minneapolis). I'll count this, because I had to travel and pay to attend. This concert was amazing, especially because they ended with Ottorino Respighi's "The Pines of Rome," which is one of my favorites ("The Pines of the Appian Way," in particular). It was so beautiful, I think I got a couple tears in my eyes.

3. Phil Keaggy, Sep 2007, State Theatre (State College). My church co-sponsored this concert, and I decided to buy a ticket even though I hadn't ever heard him play. He opened with "Shades of Green," and my jaw dropped. Here's a video of him performing it at another concert (he had some different improvisation at our concert, but you get the idea):

Phil Keaggy is without a doubt the best guitarist I've ever heard, and it's going to take a unique and tremendous talent to top him.

4. Guster, Oct 2007, Bryce Jordan Center (Penn State). A small concert, but still fun. They have such a "California" sound, I was surprised to learn they were from Massachusetts.

5. Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman, Feb 2008, Bryce Jordan Center (Penn State). It was really cool to hear a few thousand people praising God together! This was for Tomlin's "How Great Is Our God" tour.

6. Eric Hutchinson, Nov 2009, Knitting Factory (Spokane, WA). My cousin Jonathan and his girlfriend (now wife) Lindsey asked if I wanted to go with them to a concert while I was visiting them. I hadn't heard of Eric Hutchinson before they asked, but he's become one of my favorite musicians. Click here to see the music video for "OK, It's Alright With Me." (embedding disabled)

7. MUSE, Oct 2010, Value City Arena (Columbus, OH). I went to visit Alex last month for a couple days, and we took a drive down from Ann Arbor to Columbus [shudder] to see Muse in concert. Alex had already seen the show once before in Detroit back in March , but he loves Muse so much he was keen to go again with me down in Columbus. His one word to describe the concert in Detroit: "EPIC!" Here's video from the beginning of the concert (not ours, from another place on tour):

Their show in Columbus didn't disappoint! I'd have to agree with the adjective "epic." We had floor tickets, and managed to wend our way pretty close to the center, about five rows from the front. There were three towers set up on stage, the bottom half of which was a platform which would go up and down for various songs, so that sometimes the band was playing well above you, sometimes on the actual stage. Each tower also had videoboards all around, which showed tons of different things throughout the show. Combined with the tremendous laser light show, there were lots of visual stimuli. During one of their last songs, they dropped some gigantic beach balls from the upper deck that were painted like eye balls; after a time, they'd explode, showering giant confetti/tissue paper everywhere. And of course the music was great. It was a great, great show! Very worth seeing live! Here are some photos from Alex's camera (mine was too big to take in):

8. Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Nov 2010, Bryce Jordan Center (Penn State). I've long heard that TSO puts on a great live show, so I knew I should take advantage of them coming to State College. And just like with Muse, the hype didn't disappoint. I went with Walter and some PSCG friends (a bunch of other meteo folks went as well, but were in another section). I don't have any photos from the concert (again, I didn't bring my camera because it's too big to bother trying to get in), but I'll try to describe a bit of what it was like. As a start, three of the musicians were lowered on platforms from the ceiling to the stage during the second song, jamming out during the whole descent. There were a couple of catwalks on either side of the stage, which for a couple songs in the second half lowered down so that musicians could hop on and go play halfway out into (and above!) the audience. Lots of head-banging from the guitarists, bassists, violinists and dancers. Musicians running from one end of the stage to the other while continuing to play, and even going out into the aisles in the crowd. Tremendous light and laser show. Fireballs (more fire than I've ever seen indoors before). Fireworks (and I don't mean firecrackers, I mean legit fireworks). Like Muse, it was epic and over the top, and a fantastic live show. Here's a sample video from a previous TSO concert, to give a flavor of it:

And the show was 2 hours, 40 minutes long -- with no intermission to speak of! They started off playing the songs from their Christmas Eve and Other Stories album, and when they got to the last song from that, I noticed that some people got up to leave (presumably to beat the traffic, but what traffic is there to beat at night in State College??). When they got done with that song, they came back out and said they hoped we enjoyed the first half of their show, and that they had a lot more for us. They sure gave us our money's worth! Moral of the story: never ever, EVER leave a concert early. Those people who left missed at least half of the show!

[end list]

I'd have to say my two favorite concerts were the last two, Muse and TSO, because of the scale and the spectacle of each. And they were only about 3.5 weeks apart! Anyway, those two concerts are definitely two of the highlights of my last couple months before my move to Colorado!

I don't have much time left in State College now. I've wrapped up just about all of my work here at PSU. I had a PhD committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon (which went fairly well overall) to make sure everyone's on the same page before I go to Colorado. Then I spent much of Thursday and Friday packing up both my offices in the Water Tunnel Bldg and in Walker Bldg, and backing up computer files that I want to keep. Packing up everything would make me a bit sadder if I wasn't so excited to be moving on to NCAR in Boulder.

I'm down to just a small number of days left here in State College. I'm in Orlando this coming week at the CBD Conference, but I'll be around next weekend. Next week I'll be in MN/WI for Thanksgiving, and then after coming back to PA for a couple days after Thanksgiving, I'll be hitting the road to Colorado, arriving in my new digs in Gunbarrel probably on 3 or 4 Dec. I have a lot of traveling in the next three weeks to be sure!

I got home to discover that someone Tracy & Adrienne had gone on a serious re-decorating binge in the house and my bedroom in particular. Somebody else Isaac had an extra spare key made just so they could do all this:

• Streamers on the front door
• Hannah Montana background on my MacBook (no, I didn't have it password-protected)
• Hannah Montana piñata hanging upstairs
• Fuzzy cursive letters spelling out my name on my bedroom door
• Pink bed sheets
• Hannah Montana fake-silk pillowcases
• Stuffed animals on the bed
• Justin Bieber magazine and Hannah Montana diary
• Numerous posters of Justin Bieber, Twilight, or other "teen heartthrobs" who I didn't recognize
• Streamers and balloons everywhere
• Trip wires in my closet and dresser that started playing songs (from greeting cards) when I opened them the first time
• A scavenger hunt of cards hidden all around the house (including in the fridge), but which I found in a haphazard order over the span of three days (because I found the "closet music," which I thought was the end), purportedly leading to a gift of a Colorado guidebook (which I accidentally found while looking for something else two days later)

Here are some photos of the "re-decoration":

Even though this sort of thing has been done to me before (for my birthday and April Fools), I was lulled into a false sense of security by nothing happening last year. So that totally took me by surprise.

I went to dinner at Otto's with a few people (mmm, Blau Burger with Flying Squirrel Ale and Red Mo Ale...), and after dinner we made our way to Kildare's, the new Irish pub in town, where a few more people showed up. It was a really fun night! :-)

And yes, I remade my bed with my own sheets after I got a ride back from Kildare's. I was not about to sleep in those pink sheets, especially since they felt like sandpaper. I have more pride than that, haha.

Thank you to all of you who helped make my golden birthday a memorable and good one!

Thu 19 Aug

So what's the main draw of Monkey Mia? Dolphins! Being fed! For free! Just about every morning in the last 20-30 years, they've fed dolphins at the beach by the resort. Every morning there are between one and three feedings, and currently there are only five specific Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins that are fed, though many more often show up. Lots of people showed up too, but the dolphins don't always cooperate to give every person a good photo-op -- sometimes the dolphins get a bit aggressive and block the progress of the guides as they walk down the line. Anyway, each dolphin gets fed a few fish by volunteers picked out of the crowd, but those fish comprise only a small percentage of their daily diet.

Before we left Monkey Mia I made sure to go for a swim in the Indian Ocean too! From the photos it may look like it was warm, but it really wasn't. 60 degrees, maybe? Now the Arctic Ocean is the only ocean in the world in which I haven't gone for a swim (Gulf of Mexico/Atlantic in 1994, Pacific in 2004, Southern in 2004, Indian in 2010), though I don't anticipate I'll be checking that one off my list. Ever.

We left Monkey Mia after the dolphin feeding, and took our time seeing a bunch of neat places along Shark Bay Road in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area.

A bit further down the road was Shell Beach. It may look like it's a white sand beach, but it's actually made up of millions upon millions of tiny white shells.

Our next stop was Hamelin Pool, which has a shell block quarry, but is primarily known for being one of the only places on earth that's home to stromatolites. Evolutionists claim they're some of the oldest organisms on earth, and hypothesize that our atmosphere's oxygen originated from them. Whether or not that's true, stromatolites are still pretty interesting, even though they can't exactly be described as dynamic.

On our way back down the North West Coastal Highway we had to stop for petrol at the Billabong Roadhouse, because, after all, there wasn't another road for 140 km, much less another petrol station. In rural Australia there are occasionally roadhouses on the major roads, which consist of some petrol pumps, a restaurant, and maybe a few rooms.

We made it back to the town of Kalbarri, where we stayed at another hostel, just in time to catch the sunset at Red Bluff Beach.

Fri 20 Aug

My final full day in Australia was a good one. First we drove up to Meanarra Hill, overlooking Kalbarri National Park and the town of Kalbarri.

Then we went back to the city, and after I stocked up on Tim Tams for the flight home, we checked out Chinamans Point in Kalbarri, at the mouth of the Murchison River:

Here's Red Bluff Beach. And when we were atop Red Bluff, we started seeing several humpback whales well off the coast:

From there we continued south along the Kalbarri Coastal Cliffs, to places like Pot Alley, Shellhouse, Grandstand, Island Rock, and Natural Bridge. I thought Pot Alley was the most spectacular place I visited on this entire trip to Australia. I could've spent all day hanging out there!

So after having seen 20-some whales from Kalbarri Cliffs, it was pushing 1:30pm, and we needed to get moving south. One of our few, quick stops was at the Hutt Lagoon, which is a pink lake. It's pink because it has very high concentrations of beta carotene, the same thing that makes carrots orange. So very odd.

We had to keep pressing hard in order to make it to Nambung National Park, to see The Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are a collection of thousands of stone pillars standing in a small part of a desert. They're very strange, but very cool. I had hoped that we could make it there at least a half hour before sunset, but we only made it pretty much right at sunset.

After it got too dark to see anything at The Pinnacles, we still had close to a 3-hour drive to get back to Perth. Eventually Bob remarked, "Oh hey, I see other cars now. We must be in Perth." So true. Anyway, I dropped off Bob at his apartment in Subiaco, said farewell, and then drove to the airport to drop off the rental car. As I was getting out, I noticed Bob's camera between the driver's seat and driver's door. Without a phone to call Bob and without enough time to drive back to Subiaco anyway, I decided to bring the camera with me and mail it back once I returned to State College. I suppose I could've left it with a lost & found desk at Hertz or something, but I didn't think of that until after I got on the plane.

Sat 21 Aug

I had to go through security and collect my luggage three times on the trip, because my itinerary, though it was all booked with Qantas, had me on three different airlines: JetStar from Perth to Melbourne (1am), Qantas from Melbourne to L.A. (10am), American from L.A. to Washington Dulles (9am). Annoying.

Also annoying: being stuck in a middle seat on the trans-Pacific flight yet again, and only being able to get maybe an hour of sleep total.

Also annoying: LAX. Worst. Airport. Ever. No signs in way-overcrowded check-in areas. Broken escalators. Ridiculously long security lines. Only 10 gates and 1 restaurant per terminal. No, I don't feel like going to Chili's at 8:30am, even if it's the only option.

Relatively pleasant: the gate agent at LAX giving me an exit row seat, after seeing I started my day in Perth. The flight attendant was also quite nice when she found out I'd started in Perth, and asked if she could fill up my water bottle and whatnot. The guy next to me had started the day in Darwin, returning from a business trip, so we were both in the same boat.

I met up with Tracy in LAX (she'd arrived from New Zealand), and we drove my car back up to State College after we landed at Dulles. I even stayed awake the whole time behind the wheel, despite completing a ridiculously stretch of travel with almost no sleep. Unfortunately I could only sleep for 5 hours that night when I got back to State College. Go figure. So from leaving Kalbarri around 8am until arriving in State College the "next" day at 11pm, I traveled for about 52 hours straight, with hardly any sleep!

I miss Australia already again. It was a great and memorable trip, with a ton of stuff fit in to just a few days. It'd be a challenge to keep up the same pace for another week or two though! I have no idea when I'll be back, but I would like to go back again someday.

Mon 16 Aug

Ali drove me to the Melbourne airport in the morning (opposite sides of the city, during morning peak hour) so that I could catch my flight to Perth. Even on domestic flights, Qantas is far superior to any U.S. airline. No bag fees, no fees for in-flight food/drinks, and they gave me an ice cream cone too! It's almost like they're glad to have customers. Imagine that.

When I landed in Perth at midday it was about ten degrees (F) warmer than in Melbourne, and it was actually sunny too. A very nice change. I took a couple city buses from the airport to the stop nearest Bob's apartment, where he met me. Bob is a friend of mine from Penn State who worked as a forecaster at AccuWeather for a few years, but moved to Australia in early July to take a job as a forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth. When I got there, he had only recently moved into his new apartment in the suburb of Subiaco (just a stone's throw from the Subiaco Oval, where Australian football's West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers play), and quite a few boxes of stuff that he shipped to Australia had just arrived, so I spent some time helping him unpack and get things set up.

We went out to eat that evening at a local pub for dinner, and we got two pints -- at a total of $19. Yikes. $10 pints? For $10 I can get two pitchers in State College! As Bob said, "I don't know how people can afford a night out at the bars in Perth." Beer was really pricey pretty much everywhere in W.A.

Tue 17 Aug

Bob had to work at 5:30am, so I had most of the day to myself. Mid-morning I took a couple of trains over to another suburb and then walked to Hertz to pick up a rental car (my friend James had gotten me another great discount!). From there I drove down to the coastal city of Fremantle. Residents of Freo will get very annoyed if you call Fremantle a suburb of Perth, because they view themselves as a separate city with a separate identity. Fremantle is a port city at the mouth of the Swan River, while Perth sits 20 km upriver. Anyway, Fremantle is quite a charming small city, with a vibrant business district on a pedestrian mall. I took some time walking around the city and then around one of the beaches and breakwaters.

On my way back up to Perth I checked out the suburb of Cottesloe, which Bob said had a nice beach.

Then I briefly explored the massive Kings Park, a 400-hectare park in Perth city. I only had time to drive to a couple of the overlooks in the park, but I could've easily spent a lot more time in there. It's great when cities put such a priority on big parks and green space.

Then I picked up Bob from work and we made our way to the Brand Hwy (Hwy 1) heading north to Geraldton, about 4 hours away. Between the northern suburbs of Perth and Geraldton, there's pretty much nothing (a recurring theme in rural Western Australia, lots of nothing!). We got a little lost temporarily while trying to find the Brand Hwy -- we didn't really study a map closely because we figured there was pretty much only one road north out of Perth -- but it was all good. We stayed at a hostel in Geraldton, just in time to get to the neighboring Thai restaurant for dinner right before it closed. Geraldton is basically the last outpost of civilization for a few hundred kilometers north on Hwy 1 (north of Geraldton it's called the North West Coastal Highway).

W.A. travel tip #1: Stay supplied with snacks and water. When entering Geraldton from the south, there's even a sign warning travelers of limited water north of the town, and that they should therefore stock up on supplies.

Wed 18 Aug

Bob & I didn't spend much time in Geraldton, hitting the road north again in the morning on our way to Kalbarri National Park, a couple hours away.

W.A. travel tip #2: Road trains really aren't that scary. In Bill Bryson's book, In a Sunburned Country he gave harrowing accounts of road trains, making them seem like these monstrous semis that take up most of the road. In reality they're pretty tame, just two semi trailers hitched together, for the most part. And they stay in their lane too. They're kind of long if you want to pass them, but overall they're not nearly as intimidating as I thought they'd be. The only thing on the road we had to pull over for was at the turnoff for Kalbarri, when a car motioned for us to get over to the shoulder; behind it was a massive mining dump truck being hauled on a trailer. It was HUGE.

As we entered Kalbarri NP, we observed that the landscape inside the park didn't seem much different from the landscape outside it: acres of brush as far as the eye could see. Other than the few overlooks down side roads, there wasn't a whole lot to see in the inland portion of Kalbarri, yet there were "camera" signs and pull-offs periodically, which we whizzed by at 70 mph. We really couldn't figure out what was supposed to be picturesque from those pull-offs, because nothing looked any different from any other areas!

There were some really cool areas in Kalbarri NP, however. The first of these was called Hawks Head:

The second was called Ross Graham. Here we hiked down to the (mostly dry) riverbed of the Murchison River, and climbed up the cliffs on the other side. It was a neat place!

From there it was on to The Loop, which is 20-some kilometers down a dirt road from Kalbarri-Ajana Road (the only route through the park). There's a several-kilometer loop hike from the carpark there, but we didn't have time for that unfortunately. So we checked out Nature's Window (the most famous place in the park), and hiked a little bit further to enjoy some very nice views of the loop in the Murchison River.

From there we drove to Z Bend, but it was too far a hike from the carpark to the overlook; we needed to get back on the road if we wanted to make it four hours up to Monkey Mia before restaurants closed. We did manage to get to the resort a few minutes before the front desk closed, and the only food available was a small but kind of pricey pizza at the bar. Oh yeah, and $7 bottles of beer. What a deal!

W.A. travel tip #3: You know you're in the middle of nowhere when there's not even a single dirt road for 140 km! Be prepared, it's incredibly barren out there.

In related travel tips...

W.A. travel tip #4: Petrol stations often close early, so don't let your petrol get too low! After the Billabong Roadhouse (more on that later), there was a couple hours of nothing until the next town, Denham. Our petrol light came on as we rolled into town, but we couldn't find a station that was open. So we stopped at a café and I asked the proprietor if there was an open petrol station in town. He looked at his watch, saw it was 7:30pm, and said, "Nope, sorry mate, they closed at 7." He said the "pump" in Monkey Mia, 25 km further down the road, was no doubt also closed. Anyway, we knew we could make it to Monkey Mia and fill up in the morning at the town/resort's only petrol pump -- we had to go into the gift shop to ask them to turn it on for us!

W.A. travel tip #5: Bring CDs or an MP3 player or something. Radio stations are scarce, and a cause for celebration when they come in. When a radio station faded out, we'd hit seek, and let it cycle through the frequencies for however long it took for another station to come in range (half an hour? an hour?). Unless the song was truly awful, we kept it on because it was preferable to silence. And with radio stations being rare, even "Dance, Baby, Dance" became listenable, haha.

W.A. travel tip #6: Keep your eyes peeled for local wildlife, feral or native. When renting my car from Hertz, I was warned not to drive in rural Western Australia at night, because "it's not a matter of if, but when you'll hit a kangaroo." We didn't see any wildlife on our first day/night of driving, but we saw some on the way from Kalbarri to Monkey Mia. Around the turnoff for Shark Bay Road (to go toward Denham and Monkey Mia), we saw quite a few feral goats near the road. And then as darkness was approaching we did see a couple of wallabies hopping around. Just enough to make us keep our eyes peeled constantly. Over the next couple days we also saw some sheep, kangaroos, and a shingleback on/near the road, but we managed to avoid hitting any of them.

[I had to break up this post into two parts. I guess I exceeded the character limit because of all the photos/links. Click here for Part 4b.]

Wed 11 Aug

I said my farewells to Rob & Simone in the morning, and then took my gigantic suitcase with me on the tram down to The University of Melbourne, for the second of my research seminars. Several profs took me out to lunch at the University House (the same place that Ash, Tracy, Mike & I met with Malcolm and Sandy on our first day in Melbourne about ministry stuff). The seminar itself went well (though we had to wait for a class to clear out of the room that had been reserved for the seminar). I'd say there were about 20-25 people there, so I thought it was a good turnout, especially for not being in their usual Friday afternoon seminar slot. It seemed like my talk was well-received overall, and I was asked quite a few questions after the talk (someone later told me they thought it was a record for number of questions after one of their seminars). Following the talk I met with a couple of grad students, including a student named Muhammad who I knew from attending the WRF Tutorial at NCAR in Boulder back in January 2008, so it was great to see him again and catch up a bit. There were a couple other meetings with post-docs and profs, too. I was quite pleased with how my seminar and visit there went!

When I was all done with meetings and whatnot, I shuffled off, still toting my giant suitcase, taking the tram down to Flinders Street Station, and then the train over to Mount Waverley to go to my friend Jillian's house for dinner -- she'd invited several CU folks over for burritos. They weren't quite Mexican burritos, but rather an Australian take on burritos. First, in addition to the usual marinated chicken, lettuce, tomatoes and onions, there also were sauteed mushrooms, pineapple chunks, and either sweet chili sauce or bbq sauce (there wasn't any salsa). And the tortillas were lightly crisped in the oven before serving. They were still really good, but not quite like burritos I'm familiar with from, say, Qdoba. ;-) Anyway, it was great to have another evening hanging out with my Monash CU friends. Hopefully it'll be fewer than six years before I see them all again, but it's a long, long way between the U.S. and Australia. I'll say this, though: Facebook has made keeping in touch with long-distance friends much, much easier!

My third hosts on this trip were my friends James & Alison, who live in the far southeastern suburb of Hampton Park, about a five minute walk from the Hallam railway station. Alison is a primary school teacher, and James currently is a chaplain in a local public high school (the relationship of the Australian government and schools with religion is worth another post by itself, if I get around to it), though until a year ago he was the national youth director for the Christian & Missionary Alliance church in Australia. I met them a few days before I went to Australia in 2004 because they were visiting the States, and Alison's parents know my parents (her parents, who are Australian, spent a few years pastoring a small CMA church in western Minnesota), and they were pretty much my adoptive family while I was studying at Monash. They even stopped by Penn State for a quick visit last April when they were visiting some family and friends in Michigan and Pennsylvania (and yes that photo was taken at The Creamery at PSU).

Ali came to pick me up after the dinner with my CU friends in Mt Waverley, and it was great to be at their house. They have several pets, including a couple rabbits (Fudge and Bubbles), a sugar glider (Cookie), a shingleback lizard and a couple bearded dragons (they were in accidental hibernation for the time being because James forgot to plug in their heat lamps, hehe). I was told that if Bubbles woke me up during the night by making a racket in the next room that I should just say, "Bubbles, stop!" and he'd stop, haha. Fortunately I never had to yell at Bubbles any of the nights I was there. :-)

Thu 12 Aug

I had to get up pretty early to take the hour-long train ride from Hallam to Southern Cross station, so that I could make it to the Bureau of Meteorology Building by 9:30am, in time for my 10am seminar at the Centre for Australian Weather & Climate Research. My host was Beth Ebert (I cited a couple of her papers in my 2009 journal article), and she commented that I had picked up a little bit of an Aussie accent. I took that as a big compliment. :-D Anyway, that seminar went quite well too, with 20-some people in attendance (which was particularly impressive because it was the third seminar of the week), and once again lots of good questions afterward. I didn't have any meetings set up afterward, but some scientists stuck around a few extra minutes to chat. I thought CAWCR seemed like quite a nice working environment. Beth told me that while they don't have post-doc positions, they do sometimes hire people straight out of their PhD for three-year terms. So that's definitely an option I'll be on the lookout for when it comes time to apply for jobs.

The BoM Building is just west of the CBD in Docklands. I'd never been to that part of the city before, so I spent some time walking around there. It's always fun to explore new areas. I also love taking photographs of marinas.

When I was in Point Park in the Docklands I also met and briefly chatted with an actress who had just moved to Melbourne from Adelaide. Her little dog didn't much like me, though (which is actually how the conversation started), hehe. Who knows, maybe I'll recognize her in a film someday too. That'd be pretty neat.

After grabbing lunch I got a seat in Southern Cross station from where I could see all the trains, and wrote quite a long summary of my three seminars to Sue. I knew that if I didn't intentionally take time out to do that, it wouldn't get done, and then I'd forget all the specific questions and issues that came up. It took longer than I thought to write it all down, too, so it was mid-afternoon before I met up with Ash & Tracy at Huntingdale railway station, as they'd been at Monash meeting with some people that day (because of my seminars it'd been basically two days since I'd seen Ash & Tracy).

We were on our way to James & Ali's to have dinner, but our journey there was a bit... interesting. First, I was unaware that Huntingdale was a station that express trains coming from the city would skip, so it was quite awhile before a train going past Hallam stopped. And then once we got on the train, it was hardly moving. It took forever to make it two stations down the line, at which point the train was evacuated. Apparently there were "overhead" problems a bit further down the line (meaning the overhead power lines were malfunctioning), so they had everyone board buses that stopped all stations to Dandenong (one station from Hallam). Apparently train disruptions aren't that uncommon, because they had a dedicated bus stop for such occurrences. That both was and was not reassuring. Anyway, James came to pick us up in Dandenong, but because of the train disruption and all the extra buses (and cars to pick up passengers), traffic was very slow. Oh well, we tried to get there at a reasonable time for dinner!

Dinner was well worth the wait though. James went all-out on the grill: kangaroo steaks (which are apparently quite difficult to cook right, but James grilled them to perfection), porterhouse beef steaks, and fresh green prawns (huge ones -- head, legs, shells and all). And then Ali had some salads and other sides, plus a sumptuous chocolate mousse dessert with fresh fruit. I'd have to say that was easily our best meal of the whole trip! We were most definitely sated, and I ate as much steak and as many prawns as I possibly could, but there was still heaps left over. :-) I should've taken a picture of the spread, but oh well. As Alex challenged me once though, I shouldn't need to document every memory for posterity with a photograph. (I also failed to take any pictures at James & Ali's, perhaps because I usually put my camera away when inside other people's houses.)

Fri 13 Aug

I rode the train back into the city again to meet up with Ash & Tracy for one last day of ministry work at Uni Melb. We had been hoping to set up a table near the Union advertising that we had a postgrad (grad student) survey or something like that (basically using the survey Tracy & I brainstormed earlier in the week). We couldn't get a table though, and so when I got there Ash said the new plan was to hang around in a little park on the edge of campus and ask passersby a) if they were postgrads, and b) if they had a few minutes to answer a few questions. Quite honestly, neither Tracy nor I were thrilled with this particular approach (both of us think random surveys like these aren't usually used to collect data, but merely to start a spiritual conversation with a random person, which we think is deceptive), but we still decided to give it a shot -- because we actually were interested in the data, and trying to find out information about many facets of postgrad life at Uni Melb.

Gathering data proved pretty difficult, as expected. We used Tracy's two clicker counters to keep track of the number of people we asked if they happened to be a post-grad student (82) and how many said they were post-grads (8). Of those eight people, two agreed to take our survey. If we'd gotten a third data point, maybe we could've made some extrapolations. :-) Anyway, we think grad students are probably the toughest demographic to survey. Grad students don't usually congregate in large groups anywhere on campus (unlike undergrads), and usually only emerge from their offices if they have to go to a class or a meeting somewhere, in which case they usually don't have time to stop and take a 5-10-minute survey. Random surveys might work great for undergrads, but not grad students. Also, data from a survey would be most useful on a department-by-department basis, and it'd be tough to generalize the information gleaned to the whole campus. That's what I think, anyway. This trip really reinforced, at least in my mind, that in order to reach grad students, there need to be people who are already in those departments (insiders).

Anyway, following the survey deal, Mike, Ash, Tracy & I went to Trinity College at Uni Melb (kind of like an exclusive fraternity, it has its own dorms, dining hall (think Hogwarts style), and church/chapel). Anyway, the new events coordinator at Trinity is friendly toward Student Life and Christian Union (unlike the previous events coordinator, who was rather hostile), so he hosted us for lunch, along with Malcolm, Sandy, and a few other grad students affiliated with CU. That was a good time to meet some other Christian grad students on the campus who are eager to see something happen there, and it also opened some previously-closed doors for Student Life and CU to get more involved at Trinity with their undergrad ministries.

After lunch we went down to the Melbourne Aquarium, where my friend Emily works (from Monash CU). She couldn't get us in for free or a discount (though our Penn State student IDs got Tracy & I a very nice discount anyway), but she was able to give us a personal guided tour after she finished her normal shift, telling us all about the various fish and marine creatures in the tanks. The Melbourne Aquarium is really quite nice, and has been rated as the best tourist destination in Melbourne. They're also home to the world's largest species of stingray, and croikey were those massive! The penguins were also really fun to see and watch, but really, just about everything at the aquarium was neat to see. It was great to see her again and hang out a bit (she wasn't able to make the Friday night reunion thing at Joel & Rosey's, but was at the Wednesday night dinner at Jillian & Susannah's).

That night Ash, Tracy & I had dinner at Mike & Bec's house, sort of a "team dinner." I forget how we even got onto the topic, but Mike, being a PSU alum, wound up recounting a funny story of how he saw Penn State President Graham Spanier scooting around campus one day on a Segway, and other stories basically poking fun at Spanier (and to join in, I found a photo of his ridiculous washboard instrument that he plays with the Deacons of Dixieland band, so that Bec could gain a better picture of why so many people make fun of him). It's always fun to meet other Penn Staters on the other side of the world. :-)

Sat 14 Aug

James got us a deal with Hertz for a rental car for a day, so we rented a car and took a day trip down the Great Ocean Road. Apparently we were lucky to get a car; the Hertz in Dandenong was sold out, and the one in Clayton was very nearly sold out, with lots of people renting cars to go up to the snow in the Australian Alps east of the city, to places like Lake Mountain and Mt Buller. I guess Aussies don't trust their snow driving enough to take their own car to the snow, but they'll sure take a rental car!

First up: Bells Beach, which is just past Torquay, the town where the Great Ocean Road starts. Bells Beach is world-famous for surfing.

And then of course some obligatory road sign photos:

Next stop: Anglesea. We stopped for lunch at a fish and chips shop, where I got a burger with "the lot." What's on a lot burger, you ask? Bacon, tomato, lettuce, beetroot (as beets are known in Aus), fried egg, and pineapple. DELICIOUS. We got our lunch takeaway (to-go) and went to the city beach to enjoy it (it was still a nice day at this point). I don't think we each needed to get an order of chips though, they give you heaps!

Split Point Lighthouse at Aireys Inlet, and a Wicked Camper that we saw parked there (each Wicked van has a very unique paint job and pithy saying on the back):

Coalmine Creek:

It was fantastic to get a chance to drive along the Great Ocean Road again. I think I can safely say that's a place I'd like to visit every time I come to Melbourne. Here's a short video that Tracy took with my camera while I was driving, for just a little sample of what the road is like:

And then it started raining, so our photo-taking dropped off precipitously. That, and we needed to MOVE if we were to make it to the Twelve Apostles before sundown. Unfortunately that meant we didn't have enough time to drive down to Cape Otway Lighthouse. With the murky, grey, rainy weather we wouldn't have seen a lot anyway. There are so many cool vistas and other things to see along and near the Great Ocean Road, you could easily take a few days poking along in order to soak it all in. But when you only have a winter's afternoon, you do the best you can!

We arrived at the Twelve Apostles at Port Campbell NP just before sunset. Not that we could see the sun, of course. It was rainy, windy, and cold. I think Tracy lasted about 5 minutes before going back to the car, Ash about 20 minutes, and I was out there for maybe 45 minutes or an hour, because I at least had a rain jacket along. I wound up chatting with a family on holiday from Melbourne for a bit. They were there with binoculars to try to spot some of the colony of penguins that come ashore every evening in twilight on the beach far below. Anyway, I was out there until it was almost pitch black, which got Ash & Tracy worried that I fell off a cliff or something, hehe (our mobile phones were as good as paperweights out there too). Anyway, we had driven all that way, and I was determined to see what of the Twelve Apostles I could, even if the rain, wind and fading light made it extremely difficult to take pictures of even half-decent quality. The last time I was at the Twelve Apostles, there was one more standing (note the rubble from one of the Apostles that collapsed in 2006). I wonder if any more will collapse before I see them next.

By that point night had fallen and we were very ready for dinner in nearby Port Campbell. After dinner Tracy decided to try her hand at left-side-of-the-road driving, at least until we got close to Melbourne, at which point she yielded the wheel to me to navigate the city. I honestly had some white knuckles for the first few k's while sitting in the passenger seat as she got used to everything, hehe. :-)

It still wasn't quite like my mom's reaction from the passenger seat while I drove my parents down the Great Ocean Road in 2004 -- suddenly gripping my arm and yelling "JARED!!" as a car rounded a bend on the other side of the road (cliffs on one side, ocean on the other). I had to tell her, "Mom, you HAVE to stop doing that, or else you WILL cause an accident." :-)

Anyway, when I dropped off Ash & Tracy at their respective hosts, I said my farewells to them until I was back on U.S. soil. We still had another full day in Melbourne, but were planning just to chill and not meet up or anything. I was tired from spending so many hours in a car that day, but still had a little energy to play with James & Ali's sugar glider. When he leapt at me it definitely woke me up a bit, lol.

Sun 15 Aug

My last full day in Melbourne was a very relaxing one. I went to church with James in the morning (Ali wasn't feeling well that morning), and then for lunch afterward, Ali had prepared a nice meal, and invited their friend Hernon and Hernon's dad over (Hernon's dad is also named Hernon). I had met Hernon a few times back in 2004 when spending time with James & Ali (Phillip Island, surf fishing, etc.), so it was good to see him again. We just spent most of the afternoon and even evening chatting with them. Like I said, it was quite a relaxing day, and a good way to wrap up my stay in Melbourne, and get ready for a lot of traveling in Western Australia.

Stay tuned for Part 4 in a few days, about my travels in a place I'd never been to before: Western Australia!

Sun 8 Aug

I was exhausted from our very full Saturday so I just slept in at Joel & Rosey's. So I just chatted with Rosey until it was time to go into the city to meet Ash & Tracy. We planned to go to the RMIT University "Open Day," because someone had told us that a bunch of grad students and faculty would attend, showing off research posters. So we had high hopes that we'd get to meet quite a few grad students. That's not at all what Open Day was, however. Instead, it was purely an undergrad recruitment day, with one representative from each department there with some basic facts about the department. So we quickly decided it wasn't going to be useful for us, and instead decided to relax for the afternoon -- I wasn't the only one who was really tired. So we went down to a café on Southbank to have a coffee and write some postcards. I'll tell you what, I really needed a day of pretty much doing nothing.

About 5pm we took the tram to Christ Church in Hawthorn to see my friend Rob of The Backyard Bard with a storytelling of "Revelation." It was a dramatic performance of "Revelation" -- Rob memorized the entire book! Very impressive. Here's a segment of the performance, from Revelation 4:

The storytelling that Simon and Rob both do for The Backyard Bard really helps to bring the Scriptures alive. It aids and enhances my mind's eye without overwhelming it the way that a film would. Joel & Rosey were kind enough to bring my luggage to the show too, so I was able to say my farewells to them there.

After the show I rode with Rob back to his house in Brunswick, a northern suburb. Rob & Simone have a 1 1/2-year old daughter named Hannah, and again, I know them both from Monash CU; we had a Sunday night Bible study in their house, and they've since both been on staff with CU part-time a bit, though neither are currently. They're both taking courses at Ridley (a seminary), and Rob's also working full-time with The Backyard Bard.

Rob & Simone are planning to move to the Middle East to work with a deaf ministry in about a year and a half, and they hope to move to the region permanently eventually. They have a heart for Middle Eastern culture (perhaps partly because Rob's mum is Lebanese), and as such much of their cuisine and even the furniture in their house has a Middle Eastern feel. For instance, instead of having a couch in the living room, they have a muffraj (sp.?), which is basically some cushions or pads laid on the floor and against the wall. I'd even drag the muffraj into the study at night to sleep on it, so it's quite portable.

Mon 9 Aug
Read Tracy's perspective here

After discussing Australian and American politics with Rob for a good chunk of the morning, I caught the tram down to Melbourne Uni to meet up with Ash & Tracy. I was a bit late, however, because I got mixed up which way was north and south. I knew I wanted to go south toward the city, so I started walking toward the sun and wanted to catch a tram heading that way. After I waved off one tram, I realized that was actually the one I wanted when I looked down that way and saw the Melbourne skyline -- south is away from the sun in the Southern Hemisphere. Doh! So yeah, in addition to cars being on the left side of the road, the sun was in the opposite direction, so I was all screwed up!

After getting some additional meetings set up, Ash went back to Mike & Bec's house to work on some things, while Tracy & I took advantage of the third beautiful day in a row (60 and sunny, and what would turn out to be the last day of gorgeous weather in Melbourne during our stay), and walked around the Botanical Gardens some, hung out at the Shrine of Rememberance for a bit (a gigantic WWI memorial that is viewable from the CBD down Swanston Street/Saint Kilda Road), and then took some time to write up a survey we could give to grad students, to find out more accurately what their needs are as grad students in Australia, and how they view spirituality. We knocked that out while having dinner at a sidewalk Italian restaurant on Swanston St. Unfortunately I didn't find out until we got the check that my two bottles of beer were $7 each. Yikes! Glad I didn't have more!

Tue 10 Aug

This was the rainiest day we had in Melbourne. Fortunately the Queen Victoria Markets are covered! Queen Vic Market is a huge mostly open-air market that has lots of just about everything: delicatessens, bakeries, butchers, fresh fish/seafood markets, produce markets, jewelers, souvenir shops, clothing shops, sports apparel shops (even selling American sports jerseys), leather shops... Yeah, pretty much anything you can think of, the Queen Vic Market probably has. I almost bought an akubra hat, but then realized I just wouldn't wear it that much. That, and knowing that I'm soon moving to Colorado and already have too much stuff helped prevent me from buying anything there (I'd already purchased an Australia t-shirt and zipper sweatshirt a couple days earlier).

After eating lunch at the Market that we each bought piecemeal there (an orange here, a banana there, a roll here, some meat and cheese there), Mike picked up the three of us and drove us to La Trobe University, where we met with the Christian Union staff there, led by a man named Peter. He initially seemed skeptical of a partnership with us or Student Life/Campus Crusade (lots of raised eyebrows while questioning us), but by the end of the meeting he'd warmed up to us and seemed keen on the idea of a partnership (lots of raised eyebrows while joking around). Needless to say we were quite pleased and relieved with how that meeting went! Peter and his team were already poised to launch some sort of grad student ministry, and it seems like they'd welcome our input and energy. They also provided some helpful ideas for what would make future visits from us or other American students useful.

Following that meeting we had a Skype conversation at Mike's house in Brunswick West with a guy named Lewis, a transplanted American who's on staff with CU in Sydney at the University of New South Wales. Lewis is pretty much the main person in the Christian Union national organization who's really been pushing forward grad ministry in Australia, so it was helpful to talk to him. He was really excited that we were there and interested in giving energy to grad student ministry in Australia. Back-to-back great meetings!

Another cool thing about that meeting was that Rob came by Mike's house to pick us up for dinner, but sat in on the last part of the meeting while we finished up. Mike had previously seen Rob in a Backyard Bard production and wanted to meet him anyway, and Lewis had heard a lot about Rob and was planning to see a show later this year. And then I forget if I mentioned this, but Mike is a Penn State alum, who studied abroad for a semester in Sydney at UNSW, which is where he met Lewis. Add on all my connections with folks on staff with Christian Union as well, and we think there are too many connections to be purely happenstance! We really feel like God was paving the way on this trip, and opening quite a few doors.

For dinner Rob took Ash, Tracy & I to a Yemeni restaurant in the suburb of Ascot Vale. Coincidentally enough, the restaurant is called Yemeni Restaurant. Clever, huh? Rob & Simone visited Yemen (and other countries) last year, so Rob was showing the restaurant owner some photos on his iPad -- and the owner even spotted his former house in one of Rob's photos of a city in Yemen (Sa'na?). Anyway, eating at the Yemeni restaurant was quite a neat cultural and culinary experience. First off, the food was excellent. We sat on the floor, and the dishes were all laid out for us on the floor as well. For the various bean, meat and rice dishes, we'd scoop it all up with pieces of Yemeni bread (much like naan bread in Indian cuisine). We were all dipping and scooping the bread on the same plates, so we really were sharing a meal together, not just eating our own separate dishes while happening to be at the same restaurant or table. We all felt like it gave us a much better insight into what it means in Middle Eastern cultures (and meant, in Biblical times) to sit down and share a meal with other people. It really is more of an experience, and one in which you have to trust the people you're eating with, because they're dipping bread into the same bowls or dishes as you.

Following the game we all retired to Rob & Simone's place, where Ash, Rob & I enjoyed a riveting game of Power Grid (Rob won). And because it was Power Grid, Tracy knitted instead. All in all, it was a really fun way to spend my final evening at Rob & Simone's.

Stay tuned for Part 3, coming up in a few days probably, which will cover my last few days in Melbourne. Part 4 after that will be about my whirlwind visit to Western Australia!

When I was staying at his house, my friend Rob gave me a lesson in Australian politics. It's interesting but also kind of bizarre and complicated. For instance, did you know that the prime minister, who is a member of parliament, can be deposed and replaced by his/her own party in parliament at any time? Did you know that this does not trigger an election, either? Did you know that the prime minister can dissolve parliament and call for a new election if either house of parliament fails to pass a given piece of legislation twice? Or that in what is called a double dissolution, after dissolving parliament and winning the resulting election, the prime minister could then require parliament to meet as a single house to vote on the failed legislation that triggered the election in the first place?

This all came up because Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party (left-wing), who was elected PM in 2007, was extremely popular (70+%) even earlier this year. His main issue was climate change/cap and trade, which he called "the great moral issue of our time." The legislation was set to pass shortly before the Copenhagen summit, with the opposition Liberal Party/National Party (right-wing) coalition being led by a moderate named Malcolm Turnbull (Turnbull once held negotiations with both Labor and Liberal to determine which party he'd join). The legislation had already failed once in the Senate (which the coalition controlled), and Turnbull thought if they defeated it again, then Rudd would call an election and the Liberals would get trounced at the ballot box. Two days before the cap and trade vote, however, Turnbull's leadership of the party was challenged and he was replaced by Tony Abbott as opposition leader. Abbott galvanized the opposition and defeated the cap and trade legislation in the Senate. Everyone expected Prime Minister Rudd to respond by calling for a double dissolution, but instead, noting that public support for cap and trade was slipping a bit, Rudd trotted out a junior aide to announce to the press that Labor was shelving climate legislation for four years. The press and the public immediately turned on Rudd, wondering how something he had been calling "the great moral issue of our time" for three years could simply be given up on so suddenly and quietly, and put on the shelf for several more years. Nobody knew what he believed anymore, and his popularity started sinking quickly.

A few months later Rudd instituted a super-profits tax on the mining companies. Rudd's Treasury Department estimated the tax would cost the mining companies $12 billion, but the mining companies knew Treasury had made an accounting error, and that the real price tag of the tax was $30 billion. So the mining companies were hammering Rudd and Labor with TV commercials, and the public realized that mining is the reason for Australia's economy doing so well, so they soured on Rudd even more, sinking his approval rating to under 30%. Labor realized they couldn't sustain the withering attack ads by mining from then until the likely October election, so the Labor MPs voted to oust Kevin Rudd as their party leader and replace him with a member of his inner "kitchen" cabinet named Julia Gillard. Gillard, even though she was in on all Rudd's decisions, because she was a new prime minister she was able to negotiate with the mining companies to knock the super-profits tax down to $10 billion (and then she claimed it was a win for the government, based on the faulty $12 billion original tax claim, but it was really a win for mining).

Anyway, the Australian election was held on 21 August and resulted in a hung parliament (neither Labor nor the Liberal/National coalition held an outright majority in the lower house). Last week Labor reached an agreement with the few independent MPs to form a minority government. Who knows how long it'll hold together though.

Back to the Australian electoral system. The method for electing MPs and Senators is rather byzantine, to say the least. Australia uses preference voting, meaning you either rank all the parties from 1-8 or whatever, or you rank all the candidates from 1-however many there are (in Senate races, that can be more than 60!). By voting for parties, you are in essence voting for whatever candidate preference rankings that the party placed with the election commission. In preference voting, all the 1st-preference votes are tallied. If no candidate has reached the vote threshold for election, then the last-place candidate is eliminated from the race, and the 2nd-preference votes from those ballots are added to everyone else's totals. If a candidate still doesn't reach the vote threshold, then the second-to-last candidate is eliminated (I believe), and the preference votes on those ballots are re-allotted accordingly. At this point I honestly have no idea what happens if candidates still haven't reached the vote threshold. And why do I keep saying "vote threshold"? Well, because in the lower house of parliament, the vote threshold is simply majority of total ballots cast (50% + 1). In the Senate, however, the threshold is generally 14.3%. What?!? Here's why. Senate elections are state-wide, with six of the twelve Senate seats from each state up for election every three years. So with six seats available, the vote threshold is one-seventh of the total votes plus one (if only two seats were open, for example, then the threshold would be one-third of the votes plus one). Each party gives all its votes to its 1st-preference candidate. Once that candidate reaches the vote threshold, then all the party's votes go to their 2nd-preference candidate. And on it goes. According to Rob, this lower vote threshold means that minor parties have a far better chance of getting elected to the Senate, rather than the House. In Rob's opinion, preference voting makes it even harder for minor parties to win seats in the House than would a straight-up winner-takes-all election like is done here in the States. The complicated vote-counting system is also why it can take days or weeks to count all the votes correctly!

Now that I have you all thoroughly confused after my description of the Australian electoral system, I figure you all will have a little more appreciation for the overall simplicity of the American electoral system!

Mon-Tue 2-3 Aug
Travel was travel. Our American Airlines flight from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles had to make an unscheduled refueling stop in lovely Tulsa, however. The reason? The center fuel pump was inoperative. They actually went into a lot more detail than that, which I found quite interesting, but others thought was over-sharing. But we were assured repeatedly that the plane was of course totally safe. :-) Ash & I were both reading Bill Bryson's hilarious travel book about Australia, In a Sunburned Country, and cracking up pretty much the whole flight. It was Ash's first time reading the book, my third. It's still just as funny! Tracy & Ash got seats next to each other for the Los Angeles to Melbourne flight, but I was seated somewhere not near them. I was also in a middle seat, so I didn't get too much sleep. Maybe 3-4 hours total? I had forgotten how long 15.5 hours on a plane was. Oh, and 3 Aug basically didn't exist. We departed Los Angeles shortly after 11pm on 2 Aug, and landed in Melbourne at 8am on 4 Aug.

Wed 4 Aug
Read Tracy's perspective here

We hit the ground running. Mike Shepski, the Student Life (Campus Crusade) director for both The University of Melbourne and the state of Victoria as a whole, picked up the three of us from the airport, and we were able to get a much-appreciated shower at his place and chill a little bit before we went out for our first meeting. We had some time to wander around the campuses of RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and Melbourne Uni before our afternoon meeting at University House (a private club for professors/staff and grad students) with Malcolm and Sandy, who both help run the Christian Union group at Uni Melb. We had a wonderful and encouraging meeting with them, and came away definitely feeling like a partnership could work out with them. A few days later Tracy checked out a women's grad student Bible study that Sandy ran, and two Sundays later Ash went to church with Malcolm and his wife, so there were some additional connections made there.

After that meeting Mike dropped us off at Melbourne Central station with our luggage, and we made our way to our hosts for the evening -- Ash & Tracy to a Student Life staff couple's house in Nunawading, and me to Joel & Rosey's house in Blackburn, just a couple stations earlier on the same line. I think some of the other Aussies on the train near us were amused while listening to me trying to explain to Ash & Tracy everything that "no worries" means in Australia.

Joel & Rosey had dinner waiting for me (as well as my favorite Aussie breakfast cereal, Just Right, and a package of Tim Tams!), and little did I know but they were also hosting their church small group Bible study right after dinner. I almost zonked out a couple of times, but I managed to stay awake the whole way through the study of Leviticus 4-7. I even managed to participate a little bit, but man oh man was I tired by the end! I made it to 11pm, I was impressed! And so were Joel & Rosey!

I met both Joel & Rosey in the Christian Union group at Monash in 2004. Rosey's currently on staff with CU, and Joel's working in pest control while trying to find an engineering-related job. They're probably the friends I've kept in most frequent contact with since I left Australia. They're both nerdy (love to play Starcraft and watch Stargate), and Joel is fairly reserved, but Rosey is quite possibly the most outgoing person I've ever met.

Thu 5 Aug
Read Tracy's perspective here

After a morning meeting at RMIT with some Campus Crusade undergrads from UVA and Virginia Tech who were on the last day of their 6-week "summer project" in Melbourne and hearing some of their stories, Ash, Tracy & I did a little sightseeing, walking around the Old Melbourne Gaol (Jail), an oddly astroturfed courtyard, which is now part of RMIT. A sign outside proclaimed the Gaol as Australia's "FINEST" tourist and cultural attraction. I'm sure the museum part is interesting, but the finest attraction in all of Australia? Somehow I doubt it. :-)

From there we walked all the way down Swanston Street to the Yarra River. We were all fans of the super-wide sidewalks on Swanston. We took the tram back up to Melbourne Uni to meet with Mike again, and we also got our schedule set up the next day at Monash Uni. Then we trammed it back to Federation Square, where I thought about paying $25 to partake in a big wine tasting festival there, but decided it'd be better if I were still awake for dinner, hehe.

That evening we met up with Simon Camilleri of The Backyard Bard for dinner. Simon came to Penn State back in September 2008 during his US tour of the show, "Elijah." We didn't have phones yet, so we arranged to meet him in front of the National Gallery of Victoria at a particular time -- because that was a place I knew of (and, not gonna lie, I wanted to see if those crazy u-turn traffic lights were still there in front of the NGV!). Simon took us to one of the many, many Italian restaurants on Lygon Street, a street just outside the CBD (central business district) that's lined with ethnic restaurants (especially Italian and Greek ones). After dinner we stopped at an irresistible gelati shop to top it all off. It was a great evening catching up with Simon.

Fri 6 Aug
Read Tracy's perspective here

We spent the day at Monash University. Joel & Rosey offered me the use of their car, but I wasn't yet comfortable enough with being on the left side of the road and driving on unfamiliar suburban streets, so I walked up to Blackburn station and then took the bus from there down to Monash with Ash & Tracy. Read my previous post here about the day at Monash, including our meeting with Graeme, the campus director of Monash Christian Union, plus the first of my research seminars.

After my seminar I made my way back to Joel & Rosey's place, where they were hosting a reunion for everyone from Monash CU from when I was there in 2004. I got to the party a bit late though, because before the party, I had to drive Joel to the army barracks in Ringwood. It was his weekend to go there for army reserves, unfortunately, but because Joel & Rosey were planning to loan me their car the next day, he needed a ride. While that morning I wasn't comfortable with driving on the left, I had to make myself comfortable that evening. So, while driving at night on a pretty busy but unfamiliar road, I quickly had to reacquaint myself with driving a manual transmission (and the quirks of that particular manual) and with driving on the left side. Throw in trying to adjust to shifting with my left hand and signaling (indicating) with my right, and I was all screwed up -- the windshield (windscreen) wipers came on several times, hehe. I only got honked at once though, and that was for not accelerating quickly enough out of a traffic light. I consider that a success. :-) And by the return drive to Joel & Rosey's, I felt like I was finally getting a hang of how that car drove.

Quite a few people were already there by the time I got back to the house. I was so excited to see everyone again! Some folks weren't able to make it, but many were able to come, it was great! I didn't get a chance to talk to everyone as much as I would have liked, obviously, but the really cool thing about the evening was that most everyone there hadn't seen each other in several months either, so everyone was catching up with everyone else. Even when everyone lives in the same metro area, life can still get in the way and prevent friends from seeing each other much. So everyone was glad that I gave them an excuse to get together again finally.

Sat 7 Aug
Read Tracy's perspective here

Using Joel & Rosey's car, I picked up Ash & Tracy and then we drove east of Melbourne out of the city on the Maroondah Hwy. We were all very glad to see some of the countryside at last. We drove through Yarra Ranges National Park to see the town of Marysville, which was devastated by the terrible Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. As we were driving through the tall, majestic eucalyptus forests in Yarra Ranges we noticed the bases of all the trees were charred, but above about 20-30 feet there were no burn marks. Along the road that crested the mountain and descended into Marysville, all the eucalyptus trees looked "furry" -- the entire trunk was sprouting little branches and leaves. That's apparently what happens to eucalyptus trees after being severely burned. Driving along that road, I was better able to imagine the frightening and hellish scenes of what it must've been like for the residents trying to escape the intense fire. Sobering. I hadn't ever been to Marysville before, so I didn't know what it looked like before the fire, but it was pretty clear that something bad had happened. There was a good deal of new construction, temporary buildings, and open lots with signs like, "We will return." We walked around town a bit, and hoped to check out the Marysville Reconstruction Centre, but it closed right before we got there. Also, we noticed that all the mountains surrounding Marysville were brown instead of green -- an indication that all the trees were dead. Gum (eucalyptus) trees can often withstand bushfires (though their resin is highly flammable, so they have a tendency to "explode"), but the fires that day were just too intense.

We drove back the way we came and stopped for lunch in Healesville. First we poked our heads into the White Rabbit Brewery and enjoyed a couple samples. I was definitely shocked by the $19 pricetag on the 6-packs, and $65 tag on the cases. Egads. But as it turns out, that's not too out of line for beer prices in Australia. For a culture that loves to drink, I have no idea how they afford it! We got some lunch at a bakery next door, and after I got a meat pie, sausage roll and lamington, Ash & Tracy followed my lead and also got meat pies. Meat pies are kind of similar to pot pies here in the U.S., but a whole lot better and much more common. I really don't know why we don't have them here, as they're pretty good. And the traditional Aussie thing to do is to squeeze tomato sauce (very similar to ketchup, but not exactly the same).

After lunch we went to the Healesville Sanctuary (which I visited once in 2004), so that we could see some Aussie wildlife. I was hoping to pet some kangaroos again, but they were being lazy and somewhat antisocial. We also got to see emus, dingoes, snakes, pelicans, Tasmanian devils, platypuses (platypi?), and lyrebirds, among others. The Australian pelicans and the lyrebirds are definitely among my favorite animals down there. Lyrebirds are really cool in that they can imitate just about any sound they hear, including other birds, car alarms, mechanical sounds, and even people talking! They really are incredible birds. Nearby there's an exhibit that plays many of the lyrebird calls, but a guide told us they had to turn the volume down on it because it was distressing the male lyrebird in the nearby enclosure, hehe.

We got back to Joel & Rosey's, where we met up with my friend Paul and his girlfriend Susannah, and then rode the train into the city to go to an Australian rules football game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (read Tracy's take on the game here). We kind of lucked into it being the most-hyped game of the entire regular season and the hottest ticket in town, between the top two teams in the league, the Geelong Cats (the team that Paul & I both cheer for) and the Collingwood Magpies. Since we'd arrived, when we'd mention to people that we had tickets to that game, they were universally jealous. Anyway, more than 90,000 people showed up for the game, and it seemed like about two-thirds were Pies fans. While the game was going on, Paul & I explained the rules to Ash & Tracy, and Paul was actually rather impressed at how well I was able to explain details of an Australian game even though I was an American. :-) It was a fun atmosphere and a really good back-and-forth game, until Collingwood took control in the 4th quarter to pull away for the 107-85 victory. Geelong seemed off their game much of the night too, and had sloppy passing -- turnovers killed them. Oh well, it was still a lot of fun!

And now to start working on part 2...

So on Fri 30 July I gave a seminar on my research at 9am in the Water Tunnel Bldg on campus, the same seminar I was to give three times in Australia. After I finished that and some other things I had to take care of, I hit the road for Kettering, Ohio (a suburb of Dayton), to visit my friends Daniel & Katie. It took a lot longer than expected to get there, however. It was fine until I approached Pittsburgh. For some reason Yinzers are scared to death of driving through a tunnel, so they slow to a crawl for two miles leading up to it. It's happened every single time I've come into Pittsburgh on I-376/US-22 from the east -- and this wasn't even rush hour! Then I hit another inexplicable traffic jam in downtown Pittsburgh, most likely caused by Yinzers being afraid to merge properly (or at all). Then I hit another traffic jam on I-79 near Washington, PA, as it approached a junction with I-70, which had construction both ways on it (several mile standstill backup). Then on I-70 near Wheeling, WV, traffic was backed up several miles up the hill because the tunnel in Wheeling was closed -- and so were two of the three lanes of the I-270 bypass around Wheeling. What genius! In all, it took me about three hours to travel 60 miles. UGH. When I finally got into Ohio it was smooth sailing though.

Once I got to Daniel & Katie's and brought my suitcase into their house, Daniel innocently asked, "Is that everything?" because he wanted to shut the garage door. Then it dawned on me all of a sudden. I had forgotten something. Namely, the clothes I had picked out to wear to the wedding. They were hanging in my apartment's closet. By themselves. (I had packed up all my other clothes and taken them to Isaac's in preparation of moving out, so those literally were the only clothes left in my closet.) I remembered to pack the shoes, just not the pants, shirt or tie. SIGH. Anyway, I felt like a dolt, but decided not to worry about it that night or the next morning, and instead wanted to enjoy my time hanging out with Daniel & Katie and their two young daughters, Paige (17 mos.) and Claire (5 mos.). They've sure got their hands full, but not as full as they will be when they're both toddling around. :-) It was fun to hang out with them again, but unfortunately I didn't get any pics of their young brood. I'm looking forward to when they come visit State College sometime in October!

On Saturday I headed north and northwest from Dayton, angling over to Goshen, Indiana. Along the way I stopped at a JC Penney to purchase some wedding attire. Considering all I had was shorts and a t-shirt, it was pretty necessary. :-) But I found something agreeable to me at an agreeable price. I still wasn't thrilled about buying more clothes when I already have so many and am preparing to move to Colorado by trying to fit all my possessions into my car.

Anyway, onto the wedding. I hadn't ever met Mary Rose before, but I've been friends with Luke from way back in kindergarten/1st grade in Mountain Lake, MN (which, incidentally, doesn't have a mountain but does have a lake). We were on the same bus route and were practically best friends back then. When I was in 2nd grade my family moved to Wisconsin, but Luke & I kept in touch through letters periodically, and he and his mom even came to visit once when they were in Osceola for a Bible camp. Through middle and high school we lost touch, but when I was a freshman at Gustavus, I saw a poster in Björling Hall (the music building) advertising an upcoming concerto performance in nearby New Ulm by the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra, featuring guest pianist Luke Norell. I thought it was worth a drive over to the concert to see if it was the same Luke Norell that I knew, and when he walked out on stage with his red hair, I knew it was him. So we've kept in touch ever since then, but still haven't been able to hang out much.

Luke & Mary Rose are both pursuing their DMA in piano performance, Luke at Indiana University, and Mary Rose at Northwestern University. So of course there was some fantastic music at the wedding! :-)

The reception was held in the atrium right outside the recital hall where the wedding took place. It was nice to have it right on-site. Partly because it wasn't a large space, and partly because both families are quite conservative, there was no dancing at the reception, and there wasn't any alcohol either (not even champagne for toasts). It's not an arrangement that I'd prefer for my wedding, and some people might say that a wedding without any alcohol or dancing is lame, but for this one it actually worked great. I was at a table of people who all knew only either the bride or the groom but pretty much nobody else there, which was kind of nice, actually, in that nobody felt totally isolated. A funny moment came when one guy at my table accidentally lit his program/songbook on fire, hehe. :-) The reception was also filled with music throughout, with lots of family members and friends getting up and playing/singing various pieces, many of which were in small songbooks that were at each seat so that everyone could sing along as well. It was great fun!

Luke and Mary Rose also played a few piano duets:

It was a great wedding and reception, and I was glad I could make it. Even though I of course didn't get much of a chance to catch up with him, I was able to catch up some with his family, which was nice. Not many of Luke's friends were able to make it to Indiana, so they had a couple of receptions back in Minnesota for folks there in mid-August. So they were especially appreciative that I was able to make it. I think they enjoyed my story about forgetting my clothes too, and that I was in the process of moving out and about to travel to Australia on top of that, and that I still could make it. :-)

I had hoped to fly to my cousin Jonathan & Lindsey's wedding in Spokane last weekend, just a few days after returning from Australia, but I realized I couldn't afford it, what with the Australia trip and moving to Colorado. It would've been nice to bookend the trip with weddings, but I think I would've been too exhausted to hop right back on another plane for another cross-country trip!

Just in case it'll be awhile before I can write up another blog entry, I wanted to share the link to the blog that Ash, Tracy & I will be posting to about our missions/ministry work in Melbourne. The URL is http://www.christian-grads-in-australia.blogspot.com. I'll try to post here when I can, but to be honest, that blog will probably get updated more frequently, if not from me, then from Ash or Tracy.

Right now we're in LAX, and our flight to MEL boards in two and a half hours. Our flight from IAD made an unplanned refueling stopover in lovely TUL because the plane's center fuel pump was inoperative. They said the two fuel tanks over the wings are the main ones, and the center tank is just an auxiliary tank, but with that pump not working, they needed to get extra fuel to make it to Los Angeles. How reassuring! Other than that our travel day has been pretty smooth so far. I'm just super-tired from getting only three hours of sleep last night. I didn't get back from Indiana until 7pm, and then I didn't finish cleaning/moving out until 12:30am. After unloading my stuff at Hollemans, I then realized I forgot something and had to go back, so it was after 1:30am before I went to bed, and awhile after that before I fell asleep. 5:30am came wayyyy too early. I'm looking forward to a glass of wine or two at altitude knocking me out on the flight! I'm not exactly looking forward to being in a metal tube for 15.5 hours though (16.5-17 if you count early boarding and everything else), but it's worth it.

Australia here we come!

In addition to all the work-related stuff for me to do at NCAR (and my visit was useful, I thought), Alex was also at the tail end of a 3-month visit to NCAR when I was there. Bonus! I arrived in Denver on Friday night the 9th, and took the Super Shuttle to Boulder, where I had arranged to rent a bedroom in someone's house, just a 5-minute walk from NCAR Foothills Lab. Convenient! And it was only about three blocks from where Alex was staying too. Somewhere between the State College and Detroit airports I lost my memory stick, however. It had my presentation and other relevant data files on it, among other things. I called lost and founds at both airports and filed a missing item report with Delta, but nobody had found it or turned it in. Oh well. Fortunately Kerrie was able to go into the Water Tunnel Building to find and email me the files I needed. Thanks, Kerrie!! I would've been up a creek without that.

Anyway, Alex had gone with some friends out to Steamboat Springs that evening to catch the hot air balloon festival at dawn on Saturday morning. But he left me his car and keys so that I could drive to Steamboat on Saturday and catch up to him in early afternoon. I'd never been west of Boulder in Colorado, and it was a beautiful drive west from Denver on I-70 to Silverthorne and then up to Steamboat Springs on CO-9 and US-40.

On Sunday morning the 11th we drove back up to the Alpine Visitor Center (11,796 ft) in Rocky Mountain National Park to do some hiking. We hiked along Ute Trail, which started across the road from the Alpine Center, and took turns carrying the backpack. Our map said the trail went 4.1 miles to Milner Pass, where Trail Ridge Road crossed the Continental Divide. Views along the trail were pretty spectacular.

As for the rest of the week, we checked out some other cool places. Monday night was the Boulder Draft House, with a $7 burger and beer special. Any burger on the menu. So we both got their most expensive burger ($12) and Fiesty Fiddler IPA. Yum! On Tuesday night I convinced Alex to try something new -- the Boulder Dushanbe Tea House (a Tajik restaurant). Delicious. Thursday for lunch we went to a place called Smash Burger, and then that night we drove up to Lyons to go to Oskar Blues Grill & Brew. Ribs and IPA. Glorious. I'll tell you what, Colorado has lots of fantastic beer!

Climbing didn't go well for me this time though. Whatever physical excuses I might've had (tired/sore arms from lifting weights that morning for the first time in a couple months), let's just say I really need to work to change my attitude when I run into difficulty in a physical activity, be it skiing, running or rock climbing. When it comes to my body, my will is pretty weak, and I have a tendency to get easily frustrated, excessively negative and pouty. It's not pretty, but it's something I realize I desperately need to change. I had hoped to redeem myself with another go at climbing on Friday morning, but Alex was too tired (woke up super-early) and had too much to do, with it being his last day at NCAR. My arms were still sore that day anyway, so maybe it was for the best that I'll wait to try again. Next time, whether I reach the top or not, at the very least I will have a better attitude.

I flew out early on Saturday morning the 17th, and the original plan was for Alex to drop me off at the airport and then continue his long drive eastward to Iowa and then Michigan. But we got home from his farewell party too late Friday night, and he had too much more packing to do, so in order to let him get a bit more sleep before his super-long drive, I took the Super Shuttle to the airport (the shuttle was 45 minutes late though, which didn't make me happy, as it was supposed to pick me up at 4:30am). I was very close to calling and waking up Alex to ask him for a ride when the shuttle finally arrived. I was glad I didn't have to because he really needed the sleep with two days of long drives ahead of him.

Overall I had a terrific week in Colorado. It was a useful trip work-wise, and it was fantastic to be able to hang out with Alex for a week. I really enjoyed that. I desperately needed the break, too, after having worked so hard in the six weeks coming into it. I think I'll be able to get used to living in Colorado starting in November (mountains and low humidity sure are attractive!). Visitors welcome!

About three weeks ago my advisor, Sue, told us she was taking a job at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) starting at the end of August, and had arranged to bring along the four grad students she currently pays and for whom she is the main advisor -- me, Andrew, Luna & Tyler -- if we chose to go along. We had absolutely no idea that it was coming, though I did guess that was the purpose of the suddenly-called meeting about a couple hours beforehand.

So after the shock of the news, I decided within an hour or two that I'd follow her out to Boulder. I felt like the decision was pretty clear. The next day I met with Sue individually and worked out the when of my move: the week of 8-12 November. There are many reasons I wanted to stay until then, but a chief work reason is to get a journal article written on the research I've done this summer before I move to Boulder. Getting that moving date set really allowed me to relax a lot (she's starting at NCAR on 30 August, so I was panicked at first that I might have to move to Colorado right away upon returning from Australia). There are still many details that have yet to be worked out, but it appears all systems go for me to move out there.

It's an exciting new challenge and opportunity for me, and will look great on my resumé to have some experience working at NCAR while in grad school. NCAR is a great place. I'll still be a full-time Penn State student (and will only be getting paid at a grad student rate at NCAR, rather than a full-time employee rate), but I'll just be living and working in Colorado (and possibly maintaining my Wisconsin residency). I may end up stop keeping a foot in three different states and just change my residency to Colorado though, we'll see. I'll be sad to leave behind my friends here at Penn State, and to leave a place I've lived in for 5 years now, but I'm also excited to have a new beginning out in Colorado. Forcibly shaking things up a bit won't be a bad thing for me.

One of the challenges of this sudden move comes because I have a lease signed at my apartment through the end of July 2011 (signed the extension back in February, which is actually fairly late in State College to sign an August-August renewal). However, now it looks like Anders & I have probably found someone to take my spot on the lease (an incoming meteo grad student who we hosted on the visit weekend back in February) starting next month. And he's interested in purchasing my furniture too (which I'm selling because it's prohibitively expensive on a grad student salary to rent a moving truck from State College to Boulder). Hooray! Because I'll be in Australia from 2-21 August, however, that means that I need to move my stuff out before I leave (and I'm going to a wedding next weekend in Indiana, so it actually needs to be out before the weekend). Hollemans have graciously agreed to let me store my stuff in their garage or basement while I'm in Australia. When I get back from Australia, then I'll move into Isaac's new house, where I'll be renting one of his bedrooms through mid-November (David D will also be living there).

And then I think I've also found a roommate and place to stay out in Colorado too! I emailed the Evangelical Free Church in Boulder (Calvary Bible Church), told them of my situation, and a guy named David emailed me back, saying he had a room available in his townhouse in Longmont (about 10-15 miles northeast of Boulder, Longmont is a popular place to live for NCAR employees, as Boulder is ridiculously expensive). That seems like a great place and a great situation for me, so I think I'm going to take it. Everything's really fallen into place this week (mostly yesterday) in terms of living arrangements for the next few months, praise God! I'm really glad to have gotten these things set before I go to Australia.

Now I've gotta get busy early this coming week and pack up everything that I'm not taking to Australia and a few days' worth of clothes for the wedding and before I leave. Looks like I'll be camping out with just the bare essentials in my apartment for a few nights!

While I'm still busy now, I'm actually much more relaxed, which is good, and it's allowed me to get a number of things done. Applying for an electronic visa? Check. Confirming I have no-fee ATM withdrawals worldwide (and thus won't bother with travelers checks)? Check. Editing a support letter that's going out to my church this weekend? Check. Meeting with Ash & Tracy to go over some plans and advise them weather-wise on what to bring? Check. Contacting some people I know at Monash to arrange for some grad student ministry events/meetings? Check. Arranged for places for me to stay while I'm in Melbourne (with my friends Rob & Simone, Joel & Rosey, and James & Ali)? Check (kinda -- I still need to arrange what nights I'm staying with who). But things are falling into place.

Also, submitting abstracts for my three research seminars that I'm giving? Check. Took care of that one this afternoon. For the main work/education-related purpose to my trip, I'm giving three seminars (the same one at all three places, entitled "Down-Selecting for Numerical Weather Prediction Ensemble Configurations." I'm giving them mainly because I'm interested in the possibility of pursuing a post-doc position in Australia, if one were to become available. So here's when I'm giving seminars in the Melbourne area:

Fri 6 Aug at noon: Monash University
Wed 11 Aug at 1pm: University of Melbourne
Thu 12 Aug at 10am: Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre

I'm really excited about these, and they'll be brand-new experiences for me. I've never given a seminar at someplace other than Penn State before (and I'll be giving this same seminar at the Water Tunnel Building on Fri 30 Jul at 9am), and there will be a fair amount of new experiences for me. It was really easy to arrange them too; I just emailed someone at each place, introduced myself, said I was coming to Melbourne, and asked if I could visit their institution, and offered to give a seminar. They're more than happy to arrange for seminars from foreign scientists who visit Australia. :-) I've been having fun putting the talk together this week, and I think it's going to turn out really well! There's still some additional work I'd like to include, of course, so hopefully I can get that wrapped up before I leave.

Monday 2 August, when Ash, Tracy & I depart for Australia, will be here before we know it! Two weeks from now I'll be happily jet-lagged, walking around Melbourne, and seeing old friends again!!