Having just celebrated my one week anniversary of being in Australia, I feel somewhat qualified to give my initial findings on the good and bad of the country thus far.
The good:
The Fitness
This past week and a half in Australia has been one of the most physically strenuous periods of my life. Between lugging two 50-pound suitcases up and down two flights of stairs (three times), two surfing lessons, countless hikes, and trekking all around the greater Melbourne area trying to locate contact solution (Really? No contacts in Australia? Fine), I am working muscles that I'm fairly certain I didn't have before Australia. As one girl remarked during a three hour hike essentially up the side of a mountain "I feel like we're constantly on the Last Chance Workout from Biggest Loser." On the bright side, I am getting RIPPED, and if "vegetarian option" continues to mean rice, I will be returning home jacked AND skinny.
The Wildlife
As everyone has seen on Animal Planet, Australia has some seriously cool wildlife. One thing that I missed from endless viewings of the Crocodile Hunter, however, is the sheer abundance of some of these animals. Since my arrival, I have seen probably 20 kangaroos, about 4 koalas, and one terrified echidna we cornered by the side of the road and photographed as it tried futilely to bury itself in the dirt. In the WILD. Not in a zoo or even a reserve but just straight chillin. Additionally, kookaburras, parrots, cockatoos and countless other exotic looking birds live on campus here at La Trobe and can be constantly spotted in the trees around campus.
Sledging
"sledging" is an Australian term that simply means "to be rude towards any and all people one may encounter and have this be entirely socially acceptable." Basically "sledging" means you can make fun of anyone, anywhere based on anything and have it dismissed by saying loudly "Aw, I'm just takin' the piss!" in your best Aussie twang. Race, sexuality, weight, looks; everything is fair game in this twisted psychological warzone known as joking in Australia. Most of you will be unsurprised to hear that I have developed an affinity, as well as a natural gift, for sledging. Just hope it works its way out of my system by July.
Jorts
Many of you know what a dear place jorts (jean shorts, for the unenlightened) hold in my heart. Simply put, I love them. I love the texture, I love the inappropriate skimpiness of them, I love the redneck je ne sais quoi they add to every outfit. Well, gentle readers, I am THRILLED to report that Aussies share my affinity for cropped denim. Men wear jorts, women wear jorts, children wear jorts. I was even fortunate enough the other day to catch a sprightly old man rocking a tasteful pair, cutoff just above the knee. I stroll around all day gazing happily at the sea of denim covered derrieres, content in the knowledge that I have found my people.
The Bad:
The Wildlife
Remember what I was saying about the beautiful parrots, cockatoos, and kookaburras earlier? Well, beauty is only skin (or feather) deep and these little monsters regularly make horrific screeching noises at 5 in the morning when some of us may still be attempting to get some beauty rest. Being awoken to the screeches of what sounds like an epic interspecies battle (or, in the case of the kookaburra, maniacal, AJ McLean at the beginning of "Larger Than Life" laughter)is not the most restful thing I have ever experienced. Also, the bugs seem to operate by a "bigger is better" sort of philosophy and they all come equipped with some sort of sonar that allows them to aim directly for ears, eyes, nostrils, or partially open mouths that are midsentence.
The Prices
17 dollars for the cheapest bath towel at Target, 34 dollars for a poor quality frying pan, and 13 dollars for a small bottle of sunscreen. That is all. I get that Australia is a pretty remote continent, but unless you are transporting things by cart and pony, there is no reason bath towels and sunscreen need to be treated as such precious commodities.
Kitten-sized spiders aside, I am having a wonderful time in Australia, and am incredibly excited for the rest of my semester here. I will continue updating the blog, but I am having some trouble uploading pictures to Facebook, so just sit tight while I grapple with my entirely dubious internet situation.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
In which I arrive in Melbourne
It’s a good thing I practiced my nomadic lifestyle in LA a couple weeks ago, because Australia so far has really put me to the test. Since arriving on Tuesday, I haven’t spent more than one night in one place and it’s looking like that pattern will continue until Sunday, when I move into my permanent housing at La Trobe.
The flight was long of course, but not unbearable. After passing a seven hour layover in LAX (Thank you, Father, for taking any opportunity to save a buck or two), I finally boarded the most enormous plane I have ever seen for the nearly 14 hour flight to Melbourne. Fortunately, the plane had individual tv’s for all the seats, even those of us banished to Row 83, and I watched “Million Dollar Baby” (excellent), “The September Issue” (entertaining), the first five minutes of “No Country for Old Men” (a compressed-air killing machine? No thank you), and two episodes of the British “The Office” which was, as always, excruciatingly, uncomfortably hilarious. Despite two Tylenol PM’s and a lot of fervent hoping, I wasn’t able to sleep for more than a few hours, and so I arrived in Melbourne with the slightly cracked out feeling one achieves whilst running on very little sleep and a lot of anxiety.
After waiting at the baggage carousel and passing through customs dragging two large suitcases, a guitar, and a tote bag, I finally managed to find the group that I was supposed to meet up with to take us to the hotel we’d be staying in until our dorms were ready. “Hotel,” however, is a bit of a misleading term. It implies that one has taken a vacation and hopes to pass some time in relative comfort before heading back to the daily grind. “Hostel” seems more appropriate to me, the kind of place where you can imagine someone snatching you in the hallway and taking you to a basement somewhere where rich businessmen pay for the privilege of gouging out your eyeballs. The Miami has no elevators, meaning we dragged all of our luggage up two flights of stairs before arriving in our tiny rooms, bathrooms not included because they are located down the hall, along with showers that will either chill you to the bone or potentially scald off an upper layer of flesh, depending on your preference. After passing a surprisingly restful night in my closet-sized room, I dragged all my bags down the two flights of stairs and out to the bus where we would be heading for an orientation trip down the Great Ocean Road.
The Great Ocean Road is a bit of a deceptive name, because at least the stretch that we drove was located about a mile off the coast. Nevertheless, it features some pretty spectacular landscapes, and definitely helped impress upon me the vast beauty of Australia. In some ways the landscape reminds me of California in the summer; large flat golden fields dotted with deep green trees, but Australia is much more variable; equally prone to large flat expanses as to dense, tangled forests of gnarled trees. I spent most of the hour long drive with my nose firmly pressed to the window glass, trying vainly to spot a kangaroo, saltwater crocodile, platypus, or some other hallmark of Australia, only to be presented with sheep, sheep, and still more sheep. We arrived at our camp pretty early in the day and ate a quick lunch before heading out for our first activity, a surf lesson.
Despite the occasional lie I tell to impressionable non-Californians, I have never surfed before, and I was definitely psyched to give it a try, if a bit apprehensive about my lack of upper body strength and general coordination. After struggling into wetsuits, we headed down to the beach where a grizzled old Aussie drew complex diagrams in the sand with his toes and we stared blankly at him. About five minutes into that, he instructed us to lay on our boards in the sand and put us through a dizzyingly fast sequence of commands that left the majority of us thrashing around on our surfboards like a conference of epileptics, after which he looked at us approvingly and told us to get into the water.
Surfing is incredibly difficult and tiring, but it was a completely amazing experience. Despite spending the majority of the time flipping off my board into the surf and coming up with saltwater pouring out of every orifice in my face, the .4 seconds I managed to stand up on my board gave me such a rush that I gladly allowed myself to be continuously piledrived into the ocean floor so hard I suspect I will be finding sand in the various nooks and crannies of my body for days to come.
Salty and bedraggled, we headed back to our camp, ordinarily used as a Scout Camp, who, judging by the paraphenalia littered about the grounds, are fond of kilts and woodworking arts and crafts projects. We slept in tiny cabins that slept 12 people piled into tiny bunk beds presumably meant for boys of a scouting age. It was in this cabin that I first encountered what I suspect will be my nemesis for my time in Australia.
Despite hearing tales that a “huge” spider had been found in one of the other cabins, we all went to bed with relative ease, being completely exhausted from our surfing adventure. I was awoken in the morning by a slight scuffle that turned out to be one of my fellow campers vaulting from her top bunk onto the floor. We all sat up, startled, as she mutely pointed to the window right above her bed, where, perched daintily atop the lace curtain, sat a brown spider approximately the size of the palm of my hand. As a group, we all silently packed our belongings, keeping one eye on the beast, and vacated the cabin, never to return again. I hope our spider friend is content with his new lodgings.
After breakfast we proceeded to a low ropes course facilitated by a trio of Aussies who seemed perfectly content to allow us to come dangerously close to death with only a quick “Better look out there,” as we dangled precariously over whatever new torturous exercise they devised. It was a lot of fun to be out in “the bush” and staying active, and after lunch, we hiked down the hill and got as close to the beach as we could, before being stopped by the cliffs. Everything is completely gorgeous and I’ve been really excited by how eager everyone is to get outside and go exploring just to see what we can see. On one such exploration, we stumbled upon two kangaroos just chilling in the bush, grazing. We snapped a bunch of pictures before our squeals of excitement got to be too much for them, and they hopped away.
All in all, Australia has been great so far. Tomorrow morning I head off on another orientation trip, this time for my specific University, not just IES students, and I will get to try my hand at surfing again…despite the fact that my muscles still haven’t healed from my last adventures. Wish me luck!
The flight was long of course, but not unbearable. After passing a seven hour layover in LAX (Thank you, Father, for taking any opportunity to save a buck or two), I finally boarded the most enormous plane I have ever seen for the nearly 14 hour flight to Melbourne. Fortunately, the plane had individual tv’s for all the seats, even those of us banished to Row 83, and I watched “Million Dollar Baby” (excellent), “The September Issue” (entertaining), the first five minutes of “No Country for Old Men” (a compressed-air killing machine? No thank you), and two episodes of the British “The Office” which was, as always, excruciatingly, uncomfortably hilarious. Despite two Tylenol PM’s and a lot of fervent hoping, I wasn’t able to sleep for more than a few hours, and so I arrived in Melbourne with the slightly cracked out feeling one achieves whilst running on very little sleep and a lot of anxiety.
After waiting at the baggage carousel and passing through customs dragging two large suitcases, a guitar, and a tote bag, I finally managed to find the group that I was supposed to meet up with to take us to the hotel we’d be staying in until our dorms were ready. “Hotel,” however, is a bit of a misleading term. It implies that one has taken a vacation and hopes to pass some time in relative comfort before heading back to the daily grind. “Hostel” seems more appropriate to me, the kind of place where you can imagine someone snatching you in the hallway and taking you to a basement somewhere where rich businessmen pay for the privilege of gouging out your eyeballs. The Miami has no elevators, meaning we dragged all of our luggage up two flights of stairs before arriving in our tiny rooms, bathrooms not included because they are located down the hall, along with showers that will either chill you to the bone or potentially scald off an upper layer of flesh, depending on your preference. After passing a surprisingly restful night in my closet-sized room, I dragged all my bags down the two flights of stairs and out to the bus where we would be heading for an orientation trip down the Great Ocean Road.
The Great Ocean Road is a bit of a deceptive name, because at least the stretch that we drove was located about a mile off the coast. Nevertheless, it features some pretty spectacular landscapes, and definitely helped impress upon me the vast beauty of Australia. In some ways the landscape reminds me of California in the summer; large flat golden fields dotted with deep green trees, but Australia is much more variable; equally prone to large flat expanses as to dense, tangled forests of gnarled trees. I spent most of the hour long drive with my nose firmly pressed to the window glass, trying vainly to spot a kangaroo, saltwater crocodile, platypus, or some other hallmark of Australia, only to be presented with sheep, sheep, and still more sheep. We arrived at our camp pretty early in the day and ate a quick lunch before heading out for our first activity, a surf lesson.
Despite the occasional lie I tell to impressionable non-Californians, I have never surfed before, and I was definitely psyched to give it a try, if a bit apprehensive about my lack of upper body strength and general coordination. After struggling into wetsuits, we headed down to the beach where a grizzled old Aussie drew complex diagrams in the sand with his toes and we stared blankly at him. About five minutes into that, he instructed us to lay on our boards in the sand and put us through a dizzyingly fast sequence of commands that left the majority of us thrashing around on our surfboards like a conference of epileptics, after which he looked at us approvingly and told us to get into the water.
Surfing is incredibly difficult and tiring, but it was a completely amazing experience. Despite spending the majority of the time flipping off my board into the surf and coming up with saltwater pouring out of every orifice in my face, the .4 seconds I managed to stand up on my board gave me such a rush that I gladly allowed myself to be continuously piledrived into the ocean floor so hard I suspect I will be finding sand in the various nooks and crannies of my body for days to come.
Salty and bedraggled, we headed back to our camp, ordinarily used as a Scout Camp, who, judging by the paraphenalia littered about the grounds, are fond of kilts and woodworking arts and crafts projects. We slept in tiny cabins that slept 12 people piled into tiny bunk beds presumably meant for boys of a scouting age. It was in this cabin that I first encountered what I suspect will be my nemesis for my time in Australia.
Despite hearing tales that a “huge” spider had been found in one of the other cabins, we all went to bed with relative ease, being completely exhausted from our surfing adventure. I was awoken in the morning by a slight scuffle that turned out to be one of my fellow campers vaulting from her top bunk onto the floor. We all sat up, startled, as she mutely pointed to the window right above her bed, where, perched daintily atop the lace curtain, sat a brown spider approximately the size of the palm of my hand. As a group, we all silently packed our belongings, keeping one eye on the beast, and vacated the cabin, never to return again. I hope our spider friend is content with his new lodgings.
After breakfast we proceeded to a low ropes course facilitated by a trio of Aussies who seemed perfectly content to allow us to come dangerously close to death with only a quick “Better look out there,” as we dangled precariously over whatever new torturous exercise they devised. It was a lot of fun to be out in “the bush” and staying active, and after lunch, we hiked down the hill and got as close to the beach as we could, before being stopped by the cliffs. Everything is completely gorgeous and I’ve been really excited by how eager everyone is to get outside and go exploring just to see what we can see. On one such exploration, we stumbled upon two kangaroos just chilling in the bush, grazing. We snapped a bunch of pictures before our squeals of excitement got to be too much for them, and they hopped away.
All in all, Australia has been great so far. Tomorrow morning I head off on another orientation trip, this time for my specific University, not just IES students, and I will get to try my hand at surfing again…despite the fact that my muscles still haven’t healed from my last adventures. Wish me luck!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
In which I guess I'll see you guys later
There is a scene in Garden State where Zach Braff pops an ecstasy pill and says "I guess I'll see you guys later" to his fellow partygoers as the scene dissolves into a fast-forwarded game of spin the bottle and melancholy indie music plays. In a way, I can identify with Andrew Largeman at that moment as I sit here in SFO waiting for my plane to take off(Ok waiting for my plane to arrive, as I got here two hours early just in case anything horrible happened...because I am a truly relaxed traveler): I have no idea what's about to happen to me, but I'm pretty sure shit's about to get realllll weird.
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