Post TWENTY!!: Australia really is pretty darn awesome

I realize that I have been doing alot of complaining in my previous posts. Please let me say right now that AUSTRALIA IS AMAZINGLY INCREDIBLY AWESOME! Do not take my complaining the wrong way, the fact that what I am complaining about is food (which we complain about even back at LU) and birds (same deal) is good. Australia is wonderful and I am so happy and lucky and privileged to be here.

That being said, this post is all about the magnificence of Rugby, SPRING BREAK (which is i suppose really fall break...) that is coming up soon!!!!!!!!!! and actually having time to spend a total of thirty-three hours in eleven lectures that give me no credit whatsoever.

#1) on the list. Spring Break! (ok I know it is fall break. but old habits...) .

Here is my itinerary.

April 8th: Break begins. this is Friday. I will spend the day packing up everything and getting ready to go.

April 9th: Depart from Sydney airport at 6:05am for Alice Springs via Brisbane. Arrive in ASP by noon and check in to Toddy's Backpackers for the night.

April 10th: Depart 5:45 am from Toddy's for the Adventure Tours Rock the Centre 3 day excursion to Kings Canyon, Uluru (Ayers Rock) and surrounding OUTBACK areas. The outback is the reason I came to Australia. So I am so excited for this.

April 13th: Depart from ASP for Cairns via Ayers Rock 1:55pm. Arrive in Cairns at 6:25pm, check in to Cairns City Backpackers (hello 15 dollar a night rooms!)

April 14th: Depart from the Marlin Marina at 7:00am on the Sailboat the Rum Runner for a 2 day, 1 night snorkel trip to the Great Barrier Reef, I will get to do one introductory scuba dive for free, and if I want to shell out some more cash. I can choose to do additional dives.

April15th: Return to Cairns at 3:30pm, re-check in to City Backpackers.

April 18th: Depart from Cairns Airport for Melbourne at 10:35am. Arrive in Melbourne 2:00pm and meet Janet, a very VERY generous friend of my piano instructor Stefanie Jacobs' who has offered to be my host during my stay. This night, we will attend the 'Rolls Royce' of seders at a friend of Janet's.

April 21st, 22nd, or MAYBE, 23rd: Depart from Melbourne for Sydney. Arrive in Sydney where I will crash on the floor of some wonderful friends from Malaysia who live in the apartments in the Macquarie Village near campus.

Somewhere after the return to campus I will go to Sydney and attend the Royal Easter Show (a bit like the state fair I am told, not really a religious thing but more of a pastime).

April 24th: Attend the Easter service at THE cathedral in Sydney, St. Marys.

April 26th: ANZAC DAY!!!!!!!!! EAT AS MANY ANZAC COOKIES AS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!

There you have it! Looks busy, but in the time period where I will have no homework I need to fit in as much as possible!

#2.) Now, on to the experiences I had today! This involves RUGBY LEAGUE!

I am told this is called a 'scrum' but I still have no idea why they do this.

A group of 20 exchange students got tickets through 'club X' to go to the Rugby League match between the Bondi Roosters and the Canterbury Bulldogs (dogs were 'at home') at the ANZ Olympic Stadium in the Olympic park.

It took us 4 trains to get there and our journey there was actually longer than the 80 minute match we came to watch, but it was well worth it. Upon arrival we were told that apparently the Dogs and the Roosters have a heated rivalry, since Canterbury is from a certain part of town and well, so is Bondi. There were alot of police and we were told to stay in our group and not to talk to anyone. If we were to interact, it was best to 'be a fan' of whatever jersey the person we were talking to was wearing. So, 20 exchange students entered the stadium a bit on edge, but very excited to be in such a 'real' situation. We were told that we would be told the rules upon entering, however our guide forgot to do this so we were left to figure them out for ourselves. I knew a bit about rugby already, and I had seen some on the TV at the gym, so I had a very general idea of the basics (can't pass forward for example) but alot of my rule understanding was still just sort of by guess and by golly.

the Bulldogs enter

The game was so fun to watch. One has 6 plays to get from one end of the field to the endzone, and it looks similar to a very intense game of red rover. One guy takes the ball and runs as hard as he can from his line of people and towards (and into) the other teams line of people (stretching across the field). Then he is tackled, or he can lateral the ball back to keep the play going. There is a 4 point score for getting the ball over the endzone line and touching the ground with it. There is then 2 points added if they can kick the extra point through the uprights.

Tourists (aka our group)

there were water people on the field even during play! (see dudes in blue and yellow, pink is the ref)

Angie and...I dunno who that other person is...

Play is pretty close to non-stop, since when one is tackled he stand up as quickly as he can and starts the play going again. It is also very...brutal, no pads or anything and men weighing over 250 pounds running full force into each other. It was so exciting! There were 24,000 fans in the 80,000 capacity stadium, so it looked pretty empty, but they were sufficiently loud during the good plays and 'bad' reff calls to make it a real experience, though, we did not witness any police action, in fact, I did not see ANY police inside the stadium at all. We did see a couple injuries including one where I said that "I think the guy broke his leg" (turned out I was right...)....not good for the Roosters. Also, the favorite hometeam Bulldogs walked off with a victory after a dominating first half performance (though the Roosters picked it up after the halftime chat).

#3.) the Global Leadership Program (GLP): Here at Macquarie I have chosen to take part in the GLP for Study Abroad Students (there is another one for undergrad and postgrad students here for longer than we are, but theirs is much much much more involved than ours is). The program is a series of at least 10 colloquium ranging from lectures to workshops each lasting 3 hours, on different aspects of Global Issues. We pick and chose them from a number of different ones offered: subjects include (but are certainly not limited to) international humanitarian law, sustainable leadership in business, morality and living well, etc.

So far I have attended

Religion Secularism and State 

Leadership

Sustainable Leadership

International Aid

Me. Inc 

and I plan  to attend

Career Mapping 

Poverty Development and Microfinance

Believe Me When I Tell You 2 (persuasive speaking) 

Climate Change, Leading for the Future

Beyond Borders (cultural understanding)

Living Well and Doing Right (morality in the Global community).

I have found these colloquia vary on their level of interesting-ness. But I am learning about the world through a Global perspective, all of them are very informative. I am also gaining some useful knowledge about being a person of the world, that I can apply to my own life. 

There you have it! post two of a weekend! I am making up for the lack of posts that will occur during break ( I will not have my computer in Uluru or in Cairns or in Melbourne. so you will have to wait awhile to hear about my adventures there).

Plans for the near future include finishing up alot of schoolwork, and yep, thats about it. Not too exciting.

Post Nineteen: terrible conclusions

This morning was the first time I was able to sleep in past 7am. I was pretty excited and ready for a restful experience. Not to be, not to be.

Most of you readers know that when at home in the states, there is a certain bird associated largely with spring and summer, that I cannot stand. It's incessant ugly warbling loud imposing call rouses me from slumber and pesters my ears daily during these months of the year. Yes, I am speaking of the house wren.

Here in Australia, there are no house wrens. this is good, however, there are crows and the sulphur-crested cockatoo....Never in my life did I imagine that there could be a worse bird than the house wren. Australia has sadly lead me to the most terrible conclusion that perhaps the house wren is not all that bad. I know. its amazing. But the crows here and the cockatoos are now officially more annoying than any other bird, insect, or creature I have encountered.

Do not be fooled by the pretty appearance!

yuck yuck yuck, I can imagine the sound it is making and to that I say YUCK!

Crows here do not sound like real crows, they sound like dying lambs mixed with complaining babies. Worse are the cockatoos. These birds make a noise as loud as a lawn mower and the sound is similar to that of a coffee-grinder and the screeching of brakes/crunching in an automobile accident.

This morning (and a couple mornings this week), these cockatoos decided to have a conference outside my window at 5:30am and at 7am. Twice as loud as the house wren, and yes, even uglier and impertinent, the cockatoo (and the Australian crow) has now topped my list as the worst bird. Compared to these birds, the house wren is ALMOST musical. However, I maintain that the house wren is by no means a pleasant sounding bird, and it is still on my bad list, but it can be redeemed by these other two extremely unpleasant creatures.

Second: I must take the liberty to complain a bit more about Aussie food. I have tried and tried and tried, but no matter where I have looked I have failed to find 1.) Ketchup that tastes properly like ketchup 2.) tomato/spaghetti sauce 3.) good chocolate (that is not either American, Swiss, British, French, or German made). The conclusion is, that here, some things just taste different and I will not experience good versions until my return to America. I must say that, it is not that they are essentially bad, but just that they do not suite my previously formed taste preferences. Having said that, 

Australian Ketchup...

The Ketchup here is called "tomato sauce" and while it has the semblance of proper ketchup (it is red and thickish) and tastes...ok...If I found ketchup like this in the states I would say it had been open for too long, it just doesn't have the fresh tangy taste that I am used to. It is more of a darker almost burnt (for lack of a better word) flavor. I am not the only one who has had this experience! It is a matter of taste preference yes, but there are others who agree on what I have written.

What regular spaghetti sauce looks like. Australians really don't know what this is.

Tomato Sauce (careful, here one needs to call it spaghetti sauce or marinara sauc, as 'tomato sauce' means ketchup here), is non-existent basically. I recently had lasagnia and there was not any tangible tomato flavoring except one or two stray tomato skins (meaning there must have been SOME sort of sauce somewhere, but.... ) there was no sauce visible, or tasteable. This has also been my experience with pizza as noted in earlier posts. really, the concept of sauce is foreign. Even the pasta sauces are more like bunches of diced tomatoes, not really a 'sauce' there. It is also really difficult to find spaghetti sauce in stores, which leads me to believe it is not only DLC and pizza places which have this problem of no sauce.

Lastly, as I have mentioned before, the chocolate does not taste like chocolate BUT ALSO! one has to be careful when one goes to buy 'real' chocolate, because sometimes things such as M&M's are made in Australia! Make sure to check the label to see where they were manufactured!

It must be noted however, that most of my eating experiences (with the exception of chocolate) have been through the DLC cafeteria, probably not the best representation of Australian cuisine. Extrapolating conclusions from here to the rest of AU would be a bit like comparing the college food at old Downer in Lawrence as representational of American food. So I do make some allowances for quality. However, the ketchup is the same as any grocery brand, and I have noticed that pizza elsewhere comes with little or no sauce as well. I have not tried pasta.

To conclude my food talk, since I was feeling a little down and I did dip into my ANRCN (Ariana Needs Real Chocolate Now) fund a bit this past weekend, making sure to check labels for manufacturing I indulged in some Cadbury's (which to me will always taste like England since we ate it there as treats for being good, thanks Mom!) and M&M's.However, real chocolate is expensive here, and Reeses are really hard to find (when one finds them they run at about $1.50 per peanut butter cup, cup, not package, just cup, so a normal package is usually $3). I have also decided maybe to try making chocolate brownies since I found a fair trade shop with Cocoa from not Australia, and one of my resident leaders at DLC. So! Due to all of these food experiences the ANRCN organization has now expanded into the "THANKS ALOT" (Taste of Home, Ariana Needs Ketchup Sometimes And Loads of Other Things) anti-homesickness fund for donations!

Ok, that was not a cry for money, it was just a joke :) I just enjoyed trying to come up with a cool acronym.

In other news, I have not done anything particularly interesting in awhile, I am trying my best at my schoolwork, though since I have not gotten any assignments back I still have no idea where I stand regarding my classes.

Tomorrow Angie and I are going with the Exchange Club to see a Rugby game at the ANZ Olympic Stadium, so that should be heaps (an Aussie word that means 'alot') of fun!

I have also ALMOST finalized my spring break plans. I will post them up soon I promise, along with my adventure at the rugby and perhaps a description of the Global Leadership Program that I am doing. I will TRY to do this this weekend, but blogging is time consuming and, depending on a paper and a presentation that I must finish, I may have to wait until next weekend.

Post: Eighteen: this one is for Rob Elliott

Discoveries a plenty!!!

First let me relate some discoveries: last weekend I was walking along Bondi beach and I saw what looked like a sorry used up bus ticket on the ground. I picked it up just to throw it away and lo and behold! it was a 'travel ten' (ten rides to one ticket) ticket with only one ride used! AU dollar value about 12. HOT DOG!  THEN on Thursday this week I saw a 'my multi week' ticket on the ground (allows the user to access all trains ferries and buses one wishes for one week), I though "no way this could happen twice" but I picked it up anyway. Sure enough! It is usable until the 22nd of March! For this one, since they are expensive I did ask the lost and found people to keep it, but no one picked it up by the end of the day and I got to take it! Value around AU 40. that is a total profit of over $50! not bad. Never will I ever again leave a ticket lying on the ground!

Thursday night.

Set the scene: I am sitting at my computer, looking over references for an assignment. It is getting late and I am thinking, "oh I am kinda tired, seems like I should go to sleep soon". then out of the corner of my eye I see movement in the corner to my left. I turn. COCKROACH! again, the size of my thumb. I twist internally, then swirl in my chair (as quietly as possible), leap to my sink, grab my trusty drinking glass (from the dining hall, not my own of course, that would be gross!) and turn back to squish the thing. Yipes! it has disappeared. Not to be detterred I poise my (plastic) glass and wait. Suddenly, there it is, it appeared no joke, just appeared. I carefully track it and WHAM! sever the abdomen from the thorax and the head and one leg. problem solved? Nope! the head and leg are still squirreling around!! EWWWWWW!!!!!! So I had to squish the head again...now as far as I can tell it is dead (it is still stuck to my wall as of this morning).

This is only the head and half the thorax....still there....

Needless to say, I did not even attempt to go to sleep for another two hours after this. So much for the early night. But, crisis averted, bug dead, now I can sleep right? WRONG. I forgot, this is DLC...this is my floor DLC...Thursday night....aka, no sleep until 3am. yep, I kid not.

Oh well, I woke up at 7:30 and I was not too awfully tired, plans to visit Sydney still on. It was gray and rainy, (like all my excursion days seem to start out) but since I was planning on touring some of Sydney's famous bakeries (I have developed an adoration for Australian bakeries, they are everywhere! and I had researched the very best cheap ones.) and then going to Sydney tower thus I would be inside for the morning at least.

Two (ok three) shots of espresso later, I departed from the train station (using my free ticket!) for Sydney central. on the way I visited the colonial bakery (milsons point) as well as st honore (north Sydney) and infinity bakery (kings cross). I have to say, colonial has the best prices and the best sweet stuff: I had a macadamia nut 'slice' and a pumpkin scone for breakfast here. St Honore had some recommended flourless chocolate cake, pretty good, but the best part was the bottom, sort of a sugary crunch, not what one would expect for a cake as the icing is usually the good part. The icing here was not great, but that is typical of Australia. at Infinity I had lunch of a cheesy 'pullapart' and some fresh carrots. It was really nice that there were fresh veggies here, though they were too expensive to make it really worth the trip, and the cheesy baguette thing was cold. Thus the winner is...Colonial bakery.

From here it was on to the tower. I don't know if it is the tallest structure in Sydney, but it was pretty high, and despite the clouds the view was amazing. and since it was Friday and around lunch time, there was no one there.

Sunshine over the pacific ocean

Yep, we are higher than the airplanes here!

and yes, since I was by myself today I had to do the cheesy 'I was here' shots myself.

Add caption

Ok, so we have seen the tower been to the bakeries. It is still cloudy, and I forgot my free pass to hold the Koala (and I think I will not do that anyway, seems kinda against my principles...) so then now what? Being hungry for something salty, and remembering Rob Elliott told me that I should go to the fish markets, (though granted he said go at 3am, it was not 3am), and drizzle and gray is the perfect time for fish, I walked down to darling harbor, and then from there to Blackwattle Bay and the markets. It was pretty busy here, and interestingly, pretty much everyone I saw was of Asian descent, it felt like I was back in Japan! Also the fish smell was nowhere near as overpowering as I expected. Even though I missed the auctions that occur early early in the AM I did get to see some crazy stuff including a fish the size of my leg, some live mud crabs the size of my head, and I bought and ate an oyster with creamy potatoes and then later a soft shell crab.

so, how does one eat an oyster? I had no fork so I discreetly used my fingers. the Oyster tasted like...what I would imagine Elephant tastes like...and it looked like a dead hairless mouse...needless to say, I am in no hurry to try oyster again...at least not cheap ones...

Oh Ariana, little do you know what this thing you are holding will taste like...

The shell was not edible.

'do not hold the mud crabs'...right. cause that was on my to do list. it took all my might to put my hand that close for scale (it is about a foot away from the crabs, this was NOT what I ate)

I have had softshell crab before and this one was really good too. freshly fried. yum!

Then, I was tired of walking so I caught a bus and some trains back to MQ Uni, but not before buying some chocolate using the generous donation from my loving family to the 'Ariana needs to have some REAL chocolate NOW' fund. A good way to finish the day.

REESE'S! now THAT is acceptable chocolate!