5 October 2008
“That right there is death… a death-dealer. There’s no way I would put this boat right in front of this croc in a month’s time when the water warms up.”
– Our Daintree River cruise guide, as our boat sat less than 10 metres in front of a 13 foot-long alpha male crocodile named Fat Albert last Tuesday morning… very reassuring words, no?
28 September 2008
The opera house, the harbor bridge, the Olympic stadium… you always hear about these places in books or on TV, but the reality of their existance doesn’t really hit until you’re standing outside of them. Two weeks ago, I did my first major trip outside of Brisbane and visited the capital city of Sydney, which is about a 2-hour flight into New South Wales.
I went with a couple of other Americans and stayed with friends from Duke. The trip was incredibly exhausting with all of the sight-seeing and our determination to save money by walking everywhere! What most amazed me about Sydney was its metropolitan feel. Brisbane, with about 2 million residents, is certainly by definition a city, but compared to Sydney’s international flair and neon spectacles, Brisbane looks small and quaint. Dare I compare their differences to New York City versus Durham? This might be a slight exaggeration, but there was an unexpected marked difference between the two cities.
As soon as I arrived in Sydney, I felt a hustle and bustle absent in Brisbane. People rushed past you unaffectedly. Everywhere you turned, there were more bright signs, shopping, food, historical spots and tourist traps. I could constantly hear different accents from across the globe, but ironically enough, rarely (never?) heard the laid-back Queenslander accent I’ve come to be so familiar with and associate with Australians. To be sure, the sights in Sydney are amazing. The Royal Botanical Gardens overlooking city central and the harbor were beautiful, the Opera House was even more amazing up close than from TV and the Blue mountains we visited about an hour outside of the city could give Yosemite or Yellowstone a run for their money. Darling Harbor was a lot of fun: right next to the heart of downtown, complete with delicious restaurants, gelato, an aquarium, the largest IMAX in Australia and Saturday night fireworks. The atmosphere was electric and intriguing. On the flip side, the small town of Leura in the Blue mountains was merely a two-block downtown spread of small shops, cafes and a specialty candy store. For the Durhamites and Dukies reading, think Brightleaf Square or Ninth Street in the middle of the mountains and minus ‘gourmet’ places such as Mt. Fuji’s or Piazza Italia.
I think the reality that I’ve been to Sydney – you know, the famous Australian city that hosted the 2000 summer Olympics – only really hit me once I got back home to Brisbane. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip, and I can safely say it’s impossible to do Sydney justice in only four days. But isn’t that the case with any city really? Most visitors to Australia completely overlook Brisbane, but it’s a wonderful city and I am so glad it’s my home these four months.
Favorite Sydney memories? I can narrow it down to three:
Next stop: tropical Cairns!
15 September 2008
Stop massacring English!
The ad reads: “Stop massacring English!” The idea is, of course, that if you buy this company’s English courses, you will ostensibly stop “massacring” the English language.
I’ve been in Paris for a week now, and this ad got me to thinking, if there was some French guy (complete with beret, cigarette, and baguette in hand, naturally) who got a smack every time I made an error in speaking, what would he look like?
Well, he would probably be in pretty bad shape. In fact, he’d probably still be lying on the floor, quivering from the time I said I thought “the window was delicious.”
The language barrier was not something to which I gave a lot of thought before coming to France. I have been studying French since kindergarten (I have the Atlanta public school system to thank for that one), and I have been to France twice before and got along just fine.
But I haven’t taken a French class since my first semester freshman year at Duke, and it turns out that that is plenty of time for your brain to start to rot.
Yes, I remember the basics. I can order in a restaurant and talk to shop owners just fine. But it turns out that there is a big difference in being able to buy a stamp and being able to show your personality and wit in conversation.
9 September 2008
My Monday morning: watching American Sunday night football from 10am-1pm with a couple of friends and a few random Australians in an engineering lounge. Luckily for me, ESPN’s coverage of the Colts and Bears was broadcast here on our humble channel 10. And even more luckily for me, being the Chicago native I am, the Bears pulled off the upset and won.
Don’t worry, I’m not posting merely to brag – it has cultural significance as well, I swear. A couple of firsts occurred for me Monday morning and a couple of things stood out:
1. I’ve never watched football with people from a foreign country. Some liked it, some didn’t. A couple of the guys knew as much as the Americans present and even belonged to their own fantasy leagues. A couple of the guys could have cared less.
2. I’ve actually never watched football from a foreign country… at 10am on Monday. Just wait til next week… my Bears play the early Sunday game, so at 3am Brisbane time on Monday, I will be watching…somehow, though I haven’t quite figured out how.
3. I’ve never watched football with someone who truly hated it. I quote (in response to a great tackle), “Five against one?? That’s so ridiculous. This game is ridiculous.” and (sarcastically in response to a head-butt-nearly-turned-into-a-fight after a play) “Ooo, I hit him with my helmet on… I’m tough.” It was really funny, especially since he had just sat down and didn’t know there were Americans there.
But seriously, it was a lot of fun and it felt so good to see some football again. And I won my fantasy game by nearly 25 points… and it’s my first time ever in a fantasy league… and I had the second highest score overall in the league. Ok, that was bragging.
8 September 2008
I come from a world of Duke blue and Blue Devils, and here I have found myself embraced in Australia by blue skies and… Blue Dogs.
Since I arrived, Emmanuel College has been my home away from home. Oddly enough, our colors are “Duke” blue and white. I walk around, seeing everyone wearing their sweet blue and white-striped rugby jerseys and I can’t help but smile about how good it feels to see the familar but also how much fun the experience of a residential college has been.
Amazingly (and frighteningly!) enough, I have nearly reached the half-way point of my time in Australia. For the past two months, I have been living in St. Lucia, a suburb of Brisbane in Queensland, the Sunshine State. My residential college houses about 300 Australians and 50 international students, mostly under-grad, but some grad and post-doc as well.
We live in a variety of two-story brick wings situated around a grassy courtyard and alongside the dining hall and gym. My wing, affectionately known as Micky, is named Meiklejohn after the Dr. Reverend John Meiklejohn, (could his parents not have come up with a more original first name?!?) first president of Emmanuel when the college was founded in 1911.
I have found the residential college system amazing, and am thrilled that I was placed here instead of an off-campus apartment. I have the rest of my life to live in an apartment or private home, not the case for living with 40 other peers. Most of the kids are two years younger. Funny story: typically, American study-abroad students are in their junior year, so most of us are 20 and 21 years of age. Oddly enough, most of the kids in my wing are first-years (except my fellow Americans), so therefore only about 18. At first, it made me feel old to constantly meet people two years younger, I must admit, but now, it just seems normal.
So what is college life like, one might ask? All meals are provided for us. Food is pretty simple, sometimes of a very typically dining hall variety (dried meat, lots of rice) but for the most part, it’s really good. I’m happy about the constant selections of veggies and salad (and dessert!) at dinner and fruit in the mornings. As long as I have fresh food, I’m always happy. Sidenote: I’ve eaten more carrots and PB-and-J toast here than ever before in my lifetime. No complaints though… they are delicious.
In addition to the constant supply of food I do not have to buy or cook, college has many other perks, including one free load of laundry a week. Being the girl I am, I still do a load myself because heaven forbid I would ever mix darks and whites. People also clean our bathrooms, vacuum our floors and empty our trashbins from our rooms. Sounds good hey? As my mom said before I left, why would I ever want to leave here? Answer: I’m still searching for that answer. (haha, just kidding mom… I’ll come home, I promise!)
One of my favorite things about college has been the social perks. You can always find someone to go out with or stay in and watch a movie. Meals are often hour-long affairs as you chat up you tablemates and get all the latest gos (This seems obvious, but gos = Australian slang for gossip). Being part of a residential college is the best way to hear about any party on or around campus and often scores you free bus rides to such events. Living with Australians also gets you the inside scoop on places to travel, how to get there, and who might give you a free ride to the beach next weekend.
Lastly, and one of my favorite parts, Emmanuel has many sports teams that compete in the Intercollegiate league against the other, and obviously inferior (!) colleges. So far, I’ve seen a fair share of soccer, rugby and basketball. It’s a great chance to meet everyone and I think we often have way more fun on the sidelines than they do in the game.
Given that Emmanuel’s colors are royal blue and white, looks like I should have brought more Duke shirts with me after all 
Eh, no worries, I’ll just have to wait until my super-sweet rugby jersey comes in. As our college song goes… we’re blue because we’re blue, because we’re blue… Go Blue dogs!!
6 September 2008
I have nothing to say, nothing to think. I don’t understand what I am reading; there are strange symbols. People come up to me in the street and I nod and mumble. Vodka–I understand you. I have been reduced to infancy, savagery; life is palpable.
3 September 2008
I arrived in Madrid about a week and a half ago, and after exploring a bit of the city, soaking up the feeling, and letting all that white linen wash over me, I can say one thing for certain. Undoubtedly much has changed about Madrid over the past decades, but in so many ways it is still the city of Hemingway’s dreams. Dignified and proud, the light breeze is a real catharsis. As September begins, the city starts to fill back up as the regulars return from vacation. School begins soon – I’m studying at Universidad San Pablo – and I’ll be in and around Spain for the next 4 months. More to follow.
3 September 2008
Today I sat behind two elementary school age boys enjoying popsicles on the bus. First, I noted their cute labcoat attire, and then I watched them both unceremoniously dump stick and wrapper out the window, onto the street and out of mind. No one else on the bus seemed to give it any thought.
While I do my best to recycle, especially after section parties left my dorm devastated with crushed cans every Friday morning or so last year, I am no environmentalist. But the ease with which the two boys, at such an innocent age, instinctively threw their trash onto their street took me aback, and made me recall a conversation I’d had with an ex-Peace Corps worker in Guatemala this summer.
Guatemala is a beautiful country, but a quick look at almost any mountain pass will tell you that numerous Chapínes treat it otherwise: rivers of trash frequently sprawl down ravines. Streets in pueblos and larger cities are also often full of litter.
During a conversation on the matter, the abovementioned Peace Corps vet explained his two-fold theory: first, for hundreds of years before the era of packaged food, Mayans and their descendents ate natural, organic fare that could be thrown over a shoulder without a thought. Today, the same is done with plastic Doritos bags and other extraneous indecomposable packaging, but with many more drastic aesthetic and environmental consequences. While this part of the theory may be no more than an interesting thought, the more concrete part of it is that for whatever reason, many Guatemalans are oblivious to the trash on the streets, or at least conditioned to believe it to be the norm. One problem is lack of proper infrastructure: there are almost no public trashcans to be found; even in larger cities, one must ask a store-owner to use a “basurero” hidden behind the counter.
I haven’t seen enough of Ecuador to determine whether the children’s’ actions portray a larger norm here as well, but I’m inclined to believe it. I’d love to know how much environmental-awareness advertising and effort it took for this American to be conscious of his trash, whether such campaigns were privately or publicly sponsored, and how difficult it would be to stage similar drives down here.
31 August 2008
It takes over an hour to cross Moscow by car, and a bus of American students sit quietly in traffic. They come from the airport and they had trouble with customs and they are very tired. It is almost silent. Outside, the long, red wall of the Kremlin abuts the river. The students find it very beautiful, or are dissapointed, or are asleep. On the street a woman, tall and Russian, hails a taxi. Next to her an old lady, with a scarf over her hair, is waiting to cross. There are many cars; somtimes the bus does not move for a long time, but the students simply wait and watch. Eventually they reach the dormotory.
Later, upstairs three of them lie on their beds. The room is very small: there is only space for two parallel beds and a third at their foot. The Americans lie flat, with their limbs spread out and hanging over the side. The window is open, and from the street there is the sound of metal and spitting and slavic words.
Inside the room though, it is very silent, and this quietude is mysterious for these Americans who have only just met and who have talked all their lives. They are very careful to be quiet when they move.
Some black birds fly by, and one student understands what was said on the street, and the room is filled with joy and wonder. A great splash of hope rises form the belly and is spewed in magnificient, radiant sploches of neon rainbow all about the drab and soviet walls.
Land of the dark forest! Land of Empire, of the great flat steppe, of their black horsemen, nomads with daggers, of tundra and, in the far east, volcanoes. Land of literature and vodka, of Blok and Pasternak, of Tolstoi andDostoevski; of romance, of Aleksandr Sergeivitch Pushkin. Mysterious, hopeless land of gulag and orthodoxy and spiritual exstasy. I come to you , my love, moya lyubov! I burrow into you, to understand you, to know you, and deep in the cold of your Siberian winter to find myself in loneliness and poverty. The room beats victorious Russian verse the student learned by heart.
Next door, a light turns off and a Russian curses, and the second American, who lies beside the first, moans silently in agony. What blight of all that is beautiful and intelligent and cultural has reached this sad land? The drab and Soviet walls are silent. What promise and hope was there? God is mighty and terrible. Who is to blame, What is to be done? Was it vodka? Curse the vodka, slayer of hopes, curse the empty words, the ruined, decaying infrastructure, the polluted lakes. Curse the new russians and their money. Why have I come to you, desperate land? Why have I entered a sacred covenant with you: to learn you, to understand your words, you who hold nothing sacred? And years of my life! Gone, to be wasted away in this provincialism, bored and comical as a Chekhov character. The student moans again, but the walls do not answer.
And the third American sits very still, and hears nothing and sees nothing, and is only filled with an empty, endless sorrow and knows that nowadays you can travel anywhere you like.
30 August 2008
Thursday night, I took a trip halfway around the world to Scotland. In a wonderful and over-the-top event known as the Bannockburn community awards dinner, I and about 100 of my college-mates were transported to a world of kilts, haggis and Scottish tunes sung in a slightly-drunken euphoria.
Let me rewind: a week ago, signs went up around my residential college for a free dinner known as the Bannockburn. I thought nothing of it at the time because I knew I wasn’t getting any awards, I didn’t know anyone that was getting awards and I didn’t need to sit through a *boring* long dinner. After talking to friends throughout the week it became apparent that heaps of people go to this dinner and I ought to attend, so I logged onto Emmnet and signed up for my free dinner.
Let the festivities begin: we arrived at 6:30pm. Cocktail dresses and suits were the fashion, though a few boys were sporting traditional kilts. Aussie boys in kilts do look quite dashing, I must admit. Dinner began with haggis, a sausage-like treat filled with brains, entrails and other various parts of meat that most people would never choose to eat. Apparently in Scotland of yore, the haggis was created to use up all of the lesser parts of a pig so none was wasted. Best of all, an entire chant, performed in old English speech, was performed to the crowd to “introduce” the haggis. Despite my queasiness, after all the hype, I did manage to try some. It tasted much like liver pate, and much like liver pate, I didn’t really like it. One bite was enough for me, but I had to give it a go.
After the haggis, the food steadily improved. Roast beef and veggies were followed by a cake with bananas and cream. Awards were handed out to many of the college students (turns out I knew awards recipients after all!!) and we finished off the evening singing 3 Scottish songs, including Auld Lang Syne, which ended in everyone holding hands and swinging arms. Once we began singing and everyone readily joined in, singing as loud as possible, it was no wonder the dinner had included free wine.
After that, in a slightly less Scottish fashion, the students, after the adults had left, sang a lovely song together while encircling the dining hall with our arms around one another’s shoulders… I can’t even pronounce the name, but us Americans were a little confused at first. It was like a mix of “Singing in the Rain” and a chant. Good times had by all.
I had no idea that in my trip down under, I’d also be getting a trip to the Scottish highlands. And for the record, my apologies for having not posted in over two weeks. I don’t know if it’s because I’m upside-down on the bottom of the planet, but somehow time goes by really quickly here. I just can’t explain it. Cheers!
