Life 42, Pancakes 0

He Ain't Heavy

2008-08-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California"--Edward Abbey

Well my brother visited me last week with his friend Walker and despite my own opinions constantly being voiced, my brother is in love with LA and California. The main point of this post is to show ya’ll some pictures because recounting the actual events of the week my brother and his friend Walker were here will probably bore you. I’ll give you a short rundown so the pics make sense then limit myself to captions, I promise :)

Thursday
-Pick up rental car at 6, ‘move in’ to my apartment and hang with my new roomie Erin, and then pick up boys at 11 pm ish cause of flight troubles. Then I took the boys to In N Out, the California fast food chain that most are obsessed with. There’s one right by the airport where people go to watch planes take off sometimes.

Friday
-Drive to Escondido, (with minor detours) eat at macaroni grill, a chain with some enjoyable dishes, as I’m sure all of you know. What can I say; I’m a sucker for cheese and pasta. Drop the boys at the skate park and check into the Holiday inn.

Saturday
-More of the same, skating, although during the middle of the day there is a no skating time so we went to a farmers market and an orange orchard (grove, farm?) and picked oranges then skated more.

"California is a fine place to live—if you happen to be an orange."--Fred Allen

Sunday
-The boys got to skate with almost every professional in-line skater on the west coast, so from here on basically no matter what I did I could guarantee them having a good trip. Then I took them for awesome Mexican food. It was incredible.

Walker with his Carne Asada burrito, his standard order

Will drinking horchata, a cinnamon-y rice milk drink. Delicious.

Monday
-Moving! I rented a 10’ uhaul truck and we moved my stuff one block from my boyfriends’ place to my new place. Low point of the day, getting yelled at in Spanish by a guy upon a not even close to a collision incident; highpoint was the sound of the ice cream cart guy—one dollar ice cream bars=mmmm.

Tuesday
-Skating again, plus leftover shrimp and traffic. Also that night we went to my favorite Chinese place ever, hooray for slippery shrimp!

Will sporting his high class elbow pads with Walker in the background

Wednesday
-Six flags, not much more to say. We got handed a half off coupon, so that was cool. And then leftover Chinese and push pops for dessert, meal of champions. Courtney arrived that day, and we all watched the Olympics with lots of commentary whenever a McCain add came on :)

Batboy looking pensive with his cape blowing in the wind

Batboy's neon shoelaces blind his opponents so that he can karate chop them

California sunsets, made beautiful by smog

Thursday
-Lunch at my favorite sushi place in Beverly Hills. We almost didn’t make it because of traffic. Apparently business lunches make everything miserable in that area but I finally scored a parking space. Courtney, will and I shared some awesome sushi and Walker got some chicken teriyaki (thank goodness they had it, I had a momentary panic attack at being informed of his dislike of all seafood). Then we walked around rodeo drive to see how the other 16th of the population lives and we saw some expensive cars, which was exciting for the boys. Then we went to Scoops, an amazing gelato place where they have flavors like white grape peach, whiskey apricot, and apple pie. That night we had a bunch of people over to heckle the Olympics and such; good times.

Shenanigans

Courtney thinks this is the perfect photo because it perfectly embodies each boy's personality

Friday
-5 am got up and headed for the airport

I was soo glad to not have to drive in LA anymore , and to be able to decorate my place. I'll put up photos when my brown and turquoise paradise of a room is complete!

What a beach vacation is SUPPOSED to look like

2008-08-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

Whew! It’s been a while, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, my ridiculously long bus ride. We took a night bus and both got very little sleep and then once we arrived in the city of Zagreb we immediately got on a bus (or was it a train, hmmm, Lena?) to Zadar, a city on the coast, and then another bus to the small fishing village where our hotel was. (In total, about 24 hours of travel) We had no idea what the place would be like because we had booked in a rush in Switzerland, but it was in the middle of nowhere.

We got there, got false directions, walked a mile with our bags in the wrong direction (curse you watering you garden lady, you do not know the area within 800 meters of your house) walked back to the bus stop, asked at a restaurant and walked past said restaurant around a corner and there it was. It was a cute set of beachy, whitewashed buildings and we immediately dropped our bags donned swimsuits and went down to the beach. We had our own private gravel beach and the water was sooooo warm because of the little cove we were in. we decided within about 20 minutes of arriving that instead of staying for two days and then moving on we would stay 6 days and make this little hotel home base.

The driveway down to our little beach, there's a little red umbrella there where one of the most leathery tan women usually sat ALL day every day we were there

This is a shot of our spot on the beach (before we put our stuff on it, we're NEXT to the awesome umbrella, it's not actually ours)

We stayed in the hotel room two nights before moving to a little studio with a kitchenette, it had air conditioning which was lovely, but Lena was convinced I was freezing her to death with my polar bear like constitution, eventually we worked out a temperature that worked for both of us but there was one night where I stumbled in to consciousness to the sound of her trying to turn off the air conditioner with a remote without glasses in the dark…

For a day or two we just sat around on the beach although the gravel kind of hurt our feet so we didn’t spend much time in the water. We went to Pag one day because it was a cute beach town and the water was supposed to be nice. (There is an isle of Pag cheese that is supposed to be amazing, we must have missed it) We got some decent food including delicious meat pastries but the beach was so crowded that we were there for about 10 minutes before we decided to catch the next bus back to our oasis.

These are both from Pag , which is an empty ghost town during the day because it is so hot. and everything is white stone, so the sunlight just reflects directly to the back of your eyeballs. Gelato was a very, very necessary part of life for the two hours we were here.

This was the beach in Pag, you can't see it from here but it was super crowded and the water was colder than our little oasis, we didn't last long here.

One day we went to Zadar to look for new books for Lena (she hated short stories and some depressing novel I had brought, and the hotel only had books and magazines in German and Italian. Italian Cosmo, by the way, is hilarious.) Sadly, there are no English books except for in two cities in the entire country. We ended up doing so many internet errands and things that we completely missed the sea organ we had planned on visiting but maybe we’ll catch that the next time around. We grocery shopped a bit and made it to the bus station about 3 minutes to late for our bus, and the next one was in 3 hours. We ended up passing the time in the bus station by planning out a screenplay idea; people watching (highly entertaining), drinking coke, and having some sort of lamb burger thing.

This was the bus station where we spent about a 1/4th of our time in Croatia. I loved the signs for all of the different restaurants that sell basically the same thing.

Aside from those trips and our daily walk to the corner store (of sorts) to get ice cream or pasta to cook we led a simple life of beach going, movie watching, restaurant eating, and napping that was very relaxing. We even got a raft and some water shoes so we spent as much time as possible floating around. The only downsides were that there were only a few families on our beach and they were boring to people watch in addition to having annoying repetitive noise toys and that I got sunburned. I put on sunscreen, I don’t know what to tell you; I think maybe my body went into shock after going from the UK to the sun so fast.

Movies we saw that Lena had on her computer:

-Horton Hears a Who: loved the book, the movie not so much
-A messed up movie about the life of bob Dylan that I don’t remember what it’s called. Cate Blanchett was awesome and so was the kid in it, but it was way to artsy and made no sense
-The beginning of Four Rooms, a Tarentino movie about a hotel, but it was way weird. Seriously.
-Also the beginning of some very creepy movie where one girl was captured and tortured while the other was going to sleep listening to the backstreet boys. We turned it off at the first sight of blood
-Also don’t remember the title but it was the Cuban version of the godfather with Andy Garcia and every Hispanic actor ever, except S L O W
-Coupling, the series basically the British version of friends, it is hilarious and you should watch it as soon as possible

Anyway, after a very relaxing time in Croatia, with very little sight seeing and a lot of sleep, we moved on to Budapest.

This picture was taken in Zagreb by one of Lena's Friends from school. We were very hot because we were tossing a frisbee in the sun, and the random guy took a lot of pictures of us without asking, we may be Croatian celebs.

The train was hot, but we got a compartment almost to ourselves so it wasn’t too bad, and we watched coupling and ate snacks. When we got to Budapest we stayed in Lena’s apartment from when she was studying there and met the new tenant, Monica, who was really funny. We ended up going out for gyros and drinks and instead getting a Hungarian street food that is basically a savory funnel cake covered in sour cream and cheese, it is gigantic and heart attack inducing and delicious.

By the way, I have no pictures, but this apartment was EPICALLY amazing. It had huge ceilings and a balcony and Lena’s room alone was the size of half of my current apartment. It was a huge old beautiful building and it was so fun to stay there even for a few days.

The next day we went to this huge market in the morning to get food for dinner one night and we got pastries and fresh squeezed orange juice (so good) before buying chicken and bulgur and stuff for dinner. The market itself is train station size, it was made during a time when the city was booming and the government built a bunch of new buildings so its old and incredible, plus it has the usual draw of fresh produce and tons of bright colors and cool textures. It is something of a tourist draw, though, so I ran into a lot of people who suddenly stopped in the middle of a walking area to take a picture. In the end, we got stuff to make a pretty sweet tabouli with cilantro instead of parsley and cranberries and then chicken, man I am getting hungry. We ended up eating it later with Monica and Lena’s mom in the apartment kitchen, which was also very cute.

Lena went to pick up her mom from the airport and then that night we went out for a walk around town. (Her mom was such a sport to go out right after a 10 hour flight or however much) I forget the order of things but we had some pretty great meals (mmmm, duck) and saw a palace and walked across a bridge. There was a celebrate the EU fair going on so there were lots of stands with jewelry and things, Lena got me a ring for my birthday that was green and white enameled copper and really pretty. (She has a matching red one so we have Budapest memory rings) aside from the huge number of people it was really fun.

Budapest by night, VERY pretty from the top of our hill

The next day we went to the baths. The baths are an experience, let me tell you, imagine a water park with heated water and no slides and a huge yellow building and you will be close. There were different heat levels of pools and ones with jets and ones with lazy rivers and wet saunas and dry saunas. We were thoroughly pruny by the time we got out. Highlights were the lazy river pools (how many times did we try to make our own when we were little? I think baths should exist in the US too) and the massage by Lena in the dry sauna, very nice.

The city itself had a lot of history and I loved how easy it was to get around and sort of fell in love with Lena’s apartment. I left Budapest early in the morning for the airport and flew to London for a day and a half to wait for my flight home. I shopped and went to the British museum and watched TV in my tiny room in a B&B right by Victoria station. The British museum was incredible, but very crowded so after seeing most of what I wanted (I skipped the Rosetta stone and some of the mummy stuff because of a large horde of Asian tourists, but I didn’t feel a huge loss) Then I went to Gatwick airport and flew back in to Atlanta and then took a shuttle home finally. The funny part about the flight was I was next to two teenage boys and their mom, who ended up having very personal serious conversations about, whether they should be having sex before marriage RIGHT next to me. I do not want to hear that people, can’t you wait the 5 hours that it will take to get you not right next to me? Clearly the subject has waited for years, just a little longer? But no, alas.

And that was my epically huge summer vacation. It was a lot, and probably more that I will EVER tackle again, but it was a wonderful experience.

Things I will miss from Europe: easy transportation, easy access to good food (basics like cheese, yogurt and bread), laid back people, free museums

Things I missed about the US: stores being open after 5 pm, our money, yes it is all the same color but it is lighter (no one and 2 dollar coins) and it FITs in my wallet, sigh, little things, barbeque, Mexican food (oddly enough in Budapest I had a gyro that tasted exactly like a taco, it was the closest I got to Mexican food in about 6 months and it was trying to be Greek!), movies coming out on time, less expensive everything, seriously the US is soooo much cheaper than all the rest of the ‘civilized’ countries in the world.

Tune in next time for updates on my new apartment and the great big California adventure that was my brother’s visit:

Fondue=Nirvana

2008-08-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

"Any country that has melted cheese as it's main dish must have good people" -Lena

So when I left off, I was in Scotland with Courtney and we had managed to do all of the things that she wanted to do but never got to do while she was in Edinburgh. Then we went to London.

London is way over-rated; it is very big and very crowded. I feel the same way about it as I do about LA, its size allows it to have certain opportunities others do not, but it is SUCH a hassle to take advantage of them! Granted, some of the hassle (forgetting my wallet at the hostel and having to walk all the way back) was of my own making, but most of it was because of the extreme amount of people in the city, and London and the UK in general are expensive.

We did go to the TATE modern art museum that had some interesting stuff in its collection, a special Cy Twombly exhibition, and a collection of photographic portraits. The photos were my favorite because it was done chronologically and Courtney loves Cy Twombly so it all worked out. The next day we went to look at graffiti/street art that was commissioned by the TATE from a few artists from Spain and South America. It was fun because they give you a map with lots of pink dots on it and each corresponds (somewhat inexactly) with a piece of street art so it is like a scavenger hunt. My favorites were old circular light street signs which were repainted and then hung up in random alleys because people almost never think of adding objects to the street instead of just painting on the wall.

After an extensive period of art scavenger hunt/ picnic lunching, we decided to see Westminster abbey and Buckingham palace, which we did briefly, the church was impressive but the palace was sort of boring. Then we went to buy high tea and, to use Courtney’s words, we were thwarted. The first place we went was closed for a private function and the next was out of high tea. Sigh, one day it will work out but fate instead wanted us to drink tea and eat dry chocolate cake while WATCHING three young American girl tourists nibble at their finger sandwiches and waste at least 30% of it.

We needed a pick me up after that so we went and found a movie theater to watch the movie Wanted. Movies are very expensive there and because I didn’t get a student discount, I ended up paying 10 pounds to see a very ridiculous movie with the most hilarious cheesy training sequence ever. When we got out of the movie the finals for the Euro 2008 soccer game were already on and we wandered around trying to find a place we could eat dinner and watch the game. Every bar had a crowd of men outside watching the game through the windows but we finally found a small Italian restaurant playing the game on a projector screen. We had pasta a la Sofia Loren, an anchovy caper pizza (tasty and very, very salty) and wine as we watched our team, Germany, lose to Spain. In a restaurant full of Spain fans. But the food was amazing.

The next day we took the tube to the airport where they changed the destination of the train we were sitting in 3 times because of delays. In the end I had to say goodbye to Courtney in the train because my flight was very soon. (Except it got delayed, but oh well) and then I flew to Switzerland to meet Gaby and Phillip my Swiss friends, and Lena my travel companion/roomie for the next two weeks.

Gaby was my nanny back when I was wee, in around 1995 and she graciously said she would host us in Switzerland. This involved she and her husband, Phillip, who is almost a doppelganger of my dad, driving us everywhere. They showed us a rotating restaurant on top of a mountain, where they filmed the James Bond movie ‘In Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and the air was so thin we got tired walking around the top of it. Then a cute little town halfway down the mountain with a mouthwatering cheese shop. That night Phillip cooked up fondue which was AMAZING. As Lena put it, any culture that could make an entire meal out of melted cheese has to be good people. I want a fondue set as soon as possible because I could eat fondue at least every two weeks. Phillip was a proponent of a small glass of schnapps to aid the digestion because ‘it is very dangerous to eat only cheese’ it was nice in very small sips but I don’t think I could detect the hint of pear flavor above the heat of the alcohol.

View from the top of the world

People would actually parachute from the top of the mountain. This one small Asian guy asked us (in english oddly enough) if we would hold up the top of his chute for him like a kite. That's him standing on the steep slope. when the time came, he said "Thank you!" yanked the chute into the air, and jumped off the mountain.

Lena and I during out little high altitude hike. Yes that is a snowball, in July. Also we saw a woman hiking this in tight white pants and heels, according to Lena she was Russian. I LOVE people watching.

The next day, Phillip drove us all to Switzerland’s wine country. (And sorry, Phillip, I don’t have all the names of places in front of me because I can’t get out the route map you gave us at the moment, but I will put up place names when I post my picture post once I return home) we rode the train for part of the way; we were in the car, on a train car, going through mountains, it was incredible! And much faster because only the train has a tunnel through the mountain, otherwise you have to go over the top. We ate at a steak restaurant, a delicious lunch with herbed butter for our steaks and it was amazing because other than burgers it had been a long time (ok Paris) since I had eaten beef. We also went to see a glacier which was incredible and huge but i have no really good pictures of it sadly.

View from the train before we go through a mountain. Houses in Switzerland are really pretty!

Lena and I after amazing steaks

The noble 'Mountain Pig' roughly translated from Swiss slang. I don't remember what they are actually called but there was some tourist trap zoo of them for us to see, isn't it cute?

That night we ate at Gaby and Phillip’s neighbor’s house. They had an outdoor barbecue house type thing and we had grilled chicken and sausages and everything was delicious. We couldn’t understand our hosts a lot of the time but Gaby told us that was probably better as our host kept making odd jokes.

The next day Gaby, Lena and I went to Bern for the day while Philip packed up his and Gaby’s stuff to go on their trip to Spain the next day. We had a great time in the city walking around and souvenir shopping as well as going to lunch and eating spatzl and rosti which were both incredible. Gaby and Lena both humored me and we also went to an art museum where there was a retrospective exhibition of a Swiss artist called Ferdinand holder that was pretty interesting. Also in their permanent collection they organized everything by subject matter rather than time period or style, which was interesting because in one room you could see how animals were painted in the 14th century versus the 20th century. I liked it because each painting was not lost in a sea of paintings in the same genre, but in some cases they covered the walls to such an extent that I was overloaded.

Bern was gorgeous, tons of old clocks and fountains everywhere and an extremely blue river.

Bern's crest is of a bear so they have a 'pet' bear in the city but he is very sad looking because his 'habitat' is not very natural. Gaby said that they are building a new home for him, hopefully it is finished soon!

OK, this was one of the weirder/cooler things I saw in Bern in a sports store. It is an elevator that you hop on and off of like an escalator. What happens if you get stuck? Does it reach the top and switch directions? No idea, but it was awesome.

The next day Phillip drove Lena and I to the train station and we left for a day in Luzerne while they went off to drive through Spain. They were incredible to show us such a great time and I hope that someday they will visit me so I can do the same for them!

Anyway, Luzerne. We walked around a lot and did a bit of shopping but since I left the map of the city and guidebook on the area in the locker we put our bags in we didn’t really know a lot about the tourist attractions of the area, which was fine with us.

I had also forgotten to print the actual tickets for our bus ride to Croatia because I had printed the confirmation sheet and thought that was enough. Cue annoying conversation with the head of the bus company. This was unpleasant both because of his attitude/clear dislike of us and also the language barrier. We finally agreed that we didn’t actually need to print tickets and the confirmation sheet would be enough. Fast forward 5-7 hours when we are waiting at the bus parking lot having spent the very last Swiss francs on dinner and we go to the office again to make sure everything is ok. The SAME guy is on shift and this time he says we do, in fact, need tickets, even though he has looked us up on the passenger list and knows we have paid in full. Finally he prints us tickets and we wait with crowds of people in a disorganized parking lot for our bus. (None of them are really labeled very well) We decided that Croatians must run the bus service because the Swiss are MUCH more organized.

Anyway, finally our bus comes and we find out there is a fee to check our bags underneath the bus. We had no money because we had carefully used it all up on a nice dinner so Lena ran off to change a few American dollars while I tried to stall the bus driver. Guess who comes over to speed up the bus leaving and gets angry with me for holding everything up? Yep the same guy from twice before. Thankfully Lena came back and saved me from his wrath, but seriously nowhere on the ticket or website did it say ANYTHING about a bag fee! We got on the bus and there were no open seats together and after asking a few people if they would mind moving (which two of them very grumpily refused) a nice man finally moved and we sat down in the very crowded bus (which was completely full by the way so why the attitude about moving from once aisle seat to another?) and began the 8 hour journey to sunny Croatia.

Tune in next time for my ramblings on travels through Croatia and Hungary and my final journey back to the US. Till then!

Irish whiskey is distilled 3 times, that means it is the best whiskey in the world. FACT.

2008-06-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

Well it seems like it has been a long time since I blogged last. I think it has actually only been a few days but since we have stayed in a different place almost every night it seems like very long ago. I am writing this in the bar below our current hostel because there is no internet above floor 0 (the first floor here is the American second floor, the thought of floor zero baffles me, also I have seen a floor ‘+’which was between 0 and 1, WTF?) Anyways I am also writing this in a noisy bar, with cricket and pop/rock in the background because our room SMELLS. It smells like onions and dirty, dirty boy. Mostly because there is a dirty boy sleeping there, ALL THE TIME. He almost never leaves and he is sleeping at least 16 hours a day, which makes our room smell worse and means that it is always dark, ugh; thank goodness we are leaving in the morning because he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I think people that are somehow inconveniencing/ disturbing in one way just are in every other way because he is also loud (getting in and out of be, packing, snoring) and messy.

Anyways, our recent adventures:

The end of our southern Ireland tour

Courtney and I both kissed the blarney stone, which required a spotter as you had to lay backwards and upside down over a ledge, but I haven’t notice either of us becoming more eager to speak or more eloquent than we were before. Perhaps the gift of gab takes a while to set in?

We also went to the Mitchelstown caves which had a lot of amazing rock formations and were also not touristy so we got the cave to ourselves pretty much. There was one large cavern with great acoustics that they apparently use for concerts, and we staged our own private concert of the two bus clowns (Australians, I am having the hardest time convincing Courtney that ALL Aussies are not loud and obnoxious because Aussie tourists like American tourists ARE for the large part loud and obnoxious) singing ‘A Whole New World’ from Aladdin. Complete with prancing movements and duets, these guys knew ALL of the lyrics and it was awesome.

Northern Ireland Tour

The tour itself was a much different group of people and different material than our first. The first was geared to budget travel under 25s and we had one bus to one group and it was mostly cheerful scenery and partying, and our guide was very young and basically a big kid. The second had mostly families and couples, a few people like Courtney and I, and then two other tour groups that were going in the same direction to ‘minimize their carbon footprint.’ Because of this we had to stay in multiple hotels and hostels and everything was very disorganized. Our guide was a small irish woman whose sentences almost always trailed off into laughter a la Kitty from That 70's Show. She is the person I've quoted in the title of the post because she was quite funny on most occasions, but did tend to talk a lot. but she was Irish, so I forgave her. It was nice in a way, because we got a whole new group of people to people watch with though. We had alone guy, alone girl, Canadian annoying girls, Canadian family with Loud wife, Italian woman and a few others. Alone guy and alone girl got together in the end, happy ending for all of us, except apparently there were bedbugs in his bed and he had a poor end to his trip

Northern Ireland was, amazing, and Heavy. With a capitol H (or ‘haetch’ as they would pronounce that letter here) it was a war zone until the 90s and only recently has settled down. First we went to Derry/Londonderry, a town right on the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. People from Ireland call it Derry and people from UK and Northern Ireland ‘loyalists’ as they are called call it Londonderry. We were very careful with this name as it defines which side of this conflict you are on. Conflict aside, it was a cute town with interesting city walls and has seen less open conflict than Belfast because it has a river separating the Catholics and the Protestants so that there is very little interaction between them. I say this trip was heavy because there is SO much history in this conflict. Both sides have been hurt by each other in different ways for so long it is all a gray area and very difficult to ‘pick a side’ from the outside anyways.

Belfast, though by no means Peaceful it is for the moment stable because of a huge peace wall separating the two warring constituents from each other. The gates between the wall close in the evenings to keep everyone off of one another,’ but in city center where we were staying there was a mall and movie theater and pizza hut and kids sneaking around hard cider to get drunk just like any other city in Ireland.

We toured the city in a black taxi, this taxi/bus system was the only public transportation that still ran during the period of the Troubles and by and large was respected as honorable and necessary by both sides of the conflict once the bus system was discontinued because of too many attacks. The drivers that do the tours were mostly drivers during the troubles too and so are both very knowledgeable and local heroes to a point. They took us into housing project like areas of both Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods which were interesting because of all of the murals and memorials to people that fought for each side, usually in terrorist groups such as the IRA and the UFF that died in action. We also got to sign the peace wall between the two communities which was interesting and a loaded thing to do because as our driver said it isn’t to celebrate peace between the two groups, it keeps the peace by keeping them separated.

Edinburgh

We took ryanair back to Edinburgh from Dublin, a very unusual discount airline with BRIGHT yellow and navy furnishings and hit the ground running with activities. In two days, we saw the Royal Yacht Britannia (the queens old yacht, very huge and well furnished, they still make fudge in the kitchens which is very tasty), the hall of Scottish Freemasons (two very cute old Scottish men for tour guides, although I swear one of them did not speak English), hiked a mountain (it was steep), saw a Georgian house furnished as if in that period, went to the Surgeon’s Hall Museum (very cool, Arthur Conan Doyle and other notables studied and worked there, also there were a lot of pathological specimens), and shopped.

In addition to all of these activities we ate a lot of important foods like Haggis, which was actually pretty tasty if about as photogenic and appetizing looking as taco bell’s ground beef. We also ate a steak pie, chips and brown sauce, onion rings, AND a battered and fried mars bar. The mars bar was interesting in that it had all of the qualities of chewy melted chocolate while staying not messy AND having crispy batter on it, I approve of this fried delicacy at least if not the fried slice of pizza or the fried cheeseburger that the shop was also selling.

This will seem like a lot more once I post pictures I am sure, but for now we are off to London to relax. Our goals are to see the Tate modern art museum, have high tea and a full English breakfast, and sleep. A lot. If you are wondering why we are going to London to relax, this is why. We live in LA, a big city, and after running around for two weeks, we don’t want to tackle it as it is busy and big, and full of busy frustrated people that I do not want to deal with. I would rather drink tea and have a buttered scone.

Anyways, that it our trip to date, I’ll keep you posted. Monday Courtney leaves Europe for South Jersey and I go to Switzerland to meet up with Lena and Gaby, hooray!

It's a grand old land so it is

2008-06-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Bon Soir everyone!

Last time I spoke with you, I had just cooked tex-mex style food in Paris, which was difficult because the small stores we went to didn’t have things that I take for granted like cheddar cheese, or any cheese besides brie or emmenthal. Our tostadas still turned out alright, however, and we left our host with an entire pot full of refried beans. We also had an awesome pear tart and I had AMAZING apricot ice cream the day before we left Paris and I intend to replicate them both at the earliest opportunity.

We saw some art museums but other than that we didn’t do much of note in Paris but relax and enjoy, I think we really baffled all of the Frenchmen we met because we treated France as much more of a meeting place than a destination. Although I loved the food in Paris I think I would like to see other parts of France because it reminds me a bit of New York City and it would be interesting to see smaller towns.

For breakfast the next morning we left we had a bread dessert (pain perdu) our host made for us with bread sugar and cream and egg and bean burritos which we ate on the way to the subway as the sun rose.

Our flight to Dublin was fine except for the Beauvais airport, which was a huge cluster of madness largely because of the fact that the airport had one security line and four gates. Also, French people have no idea how to queue, which is why I am glad to be back in the UK area.

Dublin was lovely, we had full days of activities all four days we were there, but we never had to rush around too much. We saw the national art museum, the national history museum (which had lots of neat old metalwork and some bodies of people that were recovered from bogs. Bog people, by the way, never just fell into a bog and died, they all were brutally killed and then thrown in)

After the museums we appropriately ended the day with a tour of the old Guinness storehouse. The building doesn’t function anymore except as a museum (sort of like the coca cola museum for you southerners) but it was interesting to see all of the old ad campaigns and we did get a free pint and a novelty pint shaped oven mitt to keep Courtney’s ghost oven mitt company. An oven mitt collection is really dangerous by the way, so we have restricted ourselves to only novelty SHAPES not just designs. Guinness here is much lighter than Guinness at home and very nice except for the slight burnt popcorn taste.

The next morning we saw the Oscar Wilde memorial and did a bit of shopping (I got an Ireland soccer jersey—I have discovered that I have very expensive taste in clothes except that I go for soccer jerseys instead of Louis Vuitton purses) and then we went to the Old Jameson distillery. This tour was a bit redundant because making whiskey is pretty similar to making beer except for distillation, but there was a completely ridiculous audio visual (video) about John Jameson at the beginning. It was about a ten minute video on a man that managed to give the audience absolutely no personal information about him, his business, or the process of making whiskey. We learned that he: was patient, awesome, wore a green jacket and shoes, and we saw a lot of shots of the old buildings in Dublin in sepia so we could imagine it back in “his time.”

We met Courtney’s high school friend Stacey on one night in Dublin and watched football and went to Messrs McGuire and someone I don’t remember’s Pub, where they had a beer that tasted like a pale version of Guinness somehow and a very odd dj, but the building itself was old with lots of carving and a huge wood staircase so it was still enjoyable.

Since that night we have been on a three day bus tour targeted at young backpackers so that you can see the countryside on a budget. It is nice because our days are planned for us and transportation to all of these small places would be difficult on our own. Plus the people watching in our group of fellow travelers is amazing. We have the odd couple (literally) the pretty couple, the American newlyweds, 80’s guy, and sandwich guy (who has since graduated to food guy). We have seen:

*Countryside in fair weather and not

*Another distillery

*An old monastery (Clonmacnoise) where there is an awesome whispering doorway that has carving that transfers sound from one side of an archway to another

*Lots of cliffs, lots of ruins, and lots of good Irish superstitious stories told in a very convincing fashion.

*The Atlantic ocean, which we put our feet in because the saying goes that when you put a foot in the ocean in Ireland you leave a little piece of your heart here (awwww)

Tomorrow we go to see the blarney stone and another castle before we go back to Dublin and on Monday we leave for a tour of northern Ireland, which is nice because people watching is getting boring with this particular group as we have already categorized everyone in it.

Pictures to be added on my return to the US July 16 or later, deal with it.

Slante everyone! (Pronounced Slan-sha, which is a Gaelic toast meaning good health)

Au Revoir Australia

2008-06-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya’ll, I am coming to you straight from the U S of A as I have, FINALLY, finished with my work for my semester in Australia.

For those of you who didn’t know, I ended up returning home early because of my seemingly endless battle with strep throat, strep throat again (I apparently had the Penicillin resistant strain, I suppose after a hundred years of being around some things have become immune) and Mono. And yes, before you all ask, it was that bad. (Many people find it incredible that I found it necessary to fly home early and, I assure you, it was. I wasn’t going to even come home until my mom threatened me with hiring an Australian nursing service to come to my house and cook meals for me. Plus my department made it super easy for me to complete things at home and email them images to grade from, so that’s what I did. Here are the paintings I created in a period of roughly two weeks in my living room on the floor watching the home and garden channel and food network:

Ok, I WAS going to post pictures of my paintings here, but I have since left the country and do not have access to the files, to be updated later....

Although I left Australia about a month ago now, I feel as if I am just now wrapping up my trip abroad. I am still re-teaching myself to walk on the right (many interesting near collisions in the airport) and eating food besides burgers and sausage. (Seriously, I have totally expanded my food horizons since I got back to barbeque pork and steak, much different) Readjusting ahs not been much of a chore since Northern California where I am right now is very similar to the part of Australia I was in. They are both in drought, both have wine country, both have big open skies and small clumps of trees on brown rolling hills, both have lots of cows (although the cows in California are apparently happier). The main difference is the fact that food is much cheaper and here there are coyotes instead of dingoes. I would say overall that the experience was positive in that I learned a lot about myself and how I feel about The Future, and I definitely enjoyed my time until I got sick, but I am very, very glad that I came home as I still do not feel completely recuperated. Mostly I am just very relieved that it is finally summer vacation and I don’t have to think about school for a while. This is not turning out to be a very conclusive ending to my semester but oh well I suppose this paragraph reflects how convoluted the experience became towards the end.

And now for the latest goings on in my life: I have been visiting Riley and Dennis in Gilroy California since Saturday and it has been like staying in a luxury spa. The house is big and airy with a Tuscan inspired decorating scheme and a pool/hot tub combination out back. We’ve had Pina coladas, played croquet, and eaten at Dennis’ dad’s and stepmom’s house in the course of a few days. (They were a winning combination; he made killer ribs and she made homemade lemonade and the best potato salad EVER. I don’t even like potato salad but she made it with sour cream and lime instead of a bunch of mayo and it was incredible. I am also constantly entertained by Dennis’ two dogs, Jake and Jazz, King Charles spaniels I think and VERY energetic, much like Dennis. On the same level and equally entertaining, Dennis and his sister are the type of siblings that enjoy squabbling to pass the time, not an hour goes by without some sort of music lyric or dance contest and not a night goes by without one good chase around the house. (I was called upon in the music lyric game, but I always forget EVERY idea the minute I am put on the spot, thank God for the Beatles.

I also saw Kung Fu Panda on Sunday and it was AWESOMe! My faith in animated movies and Jack Black (umm, Nacho Libre disappointed me I’m not gonna lie) has been restored! For those of you who have seen it, there is no charge for awesomeness, or attractiveness, for those of you who haven’t, I hope this quote tempts you to go see it.

Today Riley and I are flying up to Seattle to see his sister’s graduation at an apparently ‘hippie’ school which should be an interesting contrast to my own former military southern private school background. (I am sure that wearing plaid skirts builds character on some level) So, I am going from sunny California to a very rainy and 20 degrees cooler northwest in addition to meeting the fam. It should be an entertaining trip to say the least because I get to meet a whole slew of friends and family in a period of less than twenty four hours and all of them are sure to be entertaining.

On Thursday I am headed for London and then directly to Paris to meet with Courtney, I am SO psyched.

My itinerary:

London

Paris

Dublin (Bus tours of northern and southern Ireland)

Edinburgh

London

Geneva

Lyss (to stay with Gaby my friend and ex-nanny, hooray!)

Croatia

Budapest

As you can see it is quite the whirlwind adventure and I am exhausted just looking at it but I will have Courtney and Lena to hang out with at last. When I get back to school next year I will be 21, have my own room in an apartment containing a bar, a basketball court, and ghost oven mitt, AND and inflatable couch. I will be playing Frisbee again AND it will be football season! Life is pretty good, minus mono.

I am off, I might check in with you all a bit while I am abroad but most likely I will just post about it when I get back. Thanks to Holy Shit for the emails about south America, I have not responded for obvious reasons but I can’t wait to have girl talk when we are back in La. You are coming back to LA, right?

Kate Enzenauer, signing off.

PS I am posting this from Paris where Courtney and I are couchsurfing with an awesome host, Sylvain, and his girlfriend Melanie. They have been great and it is so fun to meet people this way as opposed to in a hostel. We have also:
eaten mussels
been instructed in red wine
seen the statue of Nike of Simothrace
cooked tex mex and plantains
listened to the lion sleeps tonight as played and sung by a french brass band

More later...

Miscellaneous Photos, Boredom...

2008-05-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

Hello! My friend Elaine finally posted some pictures from her camera, and I am bored so I am passing them on to you! I thought about inserting them in the appropriate places in previous posts, but then I will notice all of my old spelling errors and you will have to read the same posts again, so here are some miscellaneous tidbits left out of earlier work:

Fraser Island: We visited this on my Queensland trip, we look happy because it was only about the third day of the trip and only the second day of rain...Anyways interesting story about Fraser Island is how it got to be named.

"Fraser Island, Batjala K'Gari, is the largest sand island in the world at 1630 km². It is located along the southern coast of Queensland, Australia, approximately 300 km north of Brisbane. Its length is about 120 km^[1].

The original name of the island is 'K'gari' in the Butchulla people's language. It means paradise.^[6]

According to Aboriginal legend, when humans were created and needed a place to live, the mighty god Beeral sent his messenger Nendingie with the goddess K’gari down from heaven to create the land and mountains, rivers and sea. K’gari fell in love with the earth’s beauty and did not want to leave it. So Yendingie changed her into a heavenly island – Fraser Island.^[7]

The name Fraser Island comes from Eliza Fraser and her story of survival from a shipwreck on the island. Captain James Fraser and his wife, Eliza Fraser, were shipwrecked on the island 1836. The name of the ship was the Stirling Castle. Captain Fraser died but Eliza was rescued off the island. Eliza later made money traveling around England and Australia telling her story of the events that had occurred while the Stirling Castle’s officers were on the island."-Wikipedia

Ok, the island was also called Indian Head after Captain Cook saw a bunch of Aborigines looking at the boats from a point on the island as he passed by. But the really interesting horrible pt of the story is what our guide told us, apparently Capt. Fraser did something to really offend the Aborigines and was killed pretty soon after arrival, but Mrs. Fraser was kept for five years and left the island in the peak of health. Mrs. Fraser wasn't getting enough attention after a while being back and started making up stories about rape and torture which lead to attacks and bias against Aborigines for years before someone figured out she was lying. Great way to name a island!

Me on the ferry to the Island, it wasn't raining yet but very windy.

This huge tree was usually used for ships masts, apparently it is a baby compared with others on the island that we were not able to see that day...needless to say this tree provoked several short jokes. It doesn't help that both of them are Amazons compared with me :) From Left: Gaynor, Me, Elaine

Also nearby is Rainbow beach where a lot of the different dunes have different colors of sand. The Aboriginal story, much abridged, is as follows. Once a woman fell in love with Rainbow, and would go to the beach every day to see him. One of the great warriors in the tribe however wanted to marry her, she refused and ran away. He followed her, grabbing his best killing boomerang and chased her to the beach. Rainbow saved her from the boomerang, but in doing so fell into a thousand pieces on the beach and has been there ever since. Aboriginal woman apparently used to travel here to put some rainbow sand in her hair or collect some of it to carry as sort of good luck/ protection. I confess my one touristy buy was a small neckalace with rainbow sand, what a good story!

Tumut: I don't think I left anything out in my account of the last trip but here is one picture. My friend Elaine is a fan of all things ridiculous. (she is sitting opposite me in a koala jumper, sweater, and also purchased a jumper with a skiing kangaroo on this trip) She got the tea cozy from the CWA a (usually) older women's group that makes jam and knitted things. It inspired me to pick up some grey yarn for a crochet project on the plane home, imagine a Koala's ears where the owl's eyes are...hmm, i may start this sooner rather than later as my house is pretty boring right now, daytime tv here is awful.

I didn't know she was taking this one as all of her focus seemed to be on the owl. As a side note this was at the Chit Chat Cafe in Tumut, toasted croissants with Devonshire cream and raspberry jam=delicious.

T Shirts: I found this one also on threadless and forgot to post it, but it isn't for sale anyway, sadly. Isn't it cute? scratch having a dog, i want a mini elephant.

Elee, My Extraordinary Pet! by Jemae

No other news as of yet, I am working on postcards but cannot find any printers in Australia. I could print and send them from the states for cheap but that would defeat the purpose of a postcard from here. Would you mind? I have started a small illustration ala threadless and will post it for your critique before i maybe submit it, it is after one of my fave childhood songs by Natalie Merchant according to the internet, I do not remember myself:

“Come Take a Trip in My Airship”

I once loved a sailor.
Once, a sailor loved me.
But he was not a sailor,
who sailed on the wide blue sea.
He sailed in an airship;
Sailed like a bird on the wing;
And every evening at midnight,
he would come to my window and sing:

Chorus:
Come take a Trip in my Airship,
come sail away to the stars!
We'll travel to Venus,
we'll sail away to Mars!
No one will see while we're kissing
No one will know as we SPOON.
So come take a Trip in my Airship,
and we'll visit the Man in the Moon!

One night while sailing away from the crowds,
we passed through the Milky White Way.
While idly drifting and watching the clouds,
he asked if I'd name the day!
Just by the Dipper, I gave him my heart,
the sun shone on our honeymoon.
We swore to each other, we never would part,
and we'd teach all the babies this tune.

All this in addition to fervently working on my research paper and paintings of course... I'll probably post soon as one or potentially both of my roommates will be gone this weekend. Oh, i have to buy catfood, excuse me.

Healing and Fun with the Internets

2008-05-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

G'day all,

I am feeling much better now thanks for all of the good wishes I think it is really helping! I find out in the next day or two if I have the antibody that means I have Mono, but I am feeling so much better right now that I am secretly hoping that it was just an epically bad mutant penicillin resistant case of strep throat. In either case, however, I feel so much better! (it's amazing how much you appreciate swallowing once you can do it again) I also have the rest of the week off from school to heal myself and I am hoping to be better as soon as possible.

Teachers here are so sweet and accommodating about illness, maybe they just aren't as jaded about excuses as some of the professors from SC. My paper has been extended, and my painting professor gave me a five-step radius and told me to go straight home as soon as possible, and to let her know if I DID have mono so she could 'warn everyone.' I feel like a plague victim.

My biggest problem right now aside from the fact that I sleep a lot is what to do with the time when I am not sleeping. Although painting does not seem like it would be hard the prospect is exhausting to me and so I have spent a lot of time reading, watching my dvds (hooray for Pride and Prejudice, so good to me when I am sick) , and surfing the internet.

Oh, the internet. I think this is the first time in a while that I have actually expended all of my eagerness to waste time on the internet, and it seems that the minute I have tons of time to waste I have an incredible urge to be productive.

As senior year is approaching I have had the inevitable what am I going to do for the rest of my life questions and I am finding that my problems with that question are similar to my problems surfing the internet. I get really excited and passionate about one subject and have tons of ideas about what I could do should I go down that road, but there are so many things I want to try!

My latest internet adventures:

Cooking--Most all of my wasted time begins with tastespotting.com and i found these from the whistle stop cafe food blog, which brought me to other food blogs, which have all collectively convinced me to start a small herb garden and maybe a tomato plant this fall.

Painting--Tons of artists post their work online and I have stumbled on to many of their pages. How cool is this guy's stuff? His name is David Brewster and it seems like he does all of his paintings with a palette knife they are so vague but so easily recognizable. http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424080736/424035807/david-brewster-1guilded-sky.html

Mexico--I was despairing with Courtney as to how expensive travel in Europe has become. I was telling my Mom that I am buying some plane tickets to get around Europe and she said, but can't you take the train? One train ticket online from London to Paris for a youth (18-25) is $137 USD, or 137 Australian dollars for those of you who were wondering. I have found some tolerably cheap tickets to get around but I was remembering how inexpensive, fun, and delicious my family trip to Mexico was so instead of researching more European flights I spent about an hour looking at towns in Mexico. They rent whole houses in some places that could sleep tons of people for $1000 per week in off-season. That is $147 per night for a house, if we had 9 people then that would be $15 each! I inevitably spent time looking at small non-touristy places, this place looks great! Except, i don't know WHERE we would find the time....

Isla Mujeres
Couchsurfing—This is a new network I have joined with Lena and Courtney so that we might be able to stay with people instead of in hostels on my trip this summer. I was wary at first, but most people have extensive profiles so that we can see what they are like, and I will be with someone else the whole time. I would so much rather a couch than a dorm full of drunk college students!
Cake decorating—I have no idea how I came upon this idea, maybe stumbling, but aren’t these cakes amazing? They are covered with some kind of marshmallow icing that has that finish. It seems like every time I see something like this I want to start on it immediately. Couldn’t it be amazing if I made a cake with blue icing and then put wax paper flowers on it, then sprinkle the whole thing with powdered sugar and take the wax paper back off again? It seems like if you want to really do it right you need icing tubes, and gum sugar, and paintbrushes and special food coloring. Everything I want to try needs so much investment and special equipment! I want to do silver-smithing, and I would need an anvil and blow torch and tools and silver, same with glass, same with cakes apparently, very exhausting. Plus the cakes I bake would actually have to turn out… could I just use betty crocker cake and then decorate do you think?
This photo was on a page titled "Are You Ready To Turn Your Cake Decorating Hobby Into A Money Making Business?" could you think of anything more dangerous to read?

Stuffed animals—I enjoyed making stuffed animals for my cousin’s baby boy last year and the minute I saw these I wanted to do it all over again! Wouldn’t it be fun to have a craft stall for the rest of my life? But then I will need a studio and storage and I don’t know what else.

Isn't it cute? more in the gallery here: http://everylittlething.typepad.com/

Web Design—the project I am a part of that takes me to Tumut constantly has a website run by two people who are constantly busy with work. I have thought about learning to do this more since I really like messing with my site and the Hellions website, but there is so much to learn! And plus what I really like to do is design the look of it, but there are so many little things that you have to do to make it work! In my own site, for example, I had to write a new page for each painting I do and will have to do the same for jewelry should I choose to pursuer that, sooo much busywork!

Anyway, the website for the project is nice and I spent any length of time perusing it to see how it works, then looking at their other projects. God forbid I actually complete a bio and become a member of the blog like I was sposed to do a month ago…it has been so long at this point I feel like I am past getting an account though. Anyway if you want to see pictures of me in tumut you can look on this site although the navigation isn’t completely logical…

http://www.tumut.engagingvisions.com.au/categories/artists

Design in general-My roommate received a package from a site called threadless.com the other day so I had to check it out. It is a site where you can submit designs and get a lot of money if yours is chosen for a tshirt! I want to learn to use adobe illustrator and design tshirts asap, then learn to screen print, then begin to wear tshirts again...hmm. Here are some of the ones I liked…

It's Just A Summer Job by Mike Sayre aka mildish

In Pachydermic Fashion by Michael B. Myers Jr. aka slaterock

Robot Dance Contest by Cameron McEwan aka Ronin60

Please send me any wacky ideas you have for an illustrated t-shirt; I really want to try one!

Letters—all during the perusing I am listening to Daddy Long Legs, a novel I read when I was pretty young, free from the internet. It has inspired me to finally write my grandmother back (the letter isn’t finished yet grandma but it should come in, I dunno, the next month or two) The book is so funny! I must have been much less attuned to sarcasm when I first read it…

Anyway that is all off my internet perusing for the week condensed down and given to you in a reader’s digest format, with so many fun things to make what AM I going to do with myself?

PS didn’t quite finish this last night so I thought I’d add before I post it. I cleaned my room today, and vacuumed, AND did laundry! Thank goodness I did too because Mani’s sister is visiting us. I always know when I am over the worst when the piles of clothes and medication on the floor start to bother me. I am a little tired from the effort but I feel much better in a clean room. (AND I wore real clothes today!)

Anyway I am sitting in my room with all of the doors in the house and my windows open so it smells like fall. I simply must go grocery shopping now because I am tired of condensed soup and my potato soup did NOT thaw well unfortunately, it looks like swamp thing. How do people have such success in the freezer? My things are just never as good if I freeze them. Off to buy and bake chicken drumsticks with some green beans and baked apples, mmm I MUST be getting better…Cheers!

It's Semi-Official, I Have Mono

2008-05-12T05:11:00.001-07:00

Today I spent the better part of my afternoon in the medical world. I didscussed various symptoms with my new favorite doctor, parents excluded. I was prodded in my stomach to make sure i did not have a rigid liver or spleen. I was poked in the arm by the nice woman at the nearby pathology lab, who seemed a little worried about my statement that i would be gone in 4 weeks, could they please make sure they malied the bill to me before then. The long and short of it, folks, is that I probably have Mononucleosis. Yay.

Apparently the blood test might come back negative but that won't shake my doctor's belief in my status as an incubator for this annoying virus so really at this point i am only taking the test to be able to present my professors with a medical certificate documenting my misfortune. All of thee symptoms are there so i have resigned myself to a few more weeks of constant naps. The symptoms, in case you were interested, involve sore throat, fatigue, achyness, nausea, and sometimes rigid organs. (Oh yeah, about the sore throat, did i mention i managed to get strep throat on top of Mono, as my friend Aaron said, this is the worst souvenir ever)

Although previously undocumented scientifically I have a few more symptoms to add for myself, just so you all will be warned if you are ever afflicted. (I am probably going to be contagious for the next few weeks so you should all stay far far away, oh wait.)

Kate's Symptoms:
*A sudden love for minty throat spray (possibly the best invention ever, rivaled only by puffs plus lotion when you have a cold in my opinion)
*A propensity to wear flannel and sweats, honestly i don't know how i managed to be sick without flannel shirts before. They have just the right level of comfort and grunge to put you in the mood to lay in bed.
*A new appreciation for librivox.com, seriously Louisa May Alcott now plays a serious role in my life.
*A love hate relationship with cookies. Okay, previously I only loved cookies, but now if i eat only a few i feel sick, very very sad. I quote Romy and Michele.

Michele: Remember the prom? You got so thin by then.
Romy: Oh, I know. I was so lucky getting mono. That was like the best diet ever.

*A dislike for British medical terms and medications. I just want tylenol, dammit, and I can't find it. Also, they call Mono 'Glandular Fever' here, which just makes me feel like i'm in a Jane Austen novel. I've decided that the reason British and Australian accents and terms sound funny to the American ear is that they are a part of our past and therefore sound incredibly formal and old fashioned in comparison to the totes quick and modern slang of the US today. Seriously, some people from the UK actually say Cheerio, while this does make me smile, it does so because i feel like the person saying it should be at least 80. And a man wearing a bowler hat.

If you find yourself wearing flannel and sleeping in beware! Not to scare the entire lumberjack population of the world or anything.

Anyways, send good karma vibes my way and check back because one of the few things i am capable of in my weekend state is blog posting :)

Penicillin, Advil, Tea, Breakfast of Champions

2008-05-11T03:29:00.000-07:00

Hello there! Looks like Lucky Number Slevin won by a LANDSLIDE too bad it didn't do as well in the box office but I suppose none of that famous cast is really hurting from that one.

It's a beautiful sunny day here in the ACT and I come to you having just sent about three hours driving over the countryside of New South Wales with a Scotswoman who shouts like a Glasgowian (not sure of the term) taxi driver at any who have less than stellar driving skillz. This, my dear readers was after the third and final installment in my Tumut field trip series.

The country was beautiful and the company lovely, the skies clear and the stars bright; there were but two blights on my lovely trip and because I love to complain you will hear of them in detail. Problem one: I was/am sick. I apparently came down with the flu shortly after my trip to sunny Queensland which i would have gotten over except that I then contracted a bacterial infection (strep) in my tonsils also known as tonsillitis here, no one understands me if I mention strep throat.

Now I understand that the American medical system is incredibly flawed etc, etc. but let us face it, when i get sick at USC I can go to the health center and see a doctor. The doctor may dish out whatever drugs i ask for without much care, but the point is I see and MD and get what (lets all hope) I need. Here you need an appointment to see anyone and most appointments have to be booked a week in advance. When confronted with this problem I left the medical center and resolved to heal myself through a seasoned blend of sleep, tylenol, tea, and stubbornness but to no avail. I finally a week later (ironically on the day i could have gotten an appointment for the week previously) waited with the tired and sick in a line in front of the clinic to get any cancelled appointments.

I got there at 8:45 and there were already about 8 people, God knows how long they had been waiting. at 9:10 I was given an appointment for 12:10, I filled out my paperwork and biked back home for a quick 2 hour nap before returning. Then I slept through the appointment. The two short 10 minute bike rides had tired me so much that i slept until 1 pm, I feel terrible to think i cheated one of the people who cane in at 9:15 from an appointment and then booked a spot with a private practice to avoid showing my face in the uni medical clinic ever again.

Anyway, without any symtoms of sore throat or couching, i was diagnosed with the illness mentioned above and prescribed penicillin, which I scurried across the street to procure. They didn't have generic brand penicillin. Ok, it only cost me $15 AUS which is, roughly, let me calculate, about $15 US but it is the principal of the thing. Penecillin was discovered in 1928 for crissakes (yes i looked it up, wikipedia is awesome) it is a common treatment for tonsillitis which is much more common than, you know, plague or something, so how in 90 years have pharmacies neglected to stock the generic brand! What is this madness?

I lost valuable minutes biking home with my healthful elixir because i couldn't remember whether i was allergic to it or not. I'm not, but I had to check with the parents; both of them because Dad's hesitation before answering he didn't think so was a bit worrying. (Sorry Dad, I know I am 20 and should know what I am allergic to) Anyways, 5 days in to my treatment and my throat hurts like it didn't when she first diagnosed me, so I can't decide if i am fulfilling my doctor's prophecy or i have the worst case of sneaky strep ever. The result of the illness was that i spent most afternoons napping in my tent instead of painting and then was clucked over by the many many older women in my group for most evenings.

Problem 2 with my trip: She who shall not be named. It is unfortunate when you meet someone that thoroughly ruins their name for you forever. Luckily in this case it was my Mom's middle name so i had a good association to keep it from being poisoned. This woman is a Martyr and yes, with a capitol M. If it isn't her bad luck with affordable housing, her mothering, her dyslexia (which gets worse when she eats apples, true story) it is her recent bad haircut. I am sorry, but if you live in project housing and have two children, WHY would you try to start a career as a painter and pay to dye your very curly hair bright fuscia and ask to have it cut in the shape of a diamond? Honestly when she mentioned the diamond shape i immediately imagined her as someone from the simpsons and had to leave the room to maintain dignity. It wasn't the broad sweeping insults, 'cake for dessert every night, how AMERICAN,' or the unwanted advice, which she gave often. It was the whole package that made my shoulders tense for an entire five days. (Including the two days that my friend and I had to chauffeur her around, with the windows down to keep her from 'drying out' or the formaldehyde in the air from getting to her)

I digress, I spent some lovely times in the streets of Tumut, my friend bought a yellow and green owl tea cosy and I purchased a ridiculous brightly colored Australia beach hat and some hot pink wool socks. We had high tea, and devonshire cream with raspberry jam on warm croissants with peppermint tea (served from a pot with an owl cosy) is my new version of heaven. The formaldehyde made some lovely mist in the mornings that blanketed the hills, and I saw a live wombat (several dead ones preceding it unfortunately) and possibly a white kangaroo. I also saw the milky way, the Southern Cross, Scorpio, Orion, Sirius, AND Leo on one stargazing adventure. We also bought sparklers and took slow exposure photography and drew things with them.

We had cake every night, played a card game called shit head (similar to Lena's 'idiot', and taught similarly too, 'oh, BY THE WAY, you can lay down cards that are the same as well') Also one woman had brought her husband and young baby (not really to the sitting on his own stage yet so pretty little) who was extremely entertaining and lovely. It is so fun to watch eye hand coordination happen right before your eyes, if you aren't the one on the receiving end of the baby food that is. (the poor parents got much child rearing advice from She who shall not be named, as did I by proxy as someone who will eventually have kids. I logged every pearl away in the back of my mind of course)

I didn't really do anything productive except on saturday when i talked with a lovely aboriginal woman named Phyllis and then learned to make pine needle baskets from a lovely woman named Jan. Sunday, today, we drove home taking pictures of lawn ornaments and washing for my friends project (many an older woman came out the front door to see what we were on about). We also had cheeseburgers, chocolate milkshakes, and a pack of strawberry Hubba Bubba. I won the bubble blowing contest, needless to say. I find my scotswoman companion increasingly delightful because she is unafraid to fawn over ceramic gnomes, have victory dances for small victories, and write her name with sparklers.

Anyway, sorry for the long bouts of complaining and sorry i have gone so long without pictures, i just couldn't be bothered to dig out my camera from the pile of things on my bedroom floor, but once i sort out travel plans, write a 2000 word essay on Madonnas with Child, and heal, I'll get right on it I swear!

PS when i got home after a long day, I found a package from my Grandma with a lovely letter and my favorite oatmeal cookies in it! Thank god the Australian quarantine inspection let them through because they came at an absolutely PERFECT time. Yay for grandmothers and mothers everywhere, Happy Mothers Day from down under!

How I Spent My Summer, I Mean, Winter Vacation...

2008-05-02T05:35:00.001-07:00

Well it has been a very long time since I updated this blog, and I apologize for this but as is to be expected when one is both in school and in a foreign country, I have been very busy.

About two weeks ago I flew with my two Scottish friends to Brisbane and then spent the next week and a half driving back from Brisbane to Canberra. This drive takes about 18-20 hours in one trip so we thought that over 10 days we would have no trouble. The original idea was to enjoy the balmy subtropical weather of southeastern Queensland for a while before we headed back to wintery Canberra. The weather during this time for about the last 12 years has been sunny and in the 70’s (Fahrenheit, thank god). So, accordingly, we packed our swimsuits, shorts, tank tops, sunhats, and summer tents and flew north.

We stayed in a cute hostel called the yellow submarine that promised free sailing on Wednesdays. We arrived on a Wednesday but discovered the wind was up to several knots, aka too fast for us to sail, and we a little disappointed but at the same time exhausted from travel crashed in our three bed room for a nap. We explored the city a little in the afternoon and I liked it a lot. It’s industrial and apparently undergoing a huge economic boom because there was construction everywhere. There was a river going right through it and a river/bus public transport system that was quite fun. At this point in the trip both of my friends were writing papers for their schools back in Scotland, and we spent a lot of time in the Brisbane public library, which had free wifi (so nice!), which was unfortunately right next to the public daycare center. One of the girls finished her paper quickly and she and I explored the city while our other friend spent most of the first 5 days of our trip on her computer. The public services here are really nice, free museum access and free library access, all really nice buildings to boot. We also got some shopping done and I got some very fun heels and a dress (yes, I was weak and bought a dress if you’re judging me now this is going to be a long post for you)

Brisbane was lovely and sunny the first day we were there, from then on we spent our time gambling with our health and belongings taking outings in the rain. On one such venture it POURED rain while we were walking across a bridge to the library, laptops in bag. We had no shelter and by the time we got to the library the rain stopped, but we were soaked; we had to get a cab back to the hostel just to change and walk across the bridge again. (Don’t worry, all of our laptops survived)

The other fun thing we did in Brizzy was go to Chinatown, which was kind of like a row of buildings from the old west that just happened to have Chinese restaurants. Seriously, they should shoot the next Shanghai Noon there. We had a huge amount of Chinese food in an arcade/restaurant where they sold HUGE bottles of Singh Tao (can’t remember exact spelling) but almost liter bottles of beer, it was ridiculous. It was the sketchiest Chinese place I’ve been to in a while, but quite good.

On Saturday we took a tour of Frazer Island, and thank god we didn’t try to tackle it ourselves. This was in my opinion the highlight of our trip because we hadn’t yet had our hopes completely and repeatedly dashed by the rain, it was beautiful, and we didn’t have to drive. We rode in a 4x4 bus to Frazer with a German couple, and a group of 6 Midwesterners. It is bizarre suddenly hearing a familiar accent after a few months without, and let me say these people were nice, but exactly the reason people hate American tourists. It was two couples, and the two daughters of one of the couples who were respectively 20 and 22. I mention their age specifically because until I talked with them I though both of the girls were in high school. I realize that when traveling with family children are bound to act more like children, but seriously. One of the men actually bought a pair of bright yellow crocs and put them on while on the bus. Turns out the reason I recognized their accent so well was that they were all from St. Louis, my frequent stomping ground, and lived in Creve Coeur. One of the girls went to St. Louis U and had just finished a semester at some school in Queensland.

Anyway, the tour. It was run by a middle aged Aussie man who loved making jokes about Americans and generally making fun of anyone in the group, usually in poor taste. (I could just be sore because he made fun of me for being American AND for being short). He actually asked one of the women if her husband ever ‘played’ Tarzan when we saw actual swinging vines (I tried to climb one to the amusement of the group, I have no upper arm strength anymore sadly). The island itself was made entirely up of sand that had built up on some ancient mountain that had been covered by the ocean. It had freshwater from mainland AUS because it was still a part of the water table, and the water was so sweet because it was filtered through hundreds of feet of sand over about 10 years. Oh, and the sand is silica sand so it was really soft. (I actually managed to impress our guide because I knew they used silica for computers and makeup, I guess all Americans aren’t dumb. And by not dumb I mean some of us have memories for useless facts.) Anyway the island was beautiful but all off-road driving, in the rain. Thank god we didn’t drive it ourselves or we would have been turned over in a puddle within 10 minutes.

The rest of the trip we were dirty and constantly damp. None of us had packed for cold weather, which resulted in several opp shop (good will) purchases, including a faux sheep lined jacket by myself and a koala wooly jumper (sweater) by my friend. We all bought pants (underwear, that one caused lots of miscommunications. The Scottish call pants trousers or jeans if they are in fact jeans) because we had no laundry facilities and were constantly soaked, and lilos (I have no idea how that one is spelled, but it refers to inflatable sleeping pads or mattresses.) Our tent leaked so our grand scheme of saving money by camping and spending hours on the leach was ruined. By the way, small beach towns are cute and have endless possibilities for activities UNITIL in rains. We ended up renting and borrowing a lot of movies in a lot of hostels.

Cute towns:
Surfer’s Paradise: this wasn’t cute but deserves mention because it is so advertised. The area around it is home to Queensland’s major theme parks including movie world. It’s got famous because it allegedly is rain free 300 days of the year (ok, it didn’t actually rain, but it threatened) and has surfable surf year round. It was terrible; imagine Orlando plus Mexico plus terrible buildings. The beaches were actually empty, so that was nice, but I think that was more the weather.

Byron Bay: south of Surfer's, it is a really cute semi commercialized beach town with lots of shops and pretty beaches, this was pretty much the last time we saw the sun on the coast. We did more shopping, because of the rain, and I got a necklace as my one big this is my way to remember Australia purchase.

Coffs harbor: we camped here, oh my god it was rainy and boring. Thank goodness we got inflatable mattresses. However it seems I was the only warm one as I had a winter camping sleeping bag and neither of my companions did; also they were both tall enough to touch each end of the tent with heads and toes so I think they got dripped on a bit. I of course was snug in the middle of them curled up and slept probably the most of all nights on the trip.

Maclean: pronounced ‘maclane’ this is a small settlement of people who were given free passage to Australia after being driven out of the highlands. Because of a recent heritage project, all of the townspeople’s tartans are painted on the electrical and telephone poles. There are also several heritage things posted about haggis and other stereotypical Scottish traditions. People here seem really repulsed by haggis, but since people from the southern US used to and probably still do eat chitlins it doesn’t really faze me. And to be fair, anything more foreign than a burger or sausage seems to distress Australians. They do not understand the sweet + savory concept, as is highlighted by their fear and distrust of several American traditions: PB&J, cheddar cheese on pie, French fries “chips” dipped in frosty, pumpkin pie, jam on toast on the side with eggs. Anyway, maclaen was cool and a bit of a homecoming for my Scottish friends. Plus they got to laugh every time I mispronounced something.

Newcastle: cool industrial town, our spirits were broken by the time we made it here because we drove in the dark in the rain to get there and were sooo excited to stay in a hostel indoors only to find a leaky roof and uncomfortable spring mattresses. We stayed two nights hoping the rain would clear. If we had actually been able to walk around a bit I think we would have liked it; it was surrounded by water and was originally a prison town built for people who committed crimes AFTER being sent to Australia for other crimes.

After these stops we drove the 5-6 hours to Canberra and relished our own beds. We had the car for an extra day and proceeded to go to places like the hardware store where we couldn’t normally drive. We also saw a local landmark, the Telstra tower. Which to me is one of the main problems with Canberra. Their two major landmarks (the other being the capitol building. I mean, it's pretty on the inside but the flag pole is ugh. Also, they built it inot a hill with the idea being that the government is 'on the same level' as the people. a really good sentiment, but forgettable building) are simultaneously not that attractive and forgettable. Who cares about the Telstra tower when there’s Uluru and the Sydney harbor bridge and opera house to see?

After a long grey trip, we found that not only had it been warm and sunny in Canberra the whole time, but that it was once again sunny in Brisbane. People were flabbergasted, as they hadn’t had that much rain in 10 years! Yay for them, the end of the Australian drought had to begin on our beach holiday. Now that we are home we have all managed to get pretty sick, I guess it is all the rain.

On the bright side, I am getting to do something I haven’t in a few years, experience fall. The leaves in Canberra right now are gorgeous and I actually get to wear my sheep wool lined coat, scarf and hat as more than just fashion accessories! I love how brisk it is until I get home and realize my bedroom has no insulation. This morning I left the house bundled up only to realize it was colder inside my room than outdoors. (I just bought an electric blanket, what an amazing invention!)

Well this has probably sounded like a lot of complaining but we did manage to enjoy ourselves a bit. People from Ireland and the UK constantly harassed us. (The Scottish draw them like magnets.) I got a newsboy hat that apparently screams ‘steal me or mess with me in some fashion!’ to every stranger around. And at times we were so giddy from our exhausting misfortunes that little things like dry socks and electrical outlets sent us to the heights of ecstasy.

No pictures for now because apparently my household has a bandwidth limit I was previously unaware of. And because I stopped bringing my camera out after Byron bay; when my friends give me pictures, I will ammend this post.

Cheerio!

This Is Just to Say...

2008-04-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry, my roommate left me a note this morning that reminded me of a note that Erin left me last year when she tool some juice. I just realized I get to live with people that reference high literature in their counter top notes, yay!

I baked cookies yesterday because I was bored and didn't feel like drawing, but it turned from a relaxing exercise into a battle of wills between me and inanimate confectionery creations...My roommates don't keep basic items on hand like whisks, cookie sheets, or mixing bowls. (I shudder to imagine what Mrs. Shlinker would think of our lack of pastry brushes, but I digress) the worst part was beating cold butter together with sugar, using a fork, which i don't think i really accomplished in the end anyway, but it all worked out. A few weeks ago I broke down and bought mixing bowls; this was a weak moment as i am trying not to stock up a kitchen with items I will only be using for the next 8 weeks.

That's right kids, I only have 8 weeks left and I have YET to finish a painting. Also, I just learned that school breaks here are 'working breaks' i.e. you are expected to accomplish things during them. Ummm, what if people want to go on holiday and cannot bring the bare essentials of painting?

ANYWAY, the cookies. I got the recipe off of 101cookbooks.com, which has always served me well in the past, except for the thin mints recipe, but one out of many many successes. And they were amazing! They edges are crispy and caramelized, the middles soft, and there are lots of chocolate chips; I had to bring them into my studio so I wouldn't eat them all. Try them, I ended up using almonds instead of pecans, using some wholemeal flour instead of white (I ran out), and adding an extra egg because the dough wouldn't stick together (don't you love it when people say they love a recipe and then list how they completely changed it?) but my studio-mates decided they were the best biscuits they had ever had. That one still throws me, biscuits are fluffy and buttery and go well with gravy and fried chicken--they do not have chocolate chips.

In other news, I went out last evening to celebrate my Scottish friend's 30th birthday. We went to a great restaurant, then a fancy bar (they had these drinks with muddled orange, gin, campari, passionfruit, and cranberry juice--Nun's Nasty. Very girly and very tasty!) then a dive bar where we watched Australian rules football, then an irish pub where we danced to old rock/blues songs most of which i knew the words to. I forgot how much fun dancing to rock music is! Then we went to a club called the Back Alley Disco (I now have a blacklight stamp that says BAD to prove it)

Clubbing in Australia is very interesting because a lot of guys seem to go there just to dance, which is nice. They all do this weird dance resembling something called the Melbourne shuffle: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZPaMdxC6CQI. This video is a bit more intense than what i saw, but I was not in Melbourne, and the video DOES have a strobe light effect about half way through so that you feel like you get the full club experience.

The two Scottish women came over to my place this afternoon for lunch and both of the poor things were very hungover and couldn't do the eggs benedict justice, but I loved it. (probably my top breakfast food, but only if the eggs are poached in tiny teacups) And Elaine and I decided to go see a movie tonight instead of go out again. We saw Grindhouse, which I missed when it was out in the states, but everything is incredibly delayed here so i got to see it on the bog screen. It was a reference to the old drive in movie double features, complete with bad previews and a fake intermission.

I actually enjoyed the experience a lot although I know many of you in my audience hate Quentin Tarantino stuff. The two films shown were "Planet Terror" by Robert Rodriguez and "Death Proof" by Quentin Tarantino. All I can say is, they went for the cheesy action flicks and they went full out. If you go into them with the same mentality that you would Snakes on a Plane or the upcoming film Wanted you will enjoy them a lot because they are so over the top. A girl has a machine gun for a leg. Seriously. Planet Terror was a horror flick, which should not have surprised me, in retrospect, but I hadn't thought about it and you all know my dislike for horror films on account of my dislike of being scared and my extremely jumpy nature. Death Proof was about a stunt driver serial killer (Kurt Russel) and it was awesome! It had such a good car chase scene and reminded me of the old North by Northwest and Psycho movies.

Anyways, they are very graphic, very cheesy, and thoroughly enjoyable. The scripts are ridiculous though, soooo apparent written dialogue. But anyway, as a result of those movies, which were, together about 3 1/2 hours long, I got so keyed up I have had to write a blog post to settle down before sleep and suppress the urge to drive cars really fast and fight off a zombie horde. The only time i have had more adrenaline this week was dancing at the club and when I thought I might have to change my plane ticket at a thousand dollar loss, whew that was close. (Don't worry Courtney, I am still flying out of here on the 10th as planned, for about two hours on friday the art department tried to give me a stress test)

I'm planning on taking photos of my works in progress tomorrow so you guys can tell me what you think! That post should be up in the next day or two. Then I get a much needed possibly edgy haircut that I can only hope is not a mullet on Tuesday. Then I am off for Melbourne on Wednesday for my fall holiday, yay!

P.S. Some of you might have noticed some typos in my blog over the course of its existence--they are there to keep you on your toes.

Tumut, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Field Trip

2008-04-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

On the desolate barren dry road again...just can't wait to get on the....

For those of you who didn’t know, I had another field trip to Tumut from Wednesday to Sunday this week and have been bust since the weekend. It has been a while since I posted, so I believe I have a bit to catch you all up on.

Last Friday, all of the people in my studio were really unmotivated and as a result I was even less motivated than usual. I spent most of the day gessoing canvas that I put together all by myself, which I was very proud of. After you put together the frame, however, you have to seal the canvas to protect it using rabbit skin glue. Yes, it is made from Rabbits, and it smells…like rabbits. After this, you have to gesso the canvas to get a decent painting surface. Needless to say, I think I will be doing the rest of my works in paper for ease of shipping and because of the long involved process which one day might be economical and convenient but right now is just much less interesting that everything else I could be doing.

Anyway, a girl in my studio and one of her friends from the textile department were going to a pub called The Pheonix, which is a pretty hilarious dive bar where lots of art kids hang out. They invited me and I gladly left, forgetting to even wash my brush. We ended up going to her house to change from our art clothes and she dressed us all up in her clothes. This is only significant because she has two closets and lots of couch space devoted to her collection of vintage dresses, and, get this, she is my size!

In moments I was dressed in a black and white checked dress, a purple 20’s hat, and some awesome black boots which she gave to me as a gift because they were to small on her! She was in a short ivory satin wedding dress with boots and a knit hat and the textile girl was in a festive dress, ochre polka dotted sweater, and red beret. Needless to say we got many looks on the bus.

I thought that the reaction would be puzzled and negative, but actually everyone loved us. Several people complimented my hat and asked about the occasion, and the bartenders served us almost as soon as we walked up to the bar, yelling ‘hey, girls in the hats’ and fighting over serving us. We are thinking of instituting a weekly hat night, as I have never been so well treated in a bar before.

Anyway, that night pretty much set the tone for the weekend and I got very little actual work done. Although I DID learn to make udon noodles, so fun!

Flour + Salt +Water
You knead them by walking around on dough covered in plastic...need I say more?

I gave a presentation on Frans Hals on Tuesday for my art theory class and then worked a bit before going home. I did freak out a little about my lack of work to show the professors, but for the first time ever my teachers do not care what I do at all! I have been doubly worrying because I keep waiting for them to suddenly crack down, but now I am starting to relax more. Hmmm maybe that's what they're waiting for...

I went to bed early on Tuesday with the plan of waking early in the morning to pack, but I slept in and woke about 2 minutes before my friend came to pick me up for the trip. Long story short, I sent her around to pick up someone else and packed for a five-day art trip in about twenty minutes, leaving the house in the sweats and shirt I slept in.

The drive was full of stops and we were thirty minutes late to the campsite, a boys summer camp we had rented out. Thursday we went in to the Tumut charity shop where I get a pair of high rise jeans, as I had no clean ones because my washing machine and dishwasher had been taken into the shop for repair on Saturday and still had not returned by Wednesday morning. (I had to hand wash several articles of clothing for the trip, all I can say is the 50’s were the ‘age of innocence’ because they had no time to get into any trouble) Then we went hiking up in the national park and laid in the sun by the Goobragandra River. (the names for things here are so cool)

Friday a group of people went into Brungle, an Aboriginal Mission (similar to a reservation) and we got a tour from a park ranger and aboriginal heritage guy. Then I interviewed a woman for a portrait series I’m working on. She seemed fine with posing, but very skeptical as to her getting anything out of it, I got the impression that lots of white people had asked to take pictures of aborigines as curiosities so I am hoping that she will trust me more later into the project. Working with the aborigines here has made me even more sensitive to the problems we still have in the states with treatment of the Native Americans (which I never hear about, they don’t have as high of a political spotlight as here in Australia) and African Americans. Someone did a presentation on two artists from Los Angeles doing art on racism in America, which was interesting because people don’t know much about it overseas. The whole question period the other American student and I were trying to avoid being asked questions about the US, luckily they didn’t think to ask us.

Then the three ‘youngins’ myself, and two other girls went up to a dam to sketch and explore. Talbingo, the town by the dam, was the home of a woman suffrage advocate and an author, Miles Franklin, but the reservoir created by the dam has completely covered her house with water. The dam is a huge problem because it causes environmental issues, but it is a green source of energy….

My painting of all of the power lines feeding into the power station;
I strategically picked a spot in full sun for maximum sunburn potential

The trip was uneventful and the watercolor I did unremarkable, but we did see kangaroos! And a flock of Emu in the middle of the road, and, sadly, wombat road kill. And tons and tons of cockatoos.

On Saturday I woke up at 6 am to go flying in a microlight aircraft. For you laymen (like me) it is basically a trike with a hang gliding apparatus above it. I had reservations at first, but the guy flying us apparently is the best in the business (people come from Sydney to learn, and he landed on the dam back no his glory days) Anyway, it was awesome! It definitely made me want to learn to hang glide, except for the whole walking off of a cliff thing. It was sooo fun.

My other car is a...

There was lots of mist because of the huge change in temp lately (for the colder)
but it worked out prettily

I went with one other guy, and after our flights we went exploring and photographing. He’s this really shy academic guy who grew up in a fishing community in Sri Lanka, then went to university in the states. His first introduction to the US was, get this, Davidson college in the south. Then he went to duke, then Berkeley. He does bird watching and had lots of good advice about getting international scholarships for post grad education. We’re going bird watching next week, hopefully in the evening cause I don’t know how many more early mornings I can do.

He has seen an albino kangaroo nearby in his recent wildlife excursions. apparently there was another bloke who also saw it but no one believes him and it has become a sort of joke in the community. So when we saw this sign and told the guy in the museum we knew someone who had seen one, well we might has well have claimed to have seen elvis or something.

I went into town and painted a watercolor from the morning until about 3:30, I was hoping to scope out people for my portrait series more than get a decent painting. I got a couple of interested people and some teenagers who said my painting “wasn’t TOO bad.” Next time I will go earlier in the morning because everyone is on the main street on Saturday morning, but it is deserted by noon. And also, if you were wondering, buildings are SO hard to paint in watercolors.

Part of the scene I attempted to paint. Painting in public allows everyone to criticize your work to your face.
Sometimes it can be interesting and sometimes a little less than pleasant.
Especially if you are struggling with it, but most people were nice.

That afternoon we went to some ruins of an old gold mining facility, which was cool, until a cattle dog attempted to ‘herd’ us, which entailed a lot of growling and barking and near heel nipping. He was big and muscular, but there was a little fluffball of a white dog egging him on. Finally my Scottish friend yelled at it and it left. (Her cursing is awesome because they tend to string words together, and they sound so proper)

Anyway, there’s not much else to report, it was one of those experiences without a whole lot of comment. I am allergic to the Australian Bush, but not Australian planned cities. Being a person who doesn’t normally suffer from allergies I never really sympathized before but wow they are pretty bad. Australian slang is all very cutsey, I heard a grown man say that he was pulling over to ‘take some pic-ys’ (pictures). I also saw the milkyway for the first time in a long time; I’m planning on doing a whole lot more hiking in the next year as I am realizing how much I miss it!

And, from XKCD, here is your moment of zen:

Easter Weekend

2008-03-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

G’day everybody!

As some of you know, last Sunday Riley, the BF, flew in to visit me in Australia. Unfortunately due to my field trip being in the middle of NOWHERE (10 hours traveling distance to Sydney or Canberra) I couldn’t meet him at the airport. And due to me now knowing that there are two bus companies here Greyhound AND Murray’s, he had to wait at the airport for four to five hours, then take a bust to get to Canberra. Very sad, but then I had Monday off so we were able to see parliament and the national portrait gallery. The parliament building is fairly new, and I love the inside, but on the outside the nicest thing I can say about it is that it is a huge contribution to the growing number of odd modern buildings in the world. My favorite anecdote is that when the bell rings for voting time, every member has 4 minutes to get to the voting room or they can’t get in. They figured out this limit by finding the oldest member, putting him in the far corner of the building, and timing him walking to the room. It took him 3 and a half minutes so they just rounded it to four. The national portrait gallery was also cool because it had paintings of all of the major political figures in Australia over the past few years, and I even sort of recognized some of their names.

Tuesday I was a slacker and skipped class, but I went to crew in the morning and it was very pretty.

We had a good breakfast and cooked our own dinner, (notes for travelers iced coffee and iced chocolate mean coffee and chocolate floats, not coffee poured over ice; aussies share the European aversion to ice apparently) Then we went to play Frisbee with my summer league; it was the last week so we got dominoes pizza (which is actually worse here) and then I added on to one team and riley added on to the other and we played for first place. I think my team won in universe point, no thanks to me (I had no cleats and the sprinklers came on halfway through the game) and I got a chocolate bunny for the prize.

Wednesday and thursday were boring, the only things of note were Riley’s fixing of our wireless internet, YAY! I now can blog comfortably form my bed and nor fro the kitchen counter far from any power outlet, table, or chair. And he showed my how to make my laptop power cable double for our secondhand dvd player, which came sans remote and power cable. Hooray for non art majors that can fix things!

On Thursday, Riley rented a car and we drove down to the southeast coast. It was a nice drive except Australian radio sucks and I forgot my cds, and it started to rain when we got into town and the road google maps told us to take was closed. When we finally made it to the place I had booked, it was storming and we had to drive up this steep dark driveway in the middle of nowhere. (by the way, it was incredibly sunny and hot, nineties, the whole time we were in Canberra, but as soon as we drove to the coast it stormed all over the country)

Imagine driving up this, in the dark, in a storm

The place seemed empty except for the reception guy, an older Austrian man dressed in a flannel shirt and named Herbert. It was a charming spa/ B&B type place in the end, but in the storm, at the time, I thought we were walking into a psycho type situation. Then before he showed us the room we met his granddaughter, who had come for a sleepover and as we walked to the room we saw them playing monopoly, so cute!

It was still rainy and cold but we managed a hike along a cloudy beach and a small trail.

Bingi Bingi Point, very pretty, squishy sand, kind of cold

The trail itself was stressful because we kept almost walking into huge spiderwebs. These spiders were crazy, they weave webs across entire trails above head height. We got lost because the trail ended at the end of the park, on a country road, in a neighborhood. I have no sense of direction, and we hadn't gotten a trail map because it was a small 'walk' like trail that I honestly thought was a loop and we really didn't want to backtrack through the spider trail. To be fair we would have gotten back eventually the way we were walking, but a nice ranger gave us a ride to our car. In the end, it was cold, and there were spiders, so we packed up early and decided to go to dinner.

Herbert got us in to a nice seafood place and our table was on a pier on the water, very nice. When we got back, we asked him if we could borrow a dvd and ended up with choices that ranged from anger management to Black Stallion II. We watched part of Moulin Rouge before I got sleepy, and I hate to say this but I did not get the appeal. Maybe it’s that I don’t like Nicole Kidman but I loved the music, loved the colors, couldn’t make myself love the movie, oh well.

We drove to Sydney on Saturday, at which point it started to get a little sunny, go figure. It was a long drive on a two lane highway, and we ended up being pressed for time and not stopping for lunch and then not being able to find the Hertz in Sydney. When we finally did find it, there were no public bathrooms in it, of course, after driving for three hours. Finally we just went to the bar next door and bought beers and recollected ourselves. The Ladies was, of course, down a steep flight of stairs and had another little surprise step under the door that I tripped on going in AND out. I can’t even imagine what drunk women think of it.

We took a cab to the hotel, which was awesome because it was right next to this old post office building with a clock tower and a short walk to the bay.

The post office building was really pretty, our
hotel was a modern attachment to it

Sydney harbor is just as impressive as they say!

Having missed lunch, we immediately went out for a 4 pm lunch. We ended up getting burgers at a little seafood place and they were AMAZING. They were loosely packed and tender and seasoned like seafood and I am getting hungry just describing them. They are second only to Mervs in my heart as the perfect cheeseburger.

We also did some souvenir shopping and I scoped out the crocodile Dundee hat situation, I am seriously considering one as my field trips are very sunny and my neck is quite burnable.

The main thing we ended up doing in Sydney though, was going to the zoo. I heard that the ferry ride there was scenic, so we went for it.

Poor Riley, I took his picture in the sun. We scrambled to get these choice seats
at the front of the boat, and then the boat went backwards the whole way.

We moved to the side of the boat here, much better on the eyes

It ended up being awesome because the zoo is on a hill and you take cable cars (gondolas in aussie speak) up to the top so we got a great air view of the harbor. We also rode it with a british family and an adorable little boy who kept pointing out all of the significant landmarks and saying he didn't want his sunglasses yet.

Us at the zoo, pictures with koalas were $20 so we settled for a
self-timer and the harbor in the background

We also got to see all of the aussie animals we failed to see on our hike, echidna, kangaroo, platypus (these are as strange in person as ever, but very cute) and we got to see our huge scary spiders again. In case you were curious, they are called Orb spiders and have the strongest webs in the world.

This one was at least the size of my hand, and
we constantly had to walk under them, shudder

We left early and went to the Gallery of New South Wales to see a Portrait contest. The show had some AMAZING portraits but it was really, really, crowded and hung in a very small space for the amount of work. In the end, I got a little claustrophobic and just bought a catalogue so I could look up pieces later.

Looking back, a lot of things were against us and most of what we ended up doing was eating, but it was a good time. The hotels we stayed in both had amazing breakfasts. The B&B had fresh mint tea and a continental European breakfast with ‘fresh milk’ whatever that means, and the second hotel in Sydney had this awesomely extravagant buffet deal with really good juice combinations. My favorite was kiwi pear mint. So usually we had late lunches and I was SO full by dinner…oh well, I suppose I will have to get my American appetite back somehow.

I loved Sydney itself. It had all of these really interesting old buildings on the water and of course the bridge and the opera house were beautiful. It really reminded me of Como and Venice in Italy; I think it would be a fun place to live IF you could live downtown by the water. It is like LA in that the suburbs go on forever.

Very pretty, and pricey, by the water

Anyway, back to reality. My fridge is broken and I am eating pasta for almost every meal at home. Before we left, we shove lots of stuff in the freezer because that was still working, but at some point while we were gone even that shut off so now I just have a smelly freezer and no roommates….sigh. Ironic that I moved here because I didn’t have a fridge in the hostel…

Oh well, I must go work on painting now; I am fairly behind and have a meeting with my professors tomorrow. Cheers!

It's Hot in the Bush

2008-03-24T03:20:00.000-07:00

So I know it's been a while but I have been way too busy to blog... I'll go chronologically and tell you about my trip to Tumut first.

I walked to the front of the school of fine art with my entire supply of camping gear because i forgot to ask my roommate for a ride, oh well. Anyway, we packed into a bus that uncomfortably seats 12, fortunately there weren't that many of us, and drove off into the bush. The natural australian landscape is extremely dry and rolling with lots of greyish gum and eucalyptus trees; it looks pretty alien to any american landscape i've seen. It's odd though ebcause apparently there are a LOT of species of plants and animals that have been brought here from other countries that are messing with the ecosytsem. the result is pine trees and willows that look really familiar to me are actually exotic here, and they're messing everything up. Even most of the grass is no longer native.

I fell asleep about half an hour into the ride, as those of you who've ridden buses with me know, they mput me to sleep walmost immediately, which was annoying because later in the trip we would take short 40 minute rides that just made me REALLY tired. Plus it was always hot (hich thirties in celsius, ninties for you imperial system americans, temperature is one of the most difficult culture shock things for me because it is totally foreign AND requires me to do math in my head) and the a/c in the bus was just too wimpy for all of the hot air & people in it.

Anyway, the trip was interesting for me, but it was quite academic and would eb broing to go into detail with you so I'll just give you a list:

Orchard
I had never seen an orchard before, or heard so much about apples, so this was pretty cool. Most of the trees aren't that much taller than me, and those nets protect the trees from hail.

Forest Plantation & Fire Tower (sooo high in the air!)
In this part of the adventure, we saw all of the harvesting equipment at work, thus the hardhats. I got an extra extra large yellow vest, you know, for my broad shoulders. the dude with his hand on his chin was out guide, very Aussie backwoodsman and a real fave with the older ladies in the group...
This was one of my views from the fire tower before it got windy and the tower started to sway....shudder.. The dark green stuff is the plantations, the open land was caused by a fire. (started by some idiot who stole a car and burned it to hide evidence) and the grey forest is natural australian forest, they aren't allowed to cut it down so they grow right up to it. They have a TON of land because this particular buisiness has been around long enough to be sustainable, but it takes 20-30 yrs to grow a tree. The blank land you see used to be worth millions of dollars in wood.

Hike/ four wheel drive through a farm and a national park

So the national park was called Kosciuszko by a Polish explorer, after a Polish saint, but everyone here pronounces it Kozzyosko, so you would never know. To get to it, we drove though a family farm where they were grazing cows. The cows, and people were very friendly.
The park itself was very pretty, this is a spot by the creek, the dude is our project photo documenter guy, Dean.

Snowy mountain scheme (huge dam that generates power)
In order to make this dam they filled up an entire valley with water from a river, this yabby lives in the lake that they've made. It's picturesque, but bizzare to think how monumentally we've changed the land.

These pipes supply water for the power generating turbines from the lake above, each one can fit a bus inside. Wow, I sound like our tour guide, except she kept throwing numbers at me, in metric, in the heat.

We camped every night at a drive in camp site by a creek, which was awesome when it was hot, but not awesome when there were 50 8th graders sharing the site with us. (luckily only for two nights.)

After that whole marshmellow poll myself and one other american girl decided to teach people how to make s'mores, which if people have heard of them it was in movies. It was pretty difficult though, because things I have taken for granted all my life were unavailable. Marshmellows here are mostly small, tough, covered with sweet powder of some kind, and flavored. that's right, flavored, ti is impossible to find plain ones in most stores that aren't in a bag with pink, raspberry flavored ones that taint the whole bag. After searching two small town stores we found some plain ones, but these were mushroom cap shaped and proved to taste better but were difficult to toast evenly. Also, thin chocolate bars like hershey do not exist, and so we had thick, not easily melted chocolate. The toughest obstacle, however, was the graham cracker. People have no idea what it is, and try explaining a slightly sweet but not really cinnamony biscuit to someone. We stood in the biscuit aisle holding up boxes of crackers to the stock guy for forever before we found a replacement (crackers similar to animal crackers in flavor) and he finally looked at us and went, "you're not from around here, are you?" In the end, the aussies were suitably impressed, but also a little shocked, I think, at the extravagant sweet cravings of the American taste palette.

My trip ended with a ride in a ute (pickup truck) with a sculptor who makes dogs, they are really cool looking actually, and she wanted to stop in a town called Gundagai to see the Dog on a Tucker Box. It's apparently part of a well known Australian legend, sort of like Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan I think, you can look it up here if you like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_on_the_Tuckerbox

Well this took longer than I thought it would, mostly because I was watching Sixteen Candles and attempting to clean out our broken fridge while writing it. I will post soon about how I spent my most recent weekend; Riley and I got to got to Sydney--it is a really beautiful city.

Off to the Bush, and Pictures

2008-03-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

Before I get started I want to brief you on what I have learned about Australian conversational slang. Take any American who does not actually know spanish, but is trying to speak it, and you have ausssie abbrievs. They stick 'o' on to the end of almost every word that they shorten, avo means both avocado and afternoon, and doco means document; the exceptions to this I have found are brekki (for breakfast) and aircon, for airconditioning, but more on this topic later. Also my new favorite expressions are 'G'day' people actually say this and it makes me really happy, 'I reckon,' 'that's not cricket' (that's not gentlemanly) and 'thank you muchly' (that one's scottish, actually) so if I say any of them , you know who to blame.

Not much to report this week. We had a long weekend because of Australia's Labor Day, which Canberra has renamed Canberra Day. On sunday I had a barbeque in the park with my two scottish artist friends, and my one vegan friend from rowing. We cooked up a huge amount of meat and bananas with chocolate inside, yum. This was only some of the meat actually, but all of it made for good leftovers.

On monday we went to the actual Canberra day Carnival, which was moderately crowded, and none of my friends from Canberra knew about. We saw Rikki Lee, a singer who did not win Australian Idol, for reasons that became fairly obvious. (Actual quote from MC: I love it when she starts losing her voice, it sounds so sexy!) We also watched some mowtown from Australia's aging boyband Human Nature, they were very entertaining, you should definitely look them up. And at the end there was a firework show which was pretty good, and really, how can fireworks be bad?

Nothing much more has happened this week other than I got a new student ID because apparently i was given a defective one at first, and now I can get into and out of my studio whenever I want!

Speaking of my studio, i finally took a few pics of my two living spaces, although not my bedroom cause it was empty.

Entrance to the Canberra YHA: Those tables belong to the bar below the hostel, convenient but loud on karaoke night

My Living Room: If it looks sparse, that's because right now we have one poster + milkcrate tables. The chick that moved out owned EVERYTHING, even stuff like, toaster, tv, washing machine, fridge, kitchen chairs...all hers, and my roommates are less than quick at replcaing more than essentials. Michael actually glowed today when Mani brought in a new kettel (yes, tea is a big a deal as they say it is)

The School of Art: Isn't it Pretty? the top row of windows on the left are the painting studios

My Mobile Unit: Isn't it, ummm, a tribute to the modular living movement? The foremost wire covered window is mine, and the tan box by the door is the card reader, also known as the bane of my existence for a week and a half. We do have 'aircon' though, and as you can see from the box, it is right by my space, pretty choice.

My Studio: See, I get my own space heater and table, and you can't see it in this picture, but i have my very own Anarchy graffiti on the ceiling!

I hope to have some more pictures soon, both from my trip and from rowing practice. (I brought my camera to rowing today but I was saddled with the 'intense
team and coach, and i didn't think they would appreciate it)

Anyway, I am off to the bush to be inspired in the wilderness and camp with a crazy/awesome Scottswoman for a tentmate. If I survive, I'll let you know how it goes...

So, I have ethernet connection but no wireless

2008-03-07T00:40:00.000-08:00

So the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I haven’t had acces to the internet in any consistent fashion for about a week now. In fact, as I type this, I am on hold with the DLINK tech support; I love how they keep telling you to visit the website for tech support when they know that half of the people waiting on hold probably don’t have internet and are getting angrier and angrier every time that the hold music, “you’ll always be my baby” cuts out, and they think someone will answer the call, and then they advise you to go to the website. Why, the one time I go to another country and actually have a legitimate reason to be spending time on the internet does it quit on me? For those of you who were wondering, tech support here is the same as in the states. Except if course, for the fact that periodically it beeps and tells me, thanks for my patience, my call has progressed in the queue. This is brilliant actually, because it happens sporadically enough that you feel as if it actually happens every time someone ahead of you hangs up.

Ok, I’ve just been ‘helped’ by the dlink customer service. Now, if anyone out there works for a tech support hotline, we’re not ALL idiots, I promise. Sometimes people call because things actually do not work. I realize that it has to be the least gratifying job ever and you might have talked to 15 rude people before me, but please bear in mind, I’ve been waiting, listening to bad pop music, for at least half an hour and I will only be rude as well if you treat me like I am stupid!

Enough with the ranting, and on to other things. This week was pretty busy for me as my key card to my studio still does not work, I didn’t even have time to go get a new one today (Friday) although I did end up talking with the art school finance guy, Robbie, a lot and we’re getting pretty tight. No seriously, I have his cell phone number.

Most of the work/stress of my week culminated yesterday (Thursday for you other side of the world-ers) and it began in the morning. Mani had told me rent was due today and it was biweekly, meaning I had to pay $330 by that evening. I was fully prepared to do so, planning on stopping by an atm after checking at the copyquik shop to see if Jerry had faxed my lease yet (he hadn’t, and the shop knows me, even when I call about a fax they don’t even ask my name anymore). As I grabbed my breakfast and lunch for the day, ready to head out the door, I saw a note from my roommate Michael that went along the lines of ‘Our landlord would like the bond (security deposit) finished today, can you have your part sorted?’ Ok, I had been asking about the bond for a week because I needed at least two days to withdraw enough cash from the atm to cover it due to my withdrawal limit and I didn’t want to do it and have $700 cash laying around. To have to come up with what ended up being about $1000 in one day by the time I added in rent. The long and short of it was that Michael, nice guy that he is, covered half of my bond and I owe him a $400 and a huge dinner as he also picked up my queen size bed for me this week.

I also gave my presentation of my idea for the entire semester of painting yesterday, which I think went well but was really daunting. Everyone before me had at least 2 paintings from last year up on the wall to show people ‘where they were coming from’ and after their talks were grilled (really harshly at times) by the teachers. I got up there and used none of my allotted wallspace because I had nothing to hang, and showed a bunch of stuff on my computer. I got pretty nervous so I probably talked a mile a minute through my ideas. At the end of my talk both of the teachers looked at me to see if I was done, said ‘ok, sounds good’ and moved on to the next presentation. Ok, not that I wanted them to be harsh or anything but any sort of question would have been nice! Oh well, I shall go back down to my exiled studio space and do as I like I suppose.

After my presentation I went to a watercolor demo by a guy named Noel. (Pronounced Nol; I need to find his last name to post some work b/c he seems like he is amazing at it. All we did was talk to him about preparing paper for watercolor and what kind of supplies we wanted. He was HA-larious, imagine Bob Ross, but well coiffed, effeminate, and with gold-rimmed glasses with really think lenses. A couple of snippets I wrote down from his talk: about stretched paper ‘isn’t that just seduction on a panel?’ and on his most expensive watercolor brush ($90) ‘bliss on the end of a stick.’

Then I went out to dinner with Deki, Matty, Deki’s girlfriend Hannah, Aaron, and another girl from USC. We went out to Chinese, which was great because it is one of the few restaurants in Canberra where you actually get enough food for your money. It was delicious, being the first time I have eaten in a proper restaurant here, but I still prefer my old LA standby Yang Chow. Although Deki told me he hadn’t been that impressed by that place (blasphemy!) we agreed to disagree.

Today I had coffee with my SIGN mentor. I actually don’t remember what sign stands for, but basically it’s to help us overseas and new kids settle in and have someone to help us out. By the time I got my mentor, however, I had dealt with all of my serious problems, so at this point it is just awkward meetings btw me, Helena, my student mentor in her 50’s very sweet, and the two other mentees Marie and Samuel, who are very, very, quiet.

When I got back I stretched canvas on a frame I made myself! Yay! It was so cool to make my own painting surface, especially since all of the tools were specially set up for just that purpose and our handymandude, Simon, helped me out a lot. There are air pressure nail and staple guns are AWESOME and make everything sooo easy. Now I only have to do two coats of rabbit skin glue (I have no idea if its actually what it sounds like) and several coats of gesso before I can paint!

I came home, tried to fix my internet, and ended up running to the corner store so I could make veggie burgers from this recipe on 101cookbooks.com. They were amazing by the way, and I highly recommend them for even my fellow carnivores. I went out in the rain because I just got my rainjacket in the mail from my parents and lots of other awesome stuff that will be put to great use this weekend!

I have a long weekend as this Monday is Canberra Day and thus a public holiday. Looks like I am going to have the house to myself and I will be cat-sitting Bella, our very cute housecat. My main plans involve a barbeque with the two art school Scottish girls, Elaine and Gaynor, and baking cupcakes on Monday because I can and because it’s Mani’s 25th birthday on Tuesday. Then I leave Wednesday for my field trip into the bush, I will be sure to post pictures of any Kangaroos when I get back!

A little overwhelmed....

2008-03-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

"Chastity: I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
Bianca: I think you can in Europe." Or Australia...

Wow there is so much to tell since the last time I posted; buckle your seatbelts folks this is going to be a long post.

First of all, it seems like there has been a decision made on our poll, people prefer crunchy waffles to pancakes, which is as it should be. Those of you who haven’t been to the Midwest or South, some day you will have to experience the culinary beauty of Waffle House, preferably around 1:30 am.

On to my week, which didn’t really start until Tuesday. Tuesday morning, I went to crew practice and after much debate was assigned to a four-girl sculling boat where the coxswain sits in the bow. I have never liked bow-coxed boats because the rowers sit behind me, and I can’t help them out because if I turn to look at them, I throw off the whole balance of the boat. Also of interest, all terminology in Australia is different. Port and Starboard are Stroke side and Bow side; weigh enough or stop is ‘Easy,’ and on top of all of these differences, I had no microphone so most of the time the girls couldn’t hear me anyway. Needless to say, it was an eventful morning, but I gut to row out onto lake Pauly Griffin and see hot air balloons and a sunrise so it wasn’t too bad of a morning.

After crew, I went to my art theory class, which was uneventful except for me constantly trying to not fall asleep. I was a good class, taught by the head of the art department, but after waking up at 5 in the morning, the last thing I needed was a slideshow.

Wednesday was the first day of painting workshop. All of the students were introduced to faculty and they told us that we had to write and present project proposals (I go next week) and then we were assigned studio spaces. Now, all of you know that my housing was mixed up and has been a source of significant stress for me over the past two weeks. I got through it in the end because I found a place to live, and because I LOVED the art school. They have huge studio spaces with lots of windows that I was very excited to work in, so naturally when I got assigned to a place called the “White House” for my studio I was confused.

This place had not been in our initial tour of the building at orientation, luckily the woman who assigned the spaced, Raquel, took me to it. I’m afraid I was pretty terrible at hiding my shock as I followed her out to the parking lot behind the art building—I had been placed in a detachable mobile unit that required key card entry. It had not been cleaned and had been used as storage over the summer for many students’ artwork. In short, it was terrifying. The place now houses myself, five other girls, and one student in his fifties named Kevin. I picked a little corner with two small windows and we proceeded to sweep, vacuum, and wipe down our new area. The key card swipe had not been activated for any of us, so we all shared one key card to get in AND out (an inconvenience at the least, a huge fire hazard at the most) and Raquel kept looking at me and asking if the space was going to be ok for me and offering to move me (I must have looked pretty bad) but I had decided to not be the spoiled kid who demanded to be moved under any circumstances.

Having been detached from the initial shock, I am now quite pleased with my studio, I have a big table, easel, chair, space heater and two windows. The girls have also decided to play house and have created a kitchen/lounge area with a mini fridge, extra chairs, and a tablecloths (bright pink and teal). Basically, all we have done for three days now is mess around trying to figure out what we want to do; the art school here is ‘self-directed’ in the third year, which as far as I can tell means that they give you a studio space and say ‘go’ we have no supervision which is amplified I am sure by the face that our studio space is in the middle of nowhere. Most of our activities have included morning tea, acrobatics, music, looking at pictures of my work, and gossiping.

Let me tell you, this art school is FULL of drama; mostly centered on one guy who is causing problems. The girls have deemed me the first normal/cool American they have met (apparently the last kid from orange county said that he thought Australian girls were not attractive and bitched about how great California was) and as such I am privy to all. Most of the drama is pretty standard except that this guy seems to make huge assumptions about people and then tell anyone he feels like; for example, he told one of the girls in the studio that I was a lesbian having never even spoken with me! I find this sort of amusing, and obvs I could care less what he thinks of me, but I am not surprised at all at his causing drama.

All of this discussion was highlighted by intense intellectual art discussions, them exclaiming over their love for peanut butter M & M’s which apparently they can’t get in large bags here (yay for Food4Less), and mild acrobatics. Needless to say, I am learning to love my studio space and the people in it.

As far as project proposals, here is what I think I am going to do:

Painting: A portrait series of people I meet in Australia including immigrants and Aboriginals, exploring cultural differences.

Drawing: This is sposed to be somehow connected to my painting project but not really; I want to make a series of postcards referencing Australia and also any other cultures I happen to research that have connections here. At the end, after they have been graded, I am going to mail them so email me your preferred mailing address for sometime in june!

Field Studies: This involves traveling around Australia and addressing some sort of environmental issue in your work. I think I want to do big watercolor landscape paintings at all of the locations I am able to travel and then find out what aspects of civilization might be threatening each one. Then, back in the studio I want to superimpose, in bright acrylic paint, whatever is threatening that area on top of the watercolor landscape.

On Friday I had lunch with my overseas mentor, a mature age developmental studies student named Helena, and her other two mentees Samuel and Marie, from china and Japan respectively. It was a barbeque with actual food besides sausage and was pretty good. They even have chicken, lamb, and Mint jelly. (a british/Aussie condiment that is an interesting flavor addition but waaaay too sweet) I got incredibly lost on my way back to the art building, which is far away from everything, and ended up wandering for about half an hour through the graduate school buildings until I walked past the brew boathouse and figured out where I was. Those of you who believe I have no sense of direction, I figured out what my problem is. It isn’t that I have NO sense of direction, I have a very strong sense of direction in fact, but it is wrong 75% of the time, but I follow it anyway because I feel like it is right in my gut, and it is not. On the upside I found lots of cool leaves and things for my postcards.

In other news, I had an amazing dinner on Thursday night at my new apartment. Micheal, the guy roommate, had been spear-fishing over the weekend and was going to cook his catch. That’s right, spear-fishing, and the craziest part was that each fish was speared with umm, intensely intimidating precision right in the neck. And he is also a very good cook, fast chopping and all. I realized the reason he was excited about me cooking was not so that I could cook for him, but because he is tired of being the only one who cooks. (Mani never cooks) Also, Mani is Buddhist (sort of, she was raised in a Buddhist household) and a semi vegetarian. Actual quote: “I’m vegetarian, but I find myself eating meat” she apparently ate two anchovies the other day because she was wandering around the kitchen wanting to ‘taste things.’ As we were eating Michael’s crème caramel, which had overcooked sadly, the girl who is moving out found out I’m staying in a hostel and offered to let me move in, at least sleep on the couch, earlier. Both of my other roommates looked as if this had never occurred to them, so I was glad that one person had thought of it!

I have now moved in to my new place, Mani picked up my stuff last night and gave me a key. I went back to get my bike, my food, and use up my internet that I had bought thinking I would be there longer. Sadly, the food was gone, and by the time I finished using the internet it was about 11. When I got back to the house it was totally dark inside, I felt really bad about being back late, but I had though on Friday night at least one of my roomies would be up past 11:30. Oh well, I unlocked and relocked the door with only a little difficulty and put new sheets on Bron’s bed, which she said I could use. When I woke up at 9:30, indie music was playing on the radio, the porch door was open, and the whole house was amazingly bright. I love this place already. Oh and they have a cat! I now have a surrogate, incredibly chill pet named Bella.

All in all, I have had an interesting week, but I am excited to start on my projects, I might go watercolor somewhere tomorrow, cheers!

On Food, and Men

2008-02-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

My hostel has been overrun by a large group of 35+ Aussie men. This particularly affects me because they are lodging in rooms all over my floor and more specifically I am convinced that the loudest of them live right next door to me, on the other side of the thinnest wall ever built by man. Seriously, Pyramus and Thisbe would have been thrilled to have this wall, I am not. Various comments throughout the day have been loud, but forgettable, mostly describing smells and intentions of getting laid. My personal fave was a guy that apparently did get laid (thank goodness I was asleep) and was singing the praises of our rickety bunk beds because his own top bunk did not break. the main irritation of these men is that they choose to be loud during inconvenient times, apparently they were all supposed to get up around 8 am, but at the tender ages of 30 and 40 had not yet developed the responsibility skill necessary to set an alarm. The ONE man in the group with this skill can bang on doors really loudly, and shout, to wake everyone in a 10 room radius up, but not his incredibly hung over mates. I don't know why you chose to interrupt my not so peaceful or settled existence here at the Canberra YHA, Aussie men, but please leave, as soon as possible.

But the main event of yesterday was that a lot of long term stay people checked out of the YHA, leaving me with fridge AND pantry space. Unfortunately the kitchen itself sucks and about four out of twelve burners in the kitchen actually work, so it's usually very crowded. But I at least have room to keep food like yogurt here refrigerated, and I made some lentil soup yesterday during a lull that I plan to reheat throughout the week (although it will taste much better once I go and buy some salt from the store, they do not stock it for their guests)

In other news, my soon to be roommate Mani came by to hang out with some friends last night, and that was fun because her friends are such a mish mash. half of the table was dressed in black and chain smoking, and then there were three buff guys that were dressed in bright red, yellow, and blue t shirts.

As far as crew goes, I am on the 'fun' team of people that just show up to row, and am not in the more competitive part of the club, so what boat I end up driving and with whom will probably depend on any given practice.

Also notable, my good friend is thinking of taking a road-trip over spring break and cannot decide whether to go through the southwest towards Oklahoma and see the pretty on the way or drive up the northwestern coast, any thoughts? Feel free to post opinions here; I would change my poll, but you guys have two or three more days on the great pancake debate!

Speaking of pancakes, Courtney brought these to my attention, someone with a better kitchen than me, make them immediately and get back! http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/poppy-seed-pancakes-recipe.html

Laid Back Down Under

2008-02-22T20:33:00.001-08:00

Last night I spent a leisurely time in the internet cafe, posting here, chatting with various persons on skype, emailing clubs, etc. All of this was because it was raining a lot outside, and I had a barbeque to go to at 6, or so I thought. At 5:30 I went upstairs to get my map and head out, and I discovered that the barbeque was actually at 5! I finally biked there, and it started raining again about 5 minutes after I left, and I got slightly lost so by the time I got to the barbeque to meet these crew people, I was completely soaked. Luckily for me they had started late, and there was plenty of sausage left to go around. I've eaten sausage more times in the past week than I had in the previous six months, but Aussies really love to serve them at barbeques.

Anyway, after showering and changing, I ended up meeting some of the crew team at a bar to play pool, hang out, etc. When I arrived, they were already pretty drunk, and one guy was icing his lips. That's right, icing his lips. Apparently they had decided to do flaming shots, and instead of blowing the flame out like any sane person, he just poured it down his throat like a normal shot. Needless to say the night from there was entertaining, and long, and waking up at 8 for my 9 am art orientation was quite difficult.

I rolled out of bed and figured I'd go to orientation, which couldn't take more than an hour or two, then grab breakfast. I met Pending, one of Courtney's friends and a fellow painter/art student who does these cool deadly cartoon teddy bear paintings in front and we went inside to be orientated. (as a side-note, i had never met Pending before, and someone who looked vaguely like him wandered around the front of the art building looking lost for about 15 minutes, I am convinced he was just trying to mess with me)

When I grabbed an orientation schedule, I realized that art orientation was going to take ALL day. We met the professors, had a coffee break, listened to presentations from art organizations, had a barbeque (with organic sausages this time), and then toured the art building and painting studios. There was a huge hail storm and flood last year, and as a result lots of depts have state of the art equipment now. the photo lab has individual cubicles for each person and a conveyor belt that develops color photos!

After the tour one of the professors, Peter, brought us to the university house and got us some beers, then the dept head came over and brought some more! The teaching staff is very laid back and Ruth, the dept head, already said I could go on field studies trips (meaning I will miss 9 days worth of class).

After my epically long orientation I came back to the hostel and hung out with some of my friends there, and Pending came over from campus. After some interesting conversation with the bar regulars we went to meet my roommate at a club with a random guy (he bartends and wants to own his own bar, and for me to not have a boyfriend, thank God Pending was there!) we met at the hostel. There I witnessed:
--My first barfight (nothing serious, just some guy causing a fuss and getting owned by the bouncer)
--Tons of people dancing to Tina Turner, awesome
--The most disturbing music video I have ever seen. Unfortunately I do not remember the name of the song, but it involved a guy dancing in his underwear, and then when I looked back, he had no skin and was ripping off pieces of himself and throwing them at women, who thought this was the coolest thing ever
--food available after 5 pm, in the form of bad pizza that stands sell to drunk people (the aussie version of ghetto dogs)

Anyway, after such a ridiculous night I am ready for a relaxing weekend! I might even explore steaking out a space in the communal fridge I found at the hostel, although it is full to the brim at the moment...

SCHOOL OF ART

2008-02-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

Today I don’t have much news to report, but this is a lazy Thursday afternoon and so I find myself with some spare time. Namely I am waiting for clothes to be dry and don’t want to leave the premises for fear that some other very small girl will want to take my clothes.

I went to the art building today to work out my classes, but before I go into that I’d just like to say how excited I am about the art building itself. It’s a huge white building with a clock tower that has huge silver letters that say "SCHOOL OF ART," a piece of abstract sculpture in front of it, and a very retro feel. It reminds me simultaneously of an old transistor radio and a train station because It is very wide at the front entrance and there are virtually no other buildings round it. It also gives me this feeling because there are stripes and geometric decorations that remind me of futuristic designs people made in the past, if that makes any sense. I’m thinking I’m just going to have to take a picture.

Each area of study has its OWN WING in the building! Coming from a building that is mostly owned by an architecture school that sometimes lends us studio space and where each area of study gets one or two rooms, this is fantastic. I walked down an entire hallway of studio space with huge windows and easels, and I am very excited for class to start, except that painting doesn’t start until Wednesday. (For those of you who were worried about all of my extracurriculars, I have one four hour class per day, and that’s it, and the one on Monday doesn’t start until 2. If I can work the system correctly though, I might be able to have two classes Tuesday and none on Monday, yay for weekend trips!)

Anyway, the reason I went to the building in the first place is that I’m trying to work out what other class I should take. I’m taking 8 units worth of painting, 4 in art theory (it’s called Cool Old Masters, can’t wait!), and I have 4 units left over for ‘complimentary studies.’ My choices have been narrowed by necessity (I thought of ceramics, but having to ship clay home would be terrible) to life drawing or ‘field studies.’

No one except for the professor of field studies seems to know what field studies actually are, and he is pretty bad at explaining himself, which probably perpetuates the problem (unintentional alliteration I assure you). As near as I can tell, ‘Field studies’ is a class where you take field trips to remote areas, sometimes visiting aboriginal land to be ‘inspired’ by your surroundings, and then you make art in whatever medium you desire based on that inspiration. This sounds good to me except that I would have to take it instead of painting, or with painting, because the complimentary form of this course seems to be more of an independent study type of thing.

Anyway, I’m off to see if I am allowed to do an independent study in field studies, if my professor is even around, (I think I saw his office the other day, and he seems to be the piles of everything especially books absolutely everywhere type of guy) since I will be taking a few caving trips and weekend trips of my own that I can draw material from. (Caving is exactly what it sounds like, by the way, climbing through caves. It is usually very wet, muddy, cold, beautiful and fun) And yes, I would be a coxswain for the crew club here; they seem pretty excited about it as I think they are very short of coxswains right now. Right now I’m leaning towards joining, because it’s a fun way to meet people, etc, but they do have all morning practices, which should be interesting.

PS. I wrote the above earlier and just got back from visiting with my professor. I am going to enroll in field studies, which involves 3 5-day field trips to a town called Tumut and surrounding areas, plus camping. This class has no scheduled class time, I just check in with him periodically and paint and take any other trips on my own time.

Yay for group activities!

2008-02-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

Last night I walked about 40 minutes to Dickson, which was, according to my freshman friends, close by. I was able to pick up and join the ultimate frisbee summer league of Canberra, which is a really fun laid back league to teach newbies to play. Despite some confusion as to pick rules (they don't go by UPA here) and the fact that I had to wear sneakers and slipped all over the place, I had a great time, and at the end we cheered the other team with actual hip hip hoorays. I now have a standing invitation to play on Tuesdays for their team, the Sultans of Fling. Plus the captain gave me a ride back to save me from walking, so all in all, a good night.

I know that those of you who live vicariously through me will be disappointed when I say that I did not go to the rubix cube party. I thought about it but in the end i realized that with the exception of one red skirt my entire wardrobe is black, white, brown, and navy and I did not want to trade any of it at a party.

I went to the celebrated Market day at ANU today, and I am now a proud member of the ANU Caving club, and a soon to be member of the ultimate disc club, should they ever surface. I'm also thinking of joining the crew club here, as there are only morning practices (no two-a-days) and I would only have to do it a few times per week. Regardless, starting tomorrow with the crew welcome barbecue I am officially slightly more busy than I was.

I've also acquired a bike, helmet, and lights so that I may traverse Canberra quickly and legally.

I do plan to go out tonight with some people I met at the hostel, and seeing as every college student in town will be out it should be quite the experience!

Ending on a good note

2008-02-18T03:21:00.000-08:00

So, today was pretty depressing.

First, I didn't really want to get out of bed, even though all of my roommates got up early and seemed chipper. I finally went and got some breakfast/lunch from the grocery store and read a bit while I ate it and then prepared to go to enrolment (no I'm not wrong, even though firefox spellcheck thinks I am, that's how it's spelled) on campus.

After having my visa checked I waited in line for an hour to have advisement on my classes. the line moved really slowly and where the line ended were rows of chairs. every time one person was served, everyone in each row moved over one seat, and the person at the end took a step forward to join the next row. except someone, i don't know who, messed all of this up by sitting in the wrong order in one row so that every time they moved it was the wrong way and the person at the end had to struggle though a row of people to make it to his/her new spot.

Luckily, I had brought something to read in line, but in my book I'm reaching the climax of the plot and I almost can't read it for how painful I know it's going to be. But it is rather good so I keep going. I didn't finish all of my stations until about 6 in the evening, having begun them around 2:30, but in the end I got my ANU student card. (actually i'm incredibly relieved because ever since my housing mix up a little part of me has been really worried that they wouldn't let me into the school either)

Anyway, on my walk home, there was nothing open to eat again except for sit down places. during the week, apparently, everything closes at 5:30 (including the 2nd largest shopping center in the southern hemisphere) and cafes only stay open till just after lunch. In searching for a place to eat, however I found a used bookstore, yay! I looked on the shelves for a while but the selection was not vast and a lot of the books were by australian authors or i had read them. I finally asked the two proprietors if they could recommend something either light or funny as I have just read D.H Lawrence and Ayn Rand and I needed a break; for the next 15 minutes two aussie intellectuals fussed over what I should read and promised that if i didn't like it, i could return it the following day. I have solved my book problem for now as I think they will buy my old books and give me plenty of recommendations for new ones.

I still hadn't solved my food problem, and since there are no subways or baja fresh open after 5:30, i got some instant noodles from the grocery store and carried them to a table to read and eat. As i was sitting though, one of my roommates, a british girl who's been living in the hostel and working for about 3 months, invited me down to the bar for drinks. Since I had forgone dressing in an 80's costume and going to an orientation party by myself, this seemed lovely. I spent the rest of the night watching an informal pool comp (the pool rules are very different here) and chatting with this girl Hannah, my friend Scott, and their circle. there's lots of intrigue and not so secret crushes in that bunch so between them, the pool, and a corona, i had a pleasant evening. (apparently aussie beer isn't very good so I went with something that reminded me of socal) There was one small guy in pants with pockets everywhere that was hilarious to watch because he was SO intense about the game, he had brought his own cue AND extender and was wearing a backwards newsboy cap and a ring on every finger. If it had been LA I definitely would have pegged him as a frustrated musician/actor. He kept using his chin to direct his shot, got his whole body in position, and chalked the cue incessantly but he wasn't doing very well, sadly, so he was back to publicly making out with his girlfriend before long, which wasn't nearly so entertaining.

Anyway, it seems as if I am destined to make only friends that do not, in fact, go to my school and do party past midnight every night of the week, (and apparently my roommate has a propensity for taking men back to the room she shares with 3 others at all hours, but I will endeavor to like her until this happens) but I am content as I have finally had some silly social activity.

Miscellanea:
I just ate an orange without a paper towel, and it is indeed pretty difficult

I hadn't eaten instant noodles in three years before today and am confident I will not again for five

When one and two dollars come in coin and you are never confident enough in your familiarity with the currency to give exact chan, your wallet gets REALLY heavy

American apparel ads can be very disturbing, beware

When it's 9 am my time, it will be 2 pm in LA, 10 pm in Edinburgh and 11 pm in Budapest, anyone wanna conference call on skype sometime soon?

We're gonna need a bigger blog

2008-02-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I finished painting, skyped a bit, and headed out to dinner with no hope of anything but my usual yogurt (raspberries and crème if you were wondering), granola bar, Nudie (this is like naked juice but way better) and bread with Nutella. I was ecstatic, as you can imagine, when I saw a world culture appreciation stage on the main city walk just a block from my home. On the stage were two Hispanic women in tight white pants and silver tube tops singing Gloria Estefan, and surrounding them were booths selling foods from all over the world.

I discounted anything that required a plate and fork as to messy (ie thai, chinese, etc) and was exited to see and Australian food tent. To my dismay, the Australian tent had been combined with the Mexican tent, and so instead of having both kinds of food, they were simply coupling Mexican food (nachos) with Australian beers (which are nothing to write home about, although I suppose I just did). *face turned up to the heavens, and shaking one fist* Will I never taste Australian food? The answer of course is that I have, but it is exactly the same as American food, sigh, oh well.

I finally settled on an empanada, but alas either I have been spoiled by Empanada’s Place in Culver city or Australian Chileans do not know how to make them, because it was not very good. What else was I to do then but go back 45 minutes later and try something else? I finally got a bratwurst on a Kaiser roll with saurkraut of course and a small beer (I do not know how people drink it in pints, I stomach feels full at just the thought) and it was DELICIOUS. I’m beginning to think that my favorite foods I have here are going to be non-Australian, but whatever. I sat with my sausage and beer, a little Gloria estefan in the background reading a book of short stories for adults by Roald Dahl called Tales of the Unexpected; almost all of them involve weird people, death, and dismemberment. In other words, they are as morbidly fascinating as his children’s books, but deal with adult topics like adultery, gambling, and murder.

When I finished this it was only 8 so I thought I’d have to go back to the hostel and find my friend Scott to play pool or dig up another book (I am down to 2, and the next used book sale is Thursday!) I entered my room to find a new roommate, and since we clearly both had nothing better to do I invited her to get coffee. We went to Starbucks and chatted about majors, hometowns, family, etc. She actually added sugar to the hot chocolate, which was incredible. She’s from Malaysia and she told me that in order to get a decent job there you have to have at least a masters degree, and that even to work in a factory or something you have to have a bachelors, and we think the job market in the US is competitive. After about an hour it was clear that we had exhausted conversation and so we went up to bed; in fact, I think we used up our conversational quota for the next few days because we haven’t spoken at all today, she’s eating instant noodles and watching some Indian action movie right now, all I can hear are the sound effects and grunts of people who have clearly just been punched.

Well, today I finally went for a run.

There were two main factors that instigated this activity, one that I am really bored. Deki has left town and all of my roommates are the quiet loner type (not that I can really criticize these traits, since I have them, but the problem is that since ALL four of us are the quiet loner type we sit and read and watch movies and don't socialize) Two,

Sorry, I completely lost my train of thought because one of the cleaning women just came up and started complaining to me about how the hostel has booked some rooms completely full and left some empty. A lot of it was mumbled and she spoke softly anyway like there was some sort of chance of her being overheard so i don't really know what the matter was, but she talked for at least 3 minutes without any interruption from me. Eventually she paused and waited for me to say something; I haven't really been able to follow her argument at this point, so I made an attempt at a sympathetic noise and she shuffled off.

Ok, I know I just started a paragraph earlier about how I'm lonely don't know anyone, etc etc, but I will completely contradict myself and complain here about being hassled. It seems like when I do make attempts to be social they don't work out, but when I am content and entertaining myself people feel the need to interrogate me. Just now, for instance, I was talking to people on line, a delicate process because of the time differences involved in communicating with Tennessee, California, and Scotland. I had headphones in, and I had started a blog post, what about this position says 'yes, I know the way to the pool' or 'please tell me how the hostel that has made me move rooms for no reason has problems with its booking process' ?

The same thing happened to me on Saturday when I went down to the lake to do some watercolor sketches. I'm pretty weak with watercolors and composition, so I thought I'd get some practice, but literally every five minutes a tourist would come up to ask me about myself or what I was painting, or they would just sneak up and watch over my shoulder (which makes you self-conscious i can tell you), or took a picture of me (without asking my permission). One woman actually sat down next to me on the ground and started asking about the composition, and then a bus-load of japanese tourists showed up.

So needless to say today when I had finished my run and shower today i grabbed a sandwich, dubbed a BLAST by the local bagel shop with the intention of doing some research for my fellow bacon lover Sonya: BLAST stands for Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado (or avo at the aussies call it, I swear they would fit right in in socal with all of their abbrievs) Swiss cheese, and Tomato.

I took this toasty piece of deliciousness to a nearby park (there are SO many parks here it’s amazing) along with a new book to pass the by Ann Raynd (Sp?) called We the Living. It’s this incredibly depressing book about how terrible communism was for the bourgeois and tragedy hangs over the plucky and brave 18 year old heroine so that it’s almost painful to read on because I know something awful is going to happen and there’s no guarantee it will be resolved. It has moments of brilliance though, so I keep reading like the crazy masochist I am, but at the same time vowing that I will never, under any circumstances, read Atlas Shrugged.
Anyway, I get all settled in the shade (yesterday I got sunburned), reading, and finally when I am at perfect peace with my depressing book, what happens? My phone rings, and what do I do? Naturally I LEAP for it, and it is my parents calling me from Skype, what a nice surprise!

After I chatted with the folks and read that book until i was incredibly depressed I did what any red-blooded bored American would do. I went shopping. Actually, I needed a padlock for my locker at the hostel and just HAPPENED to see these shorts on sale.

ANYWAY, the point of me relating my shopping is this, friends romans, countrymen, i saw, for six dollars, a hot pink straw trilby hat; it is mildly amazing, but the though of having to transport it is daunting, especially since no non-hellions will understand. what do you think, comrades, yay or nay?

Notes on Food, and Miscellanea

2008-02-15T21:51:00.000-08:00

How're you going? as my aussie friends would say...

In my humble opinion, one of the most important and exciting things about being in a new country is trying the local cuisine.

Up until now, since I dislike sitting by myself in restaurants, and most of them are italian or thai, (i.e. there are no 'Australian' restaurants for me to explore), I've reverted to Lena and my patented Italy cheese and sausage picnic diet. This is actually going quite well for me as there is ready access to Nutella (in a squeeze bottle, no more messy hands), good cheese and bread, and plenty of parks for me to eat them in.

Also, since Canberra is apparently a huge cafe culture, I've been sitting outside at tables a lot and eating sandwiches. All i can say is, Australians REALLY like mayonnaise, and on a bagel with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado it is not too bad; in fact it was delicious and snaps for Sonya making me crave bacon.

Anyway, aside from my sausage roll on the train, I hadn't had any really australian food, until last night. Deki, or Deon as he goes by here, invited me over for dinner at his house. He picked me up at my hostel and his sister and three friends were in the back, leaving me with shotgun (on the left side of the car, really trippy). He has a video screen in the shotgun visor that plays music videos! Anyway, it turns out it was his sister's sweet sixteen and about a thousand macedonian people were there, including almost the entire dancing group I watched earlier this week.

Everyone was really nice and funny and there were mounds of food, pretty standard but delicious potato salad, chicken wings, sausage etc. (people Really like sausage and chicken here, there are tons of chicken burger places, and i have seen almost not beef burger places, but I digress) Then came dessert, with three different renditions of happy birthday, and three rounds of hip hip hooray; the pet bird, Deon's best friend who he adamantly defends against his friends, even screeched a bit. I asked for a small piece of chocolate cake and Deon's mom without asking put something very gooey on my plate from a Tupperware container. Apparently what i'd been given was not a trial for the meek, as many of Deon's friends told me they never ate them because they were so sweet and rich.

Imagine a churro, fried doughnut thing with crispy outside and soggy middle, that had been literally soaking in a container full of what seemed like simple syrup for an hour or two. It was epic, sweet, and I only finished about one bite. I have to look up what it's called and let you know later, but it was basically instant diabetes (that's for Wheelsy) in a tiny syrup covered golden brown little debbie snack cake form.

Today i am back to yogurt and sandwiches (they have the BEST yogurt here, it;s amazing) as i am still recovering from my first traditional aussie food experience, but i will keep you posted.

Miscellanea
For those of you who made it this far, I OFFICIALLY have housing, I move in with Michael and Manny in two weeks. I met Manny last night, very sweet and instantly let me know about all of the personal drama with the ex boyfriend, but nice anyways.

Cheers mates

The Next Great Apartment Debacle

2008-02-14T20:02:00.001-08:00

Well, I spent most of yesterday in orientation, which for those of you who were wondering, was just as bureaucratic and mostly useless as the orientations we have in the states. I really only learned a few things of note:
1. There are zealous Christian groups here as well, this particular brand was handing out symbolic water
2. I can't register until Monday and then I have a whole week of 'getting to know each other' activities before school actually starts (albeit 80's themed activities that involve a lot of free food and a rubix cube party...)
3. I potentially have exams from june 12 to june 28, which might ruin my entire trip this summer, but hopefully the art program here is as slacker as the usc one and doesn't have exams.
4. ANU has a frisbee team (yay!)

I also spent most of the evening looking for apartments and learned that this is basically the worst time to look because ALL students need apartments and parliament is in session so all of the interns and stuff need housing as well. Great.

Apartment 1: Living with Michael and Manisa (Manny)
I met Micheal, who was really funny and seemed extremely keen on the idea of me cooking; he asked extensive questions about what i liked to make, etc. the place had a little yard, a nice kitchen, and a living room with tons of windows, but the downside is that the room isn't free until march 3-6. As I gave Michael my phone number (I now have a mobile, but it's kind of a drag cause i keep wanting to call people from home) he showed me a typed list of people that his roommate i hadn't yet met had made up for him to fill out when he met people. He looked at it kind of exasperatedly and said 'I have to rate you out of ten' apparently Manisa is very organized and wanted him to record his impressions.

Apartment 2: Katie
Young professional woman looking to rent out a room; she was ok i guess but i got a weird vibe from her and she said repeatedly that she didn't want to share food.

Apartment 3: Actually a house I would share with Jane, a portly 40's woman who really reminds me of my old boss Nancy, and a German post-grad named Antje who sends very terse emails and reminds me a lot of what I think Sonya will be like in about 6 years. ok place but it will be demolished in May and I will be homeless again...

Shortly after my meeting with Jane, I saw that I had voicemail, It was Michael telling me that I was the G-O, which I'm assuming means I am his top choice. I'm meeting with Manisa tonight, and if all works out I'll be living there in two weeks.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, folks, I'll keep you posted.

Changing 20 years worth of instincts

2008-02-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

“Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.” ~ Charles M. Schulz

I have no idea what the date is at home, but I'm going for a record breaking two posts in one day here, mostly because I have nothing else to do and it's already tomorrow somewhere else, maybe, I dunno I get confused. I was all excited because I bought a phone, but then I realized that I need an address with which to activate it, so i have another useless phone in my bag in addition to my US one. I got a portable external hard drive, finally, so my poor computer can breathe easier. I really need to name it after I've put it through so much, any suggestions Erin or Courtney?

Anyway, things I've learned here:

1. the things that are the same are WAY more startling than the things that are different. I went into Target today, in the 2nd largest mall in the southern hemisphere, and walked past a Starbucks, Baskin and Robbins, and Borders books.

2. Books are way expensive here, and most of them are from the US anyway, like Stephen King for $30. I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm down to my last book. (Kudos to Lena for recommending Lady Chatterly's Lover, it was seriously awesome)

3. I have never heard of the US spoken of with more revere than i did when i spoke with my cleaning lady today. The messy roommates are gone, their mess and smell are not. I got rid of food and bottles, but i have to get my other roommate, some guy named Scott judging by his papers, (I thought i booked a single sex room, but far be it from me to call my large hairy goateed roommate anything other than a woman) to sort out his stuff from the stuff they left behind. Anyway, she said she had wanted to go to the states since she was 5 and see Disneyland and the Rockies; having lived right next to both of those I filled her in, but I think talking to her made me appreciate home a lot. And air freshener, the angel brought me air freshener, life is good.

4. the Americans that come down here and rent cars are CRAZY; I don't have sufficient instincts to be a reasonably safe pedestrian much less drive. I'm ok with crosswalks and stuff, but i almost ran into about 5 people today because everyone walks on the left side of stairs, doors, and major walkways but there are just enough people meandering on the right to confuse me.

5. Knowing someone here is AWESOME; I had lunch with Deki today, and he showed me around ANU. He's doing traditional Macedonian dancing around the center of town tonight so I have something to do and I'm super stoked.

Ok, must go socialize and find my way downtown, yay for orientation tomorrow!

Getting Down Under

2008-02-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

G'day everyone! I'm finally starting a blog because i realized that the sheer amount of people I have to keep in touch with completely outweighs my willpower to email. Feel free to post or email me with any of your news, but anything about my general status will be available here, at least for as long as I can make myself keep blogging...

So 14 hour flights aren't as bad as i thought, the redeye is definitely the way to go because you can sleep on the plane and wake up in the morning in another country. Even with about 7 hours of sleep, I got to watch The Bourne Ultimatum, which was disorientating, 3:10 to Yuma, which was excellent, even on a tiny screen, and most of The Darjeeling Limited, which was....confusing.

After landing I met some nice people in customs, changed some money, and got on a train. The ride was amazing because the scenery in Australia is beautiful, hilly, and much greener than i expected. The compartment was kind of cold and i caved and got some sort of sausage roll from a guy who was almost exactly like Wallace from Wallace and Grommit; when i asked what he recommended he said, "Well, all I really have is pie, and sausage rolls. Sausage rolls are nice..."
(read this in a sad wistful tone)

I am currently residing in a hostel because I have no housing currently, (long story) and so after a week and a half of being a bum with no place to live I am now in a hostel indefinitely with three REALLY messy people. Seriously, some of you know that I lead what I will graciously call a cluttered life, but there is food, clothing, and various media and toiletries everywhere. the only empty space in the place is my bed, the storage closets (why can't they use those?), and of course, the trash can. They also came in wasted at 3 in the morning to have a ciggie out of my window, bouncing up and down on my bottom bunk just in case they weren't loud enough to wake me up. Thankfully one of their sober friends found them and made them go to her room; thank you random amazing sober British girl staying at the Canberra YHA, I love you.

They're sposed to leave today so hopefully i will either have a cleaner room or find somewhere else to live. I currently am exploring options like: a two bedroom apt with an older Chinese woman and kitten, a four bedroom house with 3 male uni students, sharing a bedroom with a Chinese girl, becoming a hobo and sleeping in the library, we'll see.

Anyway, it's finally getting sunny so I'm off to explore my school and make sure i can find orientation tomorrow. More later, Cheers!