Rocking with the Kiwis

After such a great weekend in Sydney, I was still super pumped for my next weekend... in New Zealand!!! The week went by pretty quickly: had class on Monday, work training for my new job as a social science interviewer (I'll explain later) on Tuesday, Pub Crawl for Ekka holiday on Wednesday, then struggling through class on Thursday before hopping on a plane to Christchurch. I was bummed that I wasn't able to get a window seat but it was dark out anyway so there wasn't much to see anyway. Best part of the journey was getting through customs to see Phillippa, Tessa (two of my fellow blueshirts from Dson), and Tessa's sister Georgia waiting for me.

It was rather late but we went back to Tessa's house for a couple beers and played in a park, then watched some crazy NZ tv show called "Outrageous Fortune" before passing out. Tessa and I spent Friday checking out downtown Christchurch and the local museum with the infamous Paua Shell House. Paua shells come from abalone and when shined have a beautiful iridescent blue, green, purple color to them. Back in the 1960s, Myrtle Flutey got tired of her husband leaving his shiny paua shells lying around the floor of the house so she started hanging them up on the wall. Next thing they knew they had over 1200 and they opened their house in 1963 to tourists for free. They started collecting other "Kiwiana" as the kiwis like to call their local knick knacks and after they died a recreation of their house was made and the entire collection moved to the Canterbury Museum for our viewing pleasure :)

After the shiny shell house, Tessa and I got some delicious souvlaki before meeting up with Phillippa for a ride up into the "hills" surrounding Christchurch. By most Americans they would probably be termed mountains but by kiwi standards they apparently didn't quite make the cut. In any case, the views were absolutely beautiful. It was a foggy day but we could still easily see the ocean on one side, the Canterbury Plains, the neighboring bay of Lyttelton, and off in the distance a vague outline of the Southern Alps. Wasn't quite LOTR territory but it was amazing nonetheless! There are a few hiking trails running through the hills, most notably the Bridle path which the original British settlers used to cross the Port Hills.

Friday night took us downtown again for the local pub scene and to see some band that Phillippa's friend was lead singer for. Very chill (and chilly) place, the music wasn't quite my thing, but there was a delicious organic brew on tap which I'm kicking myself for not remembering the name of but so it goes!

Went into town again with Tessa intending on actually checking out the Botanical Gardens. Seeing as Christchurch is nicknamed the City of Gardens it would make sense to check them out right? Instead we got sidetracked and went down to New Brighton Pier to get some ice cream and check out the ocean. After that I went with Tessa's family to a couple malls (very similar to American malls). Tessa's dad made us some delectable homemade pizza. Kiwis scoff at American pizza and our happiness to have just cheese or one/two toppings and so instead we had some three really good types ranging from shrimp with brie, peppers, etc to a simpler bacon and veggie pizza. Super good!

Even though the legal drinking age is 18, kiwis (and aussies) still like to celebrate 21st birthdays. Phillippa had turned 21 a few weeks earlier but had only just managed to organize her bday party that night, lucky for me! It was a really cool experience, its traditional to invite both family and friends to a 21st bday party and to have a few people give speeches about the lucky birthday gal/guy which can range from sweet anecdotes to embarrassing stories. Somebody asked me if we did anything similar in the states and I couldn't come up with anything similar aside from maybe at weddings or perhaps at someone's graduation party. One way or another it was very cool to hear more stories about Phillippa as well as to get to take party in this kiwi tradition.

I've only barely settled back in here at college but I've actually got a basketball game in about 15 minutes so I'll have to continue my tales later. Never stopping!

Opera House, Dugongs, Harry's Cafe du Wheels, and other Sydney Wonders

Not typically a big city sorta guy but Sydney was freaking awesome! We left early Friday morning out of Brisbane and after a short hour long flight we were there. As a quick aside, security for domestic flights in Australia is a bloody joke/nice reprieve from the crap we deal with in the states. No liquid restrictions and they didn't even ask us for ID for our tickets! Crazy...

Since we were only there for the weekend we quick dropped off our stuff at our hotel and then took a bus to a nice park overlooking the harbour for some lunch. I haven't been to cali but it reminded me a lot of pics that I've seen of San Fran or Italy with winding streets and beautiful houses on the hills overlooking the bay. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous with huge trees like this guy below all over the place. To put it in perspective that tree would take about 5 or 6 of me possibly more to wrap my arms around it!

Next we took the bus back into downtown where I was amazed by the number and size of they parks that they have right in the city. This is thanks to the last governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, who had the commendable foresight to not only plan out many of the city streets but also to set aside large chunks of land to serve as parks and gardens in order to keep the natural beauty alive and well inside of the city. Made the country boy in me quite happy! In the Botanical Gardens we had a blast getting to feed the cockatoos which happily hopped up on our shoulders and/or heads and walked around with us for ten plus minutes even after we'd run out of food for them. Though one did try a bite of my sunglasses but figured out pretty quickly they were a bit less tasty than the banana bread that I'd been feeding it!

A short walk along the harbour then took us to the famous Sydney Opera House. Pictures did not do justice the phenomenal place that it is. Our tour took us through the impressive and ingenious design and construction of the opera house. They started with a design contest and the design they picked was actually rejected initially because it was extremely abstract and had absolutely no actual construction details but they went for it anyway. Construction was originally estimated to take only a few years a 7 million dollars but ended up taking an extra 10 years and a total of 102 million! Being the musical person that I am I was in constant awe of everything that I saw and was able to get into a brief discussion with our tour guide who was excited to talk with someone who had actually helped move a piano before. Here's me inside the main concert hall! (I admit I had to keep from drooling when I heard about the organ which has over 10,000 pipes going back over 8 meters into the wall)

My only regret is that we didn't have time to catch a performance there...

That night we went out to dinner at a cool little pub where you could grill your own steak (delicious) and then proceeded on a pub crawl through some of the more historic pubs e.g. Sydney's first hotel, first pub, etc. Enjoyed a really great local porter (I'm realising how big a fan of dark beers I am) at one of the place's called Nelson's Blood, as you can imagine it was a grand evening :)

The next morning we got up early to walk along the coast listening to our tour guide, Russ, explain a bit of the history of the harbour to us. Apparently when the British first came to Australia they completely missed Sydney Harbour and it was only during a return trip that somebody thought hey! I feel like there's something more in here! If you wanna check out the pics they'll be on FB soon and eventually I'll get around to getting my pics posted up somewhere more easily accessible for peeps who haven't caught up to the 21st century :P The water was the most amazing blue I've seen due to the water being pumped into the harbour and Pacific being filtered of any human caused pollution before being allowed back out. Once again I have to commend the Aussies on their efforts to try to keep green. They're also quite proud of their environmental work and almost everywhere you go you'll see some kind of sign explaining just what is going on.

We walked by a few different beaches until we made it to the infamous Bondi Beach where you can find the Iceberg Club which has its own pool situated right alongside the water! It was founded in 1929 and in order to become a full member you have to take part in a winter swim with the "IceCubes" where they actually fill the pool with ice. I suppose this the Aussie version of the Polarbear Plunge though we've definitely got it a bit easier since our beloved Lake Superior conveniently freezes over every winter for us!

We then spent the afternoon exploring a local Aussie market (read great authentic souvenir opportunity) where we also stopped at a famous chocolate shop, Max Brenner: Chocolate by the Bald Man. Pure decadence this place was. Taylor and I indulged in the "Exploding Chocolate Shot" which consisted of a shot of pure milk chocolate mixed with pop rocks and some white chocolate chunks. I can easily say I've never had such good chocolate before and fingers crossed they'll get around to opening up the store they're working on in Brisbane before we leave! Next we had a bit of downtime before getting dinner at a nice Malaysian restaurant. A few of us headed over to the aquarium only to find out it had closed ten minutes before we arrived but our spirits were quickly raised by a street performer by the name of "Toy". He wasn't particularly talented but was absolutely hysterical with terrible "Engrish" and a lovely cache of lewd jokes. A bottle of wine back at the hotel also helped to raise spirits for the evening and a bunch of us ended up wandering around the city having another grand evening in the Harbour City.

Sunday morning we quick checked out of our hotel (which I forgot to mention was easily the nicest hotel suite I have EVER stayed in, read thank you Dson) and scurried over to the aquarium. I can't remember the last time I was at an aquarium but I had a great time there. Sharks, dugongs, octupi, huge sea turtles, and endless Finding Nemo jokes made for a happy Phil. The shark feeding was less than exciting though, they just kinda swam up to the fish grabbed it and then continued swimming around. LAAAAAME

Russ had told us about this famous meat pie stand called Harry's Cafe du Wheels (conveniently located by Russell Crowe's less than humble abode) that with my growing taste for Australian foods I had to try out. This meat pie was a heck of a meal piled with mashed potatoes, mashed peas, and covered in gravy and was delicious beyond words! Time was ticking down though and we made a quick foray into the Paddy Markets which boasted loads of cheap merchandise sold my lovely Asian folk. 'nough said there. Thus ended our time in Sydney and before we knew it we were back at college eating the much less appetizing food wishing we were rich and could have just stayed there forever (kidding i promise) It was an absolutely unforgettable weekend, though it was all too short and with any luck someday I'll find my way back there.

For now its been back to class and then off to New Zealand on Thursday! Didn't you know I don't ever stop?

Off To Sydney

Hey y'all,

haven't posted recently because I've been a. lazy b. busy c. fighting off an ear infection d. recovering from an unfortunate kangaroo boxing accident. Okay so I haven't gotten into any fights with a kangaroo but the other three are actually valid. Don't have time to catch up on everything right now as I'll be catching a taxi to the airport in t-minus 8 hours then flying to Sydney for the weekend with the rest of the Dson folk. Not sure what we'll all be doing there but I promise I'll get back on my game here and get some posts up about this last week+ as well as the Sydney trip. Until then, miss everyone back in the states and hope you're doing well.

Cheers, Phil aka 'Cluck'

CroWeek Craziness Continued

Did I mention how awesome alliteration is? Didn't have a chance to finish up my last post yesterday due to said craziness but I'm currently sitting in an absurdly simple introductory lecture so I figured it'd be a good time to continue on!

Monday I had my first class in Australia! At noon... Having been out the night before I made the (at the time) great decision to sleep through bfast. Theeen after I actually got up did I realise that my class was going to knock out lunch time at the college. Not a terribly big deal I just had to buy lunch on campus but I've found myself turning into a bit of a scrooge with my money. Everytime I look at something I can't help but think "that's not worth that!" For example I won't be eating at McDonald's or Maccers as the Aussies call it anytime soon, they don't even have a dollar menu! At the same time its made me more aware of how cheap a lot things really are for us in the states and then the mind can't help but wander into thoughts of the reasons that we're able to get such cheap food, clothing, etc.

But back to class or rather back to academic class, my first and only class Monday was Second Language Acquisition, a pretty self explanatory title I think. I knew I was going to like the professor when a student started saying something "Surely..." and the prof cut her off saying "Don't call me Shirley!" Oh you silly Australians and your theft of American culture.

The Monday night Croweek activity was an Irish pub crawl. At dinner they seated people at different tables that each had Irish last names on them (and some with more creative "Irish" last names). The tables had watered down goon (dyed green of course) and loads of green confetti all over the tables (which still appears all over the college in new places every day). The food was decent, nothing particularly Irish unless you count potatoes, the only other really interesting bit was a limerick contest and let me tell you, college students are nothing if not extremely inventive at creating lovely sexual rhymes.

After dinner, more goon drinking ensued. Fuster and I were introduced to the Australian goon equivalent of a keg stand, called a "liedown" which basically consisted of you lying down and have goon poured into your mouth. Let it be known that I rocked that (thanks for the good drinking blood mom). We had been informed time and time again that Australians were not into drinking games but in my brief experience it seems like many of them have actually been very interested in learning our drinking games. I was more than happy to introduce them to a simple game called "Up the River, Down the River".

The actual pub crawl was sadly rather anticlimatic. The first pub was not particularly exciting and the second and third pubs were actually CLOSED! Never found out what was up with that, we'd arranged our pub crawl with the pubs ahead of time so who knows. It worked out in the favor of the Victoria or Vic where wandered to instead (keep in mind you have to picture a mob of about 100-150+ drunken college students streaming through the streets). It had a pretty sweet dance floor and Dj as well as pool tables so we had no lack of entertainment there.

Oh jeez lecture just ended. I'll have to finish this post up back in the room...

Alrighty back at it. So tuesday I had Advanced Bioinformatics (basically using computers to do genetic sequencing, VERY cool stuff) which I had originally thought would be out of my league because I haven't had any bio-ish classes since high school but I've had two lectures now and think it should be doable. Followed that up with Australia Marine Biology. Now let me start off by saying that Dickinson basically tells us to take this course not so much for the actual course but more for the two field trips you go on, one up to the Great Barrier Reef and another to Moreton Island. Key part: THEY PAY FOR IT! So most of us Dson students are in it as well as large number of other international students with a decent number of Aussies too. Met a girl from Germany who with any luck I shall be seeing more of in my time here :)

Next came Artificial Intelligence. I was pretty pumped for this course but had a heck of a time finding the bloody lecture room. It was located in this complex of 4 or 5 buildings but no map would tell me which one it was in... So I wandered around and finally stumbled across some arrows written in chalk on one of the buildings that managed to get me there. I sat in the lecture for about 30 minutes and then walked out. Two main reasons: I couldn't stand the lecturer's voice and I remembered being explicitly told by a couple friends who had been here last year saying "Phil, don't take AI, the prof is terrible and you will learn nothing." Sweet deal for me really, I had been signed up for five classes and had been worried I wouldn't be able to pick one to drop (I can only take four courses). So thank you miss, you made my life much easier!

Tuesday night's event was called Black and White night, which was a bit more complicated than the rest of our activities. Basically it was like all the stages of marriage crammed into one night. Interested parties had to arrange some sort of public proposal and whichever proposal the exec board deemed the best would be married that evening. That night we had formal dinner, which I'm just going to call Harry Potter dinner. We all wear our wizard gowns and have a "nice" dinner with a little music and speaker. Cool but not overly exciting. At dinner one guy had his friends pick of the chair of his fiancee-to-be and carry her up to the grand piano where sang in the most terrible of voices. It was hilaaaarious (and they ended up getting married that night). One of my faves though came after the dinner. My friend, Spread had walked into this girl's biology lecture, apologised to the lecturer of course, and proposed right in the middle of this 100+ person lecture hall. Some girl in the crowd actually booed! The video of the thing was really funny.

Wednesday brought my Contemporary Australia course and more marine biology. It was karaoke night but people were pretty drained after the prior night's festivities so most of us didn't go out. We'd been rocking out since Sunday and had just had a wedding the night before so who could blame us! Today has been pretty relaxed, only had two classes and now I'm done for the week! Tonight is a big party at the Chalk again, they're apparently going to make over 40 tonnes of snow and it's also our All college exchange so people from each of the 10 UQ colleges will be there as well as whoever else might come. Fingers crossed we actually get in!

Whew that seemed like a lot, hopefully its not too boring of a read. I'll try to make my future posts a little more exciting for my two followers haha. Cheers!

CroWeek Craziness

Been busy since my last post though I suppose that seems to be my trend lately so I really shouldn't be surprised! Classes started Monday and I've been out every night since Sunday so its been exceptionally crazy. The weekend was fairly relaxed, the Cromwell students finished moving back and so most of my time has been spent meeting people. Watched Master Chef again Saturday night and have decided that its actually a pretty cool show. The season ended Sunday night though so no worries about getting hooked on it.

Sunday night during dinner the Cromwell student president gave a little welcome back speech and then she called all of us "freshers" (which was just us Americans and a few other Australians new to the college) up to receive our "fresher" names. Thus Maia became Jeeves, Megan became Shazza, Taylor became Fuster, and I became Cluck. I haven't heard the origin of the girls names but apparently the exec board decided it would be funny to have a play off the phrase "cluster fuck", so Taylor and I became the lucky two. Like I said before, ridiculous! This was the start to what they call CroWeek, which is basically a Sunday to Sunday week of ridiculous nights out with transportation arranged by the college.

Sunday night was called Chalk night where we all went out to dance at a place called the Chalk Hotel, which had some beautiful drink specials :) Alcohol is still absurdly expensive but the Chalk had some of the cheapest drink I've seen yet aside from "goon" aka box wine. Everything else has had ridiculous taxes put on them over the years by the Aussie govt in their efforts to reduce underage binge drinking. True to teen spirit, the Aussie teens and college students have just moved from one drink of choice to another leaving them with "goon" as the only remaining cheap alcohol.

Toilet Spinning

While watching Master Chef (watched regularly by approximately 2 million Australians) we started discussing some of the differences between Australia and the US. One of the first things I'd noticed here was that the water doesn't spin in their toilets! Apparently in an effort to conserve water the Australians devised the "dual-flush" toilet with a smaller flush for going #1 and a larger flush for #2. Great, I'm all for conserving water; especially in a country that seems like its constantly in drought. My problem, all of the Aussie students thought it was a myth that toilet water spun! So for all of us Americans who were pumped to actually see the old tale in effect, we're simply s*** out of luck.

In other news, Thursday morning, Taylor knocked on my door and lo and behold my door now read "Katrina Philps". Similar, but definitely not me. We were summoned to the Dean of Students office and learned that apparently he wasn't keen on having guys on a gals floor. He listed a few other BS reasons (we know that they've had guys in the exact same rooms in the past) but we didn't really have a choice in the matter so we hauled our stuff across college to our new room. Maybe somebody above really didn't want us to live in our original rooms cuz man did we luck out. Taylor and I are now living in the same room but we have our OWN bathroom and shower! So we decided that in an effort to be accommodating we'd just smile and nod and make the best of our new surroundings. Don't want to feed the terrible American stereotype right? :)

Took part in a really cool study yesterday morning. Earlier in the week had been looking around for some simple employment to help me get by here when I stumbled upon a paid Deep Trunk (lower back) muscle study at the UQ and thought what the heck, why not! So yesterday morning I walked across the street to the Physiology building and learned what I was in for. Started out with a simple ultrasound of my back to make sure my muscles were in good shape (they were) and then they stuck me with 4 needles to implant 4 wires in different spots in the muscle. Then I was hooked up to a machine to record my muscle activity and then had a bunch of little 3d modeling thingers taped on me. If you've ever seen those cool suits that they use for 3d modeling in movies and video games then imagine that minus the suit.

So now that I looked like a christmas tree I got up on a treadmill with a bunch of cameras around me and a computer screen showing a little 3d me on the screen. Did some reeaaaally slow walking increasing in speed up to a light jog for about 30 minutes. Then did some more intense movements with resistance to really make my back muscles work. Oh and I forgot to mention throughout all this I had a neverending supply of gummy candies or lollies as they call them. I was getting paid but dang I would've done it just for all that candy I ended up eating! That about summed up everything, the wires and all the tape were pulled off and I was good to go. In retrospect I should've asked for some pictures cuz I must've looked pretty ridiculous. Now everybody has been asking why the heck I put myself through that for a small bit of money but the way I look at it, it wasn't about the money. Physical therapists and scientists have thought that these muscles might be the main source for many untreatable lower back pains and so far the results from the study have been positive that strengthening these muscles might be a way of alleviating that pain. So if I could be a part of the research that helps somebody and their pain then I'll count my time and very minimal discomfort well worth it.

Anyhoo, I was surprisingly pretty exhausted after that and laid low for the rest of the day with just a little bit of shopping for necessities. It looks like the majority of people are moving back into the college today and everyone has been eager to meet us "seppos" (google it yourself but don't worry its all in good fun). There was a rumor that Taylor and I might have to move again but we promptly went to the Dean and shut down that idea. The principal had gotten it in his head that we wouldn't meet people if we lived together but thankfully the dean agreed that we were doing just fine socialising with the Aussies and didn't need to move us AGAIN for us to get a good Aussie experience.

In other news, our group has been very bummed to find out that Cromwell's biggest party of the semester and coincidentally the biggest college party in the ENTIRE southern hemisphere is scheduled for the same weekend that our program will be going to Sydney. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. As of now its looking like we're going to make the responsible decision to go to Sydney but its oh so difficult for us. I'm sure the two people reading this will commiserate. So it goes though, can't have it all as much as we'd like. I just recently booked my flight to visit a couple friends from Dickinson in New Zealand for the following weekend. There's definitely going to be no shortage of adventures here!

About 200 Hundred Indigenous Languages..

Answering that question at orientation this morning got me a free thing of white chocolate Tim Tam's! Tim Tam's are chocolate biscuit (cookie) perfection, so perfect in fact that the Aussies designed a way of eating them called the Tim Tam Orgasm. Basically you eat off two opposite corners and drink coffee through the chocolatey middle part like a straw. I've yet to try this myself but I am definitely going to give it a go in the morning! Its been neat trying the different foods here and Tim Tam's have definitely been one of the best discoveries so far. My friend Taylor and I spent a good half an hour just wandering around the grocery store earlier tonight laughing at some of the outrageous things we saw and some of the Australian equivalents to US foods. Many things are the same but for whatever reason they just gave them new brand names such as Lynx = Axe, Hungry Jack = Burger King.

Spent most of last weekend hanging out with the Dson group. As college students, we've latched onto the cheapest form of alcohol, box wine. The exchange rate is slightly in our favor but most everything and especially alcohol is pretty expensive compared to the states. So finding $8 four liter boxes of red wine was a definite win for us. Monday, we toured the XXXX brewery, which is Queensland's beer. Apparently there is a strong pride for the particular beer brewed in each state (Victoria from Victoria, Tooheys from New South Wales...) and so most Queenslanders will vouch for XXXX as the best beer around. The tour itself was pretty cool, getting to hear a bit of the history of beer itself as well as the intertwining histories of XXXX beer and Australia/Queensland itself. Personally, I don't think its anything particularly special (ssshhh don't tell anyone!) but I do think its cool that they use only Australian products to brew it. I will say that its definitely better than the Fosters that they export off to us in the states... Best part of the tour was definitely getting to pour our own frothy brew from the tap, Australian style. Unlike England and other such places they don't like the head so they fill glasses in two steps. Fill and flick off the head, then fill to the brim! More beer that way they say and I'm inclined to agree with their logic! My friend Taylor and I took tally and realised that in the 6 days we'd been in Australia, we'd tried 13 different beers (my fave so far has definitely been a James Squire Porter) Don't worry mom, we party hardy but we're keeping it safe down under :)

Speaking of being safe, as part of our study abroad orientation today we had a session on every sort of safety while we're here from going out to swimming to the various creatures we should be careful of. Poisonous snakes galore, stinging jellyfish, sharks, etc. but as usual my big fear is still easily spiders. The lady giving the talk put up a picture of a huntsman spider, which are about the size of your hand, and explained to us that it was harmless. Then she showed us pictures of the little spiders which are absurdly poisonous. Herein lies my problem with spiders: the big ones are scary as heck and the little ones will kill you. Why the heck would you not be freaked out by them!?

Aside from all that, all is going pretty well. It looks like Taylor and I will be moving into another building because our college goofed up and put us on a girls floor. We tried explaining to them that this really wasn't a problem at all buuutt apparently they want to abide by their rules. Silly rules I say... Its been nice though, other students are finally trickling back into the college and by Sunday all 200 or so of them should be back and then things should liven up quite a bit. There's a really cool college culture here that I'm pumped up to join in on. Part of the tradition at Cromwell is that each student goes by a nickname that they're given as a "fresher" and they range from mild to downright ridiculous. For instance, one student (from Canada!) apparently looked seedy in his app photo and so he became Multigrain. Genius right?

I've also been really excited to be able to play piano again and was suckered into agreeing to play at one of our formal dinners. I hadn't played for two months before coming here and I have absolutely no idea what the heck I'm going to play so it ought to be interesting. Hopefully they like the Entertainer or some other fun little pop tune that I can pull out of my ass... Anyhoo its off to bed for me. I've promised myself that I'll actually check out the gym tomorrow before lunch so we'll see how that goes. Going to some play called "I love you bro" with the Dson group in the evening as well and that should certainly be interesting. Cheers!