‘Cause I’m Gonna Make This Place Your Home

This week’s post title are lyrics from the song “Home” by Phillips Phillips. The song served as the official NBC anthem for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and with the games in Rio set to kick off tomorrow I thought it served as a perfect homage, in addition to having a fitting message for the days since my last blog post.

Speaking of my last post: in it I briefly mentioned the fact that I had a surfing lesson at Bondi Beach. I didn’t go into any more detail because I was waiting for pictures from the day so I could fully convey how awesome it was to experience such a bucket-list-esque activity. You can imagine my disappointment when the photos were released and the only one of me is while I’m standing on land – though I’m quite proud of my standing on land skills, it wasn’t exactly the profile picture I was looking for. I’m sure if you talked to the photographer from the surfing company he would claim that he didn’t publish a photo of me because the only action shot was of me falling off my board…while I was sitting on it…however I maintain that I was simply too fast for the camera. Originally I didn’t click with surfing: after years of wake boarding I didn’t understand how anyone could enjoy an activity where you have to wait for the perfect wave, only to ride it for a short period of time, after which you fall into the ocean (likely swallowing half of it in the process as I seemed to), and then you have to swim back out against the current just to experience it all again (I mean it’s bordering on physical activity here). All my doubt and confusion disappeared on the last wave, though, when I paddled and stood up perfectly, and I rode the wave to the shore, getting some carving in along the way. To put it more appropriately: I totally shred the curl on that last one dude.

I’m in the red wet suit (a color I still think should have been easy to photograph)

 

The week after surfing was orientation week back on campus, so I spent some of the week doing welcome activities like like table-tennis and volleyball. Every now and then I discover something about Australia that reassures me it’s the perfect country for me. For example, in the United States I experience a small moment of embarrassment every time I order a hot chocolate at kids temperature because otherwise I find it scalding, but in Australia the temperature standard for the drink is already perfect. I experienced this reassurance again during table-tennis when I was informed that even after losing three times, I was somehow still in the tournament – participation medals be damned, I’m apparently an athlete.

Other parts of the week were spent attending various welcome sessions for international students. The sessions were a mix of helpful and not so helpful: the not so helpful being the one in which we were advised that this would be a good time to practice our english, and the most helpful being the one in which it was explained that the Y buildings in the alphanumeric system on campus stood for “y…the f**k are we so far away?” At the end of the week, a lot of the international students on campus took a trip to the Sydney Aquarium. I must say an aquarium loses a little of its pizzaz after having swam with some of the same fish in the Great Barrier Reef, but it was still cool to see some animals that I’m glad I didn’t encounter in the water – though Uma the shark is a “gentle and laid back” creature, I don’t think my brain (or bladder) would exhibit the same characteristics upon meeting her. The aquarium is located in Darling Harbour so after we were finished, some friends and I explored the area. It happened to be right around sunset then so the views were absolutely stunning, and were made even better by the numerous boats docked there for the Sydney International Boat Show.

Don’t think my 1 semester of sailing team qualifies me to buy one these

It may look like summer but I was freezing when I took this photo

The next day (Saturday) a friend and I set off into the city again. One of the things we were told we must do during our time in Sydney is visit the Contemporary Art Museum. The museum has a long and storied history that I’m sure could fill many pages but we were most attracted by the fact that it was free. The museum is in a part of town known as “The Rocks” which is the old part of Sydney. The buildings here were constructed during its transformation from penal colony to free society sometime in the early 1800s. Admittedly, walking around this area was the coolest part of the day. Art can be rather lost on me: while I appreciate an artist’s effort to capture “new understandings of humanity and ideas about posthuman” using only a clock, I’m afraid I never grasped the full effect (though I did insert plenty of “mmm”s, “ahh”s, and head nods to make it seem as if I did). We ended the day on the museum’s rooftop bar/cafe, which overlooked the cruise ship terminal. The cruise ship currently docked was almost 20 years old, but it still dwarfed the Opera House and even the Harbour Bridge in a way – as my mom would say, “it’s amazing those things float.”

I tried to play up my past 2 experiences performing on a Carnival cruise, but they still wouldn’t let me on the ship

“The Rocks” set against the modern skyscraper hotels of Sydney

Sunday was perhaps the most anticipated day of the week. To commemorate the last day before school started, some friends and I decided we would do the famous Bondi-Coogee walk. The 6 KM walk from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach runs along some of the most impressive coast lines that Sydney has to offer. We set off from the south end of Coogee beach at 11:30 AM and by noon we had made it to the north end. I’m sure we were easily identifiable as the most touristy people on the walk, taking pictures of just about everything in sight (“no, I swear, this rock over here looks a lot different from that one over there”) but we had no complaints about prolonging the time we had to take in such beautiful views. Even on a cloudy day the walk was enjoyable and near breathtaking so we already can’t wait to go back and do it when it gets warmer.

Picture 3/2000

Picture 251/3000

Monday morning I woke up for the first day of my junior year of college. Of course there were some nerves involved with starting at a new university in a new country, but a main reason I chose to study abroad in Australia is so that language wasn’t a stressor adding to any of those nerves. However, my expectations were essentially shattered during the first minute of my first class: “halo, z’I am your professcheur for thees modu-el, and z’I am fwrom Fwrance.” I simply stared at my new professor, and quite possibly dropped my jaw as I considered whether this was somehow punishment for not choosing to study abroad in France, as was the obvious choice after taking 5 years of French classes (this is not to say I got anywhere in those 5 years as my crowning achievement was just now when I was able to write the previous sentence phonetically). Of course he spoke fluent english, but his accent was so thick that I actually started praying he would start speaking in French just so I could understand more of the lecture. The rest of my classes have been uneventful (and in English), and I’m looking forward to the topics that will be covered. For those who don’t know, this semester I’m taking Strategy and Security in the Indo-Pacific, Counter Terrorism Operations, Contemporary Health Issues, and Business in the Asian Environment.

My classes were especially easy Tuesday because I actually have no classes on Tuesday. I had long ago decided that this would be my day to accomplish more touristy things in Sydney; what I am officially calling Tourist Tuesdays. Since there was a threat of rain this week, I decided to start with a museum. The Hyde Park Barracks is a World Heritage Site, and one of the oldest buildings still standing in Sydney. It was originally constructed to hold the convicts that were sent from Britain. Though this is where the convicts slept, they actually spent their days outside, helping to build the city as part of General Lachlan Macquarie’s vision to transform Australia. In later years it served as an immigration house for women coming to Australia for a better life (many from Ireland), and as a courtroom. The museum was a great choice for my first Tourist Tuesday because it told the fascinating history of how Australia came to be and the importance of different areas and buildings throughout the city. After the museum, I ate lunch in Hyde Park, strolled through the Royal Botanic Gardens and Circular Quay, and took my 20,000th picture of the Opera House.

Afternoons like that are the reason for this post’s title. I feel that I’ve reached the level of comfort that makes Sydney feel like a home: I know the layout of downtown and how to get around, I’m navigating the public transportation system with ease, I know where to go for groceries, mail, and other supplies, and there are countless other examples of how life here has turned from stressful to habitual (most of these examples revolve around me not getting lost, not confidently leading myself to somewhere where I am even more lost, and then not reluctantly pulling my phone to see where I actually am while also trying to make it look like I’m just checking my email)

This weekend I have plans to go hiking in the Blue Mountains, and then next week for Tourist Tuesday I’m booked on a whale watching cruise so I’m sure I’ll have plenty of updates in the next post. Until then I’ll leave you with 2 pictures that captivated me this week: the first is of Port Jackson in the early 1800s when the Hyde Park Barracks were built, and the second is of Port Jackson today (more commonly referred to by its broader area, the Sydney Harbour).

Just picture the bridge where the left-most trees are

Different view so the bridge is now right-most object