I got my computer back yesterday, and I’ve just posted a whole bunch of photos to http://web.mac.com/sstigler1985 . No username or password is required. I’ll be keeping that site updated with more and more photos as the semester progresses.
I really miss my computer. I can’t wait to get it back. Everyone else in the apartment has Internet except for me, because I don’t have my computer back from repair yet. Today I received the wireless router that my mom sent from “the States,” as they’re called around here, but I had to set it up with somebody else’s computer.
Other than that, things are pretty good. I was really stressed about having to prepare (i.e., do reading that I hadn’t done) for two tutorials today, but I ended being able to switch one of the tutorials (the one for POL167) to Friday morning. Hopefully that won’t conflict with any planned CEA activities… I think it should be fine because Murray said that if we did another activity that left on a Friday, like maybe a weekend trip to Canberra (pronounced “Can-burr-uh”) we would plan to leave after my last Friday class. Speaking of pronunciations, I’ve learned that all along I’ve been pronouncing the names of some Australian cities wrong: Melbourne is “Mel-burn,” not “Mel-born;” Brisbane is “Briss-bun,” not ”Briss-bain;” and Cairns is pronounced “cans.” I really enjoyed the tutorial I just got out of today, which was for POL165. It was really light-hearted and an overall fun atmosphere. Most of the people in the tutorial are Americans, so I got the idea that the tutor (as I think she’s called) will make an effort to explain some things better to us that might otherwise not be as clear.
Let me start this post by saying that I risked my life to get to the library computer lab to write this. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but allow me to explain: As of about half an hour ago when I entered the library, it recently started to rain heavily. There was some thunder, and occasional lightning. This happened last night as well, around 9 or 10 o’clock, maybe later. I was looking out the window with one of my roommates, Becca, and we actually saw at least a few, maybe several, I forget, very long bolts of lightning in the not-too-far-away distance. Last night was not the first night this has happened. On a previous night, maybe a week or so ago, I actually had the guts to walk to the movies in the middle of thunder, lightning, and rain. But the difference was that that night I could only see big flashes of light that lit up the night sky, not actual bolts. After seeing the lightning bolts, I realize that I cannot be as carefree about the rain in Sydney as I am in Portland. It is not a force to be reckoned with. I know this is sounding weird, but last night was actually kind of scary. When I was in the bathroom switching my laundry to the dryer, every 10 seconds or so I would see maybe a two-by-10-inch flash of bluish electric energy at the window just to my right. When I went in my room to do reading for a class, I made sure to keep a flashlight right there on my desk with me.
I ended up going on the surf trip after all. This shift began Wednesday night at The Ranch, a not-so-nice bar diagonally across the street from my apartment. I’d gone over there following the birthday party of one of my other roommates, Liz. Everybody else from the CEA group was there, and they practically begged me to go. I felt very guilty being the one person not going. Thursday I spent a good portion of the day pondering of whether I should go or not go, up to the point of even calling my dad to get his advice. He thought it was worth it as long as I was able to get the work done (which unfortunately I’m now rather struggling with, but that’s a different story), and so I ended up calling Murray and telling him I actually wanted to go after all. He told me my spot was still available, so me and Becca (who’s also in the CEA group) met everybody else from the group in front of the Stamford Hotel, a really fancy hotel across the street from our apartments, at 10am Friday morning to take the Surfaris surf bus north to Point Plomer. It was about a 7-8 hour bus ride, but luckily we were allowed several stops along the way. When we got there the campsite was already set up, so all we had to do was move in. The next morning we went surfing around 9am, but I wasn’t as into it as some other people in the group, mainly because the water was reallly cold — so cold my teeth were chattering within maybe half an hour — and I got kind of discouraged that I was having trouble getting up. I did have one good ride, when Planko (the surf instructor) basically held the board for me and pushed me down a wave, so all I had to do was stand up. That day I ended up getting really sunburned, so Sunday morning I wasn’t too interested in going back out again, although I did stand and ponder it for hours while I stared at the ocean. (Seems kind of crazy, doesn’t it? Just staring at the ocean? But it was so beautiful in that location… you’ll see what I mean when I post photos.)
The reason I haven’t been able to post photos lately is that my computer has been in for repair. It’s got some problem with its hard drive. The place I took it to said 3-5 days, and I dropped it off on Thursday, so with luck it’ll be ready tomorrow. Another piece of good news: My DSL should be activated by Telstra by “close of business” today, so that means I won’t have to come down to the library, i.e., risk my life (-: every time I want to check email, post in this blog, etc.
Today I attended the second POL165 lecture, which was excellent, and the first ABST100 lecture, which wasn’t quite what I thought it would be: I thought it would be actually more meeting Aborigines and learning about the digeridoo (did I spell that right?), and stuff like that, and instead it seems to focus more on tolerance-related issues. We did see one cool movie in it, though: Babakueiria (sp?), which basically imagines what would have happened if it had been the Aborigines that had colonized an indigenously white Australia. (The movie’s title comes because the aborigines got off the boat, at a barbecue area and asked the Australians what the name of the place was, and one of them said “Barbecue area.”)
Anyway, I decided to drop ABST100 in favor of POL167 (the equivalent of an Intro to Politics course), which will count for one of my IA major requirements. I hope I’m making the right choice — besides meaning that I probably won’t learn as much academically about Australia, it also makes it a lot more difficult for me to go on weekend excursions with my study abroad group. Luckily, all of the lectures are recorded, so if I have to miss one or two I will, though I would prefer not too. I made the hard decision to skip a surf trip that my study abroad group is going on in some beautiful remote area of Australia between Sydney and Brisbane (Point Plomer) this weekend in favor of going to the first lecture. Anyway, I’m feeling kind of upset about that, and that I’m going to have to make those choices on a regular basis.
Hello again!
I’m sorry that my posts haven’t been as frequent as I’ve said they’d be; I don’t yet have DSL in the apartment (it’ll be activated sometime this week, though), my computer been in for repair (but I decided to cancel that repair today, and should have the computer back by tomorrow evening); and the computer lab has short hours compared to the ones at LC. As soon as these problems have been resolved, I will try to make more regular postings.
Friday I had the official university orientation for international students, which was pretty cool and lively, because they said a lot of things you’d never expect a professor at an American college to say in a million years for fear of getting fired. Over the weekend I saw two movies: Music & Lyrics and The Good Shepherd; both were excellent and I highly recommend them. One thing about Music & Lyrics: I almost walked out in the first few minutes when it started with some random ’80s music video. Don’t. It gets much better.
Today I had my first two lectures: GEOS111 (Geographies of Global Change) and POLS165 (Introduction to Australian Politics). I’m a little concerned that GEOS111 may be a little not what I’m looking for, (too much emphasis on local geography and too little on international stuff), but for now I’ll take a “wait and see” approach — she did say that globalization would be a big part of the course, which might make it interesting; the thing is, I’m a little globalization-ed-out after taking Economic Development with Marty last semester.
POLS165 turned out to be really good — it appears to be designed as an introductory national government class, kind of like our AP Government, but for Australian students. I get this feeling because the professor (actually, I think they’re called lecturers or convenors here) started off by giving us a brief 25-30 minute overview of terms such as hegemony, democracy, sovereignty, etc. Interestingly enough, while he spoke of James Madison in high regard, he glossed over the Federalist Papers, whereas that’s something that in the U.S. we would spend a great deal of time on.
My class schedule is currently as follows: (all times are Sydney time.)
I’m thinking about switching out of ABST100 and into the equivalent of a POLS101 (Poli-Sci 101) class, but that would mean I’d have one lecture on Friday mornings, which would probably conflict with weekend excursions that CEA has planned. The reason I’m thinking about switching is so I’d be taking another course that would count for my major.
Until next time,
Sam
I’m writing this blog posting from an Internet cafe in Manly, a beach suburb of Sydney. Now a recap of how I got here: My flight to Sydney left later than expected on Saturday, not even starting to board until around 12:15 AM or so. Once I was on board, the vision I had had of international economy seats being nice and plush was pretty much instantly squashed: It was like a cattle car! The seats were crammed so close together (seat pitch ~33-34 inches at most) that I almost-instantly began to worry about DVT. But the on-demand movie selection was nice, though: I got to watch both Borat and Employee of the Month, both for the first time. I loved each of them. The food was mediocre, but on a whole better than domestic airplane food usually is. And the service was impeccable — they even had a “customer service manager” who would make PA announcements throughout the flight. Unfortunately due to the cramped conditions and the fact that the cabin crew initially missed my row when they were handing out the eye masks, I was only able to get about 4-5, maybe 6 hours’ sleep. However, around the time I woke up we were just about to cross the International Date Line, and I was able to get some great pictures of Noumea (which I’m pretty sure is part of Fiji) and the surrounding islands.
Upon arrival in Sydney everyone on the flight had to go through customs, and then something called quarantine in which some people actually had their bags scanned to make sure they weren’t carrying any prohibitied food items into Australia’s protected environment. (This was all after they’d retrieved their checked baggage.) A lot of people had to throw away their snacks. (Don’t tell anyone, but I didn’t realize it until later, but I completely forgot about a pack of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies that were in my backpack. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to covertly dispose of them in a manner that’s safe to Australia’s environment.
Upon clearing customs and quarantine, I proceeded to the “Meeting Point” just inside the airport where I was to meet up with Macquarie University’s airport pickup service. I was allotted a bus to take me and a group of other people to the university, and then we walked outside. I don’t want to sound weird, but the first thing I noticed about Sydney (and now I think it was just the airport) was an overpowering fish smell. The second thing I noticed, very soon thereafter, was just how hot it is. I mean, it must be in the 80s or 90s right now. I’m typing this at 10:19PM Sydney time and, according to weather.com, it’s currently 80% humidity and 23.7 degrees C (75 degrees fahrenheit). We had to wait for the bus in this terrible heat for about 20 minutes (the driver had to retrieve it from the parking lot), but once we got in it was really interesting (and scary at the same time) because we driving on the left side of the road with cars whizzing by on the right. When we arrived at Macquarie the first thing we did was go by the main international office (Macquarie International) to get the keys to our apartments. We did this, but then I was stupid and decided to go after my SIM card for my cell phone. As a result, the bus left without me, along with all of my luggage (except for my backpack) and my nice, expensive Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera. I ended up getting my SIM card (cell phone and all, mistakenly — I later returned the cell phone), but had to find my own way to an apartment that I’d never been to before. That was, well, an adventure. I ended up getting really hot and sweaty walking 10-15 minutes in the wrong direction with my big, heavy backpack on my back, then realizing my mistake and finally figuring out where to go.
The apartment’s address is 24/137 Herring Rd. I’m not sure about the city; I think it’s either Ryde or North Ryde. I’ll post when I know for sure. The “24/137″ means “unit 24 at street number 137.” The apartment is small and doesn’t have Internet access, but it’s really all I need for now. I have three roommates, all of whom are really nice and friendly. Only one of them is actually studying at Macquarie through CEA. Another one of them, a senior, is doing this study abroad for the second time (she also did it last year), and her boyfriend’s an Aussie that she met while she was here, so she’s offered to answer any questions we might have. She’s already proven to be very helpful.
Today I woke up bright and early and met everybody else from the CEA group at the university for a CEA orientation. That was short and laid back, and then we went with Murray Fraser, the cool CEA program leader in Sydney who also works at a surf shop, into downtown Sydney (the Rocks) by bus to climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge. That was really fun, and actually not that scary, and the view was amazing! I’m not at my computer now, but I’ll post photos as soon as I can. Thanks Rick for the tip! I really love that Sydney harbor is so big; I can’t wait to try sailing in it. After taking an hour for lunch we then took a nice walking tour of downtown Sydney, as well as a group photo on the steps of the Opera House, and then boarded a ferry (operated by the Sydney bus system) to take us to Manly, where we’re staying overnight in the Manly Backpackers hostel.
Tonight and tomorrow are basically free, but there was a great BBQ hosted by the hostel tonight. Tomorrow I’m probably going to go boogie boarding.
So I’m sitting here late this Thursday night, and I’ve finally got my blog set up. Boy, that “5-minute” set-up that WordPress promised really turned out to be more like half an hour! Today I went to REI and bought really light rain jacket (I already have a heavy jacket, but I wanted something I could easily stuff into my backpack for short trips), the suggested basic first aid kit, and a little travel pillow so that I can hopefully arrive rested in Sydney after the long flight. I also bought a pair of those expensive Bose QuietComfort 2 noise-cancelling headphones, in the hope that they, too, would let me get some more sleep. (You see, I can sleep on planes, but only in intervals of ten-fifteen minutes that are few and far between.) Plus, I needed some new headphones anyway. Hopefully they’ll turn out to have been a good buy. Tomorrow I’m planning on starting the packing. Yikes! I just realized that tonight is the last chance I’ll have to say goodbye to my stepsister and stepbrother. I better do that. Tomorrow I’ll start really getting down to the packing, and my flight leaves at 11:45PM L.A. time on Saturday. Oh, one other cool thing: Today I went by the bank to pick up some Australian foreign exchange currency that I’d ordered. I’d never done that before, so it was quite an interesting experience.
My name is Sam Stigler. My hometown is Pacific Palisades, CA; but I go to college at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. If you’d like more information feel free to email me or look me up on Facebook.
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