Sydney Adventures

December 14, 2011

So they say the human attention span limits our ability to focus for extended periods of time. That’s why experts recommend that about every two hours you deserve a 45 minute study break in order to refresh your mind. You know what? I value expert opinions. I mean, after all, they are called experts for a reason. So before my last exam I figured I’d take my study break. But, since I had been studying and writing essays for the past two weeks, I figured that, mathematically, I need a break proportionate to the amount of work I had been doing. And that’s how I justified my one week vacation to Sydney before my last exam. A few other spiders studying at University of Melbourne and I went off to Sydney to stay with a few Spiders studying there. And thus, we were spreading our spider web over Australia…because we’re spiders. Spiders spin web. And that, my friends, is almost definitely the last Richmond Spiders pun I will make.

Anyway, a few friends of ours from Richmond offered to let us stay with them in Sydney. What’s nice is we’re getting an opportunity to see what it’s like at other universities in Australia. They live on campus at their university, but much like University of Melbourne it is very much a commuter school. Still, the smaller minority who live on campus is proportionate to the size of the entire student population. So, there are about 1000 students living here at a time.

The city of Sydney is incredible. We took time to visit some of the famous touristy areas like the opera house and the royal botanic gardens. Before we left to venture out into the nightlife of Sydney, we had to decide whether we would try to catch the last night train, or wait until they started again in the morning. And that’s when I realized you reach a point in life where you tell yourself that all-nighters are over-rated. You come to believe and accept that, after countless late night study sessions and written-in-one-night papers, nothing really special happens at the break of dawn other than a weird bodily sensation of fatigue that you can’t really differentiate between “just woke up” fatigue and “it’s really time for me to go to bed but I’ve had too much caffeine” fatigue.

So, like back at school, we decided that we would catch the last train, feeling that we had outgrown the all-nighter phase. And with that decision, we learned another very important lesson. Some decisions don’t go the way you plan them to. Sometimes, because of things like track work on trains, a changed bus schedule and a very convincing argument that there will be a second “last train”, you just don’t get to avoid the all-nighter…And sometimes you don’t get to avoid it three times in a row. Now, as much as I would love to say that the incredible people we met at 4:30 in the morning showed us a different part of Sydney that I will personally hold dear forever, I can’t, mainly because everyone else was asleep at 4:30 in the morning. What was incredible, though, was the way friends can make up games to keep themselves entertained for hours until the trains start running again. I guess that’s when the creativity kicks in. But you definitely find out who you can and cannot deal with after four hours in the Australian version of Burger King. And I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

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Posted by mikeinaustralia

The Traveler’s Guide to Hitchhiking the Gold Coast

October 24, 2011

It was finally that time– the time that students worldwide wait for in anticipation. Well, it was the time that students worldwide wait for in anticipation, if you don’t include summer break. Okay, not including summer break and not including winter break, it is by far the most highly anticipated vacation of the academic year. And because things work quite differently in the southern hemisphere, it had come much earlier than expected. It was spring break.

I had made plans to go to the Gold Coast of Australia with two of our very own Spiders also studying abroad in Melbourne. We were staying at a place called Backpackers in Paradise, located in a neighborhood called Surfer’s Paradise, which happened to be walking distance from the beach. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?  If a picture’s worth 1000 words, and this was picture perfect, how many words was Backpackers in Paradise worth? If you answered anything other than zero, unfortunately, you are incorrect.

Contrary to popular belief, modern forms of currency do not include payment in the forms of words or letters. After drifting away from the gold standard in the post World War II era, currency took the form of bills, commonly referred to as notes, and coins. Additionally, if expressions were measured in words, then speechless would equal zero. And speechless is what we were when we realized we would be living and sharing a bathroom with eleven other people, not including the three of us.

If you have never seen fourteen people share a bathroom together, it is nothing less than amazing. It requires both timing that is unheard of and an adjusting of sleep schedules that would equal forcing Dracula, a seven-year-old child, and a caterpillar in a cocoon to sleep at the same time. Surprisingly enough, we managed to rarely, if ever, have problems with the bathroom. Regrettably, we were not as fortunate in consolidating sleep schedules.

Regardless, the Gold Coast managed to live up to its name. The weather was incredible, people were at the beach everyday, and club promoters and their bargain deals had to be subdued with a two meter pole (preferably wooden, to mitigate permanent damage) with all the discounts and free coupons they offered. Additionally, the hostel we stayed at seemed to get new people every day. Students participating in the University Games (which I will explain in a later blog) came in dozens. How could this dream-like paradise possibly go wrong?

The second day at the beach, when we were well-rested enough to properly understand the grave mistake we had just made, we understood the grave mistake we had just made. We looked at one another in horror as we realized that no one had a football. The core of all beach-like activity was not present. We would be deprived of the pure foundation of waterside entertainment, American football. We quickly checked our backup, plan-B option. No Frisbee. We were doomed.

Then, as if it were a gift sent from above, we saw it. There, before us, was an American football in Australia. Long story short, we not only got to use the football, but we also made some new friends. Our day was a success, and those to come would be filled with panic and crisis. But, more on that next time.

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Posted by mikeinaustralia

Food For Thought

October 24, 2011

So, I am in Italy, quite possibly the birthplace of amazing food. Amazing, expensive food. If you have 15-30 euros to spend on dinner every night (roughly $25-45), you will eat like a king. You will think that America has been tricking you for your entire life and that only now have you discovered what food is truly supposed to taste like– like Columbus or Marco Polo conquering a new world with the greatest food imaginable.  However, the criteria for me being able to indulge you with my stories is that I need to be a college student, and generally, a basic characteristic of any college student is being broke. So needless to say, I can’t eat like a king every night, but on the rare occasions that I have, my taste buds were taken to a place far surpassing any previous level of enjoyment and satisfaction– a place they still long for when I bite into my cold pizza left over from the night before.

I have needed to find new ways to feed myself while saving money and still enjoying eating some delicious food. So early on in my trip, I took a trip down to the supermarket and walked around indecisively, looking for food that I could cook with my extremely limited cooking skills. We’re talking microwave pizza limited… actually, we’re talking a stove or an oven might as well be alien technology limited… but anyway, I decided I had to learn, or I would be broke and starving on the street come December.  I had been longing for red meat since my pizza and pasta Italian diet left me with a big hole in my usual diet, so I got 2 packaged steaks and put them in my basket. I decided then that I would be a little adventurous and try to add some flavor to the steak, which turned out to be best served by a small bottle of soy sauce located in the corner of the grocery store. So I walked back, proud of myself, and excited to begin my experimental cooking. I met my friend in one of the communal kitchens in our dormitory and we both tried to decipher the stovetop. It was an electric induction stove (much safer for dorm rooms, no gas or fire) and it took us 10 minutes to figure out how to turn it on.  We had to ask an Italian girl across the way that after a strange look walked in, pressed one button, and walked away with heat emitting from the stove. “Grazie mille,” (“Thank you very much,”) we said as she left, probably adapting the old adage, “How many dumb Americans does it take to turn on a stove?”

Our excitement was short-lived when we discovered the pan we put on the stove was not getting hot. That led to another 20 minutes of confusion and stress, my stomach growling, and us stupidly pressing every button to make it work. The Italian girl was gone, so with no more help from her, we found a manual for the stove… written in Russian, and we had no experience with something like this before. Frustrated and hungry, on the verge of giving up, we were about to be saved. My friend’s Italian roommate and his girlfriend came in to cook and saw us struggling. He was confused at first too, but after diagnosing the problem, he told us in broken English that induction stoves need induction pots and pans to work (duh). He happened to have some in his room he would let us borrow, and the four of us cooked and enjoyed our meal, them teaching us some Italian, and us teaching them some English. My soy sauce steak was actually quite delicious.

Since that run-in, I have had some more cooking struggles, with every time being a learning episode, but I am slowly becoming a world-class chef (self-proclaimed). I am getting more daring with my recipes, trying new foods, and I know that stovetop like the back of my hand.  When cooking gets boring, or if I haven’t made a supermarket trip in a while, I enjoy getting a kebab from one of the many places around the city (basically gyro meat in a sandwich or wrap that is insanely good), a salamella con tutto (a sausage sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, ketchup and mayonnaise, which I am basically obsessed with at this point) for lunch from the sandwich cart in the middle of campus, or I will spring for a 3 dollar pizza from my favorite hole-in-the-wall place around the corner where they always greet me with a friendly “Ciao caro” (“Hello, dear”).

I have come to greatly enjoy the food here, made either by myself or by others. And when I have some money saved up, I can always treat myself to a delicious four- or  five-course meal in downtown Milan. Adapting to my situation wasn’t quite smooth, but very effective, so it is always important to stay open minded and versatile… so I guess that, right there, is a little food for thought.

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Posted by johninitaly

Lean on Me, Leech on Me

August 29, 2011

My departure from Bangkok was timely, as I was ready to experience something outside of the backpacking district of the capital. The drive to the “resort” where we stayed this past week was about 7 hours from Bangkok in Khon Kaen, Provence. We left our computers to be brought to Khon Kaen University, so the week was entirely wireless and open for bonding.  Through many group meetings and activities, we really started to work together as a group, finding our way each moment.  Whether we were transferring people through a web of string or discussing oppression, we leaned on each other through rougher moments and celebrated the positives together.  It seems like we are really forming a strong community, which is a main focus of the program both internally and within the villages we stay in.

On our way to the resort, we stopped about halfway through for a nature walk. By nature walk, of course I mean sludging through mud in gaters (which are cloth coverings for your legs and feet, because apparently there are leeches in the national park).  The scenery was absolutely gorgeous and followed by a delicious plate of kauw pad (fried rice).  As we went to get in the van, though, I noticed I was bleeding on my foot, so the med kit was grabbed so that I could bandage my apparent leech wound. It wasn’t until we were ten minutes on the road that I noticed I was bleeding on my thigh as well, and friends in the back of the van simultaneously found a huge leech on the ground. I suppose I, too, am delicious. All is fine, the leech was killed and cleaned up, and I was bandaged. Needless to say, mai pen rai (it’s all good / no problem—and a popular Thai phrase at that).

We started Thai class this week, and wow, is it a difficult language. Sure, they don’t have verb conjugations, but they have tones for each word. Use the wrong tone, and it’s a different word. So, although I will throw in some random Thai in these posts, it is not really helpful without audible dictation.

rice paddies in Thailand

The final stop before coming to Khon Kaen University, and our apartments, was a homestay in a weaving village. I was with one other girl, and together, we maybe understood 10%. Communication was not easy, and all our Meh (mom) wanted to do was feed us and have us take an abb naam (shower). However, in the course of 24 hours, we had a fresh coconut and grapefruit picked off a tree for us, ate fresh peanuts, and helped farm rice, pulling up the plants in the paddy. I also was attacked by my host mom with baby powder (which has the affect of Icy-Hot here). Before we left, some of us spent a few hours playing with the kids at school. My favorite game was their version of Duck Duck Goose, which involves a shirt instead of patting heads and a very catchy song. We were running around, slipping on the dirt, and finally “communicating” with Thais.

playing duck duck goose

It has been a long week, filled with surprises and adventure. I finally have met my roommate and moved in, and she is so cool. She is an English major, so communication is fairly simple. We were welcomed last night through a traditional Thai welcoming ceremony and we have a short weekend break before heading off to the Railroad community on Sunday.

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