9 April 2009

Hello, all.  Again, I'm slow with updating this and I apologize!  The past few weeks I have really been enjoying Sydney.  I sat in the SECOND ROW at a show at the Opera House (it was called Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, look up the synopsis because it was crazy), went to some new beaches, enjoyed gelato, hung out in Glebe which is the Greenwich Village of Sydney, went to Featherdale Animal Park to see, and pet, wallabies, kangaroos, and koalas along with heaps of other native Australian animals, went to the largest IMAX screen in the world to see Underwater: 3D (and yes, it was amazing!), and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.  This week is project week, so we have classes off to work on projects and catch up on homework.  Next week is our study break and a group of us are going to Magnetic Island in Queensland to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef!

This week is also holy week so we've been enjoying the festivities.  Wesley Institute (my university) did a march around Circular Quay on Palm Sunday reenacting when Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey (yes, we had a Jesus and a donkey).  Today is Maundy Thursday and we went back to St. James Anglican Church (where I went for the Ash Wednesday Service) for the Liturgy of the Lord's Supper with Footwashing.  I am really beginning to love the Anglican Church.  It was a very solemn service, with all the normal rituals like purifying the church with incense, but the focus this time was on the new commandment that Jesus gives at the Last Supper: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another," (John 13:34).  In an act to acknowledge his command to love one another and to accept each other with grace and humility, we, as a congregation, washed each other's feet.  It was such a great moment of respect and vulnerability to not only wash a complete stranger's foot, but to place your bare foot into the hands of someone you have never met, and wholeheartedly (or timidly) watch as they cleanse it, just as Jesus did to his disciples so many years ago.  The bulletin explains this act: "The washing of feet, like the Eucharist, is a revelation of the church to itself, 'If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, then surely you must wash one another's feet,' (John 13:14).  Once ministered to by Christ, we are both enabled and impelled to minister to each other.  This mutual ministry is the sign that we have been bound to each other by him, and our behavior toward each other will demonstrate our reality as the church -- the body of Christ."  It was a humbling experience, but also a uniting moment for the congregation; I would like to see my home church, Hanfield, incorporate this ritual in our yearly Passover meal.  After the footwashing, the service became very somber, because we remembered that Jesus washed his disciples feet even though, "he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, 'Not all of you are clean,'" (John 13: 11).  At the end of the service, the choir chanted Psalm 22 in the dark (to represent the dispersal of the disciples) and the sanctuary was stripped clean (to represent the betrayal of Jesus).  We were to depart the church in silence and silence was kept in and around the church until the Good Friday services began the next day.  There was also a Prayer Watch that is kept throughout the night in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit.  The whole service put me in the proper mindset of what happened this night, and on Good Friday.  It is a bittersweet moment, to which Jesus gives his disciples a plan for the future, to love one another, yet also is betrayed and crucified.  It gives Easter a deeper meaning and a greater celebration.  There is joy in the morning!

I will sadly be traveling on Easter morning (cheaper plane tickets...) but I will hopefully at least attend an evening service in Magnetic Island.  I did buy a dark chocolate bunny to save until Easter morning (since I will be without an Easter egg hunt) as they are EVERYWHERE and have been haunting me since I first got here.  I will sign off this post with some pictures, since I haven't put any up yet!  (Some of these are duplicates from facebook!)  Miss you all...

This is Anaya, Kaylee, myself, and Brittnee in front of the Opera House (although you can't see it) after our show!

 

                         

Petting Kangaroos and Koalas...

Kaylee, Anaya and I at a fair trade coffee shop in Glebe. (This photo is courtesy Brittnee Wood who took this picture for a photo project!)

Sarah (one of my roommates), Kaylee, and I eating gelato in Darling Harbour...the perfect ending to a day.

25 March 2009

OK, so much has happened, I'm sorry I haven't written in awhile.  In my defense, my computer's hard drive crashed and I was without a computer for about a week.  But it's fixed now, and I had an external hard drive, so I have my important files, and everything is all good.

Since my last blog, I turned 21 years old, thanks to everyone that facebooked, emailed, and sent cards and/or packages.  It was so great to get any little piece from home!  My host family was great and made a birthday dinner for me, complete with a birthday chocolate cheesecake, and I celebrated my birthday, another student's and St. Patrick's Day all on the 18th of March at a party that was hosted by some ASC students.  It was a blasty blast.

This past weekend, our group had a trip to Australia's capital, Canberra (pronounced can-bra, NOT can-bear-a), to visit both the old and new Parliament Houses, the Indonesian Embassy, the Great Britain High Commission, and to see every museum that it has to offer.  It was really fun and really exhausting, both physically and mentally.  We have been talking about Australian foreign policy, and therefore how Australia interacts with the United States, and it's amazing to see our country from an outside perspective.  We were prepped in earlier weeks before the topic of foreign policy with the topics of basic Australian history and national myths.  While most of you know, European settlement in Australia began with convicts being sent there from England in 1788.  They thought they were embarking on terra nullius, or no man's land, but the land was actually home to over 250 tribes of Indigenous Australians that were there for at least 40,000 years prior.  Regardless of the Indigenous population, England settled its penal colony in a land that they thought was fertile, but realized it was harsh and fragile.  While it may not seem very critical today that Australia was settled by exiled convicts to a land that is unwelcoming and sterile, it spawns the national myths that still affect how Australian's make decisions in personal relationships and with relations to different countries.  Australian's have this sense that they are outcasts, sent to the very corner of the earth, and in fact they were the lowest class defined by 18th century England, and were "weeded out" of the population in order to pursue a more perfect nation.  They were then sent to a land mass so huge and so far away that they felt, and still feel, that they do not have the man power to defend themselves, and therefore need a protector.  They also have a deep fear of invasion from countries like Japan in WWII and Indonesia 10 years ago who are close enough to destroy them without the rest of the world realizing.  These national myths have pushed Australia to develop a foreign policy based on these ideas.  They have a "mother country" as their protector, with the UK taking the role until WWII in which it switched to the United States.  Australia's policy is to pretty much adapt to the foreign policy of their "mother country" and do what they do and send troops where they send them.  Of course Australia's "mother country" still has the basic values and goals that Australia has for the world, they just basically make the decisions for them.

Since the United States has resumed position as Australia's guardian, we discussed the national myths and foreign policy of our country as well.  Our settlement looks  a lot different than that of Australia, since our Pilgrims came in hope to pursue religious practice without persecution.  We had a strong sense of optimism because we believed we were coming to a land in order to start a civilization based on freedom.  Therefore, our national myths are that we believe that the US is an exceptional nation, in which US Christians are "chosen" by God because our Pilgrims were the light on a hill.  We also are a nation based on isolationism, in fact one of our founding fathers George Washington said that staying out of foreign affairs would be the success of our nation.  Now, Manifest Destiny inspires our land in that we believe we have a right and a duty to promote and secure democracy worldwide.  We do this through the idea of liberal internationalism in which we believe that we must be in great partnership with every nation, which is why the UN is established in the US.  Lastly, and most recently popularized under the Bush administration, is the idea of neo-conservatism in that we believe we have a mission to help the world, but we do not need to consult the advice of any other country; basically, "if you're not for us, you're against us."  With these ideas acting as our passionate foreign policy, we welcome any country, like Australia, that wishes to do as we please.  In a way, doesn't that seem what we're striving for?

The United States is viewed as a nation that wants to take over the world with their own military domination, and we believe American domination is a moral claim.  We want to use force to solve problems in the world and that is evident in our spending on military and defense as it makes up 45% of the world's total military expenditure.  (What would our country look like if we drastically altered our spending into helping instead of defending?  Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is a nation approaching spiritual death." World Military Spending)  And in the defense of the United States, so many countries, like Australia, look to us to be their defender and to assist them in times of crisis -- we do this in the way we know how: military destruction.  However, what kind of mindset is this?  Is this how we were brought up?  We were challenged in our class to think about a foreign policy based on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), in which the focus would be on the poor, the mourners, the hungry, those persecuted for seeking righteousness, the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, and the peacemakers.  Can a foreign policy exist with these in mind?  Foreign policy itself is a set of goals for a particular country so that it can grow economically, politically, socially, and militarily.  For the United States, it is represented as completely individualistic.  We were challenged with picturing what the world would look like if foreign policy, especially foreign policy of the United States, was based not on defense and military, but by helping countries find their own stability and place in the world.  Jim Wallis, in our required reading of a chapter in his book titled God's Politics: Why the American Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, makes a connection between security and stability and the idea that if every nation could find their own stabile piece of the world, they would feel secure.  He says, "there is no security apart from collective security -- no national security apart from more common global security."  He also challenged the United States in its contradiction with biblical prophets, especially Micah, to use fear as the central point of motivation of its foreign policy and to say that peace depends solely on "unquestioned military preeminence", and then say the nation is "the greatest force for good in history" (President George Bush, 2002).  While these ideas may or may not be hard pills to swallow, i thought the most profound things that Jim Wallis had to say about the United States was his thoughts about September 11, 2001.  He says that this was a time for the United States to join the rest of the world by being entirely vulnerable, an inevitable truth in the human world.  He said that this moment could have been a teachable moment, a moment where the United States could have set the precedence for other democracies to ensure human rights.  We were put in a unique position because of worldwide sympathy, and Wallis believes we had the opportunity to lead the world in strengthening international law and institutions, and committing to things like abolishing all weapons of mass destruction, including our own.  Instead of focusing on multinational cooperation, and using wisdom to solving the root of the problems of social unrest, we reverting to the comfort of our military power and dominance.

With all of these ideas fresh in our minds, we embarked to Australia's capital city.  My favorite places were the Great Britain High Commission and the Indonesian Embassy.  I had always had the view that Great Britain was more egotistical than the United States (I'm not sure why) and I wasn't looking forward to going to their High Commission, but I really enjoyed it.  Peter Elder, First Secretary of Economic and Global Issues, spoke to us about Great Britain's basic foreign philosophy which boils down to their saying, "Better World, Better Britain".  Globalization is a big focus for Great Britain, especially with the reality that decisions now affect everyone in the world on a much bigger scale, and they have goals to attack the threats of globalization like food security, poverty, migration flows, and climate change.  Peter said that the bonds between states of the commonwealth have never been stronger, and the same goes for the bond between UK and the US (although he did say that he thought it would be great for the United States to join the Commonwealth).  These strengthened bonds he believed had to do with bilateral relationships with the states/countries and the idea that we all have similar goals for the world and similar demographics so we can learn from each other (especially from each other's mistakes). The strong relationship between the UK, the US, and Australia make it so that each can use their different worldly spheres (like the UK being a part of the European Union and the US and Australia being a part of APEC) and their common ideas for the world to make a difference.  "Big challenges won't go away but we should give everyone a fair go," was the summation of Great Britain's foreign policy.  From there, we went to the Indonesian Embassy and learned about democracy from the point of view of a country that in the process of becoming a democratic nation.  Indonesia has been adapting democratic principles within the past years, and have strongly emphasized home-grown democracy -- that strength in democracy comes from people being a part of it, realizing it is important and the best for them and then fighting for it.  They believe "you cannot promote democracy at gun point."  As far as the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, Indonesia sees problems in the lack of education in Australia about Indonesian culture, as a relationship cannot grow if there is not an understanding in one another's culture (an interesting thought for education in the United States).  Also there is a perception that Indonesia is unsafe for Australian citizens because it is a nation of terrorism, which is apparently false according to the Indonesian Embassy, but is a warning to citizens from the Australian government.  This contradiction obviously hurts their relationship.  They too focus on bilateral relationships and hope to set the precedence with Australia for developing and developed countries in bilateral relationship with one another.  

Canberra as a whole was a great experience, and wasn't all about visiting political institutions.  We also went to several art museums including the National Gallery of Australia where I saw Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles and more Andy Warhol pieces to add to my "have seen" list.  

I am truly sorry for how long this post is, and how long it took for me to update the blog, but I wanted to share what I was learning.  I could go on much more, but I'll try to save more information for later posts.  I would love it if you would comment on any of these ideas, I am not saying that this necessarily encompasses my own beliefs as I am still searching, growing, and learning, so I would love it if you would let me know what you think as well.  Please be a part of my learning process!  I love you all and still miss you!

6 March 2009

So this week made me hate public transportation. At first I thought it was the best, because the city seems so attainable! Just jump on a bus here, grab a train there, and you are automatically at your destination! Anyone can get anywhere in just a blink of an eye! Wrong. It takes forever. Thanks the thing, public transport (as they say here) tricks you. You think you can get somewhere super fast, but it actually takes so long, by the time you get where you want to go, you lost the desire to go there in the first place! So last weekend, a group of ASC-ers went to the Blue Mountains (a mountain range close to Sydney – it only takes a few hours by bus or train!), but another group of us have our required service placement on Saturdays, and we couldn’t go, so we decided to visit Manly Beach. We were done at noon, so we’d have the whole day basking in the sun, right? Nope. We had our orientation on Saturday, at Hillsong Church in Baulkham Hills. We were told it was just a short train ride from the city. We were tricked by public transport. Sure, it was just a half hour train ride, but that was after I had a half hour bus ride and previous fifteen-minute train ride, and before we had another half hour bus ride! So I had to get up with the sun. Then, when we were finished, we missed our bus by ten minutes that comes hourly, so we had major time to kill before we made the long trek back to the city, just to take a 40 minute ferry ride to actually get to the beach. So we made it to Manly just in time to get an hour or two of sun and for two girls in my group to get stung by Bluebottle Jellyfish. Awesome. Don’t get me wrong; it was still a great day, I just now have a more realistic view of the public transport and how long it actually takes to get places! Also, the trusty 506 bus that takes my roommates and I anywhere we want to go is actually not so trusty. It usually comes 20 minutes late, or not at all, and when it is on time, it is actually about four minutes early. We were told by one of our program directors that it was the “Bus of Kings” but that is a very false statement. Whatever would be the opposite of the “Bus of Kings” would be our bus.

But before I had my public transport realization, last Friday our group went to the Rocks. The Rocks is the oldest neighborhood in Sydney and was where the convicts were brought to Australia to begin the colonization. It is now a trendy district with stylish pubs and restaurants and the biggest street market on the weekends, but it didn’t start out that way. It was a corrupt area with about as many pubs as homes, and people lived in filthy, cramped quarters without fresh running water or any kid of septic system. The houses were steeply stacked on top of each other on the edge of the hills leading to the harbour, so all the waste ran down to the homes on the lowest level. Obviously, the higher up you lived, the higher the class you belonged to. The area of the Rocks was morally corrupt as well. People spent most of their time at any of the hundreds of pubs and prostitution was extremely common. We were even told that the first night that the boats arrived on the New South Wales shore, there was a massive orgy that mostly everyone participated in whether they were willing to or not. As colonization grew, with the aid of the Sydney Harbour with its deep waters so that ships could dock right at the shore, the gritty neighborhoods grew as well, and gangs and promiscuous sailors ran rampant through the streets. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Rocks became infected with the Bubonic Plague and the whole neighborhood became quarantined. After the plague was contained and destroyed, a Royal Commission began to clean up the slums of the city, which began at the Rocks. The restoration would last for most of the 20th century because of the two world wars, but now, the Rocks is a popular spot for tourists and city-dwellers because of its fresh cosmopolitan streets mixed with the history from the first colonization. Some of the pubs from the slum days are still around, and the sandstone rocks that convicts were forced to dig out, and then carve in their own “signature” pattern, are still visible in the walls of buildings. Our group split up and explored some of the “hot spots” of the Rocks, including Pancakes on the Rocks, a 24-hour restaurant that makes the most decadent pancake dessert concoctions known to man. This place is a favorite stop for sure.

As far as the rest of the week, I just went to more class. I’m getting used to Wesley and am enjoying the lunch hours on the Grassy Knoll where most students hang out before our afternoon classes. This week we played a massive game of Twister with a homemade mat that was four Twister mats put together. We started with a large group, but as people fought for the color palettes and dropped out, the sides were rolled in so that we ended up with a mat smaller than the original Twister game. Needless to say, it was fun. We also went to the New South Wales Art Museum for a free concert with this year’s Australian Idol winner, Wes Carr (woo!). Yeah, that was cool too. Tomorrow, I have my service placement, (which by the way is called street teams, where we go to certain streets in Sydney and do volunteer work) at a closer location (thank goodness) and then hang out in the Sydney before the Mardi Gras parade tomorrow night! Look for pictures coming soon, hopefully.

I miss you all and enjoy your comments/Facebook posts/ AIM conversations/Skype chats! Much love!

P.S. Just fyi, cursing is very common, and acceptable, in any Australian conversation no matter how young, old, religious, high-class, whatever. This is a big change from Taylor’s campus, of course, but it does make life more interesting and jokes funnier. For example, while strolling down a picturesque beach on a beautiful day, it is very common to hear an eight year old boy yell affectionately to his friend, “I’m gonna f**king kill you!” Or in a classroom, a lecturer may apologize that his/her material is as boring as bat sh*t and a student may tell another to either shut the f**k up or go to hell. (Notice I use asterisks because for all of you in America, all of this may be way too explicit.) All of us Americans were not only forewarned of this in our orientation, but we were also told that it is quite reasonable for us to pick up this language. All of this to say, if I come home cussing like a sailor, blame Australia.

25 Februrary 2009

So I know it’s been a while since my last post. Sorry. I started my first week of classes on Monday and it’s all going quite well. Although it is a bummer because it seems like I have class in the afternoons, when a lot of people have class in the mornings and then go to Bondi Beach while I’m stuck in class…but other than that classes are so great!
Today, being Ash Wednesday, a large group of us went to St. James Anglican Church in Sydney for the service. St. James is a very high form of Anglican churches, and we were told that although Anglican is the main church in Australia, most are not as formal as this one. It was unlike the church services that I am used to, but I really enjoyed it. They purified the church with incense, the choir sang in Greek and Latin, the priest sang his words, and we knelt a lot, but it was a great experience. When our group talked afterward to “de-brief”, I talked with some people about how grand God seemed to be. The music was so formal and beautiful and the church was so vast, that it made us, as humans, seem so insignificant, and God seem so amazing. Much of the service’s emphasis was also about how lowly and undeserving we humans are, begging Christ to have mercy on our souls, which again exemplifies the greatness of God. Although St. James was an extremely different church from what I know and am used to, it was still a place where God was. I felt his presence in the unfamiliar place, and was reminded that He is everywhere. And, walking around Sydney afterwards with ashes all over my forehead was a plus, too. So yay, lent – bring it on. Oh, and I’m giving up shopping haha.
So yeah, that’s really all that’s been happening, sorry this is a little boring. Classes are fun, Sydney is sweet, and vegemite, I learned, in small doses, isn’t really that bad. Still no kangaroos, but you should all be interested to know that there really are as many fine looking surfers in Australia as you may think there are. Maybe I should have given up stalking hot surfers for lent??

20 February 2009

It is 6:30 pm on Friday night (although I won’t post this until much later because we STILL haven’t gotten the internet pass code!!), my roommates and I are watching some Australian TV, waiting for dinner, and planning our night of exploration in Sydney. Although we did have an “orientation” of Sydney yesterday, we do not feel confident on how to get around as we ran around for two solid hours on a scavenger hunt of the thirteen most popular spots in Sydney (yes, it was devastatingly hot and yes, there are blisters all over my feet!). After the scavenger hunt (my group unfortunately did not win), we went on a Sydney Harbour cruise and got great views of the popular and breathtaking Opera House and Harbour Bridge. A delicious Mongolian BBQ dinner followed and then we were left free to walkabout Sydney and find our own way home. My roommates and I were fairly optimistic on finding our way home with no trouble, but after conquering the bus portion of the trip (we did have to wait for a second bus because the first once was full), we got lost in the hill-ridden, winding streets of our neighborhood. It was dark, we were all exhausted, and we tried to go into the wrong house. Seriously, we actually walked onto the porch and knocked on the door of a house that was not ours. For all of you who think you know me, what was I doing as we were lost: 1) leading the group farther and farther into the wrong direction; 2) consulting the map printout that our host mom gave us under the dim light of the street lamp; or 3) squatting in a nearby neighbors yard dying of laughter and hoping not to wet myself as I had been due for a restroom stop since we were denied access to the first bus. Yes, I was girl number three.
So now, we have finally finished all of our scheduled orientation events, school starts on Monday, and we are embarking on our first weekend in Australia! And as I said before, tonight is devoted to Sydney, and tomorrow, weather permitting, will be an all day exhibition at Bondi Beach (sorry to all of you are in the blistering cold at home!).
I still have not tried Vegemite (although I did smell it, and it smells like straight yeast), and have not seen a kangaroo, koala, or any of the thousands of dangerous/poisonous animals that infest Australia. I am getting along with my roommates and host family really well, but I miss all of you! I hope to talk to you all on the Internet soon because we are hunting down our host brother Jared for the blasted password!

19 February 2009

I am finally in Australia and finally have a spare moment to write this blog (but we don’t have the password for our host family’s internet so it won’t be posted until tonight); it is 6:30 am. Because of the jet lag my roommates and I were all exhausted at about 9:00 last night and all are up now.
I guess I should start at the beginning, which will be at LAX, where I dragged my over packed luggage from baggage claim, through a long hallway, outside, and to another building that was the chaos of the international terminal. After much searching, and with aching arms thanks to my dear bags, I found my group, checked-in, and passed through security. I now had two hours before boarding time at my gate with the other ASC-ers (Australian Study Center students). We then boarded a bus, which took us to our plane, where we entered our home for the next fifteen hours. My seat was 66C. So yeah, it was a large plane. The flight was rather uneventful, we ate, watched movies, slept watched movies, ate again, and just like that we were in Sydney.
After going through customs and getting our bags, we boarded a bus with directors of our program and some Aussie students and went directly to our school, Wesley Institute, for orientation. We toured our library, lunched, went to a rules and safety information session, and then toured our school and adjacent streets. Wesley is in a quite picturesque neighborhood surrounded by nice-looking homes. Lyons Street, which has a lot of restaurants and shops that the students utilize, is where we will take or bus to and from school.
After the tours, and another information session, we had afternoon tea and met some other Aussie students. Wesley is a commuter school so many students do not live nearby; it is normal for them to travel up to two hours to get to school every day. My host home is only about a 20-25 minute bus ride from campus, and after arvo tea (afternoon tea), my host mom Gerry picked me and my other three roommates up and took us there! Our home is very nice, two girls to a room, and we share a bathroom and a common living area. We do not have many rules or chores, but we are only allowed one five-minute shower a day because Australia is still in a drought even though Sydney did recently receive a great deal of rain. We unpacked, savored all five minutes of a much-needed shower, and ate a delicious dinner where we met our two host brothers, Jared and Conor. After dinner, there was not much activity as my roommates and I were all over due for some sleep.
Today we are going back to Wesley for more orientation, but we are going into Sydney this afternoon! Hopefully I’ll have some great pictures for the next post!

Note:

The title for this blog has been up to much debate before I left home. I wanted it to be creative, yet not cheesy, avoiding everything like “What’s up from down under!” or “A short walkabout Australia”. So despite all the wonderful suggestions (especially from my mother), the title is Kairos, which was an expression given to our group by our director to inspire our semester. It means a unique moment in time, a term that beautifully describes this semester, and is developed even further with this quote:

“The hour [which] is the God-given moment of destiny not to be shrunk from but seized decisiveness, the floodtide of opportunity and demand in which the unseen waters of the future surge down to the present.” (Oz Guinness)

So without further ado, I invite you, all my friends and family, to join me via this blog, on my own personal Australian Kairos!