Coming from someone who doesn't fly from New York to Dallas without a hitch, a slick 15 hour hop from LAX to Brisbane, Australia was not high on my list of easy things to accomplish in life. Luckily for me, and for everyone on board, I kept myself quiet and relatively asleep for most of the flight until the last four hours where I may have made a flight attendant hold my hand for 45 minutes of turbulence...but that's neither here nor there...I made it to Australia in one piece and relatively without incident. Mission accomplished. I waited for Lacy and Molly outside of the arrival gate for quite a while, but soon remembered that there were over 200 people on board, leading me to the decision that my time would be better spent making forward progress, so I headed for customs. My two obscenely oversized and beat up bags were part of the first set of bags on to the carousel and I definitely received my fair share of odd looks as I lugged them back to my little bag cart and struggled to balance my next three months of living materials in a suitable manner. It was fine - I would have stared at me too. I waited against the wall for Molly and Lacy to clear customs and come collect their bags and watched the drug sniffing beagle trot around and invade everyone's personal bubble that his handler would let him near. I chuckled when he deliberately sat down next to a bag belonging to a man with a suspicious toupee and then laughed audibly as he was carted off to a back room for what was sure to be hours of dead end questions over a muffin or a sandwich that he probably had in his bag which Snoopy clearly took an interest in. It's amazing what's entertaining at 5:50am two days later after a 15 hour flight. That reminds me, how was everyone's September 2nd? I have been robbed of a day seeing as we took off a little before midnight on September 1 and landed on September 3rd. Bizarre. I hope it was a decent day. Anyway, when the other two finally emerged with their bags we made a break for the exit just as Snoopy and his handler were coming out of the back room. He marched over to my bags, did a few loops with his trusty sniffer going full throttle, and then walked away. Sorry, Snoopy, no drugs for you. Molly was suddenly not behind me so I turned around and low and behold the damn dog was sitting down starring at her bag, burning it with his beady little beagle eyes. I was positive this meant that it would be days before we saw her again as someone had clearly slipped their daily heroin or cocaine into her bag without her knowing. Instead of dragging her off to the dreaded airport back room, Snoopy's handler shooed Molly away upon reaching the decision that she was most likely not someone's drug mule. Maybe the Tory Burch gave it away? Molly had arranged for a driver to pick us up from the airport to take us to our hotel which he had to stay in for the night so that we didn't have to deal with cabs at 6 in the morning in a strange country. We located a nice little 5 foot nothing asian man named William holding a sign with her name on it and followed him to his van. Watching this poor little man try to load all of our oversized bags into this car was literally like watching the worst game of Tetris ever, but he somehow made it work, Tim Gunn style. We were immediately on the lookout for Kangaroos as someone in the airport told us that they were "just like deer in Australia," and that they were "everywhere." Yeah, everywhere in the Outback and the suburbs, buddy. Reason told me that no self respecting kangaroo would ever be seen bouncing around the side of a highway, but then again, deer in the States are all about highways, so I guess it was a toss up. Anyway, about 20 minutes later we made it to our interim hotel and proceeded with the terrible task of moving these monstrous bags out of the van, up the curb, up the steps, through the lobby and into the elevator. Talk about a spectacle. Things were falling out of bags, bags themselves were falling, we were falling, it was a mess; but at 6am, everything is a mess.
It was at this point that I learned Australian Lesson #1: They Don't Tip. Ever. Unfortunately for me, my father taught me well and I always tip people who do me a civil service, don't hassle me, are nice and accomplish the task incident free. William accomplished all of those things, and fortunately for William, in my semi-sedated overtired and confused state I was feeling very generous. I proceeded to tip William a cool 15 Australian dollars, which he practically ripped out of my hand and then dove into the car and sped away upon receiving. At the time I remember thinking, 'wow, he must really have somewhere to be.' Now, looking back, I know his thought process was something more along the lines of, 'JACKPOT: Stupid American too tired to use discretion!" I am yet to live this misunderstanding down as Molly and Lacy have quite loudly reminded me every time we go anywhere NOT TO TIP. I guess I deserve it. After having to make two elevator trips because our luggage not only weighed too much, but also simply would not fit into the elevator, I mean, "the lift," all at once, we collapsed into the hotel room. We soon learned Australian Lesson #2: the light switches here are backwards, or upside down, or what have you. In order to turn anything ON here, you press the BOTTOM of the switch, which is just counterintuitive and simply should not be. Immediately after that, we learned Australian Lesson #3: In order to actually use the electricity in the room, you have to insert the spare key card into the little slip on the wall by the door, forcing you to turn out the lights when you leave. These Australians are clearly ahead of us on the whole Green Planet thing...although most people seem to be these days, so I guess that's a moot point. I am sad to report that we figured neither of these little nuggets of information out on our own, as Molly eventually called down to the front desk after we admitted defeat to the electricity. After taking a brief but life giving nap, we headed out into downtown Brisbane to explore and walk off the jet lag. Our first stop was a sushi restaurant a few blocks down the hill. Australian Lesson #4 was learned here. Australian sushi is remarkably different than what we're used to in the states. For starters, the "tuna" that they use for any type of tuna roll is actually the type of tuna that you find in a tuna fish sandwich for example - that mushy grayish colored sushi/mayo concoction that has NO business being in a sushi roll - yeah, that kind of tuna. Also, if you ask for a spicy anything, you get whatever roll you ordered with some sort of chili pepper around the outside of the roll in place of spice. Bizarre. After that little experience, we headed down to what looked like a huge mall in the center of town where the other two began their epic search for "a regular cup of coffee" which is still going on as we speak. Australian Lesson #5 (we learned a lot of lessons on Day 1) taught us, or the coffee drinkers of the group, that you cannot just order a coffee. You can only order a cappuccino, or a frap, or something with a description word in front of it, as a simple cup of black coffee for example, is not easy to come by or at least commonly ordered. From here we found an electronic store and bought ourselves some pathetic Go phones for $30 that would work in Australia. Now that I'm using this phone every day it's literally like having a phone from 1995. I've forgotten how to text on anything where there's a big number with three little letters underneath it, T9 is the most complicated function ever, and it takes me 25 minutes to construct a 10 word text. Mom, I'm sorry for ever assuming you could text on a phone like that. You were right, it was way out of your league, as it's way out of my league now that I'm part of the iPhone nation. After that shopping experience, we did a little more wandering, then made our way back to the hotel to nurse our jet lag and check out Australian TV. It was the most perfectly stereotypical experience I have ever had. We pressed "ON," and who's voice do we hear before the picture shows up, but the late, great Steve Irwin. We concluded the eventful day one by walking to the bar across the street and had some good fried comfort food for dinner before crashing pretty early. Our arrival to the Sunburned country coincided with the Brisbane Festival so we capped off the night with some fireworks over the River that we could see all over the city. It was definitely a great welcome to the country. Of course, I just assumed that they were celebrating our arrival, but the bartender shattered my high hopes by explaining that it was for the festival. Nonetheless, it was a great end to the night.
The next day, we finally made our way to our new home, Bond University located on the Gold Coast about an hour outside of Brisbane in Robina, about a 30 minute bus ride from Surfer's Paradise. If I ever complain again, someone should hit me with a blunt object. The school is incredible. It was built in the 80's, so things are very modern and massive and clean. There's an awesome lake and tiered waterfall right in the heart of campus with a huge arched building stretching over the waterfall that sprawls down and flanks the lake on both sides. Molly and I are both living in the South Tower that overlooks the lake and the rest of campus - well, Molly's room does at least. My room on the other hand, happens to look down onto the school dumpster and loading bay for all dining machinery which is lovely at 5am - however I'm not complaining. My room is massive. I have my own bathroom and full shower attached to my room, and more floor space than I know what to do with. AND! "Housekeeping" comes in every thursday and takes our "rubbish bins" and vacuums. It feels like a hotel at times. The building itself was pretty quiet until about a week later when the Australians came back from their "spring holidays" aka spring break, as most of my building is comprised of Australians, not study abroad kids. Anyway, we spent the next week basically playing. "O-Week" or orientation week started right away, but was basically complete by the first day so we literally spent the next few days going down to the beach at Surfer's Paradise, dodging jellyfish by day and getting our fill of clubbing in by night. No complaints - Ever. It's a big change relying on public transportation to get from point A to point B, and we soon realized that a bus schedule needs to be checked, double checked and triple checked before it is deemed reliable. We made some new Canadian friends right off the bat who live in an apartment down in Surfer's Paradise so we spent a lot of time with them that week and had a ton of fun. It was thanks to them that we first experienced the wonder that is Vegemite. Australian Lesson #6: Vegemite is foul. This stuff hast to be radioactive or at least toxic in some way - nothing digestible should ever taste like this. When you bite down the initial horror is slow to take affect. At first it unpleasantly burns your taste buds and is then very slightly reminiscent of a vodka shot with a terrible after bite. To add salt to the wound, it sticks to the back of your teeth in the most solid way possible, and by the time you realize that, you're too afraid to get your tongue near it to scrape the congealed substance off of your teeth. It's a terribly stressful ordeal that lasts about 35 seconds per bite, and it doesn't get any better the second time around. Cross that one off the list: Tried Vegemite, Chose Life.
Classes have started by now, and apparently Australians are trained at a young age to be content with 2 and 3 hour classes. Australian Lesson #7: Australians are very obedient people. Only the Americans and other international students seem to be horrified by the idea of a 3 hour class, whereas the Australians show up with rations of food and the occasional red bull to make it through the class without even batting an eye at it. By the time I hit hour 2 I'm practically a homicidal lunatic, but these Aussies can just cruise right through to hour three, then walk across campus and do it again. Speaking of walking across campus...allow me to quickly address the layout of some of these buildings. The buildings are all very clearly labelled numerically to make life easy for us challenged international students, and the classrooms are also very clearly marked as well. So building 6, floor 3, room 27 should not be hard to find at all. Unfortunately, the rooms go from 26 to 29 with no warning and rooms 27 and 28 seem to exist in the ether. I was literally at the point where I was giving myself a half hour to find these rooms before class as many of the entrances to these rooms are actually located outside of the building. WHO MAKES A BUILDING LIKE THAT?!? It was like something out of a Robin Williams skit where he impersonates the jerk who designed the building as he chuckles to himself knowing that anyone looking for these rooms is totally screwed without a GPS locator or a yellow brick road. I might as well have been looking for Platform 9 and three quarters at times. Anyway after finding the damn rooms the lecture halls were actually pretty impressive as they were massive in size and very modern in design with BOND UNIVERSITY written in neon blue lights above the lecture stand and all sorts of cameras and lights capable of doing practically anything. (I had 3 hours to stare at every nook and cranny of these rooms, I know them well by now.)
The last thing I've experienced this week worth mentioning was our trip to the Canberra Wildlife Park. The desperate, aching urge to hold a koala while in Australia was finally satisfied, but first, we had to get into the park. It was quite the task moving a group of 9 people through a very slow ticket counter when we can literally see the koalas just past the gate. After buying our park tickets, we were all given bumper stickers that said, "No Tree, No Me." with a big koala head in the middle, and the phrase itself provided endless entertainment despite it's morbidity. When we finally got to the koala picture-taking-holding-zone we were like a group of giddy school girls dying to hug Bugs Bunny at six flags. The koala we held was conveniently named, "Harry," but "Stinky" would have been far better suited for him. Australian Lesson #8: The one thing that people commonly fail to mention when they discuss koalas, is that they smell - really, really bad. Not exactly a faint aroma of eucalyptus wafting from its fur. Instead, it's definitely the distinct smell of rotting wood, must, and dirt. Fortunately though, they're so freaking cute that it just doesn't matter if you're ever that close to them because all you want to do is squeeze them. They are quite literally a ball of fur with ears, that wants to sleep and eat all day. I'm totally coming back as a koala in my next life. So we all took turns holding Harry and getting our pictures taken and the tiny fleeting moments with him were cruelly short lived, but glorious regardless and I would do it again in a heartbeat...even though we practically had to scrub down with hand sanitizer afterwards, it was still awesome. After Harry, we went and quite literally hung out with the Kangaroos. We spent about an hour petting them and feeding them and wondering how on earth somebody took a rabbit's body, gave it steroids and then crossed it with a llama's face and neck. Such a weird animal, but I absolutely love them. Nobody lounges around better than a kangaroo. They literally stop walking, fall over and sprawl out in whichever way they please, whenever the spirit moves them to do so. After the roo experience, I insisted on finding the Dingo exhibit to see some Australian wolves. They were surprisingly orange. I guess I always thought that in the pictures they just seemed red or something, but these dogs are about as orange as the fruit, and much more dog like than I thought. Definitely clarified some of questions I had about the origins of my mutts at home...Kita has most definitely got some dingo in her, apparently they come in black too. The wombats evaded us, but we were able to see a tasmanian devil which is literally the least threatening animal ever. Warner Brothers took that idea and ran with it when they designed the Taz of my childhood. They didn't even get the color right, these suckers were definitely black, not brown, and also did not move one inch in 20 minutes, let alone run around in a tornado the way Taz allegedly does. While waiting for the tasmanian devil to move, I encountered life threatening animal number 2 (the first were the jellyfish at Surfer's Paradise.) We discovered a spider a little larger than my pointer finger sitting, poised to attack me under the railing of the enclosure. Australian Lesson #9: Google was right - Australian spiders really do hide in unfair locations, and are also unreasonably large. There's just no plausible reason for a bug to reach that size. In fact, sizes like that shouldn't even be classified as bugs anymore, they should fall under the "small rodents and animals" category. That thing belonged in the Amazon of Ecuador with it's tarantula friends I met a few years back, I'm sure his family misses him.
Anyway, that's about as far as I've gotten in Australia, I'm only about ankle deep and I love it already. The people really are as nice as they say which was a really nice surprise. I guess New York has just hardened me to assume that it was just an exaggeration of a few tourists who had some nice guides, but the people in general are definitely a kind and genuine group that I've encountered thus far. My fingers are crossed that the spiders stay at bay until the next time I update this blog, so that I won't have to dedicate another paragraph to my bewilderment that they even exist. It's definitely called a rugged country for a reason!
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