Aussie Rules Football

This week has been a flurry of preparations. Tomorrow I am flying to Melbourne for the week and next week the ASC is going to the Outback. I’ve been busy booking tickets for Melbourne and getting caught up on my school homework. For the next two weeks I’ll be travelling Australia!

This week has had some excitement of its own as well. I spent the beginning of it at the school all day every day working on homework. Friday’s Indigenous class was watching the movie Rabbit Proof Fence and hearing the stories of two actual members of the Stolen Generation. Their stories were heartbreaking to hear and all we’ve been learning about their history was really given a reality it didn’t have before.

On Friday night April and I went down to the markets on the Rocks since this was the last weekend it was open. It’s an open air market with stands full of arts and crafts like jewelry and candles. Several other groups of ASCers were going also and we all met up and hung out for the night in town.

Last night we went to an AFL (Australian Football League) game at Olympic Park. It was awesome. Aussie rules football is a cross between soccer, NFL (referred to as “grid iron” here) and rugby. They play on an oval field similar in size to a soccer field and there are four poles at each end of the field for goals. The game is played by kicking and passing the ball around the field. You can’t run more than 5 meters without bouncing or passing the ball. You must either punt it across the field or pass it with an underhand serve type motion like in volleyball. The ball moves back and forth across the field by interceptions and tackles. When a player is tackled the game doesn’t stop like NFL, it simply bounces around the field until someone gets a hold of it and the play continues. If the ball goes out of bounds, sometimes in goes to the opposite team, and if the call is unclear, the referee will throw it back in behind his back. The players don’t wear any padding and they do wear really short shorts. They also shave their legs and put Vaseline on them. But don’t be fooled, the average size of an AFL player is 6’ 6” and the game is very aggressive. You score points by kicking the ball through the poles. If it goes through the center two poles it’s worth six points, if it goes through the outside poles it’s only one point. We had some of the best seats in the house right behind the goalposts and five of us (myself included) had seats in the third row! Unfortunately, the Sydney Swans lost to Victoria’s St. Kilda, but it was a close game the entire time and we only lost by 8 points. We weren’t expected to do even half that well. AFL is not as popular in NSW as it is in Victoria so many of the 19 AFL teams in Australia are from the Melbourne area. St. Kilda was the runner-up at the championship game last year.

It was also of note that the game was played in the Olympic Stadium. Outside was a bunch of poles with the names of all the Olympians who competed in the 2004 Sydney Olympic Games. Among the list of Campbells there I was of course. Dan, you were on there too!

Tomorrow afternoon myself, April, and three other girls from the ASC are flying to Melbourne and staying in the Youth Hostel until Thursday. It’s project week up at Wesley and we have no classes. We’re basically going to tour the city, attempt to see some penguins, enjoy the shopping and arts culture of Melbourne and then we’re taking the train back to Sydney Thursday night and not getting back until 7am Friday morning. One we get back it is up in the air whether we go north to Foster with our host parents for the weekend, and then Monday mid-afternoon we’re headed off for the Outback, or “back of Burke.” It’s going to be a 2-day, 12-hour drive and HOT with lots of flies, but I’m so excited. This is going to be a crazy two weeks but there’s so much to do! After we get back it will be halfway through the semester already and then we will have a lot of school to plow through. But there’s still so much to do in Sydney. There’s a whole half of the city I haven’t seen yet and I’m planning on seeing a ballet at the Opera House soon. Before we know it we’ll be off for New Zealand and then home.

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Rebecca Campbell and I am a university student from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Right now I am studying abroad for the semester in Sydney, Australia.

During my time in Australia, I have been learning about the Indigenous nations of Australia, the Aboriginal people, who represent the oldest surviving cultures in the world. Since the European invasion in the late 1700s, they have been robbed of their culture, land, and dignity and forced to assimilate with European culture. Their sovereignty has never been formally recognized through the offer of any kind of treaty or settlement and were even once regarded as flora and fauna rather than people until 1967. The government has taken their children from them and forced them to work to build an advanced western nation they have no place in. The children who were stolen are known as the Stolen Generation and were taken from their families as late as 1972, meaning many of these people are as old as you are.

I am writing to urge you to take the time to recognize the Aboriginal nations of Australia during your visit to Australia in June through a visit to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. The tent embassy was established in 1972 to protest the atrocities being served to the Aboriginal people and to represent their sovereignty and rights, which have been largely ignored by the Australian government even today. The people there are willing to share with you their stories and tell you more about the situation. Your recognition of their struggle would mean so much to them.

The stories of the Stolen Generation and of the Aboriginal population are heartbreaking and I have had the opportunity to listen to several of them firsthand. The relationship between the Aboriginal peoples and other cultures that now inhabit Australia are in desperate need of healing and reconciliation. I believe that this begins with the recognition of those who were here before us.

Please show the traditional owners of this land the recognition and dignity that they deserve.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Respectfully,

Rebecca Campbell

Structure and selected quotes from Melanie Vacik, Best Semester 2010.

Canberra

I haven’t written in over a week, so a lot has happened, especially this weekend. On Wednesday, April and I attempted once more to go to the beach, but ran out of time when we got into the city since the bus was leaving so late. We decided to celebrate our bad luck by getting a Gaytime – which is actually an Australian popsicle that is very popular here and for good reason.

On Wednesday night April and a group of ASC students went to see Wicked at the Capital Theater in Sydney. Mike invited me to play cards at a friend of his’ house so I went along and played 500, which is somewhat akin to Euchre only with an 11-card hand. It was a fun night though everyone raved about how awesome Wicked was. I’d really like to see it in the states sometime.

On Thursday we went to the travel agency Sue had told us about and discovered that at this point a flight alone to Cairns was going to be over $500, so that’s out of the question for next week. We’re planning now on going to Melbourne with a few other American girls.

This weekend was also the Canberra trip. We left the school in a charter bus a 6am Friday and arrived in Canberra around 10:30am. The first stop was the New Parliament house just to use the bathroom. The New Parliament house is built half into a hill so that grass grows up over the top of the roof. The reason for this is that the government should never be higher than the people.

After that we went to the Indonesian embassy and the New Zealand high commission. At New Zealand, a woman of Maori descent sang us a traditional welcome and also before and after the speaker, who was a New Zealand politician. He gave a great talk about New Zealand’s difficulties being a small nation isolated in the South Pacific. They are no smaller than any other small republics like the Scandinavian countries, but their isolation and dependence on Australia makes them have to be doubly as clever and on top of things to even be considered for an invitation to an international round table. I can also officially say I've been on Indonesian and New Zealand soil now.

After that we visited the Aboriginal Tent embassy, which was different from anything I have ever seen. It was located just across the street from the Old Parliament house (which the government outgrew in the 1960s) on a park land listed as a National Heritage site. On it a group of Aboriginal advocates have pitched their tents and have been living there in protest for 10 years. They have created their own “embassy” asking the Australian government for some kind of change. The Aboriginal people of Australia have never been given a treaty of any kind like our Native Americans. A woman named Auntie Jude who was part of the stolen generation talked to us on the park steps about her tragic history and her wish just for some basic rights and benefits in reparation for the way she and her people for the way they have been treated. She was taken from her family because she was a half-cast child and placed in a white family for her entire childhood. Only when she was an adult did she finally go back to meet her real family and come to know them better. She’s been living at the tent embassy for about a year now since two days before Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aboriginal people. We were all really touched by her story and felt very strongly about what has happened to these people. The Aboriginal population is down to about 2% and most of them are now involved in alcoholism, and drugs and live in slums. Many Australians are embarrassed by the problem, but they are the cause of it. Only a couple generations ago these people lived as part of the land, and now their entire culture has been demolished.

After that we checked in at the YHA in Canberra and had pizza for dinner. After dinner we had a long “processing” session about the day and talked a lot about anti-Americanism and the way America is viewed here in Australia. Before I went to bed I walked around Canberra to see the city with Haley and some other kids and played catch phrase. It was a great time to bond with some other people that I haven’t spent much time with and I feel like I’ve gotten to know a lot more of the ASCers after this trip.

The next morning we headed off to the National Portrait Gallery. I was soooo excited about this stop and it was amazing. We were only there for about 45 min. so I had to be fast but it wasn’t a very big museum and the painting were amazing. I wrote down tons of names of artists and Australian who had been painted to look up later. Next we went to the National Museum, which was a lot of history and such but still enjoyable, and had lunch beside Canberra’s manmade lake. Then we went to the National Gallery where we went to with Brian and Sue in February. The Master’s exhibit that we visited had been extended two more weeks at the National Gallery and line was insane. It extended probably 4x longer than it was when we went and snaked all the way through the museum. I am so glad we went earlier! The permanent artwork in the rest of the museum was beautiful as well and my favorite piece was a full-length portrait by Australian artist Hilda Rix Nicholas called Les fleurs dédaignées. The gallery also had a Jackson Pollack, a couple Monet’s, the Chuck Close, and a couple Andy Warhols, though I liked the more traditional paintings done by some Australian artists in the Modern period.

The last place we went was the War Memorial. It is the second largest war memorial after the one in London and is really quite nice. We had a guided tour through the exhibits and then stayed around for the closing ceremony at 5, which was the trumpet song played at the last post, kind of like taps. Finally we headed home exhausted and got back at 9:30 pm Saturday night. Kimberly and Melanie kept us busy all day both days down to the minute but everyone did a good job following directions and being where they were supposed to be even with such a large group. We were told we would be left behind anywhere we weren’t back to the bus in time and provided with an itinerary and numbers to call a taxi to take us to the next place. Fortunately that didn’t happen to anyone on this trip.

The Nation of the Long Weekend

Now closes Week 3 and I've been here almost a month! I've suddenly become aware that my friends at home are having their spring breaks! That seems so strange since it's beautiful and sunny down here and school has just started. My first break is in two weeks though for Easter when we go to the Outback. There's also a week before Easter break for "project week" at Wesley. It's mostly for the drama students who are preparing an Easter play but my classes have nothing due, so I have an extra week off! I'm toying with the idea of going to the Great Barrier Reef or to Melbourne with some other ASCers. We learned this week that Australia is known as "the nation of the long weekend" because Australians don't like to work that much. For example, ANZAC (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) Day falls on a Sunday this year, so the Australians made Monday a day off for a public holiday. So I can understand that two weeks off is a relative necessity every once in a while.

Earlier this week April and I made Mexican enchiladas and guacamole for our host family. We took the bus to the mall to buy some supplies and ended up in an accident. A couple of school buses were stopped at a bus stop  and our driver tried to get around them. Instead, she caught the rear fender of the bus on a guard rail and pealed back the whole corner of the bus! A literal fender bender. We all had to get off and wait for the next bus to come. What we didn't realize was that we were only about two blocks away and could have just walked! The cooking went really well, seeing that neither of us had ever cooked enchiladas or even peeled an avocado. Mexican is not very common over here so a lot of people really miss it and it's a unique food for most Australians.

Last night was the first family night where a smaller group of ASCers go to Kimberly's apartment, have dinner, and hang out. We had a great group and had a ton of food. Everyone wanted Mexican food, so we cooked Mexican for dinner and had some great conversations. After that we headed home on the buses and saw Sydney's weekend night life - so different from the day! Everyone is dressed up and out clubbing or going to pubs. We probably looked ridiculous in our street clothes and all carrying our backpacks from school.

This weekend I'm tied down until I get my latest graphic design project done. There seems to be no time to work on it during the week so I'm doing homework on Saturday morning:(. The picture at the top is from a park on the bay really close to my house. Isn't it beautiful (the view I mean)?

The Pacific

This week had its ups and downs. School picked up and there wasn’t much of anything to do to keep me distracted. I was missing home and feeling a little out of place, but there were some really good moments in the week too. The other night it poured all evening and into the night. And I mean poured non-stop all night. It rained earlier in the week too, and this amount of rain is quite abnormal here. April and I had no plans for the night so we decided to go into town to see Alice and Wonderland, but because of the rain we decided against it. A ten-minute walk in the rain to the bus stop just didn’t sound appealing.

Rain was also on the forecast for the rest of the weekend, but yesterday morning we woke up to some beautiful sunshine. I went in to Wesley in the morning to practice my violin and get internet and then April and I were going to try to make it to Town Hall to meet some other ASCers to go to Bondi for the afternoon. We ended up getting a late start and then the bus was almost half an hour late so we took the ferry to Manly instead. The ferry ride was about 20 minutes and very beautiful. The sun was beginning to set since it was around 4:00 and we arrived at the beach at the end of the day. The ferry passes the break in the harbor going out to the ocean and stops at Manly on the harbor side. You get off the ferry on the harbor side and follow the crowds down a narrow street and out onto the beach. It is absolutely stunning.

The water is so blue and clear and the sand is impeccably clean. It was late so we could only stay for about an hour but just standing in the surf was amazing and so beautiful with the sun setting behind us. It was my first time in the Pacific. We saw heaps of surfers out riding the waves but the area you could swim in was only about 10 yards wide. Not sure why this was yet, though from what I’ve heard it could have been blue bottle sightings or shark sightings or the swells were too big. Yikes. Regardless, we are definitely planning on going back to the beach soon.

Yesterday night we went to see Alice and Wonderland in 3D with Brian and Sue. I enjoyed seeing it and they did a really good job with it. This morning we went to the Anglican Church with Brian and I really appreciated the service. We have to go to a Catholic Church and an Assemblies of God church pretty soon to complete our tour of the denominations for class. It's another beautiful day with a nice breeze. For now we’re just chilling and keeping updated with you people at home. I hope spring comes soon!

Service Placement

Today I went to my first service placement visit. I walked down to an entirely new bus station, waited for 20 minutes by myself, and got on a bus going somewhere I’d never been in my life. After a short time of initial confusion and stopping once to ask for directions when I got off at my stop, I made it to the church right at 3:00. The place I was going was a Baptist church in Ashfield where the Wesley Youth Service hosts an after school program for kids 12 to 18 on Tuesday afternoons. Basically I just come in to hang out with the kids and have fun. The ASC program requires us to complete 35 hours of service before the end of the semester.

The kids stop in after school to have a snack and then play ping-pong, Wii, card games, or art projects. I played ping-pong with Dennis (my supervisor) before the kids arrived and he told me I would give some of the boys a run for their money. I played for a while with one young boy and then joined the coloring team out on the footpath (sidewalk) for a while. A kid named Jessie peppered me with questions about American pop culture for probably and hour and then proceeded to fill me in on what I didn’t know. That’s definitely one thing I've been surprised by in Australia - all their pop culture is American so they want to know what it’s really like over in America and if we’ve seen everything they’ve seen. Unfortunately I’m very limited in my knowledge of pop culture so I don’t get very far in those conversations. It’s very strange when someone from the other side of the world knows more about Adam Sandler or Paris Hilton than you do.

After I helped clean up, I headed back down the street to look for my bus stop. I ended up getting a little lost and got on the wrong bus. I was the only one still sitting on the bus when the driver called “last stop” and I had no idea where I was. Turns out I was headed in the wrong direction on the right bus. I asked the driver if the bus had already been by my stop, yes, and he was very nice and told me he could drop me off back where I had come from before he ended his shift. I was very grateful and found the real bus stop no problem after he pointed me in the right direction. I got home a bit late for tea (an alternate word for dinner) but it was an interesting experience and the more places I go the quicker I learn the public transportation.

Today in the View from Australia class we talked about the difference between Australian thinking and American thinking. It’s not a surface thing that you see right away, nor is it easy to spot unless you know what you’re looking for. We look the same as them, we dress the same, we speak the same language. But it all goes back to our “national myths” as they are called. In America we speak of the “American Dream.” We believe that everyone can achieve a great life if they only dream big and work hard. Any hint of socialism (think healthcare) and we are off on how we have worked for our money, we deserve to have our own benefits, and if someone doesn’t have what we have, it’s their fault.

In Australia it’s just the opposite. The Australian view of life is very fatalistic. They see themselves as the children of petty thieves, unjustly judged, thrown into a harsh wilderness and left to survive on their own. Life is only as good as life gives you and you shouldn’t expect more. The “laid-back Aussie attitude” stems from this belief. People don’t set high expectations or goals because they think they may be setting themselves up for failure. They are much more apt to let the government take care of things. I really resonate with the “let life happen” mantra of the Australians. I’m kind of a chill person and like to let life take me where it wants to, though I definitely feel like goals are good things for us to have in order for us to make progress. Somewhere there is a happy medium, but I think I may be Australian at heart.

Week Two

It's the beginning of another week here, our second one. All my classes went well last week and today I have music ensemble and graphic design. A girl in my ensemble class has an extra violin and she is going to lend it to me for the semester so I don't have to rent one. Today it is raining and has been on and off since last night. It hasn't been as hot as it was at first and it is coming to the end of the hot humid weather the Aussies say.

Yesterday April and I went to church with Sue, our host mom, and then went downtown to the Rocks to finish an assignment for class. Sue has gone to the same church since she was in Sunday School. Her parents didn't go to church but they sent her to Sunday School up the road anyway until she became a Christian when she was a teenager and started to go herself. It's a very small church, maximum 30 people, which Sue said was a very good number. Church attendance is very low in Australia and a church of 40 or 50 people is doing quite well, excepting Hillsong of course.

The Rocks is the oldest part of the original Sydney colony from the late 1700s and is full of brick streets and little shops. Our assignment was to visit a number of historical sights. That's me standing awkwardly in front of a sculpture of the first settlers in the Rocks. At one point we found ourselves beneath the Harbour bridge and saw a group of bridgeclimbers all suited up and making their way up to the top. I wish I could do the climb but it costs almost $200. We made it home just before the rain. On Saturday night the Jago's son Andrew and his wife Marika came over for tea and we played a German board game with them (Marika is from Germany and studied at Wesley where she met Andrew). Apparently Germans buys more board game than any other country in the world.

I'm sitting in the courtyard at Wesley just now and I can hear the dance students' music wafting across the campus. The campus is literally four long two-story buildings of classes arranged in a square with the student center in the middle. We've been told to expect to see only 200 of the 400 total students regularly on campus. The other 200 are doing distance education and only come in once a week or so. My three graphic design classes have almost all the same people in them so hopefully I can get to know some of them.

There isn't much on the schedule for this week besides classes except that my service placement is beginning on Tuesday. I am going to be helping with the youth group at Wesley Mission in Ashfield from 3 to 6. I've gotta find my way there on the bus by myself so fingers crossed that works out.