I love stories. I think stories are my favorite things in the world.
I love spending hours with books, and getting lost in someone else’s imagination. I’m a firm believer that you can’t like a book if you’ve only read it once. I even like books I hate, because at least they made me have an opinion on them.
But really, my favorite thing is sitting with friends and family, and listening to them tell their stories and adventures. And it’s pretty safe to say that I know and am related to some of the most interesting people in the world, and their stories are the best I’ve ever heard. And I wish they were mine.
There comes a point where I’m tired of listening and want to do some talking. And when that time comes, I don’t have much to say.
Maybe you’re one of those people that always have stories to tell. But maybe you’re like me and haven’t had many adventures yet. But I decided to change that.
So I came to Australia for life-changing experiences.
And it frustrates me that there are people here content to have a normal semester. It’s like they came for the photo ops, and don’t want anything else. But I don’t want to be like that. I want more than a profile picture with a koala. I want experiences. I want stories. I want drama. I want my exploits here to require courage. I want people to hear my stories and be affected like other people’s stories have affected me.
I want adventures.
But adventures don’t just happen to you. Dwarves don’t knock on your door and invite you on a journey. You don’t come home to a tollbooth waiting in your room. People don’t break down your door and tell you you’re a wizard.
I’ve come to realize, or maybe come to accept, you have to make your own adventures sometimes. And I feel like I haven’t done much about that. I’m sitting around, waiting for the wardrobe I’ve opened a thousand times before to suddenly lead somewhere new. And I’ve finally gotten tired of it. I am going to have adventures, and if I have to I’m going to make them myself. That’s what I want to do.
I’m halfway in. I’ve gotten comfortable. Now I want to get crazy. I want this half of the semester to look different.
I don’t really know how to go about creating adventures, so I’m just going to wing it.
Here’s hoping this blog will get a lot more interesting soon.
current song: Memories & Dust by Josh Pyke
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
my eyes are small, but they have seen
OUTBACK.
No seriously. Think about it. The Australian Outback.
I can’t even begin to comprehend that I went there last week. It’s like one of those places I never really believed existed. When you talk about it at home, or see it in movies, it’s in the same category as Narnia or Middle Earth or something. It’s a place you’ve heard so much about, but will never get to see.
We drove for about a day and a half, which sounds intense until you find out we stopped about every hour and a half for morning tea/lunch/afternoon tea/dinner. The bus rides were actually pretty great. We watched Australian classics like Strictly Ballroom, Bran Nue Dae, The Dish, and Australia, had good conversations and bounced along the red dirt roads until we reached our final destination of Trilby Station.
TRILBY STATION FACTS
1. Liz and Gary are the only 2 permanent residents
2. They’ve been on Trilby for about 30 years
3. They have around 20,000 sheep
4. They live on 500 sq mi of land. That’s the size of Rhode Island.
5. The closest town has a population of 36
6. If Liz wants to go into town, she has to plan it months in advance
7. 2,000 tourists visit Trilby Station every year
It was so crazy to hear about their life. They talk about flying the plane to round up sheep, being trapped on their property when the river floods, teaching their kids to drive at age 6 like it’s normal to them. And the crazy thing about it is that it IS normal to them. I can’t comprehend what it would be to live like that. Gary said that his job required working 8 days a week. But he and Liz love their life. We asked what the worst part of living in the definition of the middle of nowhere was, and he said, “There is no worst part.” And when we asked him how hard it would be for him to take a vacation he said, “Why would I ever want to do that?” It takes a certain kind of person to live like that, to say the least. But Gary and Liz were (surprisingly) totally normal. They were really down to earth and funny. If you ran into them on the sidewalk (not that you would, seeing how they rarely leave their own property) you’d never guess they live so incredibly different than you.
Our time at Trilby was so great; there really was a ton to do. In our free time we went canoeing, played in the mud, walked, climbed trees, threw boomerangs, and fished for yabbies, which are the Australian version of crawdads. But the best times were when we just sat around the campfire and talked.
As a group, we took a couple tours of the property. We drove where the iconic red dirt was and had a time of reflection where we were supposed to write letters to ourselves and I may or may not have drawn a picture instead. We walked around the buildings with Liz and she told us what it was like to shear 20,000 sheep. We drove out for photo ops, and abandoned cars, busses and houses.
One night we were there, we met a real live kangaroo hunter. Wayne. He was total Aussie, through and through. We pretty much bombarded him with questions, saw his ‘roo huntin’ truck and gun, and then talked him into going out and shooting a kangaroo and bringing it back to show us. And he did.
KANGAROO HUNTING FACTS
1. You have to be qualified/licensed/something to kill kangaroos.
2. You get so many tags, and that's how many you’re allowed.
3. You have to shoot them in the head, or you can’t sell them.
4. You can shoot for human consumption or pet food.
5. Once you shoot a kangaroo, you have to cut its head off, cut its feet off, take out some organs and then hang it up on your truck.
6. If you shoot a kangaroo with a Joey, you have to kill it, too.
The dead kangaroo was, not surprisingly, gross. It was kind of cool, and we got to see inside it and touch it and stuff. But in the end, it was just another dead rat in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. Name that movie.
Probably my favorite part of the trip was every night, we all got around the campfire and took turns telling each other our life stories. It wasn’t like a long, detailed story. Mostly we mentioned defining moments, or turning points, or themes in our lives. I just loved hearing about everyone’s life. We have a lot of discussions in class, and you get to know people’s opinions, but this is all the stuff that really matters. Hearing about everyone’s joys and pains really made me look at everyone differently, like I never really knew them at all. One of my favorite things was when one girl looked around at all of us and said, “We’re all just a bunch of broken vessels.” I think that’s beautiful. And for one of the first times on this trip I thought, “It’s going to kill me to leave these people.”
I feel like this whole experience was about things too big for me to understand. I can’t imagine what 20,000 sheep look like or how big 500 square miles is. I can’t imagine what it would be like to walk for weeks and never see another human being. I can’t count how many stars I saw in the sky and I can’t describe the feeling of being swallowed up by empty space.
God is so big, you guys. I don’t even know. But when I was there, I could see for miles in every direction. And I could see the whole sky at once. And I was overwhelmed with the vastness. You can’t measure how deep or how high or how wide it is. You’re just totally swallowed up in space. And it’s so hard to articulate how it makes you feel or what you’re thinking then. So just go there and find out for yourself.
current song: Everything Glorious by David Crowder Band
No seriously. Think about it. The Australian Outback.
I can’t even begin to comprehend that I went there last week. It’s like one of those places I never really believed existed. When you talk about it at home, or see it in movies, it’s in the same category as Narnia or Middle Earth or something. It’s a place you’ve heard so much about, but will never get to see.
We drove for about a day and a half, which sounds intense until you find out we stopped about every hour and a half for morning tea/lunch/afternoon tea/dinner. The bus rides were actually pretty great. We watched Australian classics like Strictly Ballroom, Bran Nue Dae, The Dish, and Australia, had good conversations and bounced along the red dirt roads until we reached our final destination of Trilby Station.
TRILBY STATION FACTS
1. Liz and Gary are the only 2 permanent residents
2. They’ve been on Trilby for about 30 years
3. They have around 20,000 sheep
4. They live on 500 sq mi of land. That’s the size of Rhode Island.
5. The closest town has a population of 36
6. If Liz wants to go into town, she has to plan it months in advance
7. 2,000 tourists visit Trilby Station every year
It was so crazy to hear about their life. They talk about flying the plane to round up sheep, being trapped on their property when the river floods, teaching their kids to drive at age 6 like it’s normal to them. And the crazy thing about it is that it IS normal to them. I can’t comprehend what it would be to live like that. Gary said that his job required working 8 days a week. But he and Liz love their life. We asked what the worst part of living in the definition of the middle of nowhere was, and he said, “There is no worst part.” And when we asked him how hard it would be for him to take a vacation he said, “Why would I ever want to do that?” It takes a certain kind of person to live like that, to say the least. But Gary and Liz were (surprisingly) totally normal. They were really down to earth and funny. If you ran into them on the sidewalk (not that you would, seeing how they rarely leave their own property) you’d never guess they live so incredibly different than you.
Our time at Trilby was so great; there really was a ton to do. In our free time we went canoeing, played in the mud, walked, climbed trees, threw boomerangs, and fished for yabbies, which are the Australian version of crawdads. But the best times were when we just sat around the campfire and talked.
As a group, we took a couple tours of the property. We drove where the iconic red dirt was and had a time of reflection where we were supposed to write letters to ourselves and I may or may not have drawn a picture instead. We walked around the buildings with Liz and she told us what it was like to shear 20,000 sheep. We drove out for photo ops, and abandoned cars, busses and houses.
One night we were there, we met a real live kangaroo hunter. Wayne. He was total Aussie, through and through. We pretty much bombarded him with questions, saw his ‘roo huntin’ truck and gun, and then talked him into going out and shooting a kangaroo and bringing it back to show us. And he did.
KANGAROO HUNTING FACTS
1. You have to be qualified/licensed/something to kill kangaroos.
2. You get so many tags, and that's how many you’re allowed.
3. You have to shoot them in the head, or you can’t sell them.
4. You can shoot for human consumption or pet food.
5. Once you shoot a kangaroo, you have to cut its head off, cut its feet off, take out some organs and then hang it up on your truck.
6. If you shoot a kangaroo with a Joey, you have to kill it, too.
The dead kangaroo was, not surprisingly, gross. It was kind of cool, and we got to see inside it and touch it and stuff. But in the end, it was just another dead rat in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. Name that movie.
Probably my favorite part of the trip was every night, we all got around the campfire and took turns telling each other our life stories. It wasn’t like a long, detailed story. Mostly we mentioned defining moments, or turning points, or themes in our lives. I just loved hearing about everyone’s life. We have a lot of discussions in class, and you get to know people’s opinions, but this is all the stuff that really matters. Hearing about everyone’s joys and pains really made me look at everyone differently, like I never really knew them at all. One of my favorite things was when one girl looked around at all of us and said, “We’re all just a bunch of broken vessels.” I think that’s beautiful. And for one of the first times on this trip I thought, “It’s going to kill me to leave these people.”
I feel like this whole experience was about things too big for me to understand. I can’t imagine what 20,000 sheep look like or how big 500 square miles is. I can’t imagine what it would be like to walk for weeks and never see another human being. I can’t count how many stars I saw in the sky and I can’t describe the feeling of being swallowed up by empty space.
God is so big, you guys. I don’t even know. But when I was there, I could see for miles in every direction. And I could see the whole sky at once. And I was overwhelmed with the vastness. You can’t measure how deep or how high or how wide it is. You’re just totally swallowed up in space. And it’s so hard to articulate how it makes you feel or what you’re thinking then. So just go there and find out for yourself.
current song: Everything Glorious by David Crowder Band
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
look out the window, the birds are composing
Spring Break 2010! A couple of us Americans (me, Mariah, Hannah and Callie) went with Hannah and Callie's host-parents to some cabins in Jamberoo up in the mountains. It was so much great fun, and packed full of stuff. Here it is, Letterman style.
TOP TEN THINGS ABOUT SB2010
1. Seeing the amazing views. Australia is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. Scratch that. No probably. It IS the most beautiful place. Jamberoo is in the mountains, which aren't really mountains. They aren't very big, but they feel really big when you walk up them. Regardless, it was incredible."I want to see mountains again, Gandalf!"
2. Milking a goat. The caretaker of Ben Rickets, the nature preserve our cabin was on, lived across the street from us, and when we went to greet her on arrival, we invited us back the next morning for the 8:00 am goat-milking. It was harder than expected, but I had success. While we were walking around her property, brushing goats, and milking cows, and looking around the mountain, I thought "I could totally live up her and milk goats for the rest of my life." And about ten minutes later I was like, "Nevermind." But still, a valuable experience. And I learned a life lesson. You never know when you'll need to milk a goat.
3. Being in Jurassic Park. We went to Minnamurra rain forest for the morning on Tuesday and took a little hike. I was expecting a velociraptor to cross my path at any moment. Definitely my best experience in a rain forest. It was incredibly beautiful, and totally worth the super steep and sometimes slippery hike.
4. Being able to breath without inhaling bus exhaust. Not hearing traffic, beeping pedestrian signs, cell phones, people. Being surrounded by trees instead of buildings. Seeing 342709382470123856987 stars at night. So I guess nature, in general.
5. Wombat hunting. Callie was obsessed with finding a wombat on our trip. There are a ton around, but they're pretty shy and nocturnal. But one morning, low and behold, a wombat had done some digging under our cabin. We saw plenty of more wombat holes and tracks, but they remained elusive.
6. Being in a cabin. I loved our cabin. It was super small, super cute, and super in general. We had a little wood stove to keep us warm, little bunks, and a little kitchen where we had amazing mountain food. Like bacon and eggs and Aussie hamburgers. And kangaroo spaghetti. It was great fun to look out the window and see trees everywhere, and get woken up by kookaburras instead of airplanes.
7. Kiama Blowhole. Kiama is a little town near Jamberoo that has great beaches for surfing, and also a blowhole. A blowhole, boys and girls, is a hole in the rock on the shore. And when the huge waves crash around, they hit the hole and BAM go straight up in the air. It was pretty cool. There were cliffs and rocks that we climbed all over, and the view was incredible. The ocean was such a beautiful blue.
8. Bushwalking. Our last morning in Jamberoo we went for a walk out in the bush. It was pretty great, and I'm not even going to try and pretend like I didn't imagine myself in Middle Earth. Australia's landscape is so bizarre, and so different than anywhere else that it's so hard to accept that it's normal, you know? The jungle, the mountains, the ocean, the fields, I could get used to any of that. But Australia is all sandy, but there are plants growing in it, and really tall grasses, and really tall twisty trees randomly sticking out. It's just crazy.
9. Glowworms. These are the coolest things ever. During a walk at around 8:30 at night, we took a little detour off the road about ten feet, shine our flashlights around and then turned them off. And then there were fifty jillion glowworms surrounding us. It was like the sky was full of stars, and it was right in front of our noses. I feel like every time I look at the sky now, I'm just going to think, "Yeah, but it's not as cool as those glowworms."
10. Not being at school. I know I've kind of said this before, but not living in a dorm or at school makes college feel so different. I don't get to spend a whole lot of time with my friends and classmates outside of class, or unless we're doing some activity that we planed. There isn't very much room for just hanging out. But I got to spend time with friends, and we just sat around and played cards, and it was great.
I tried to put pictures here, so if it doesn't work I'm sorry that I never paid attention to CSS or HTML or whatever in class.
current song: Your Love is Strong by Jon Foreman
TOP TEN THINGS ABOUT SB2010
1. Seeing the amazing views. Australia is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. Scratch that. No probably. It IS the most beautiful place. Jamberoo is in the mountains, which aren't really mountains. They aren't very big, but they feel really big when you walk up them. Regardless, it was incredible."I want to see mountains again, Gandalf!"
2. Milking a goat. The caretaker of Ben Rickets, the nature preserve our cabin was on, lived across the street from us, and when we went to greet her on arrival, we invited us back the next morning for the 8:00 am goat-milking. It was harder than expected, but I had success. While we were walking around her property, brushing goats, and milking cows, and looking around the mountain, I thought "I could totally live up her and milk goats for the rest of my life." And about ten minutes later I was like, "Nevermind." But still, a valuable experience. And I learned a life lesson. You never know when you'll need to milk a goat.
3. Being in Jurassic Park. We went to Minnamurra rain forest for the morning on Tuesday and took a little hike. I was expecting a velociraptor to cross my path at any moment. Definitely my best experience in a rain forest. It was incredibly beautiful, and totally worth the super steep and sometimes slippery hike.
4. Being able to breath without inhaling bus exhaust. Not hearing traffic, beeping pedestrian signs, cell phones, people. Being surrounded by trees instead of buildings. Seeing 342709382470123856987 stars at night. So I guess nature, in general.
5. Wombat hunting. Callie was obsessed with finding a wombat on our trip. There are a ton around, but they're pretty shy and nocturnal. But one morning, low and behold, a wombat had done some digging under our cabin. We saw plenty of more wombat holes and tracks, but they remained elusive.
6. Being in a cabin. I loved our cabin. It was super small, super cute, and super in general. We had a little wood stove to keep us warm, little bunks, and a little kitchen where we had amazing mountain food. Like bacon and eggs and Aussie hamburgers. And kangaroo spaghetti. It was great fun to look out the window and see trees everywhere, and get woken up by kookaburras instead of airplanes.
7. Kiama Blowhole. Kiama is a little town near Jamberoo that has great beaches for surfing, and also a blowhole. A blowhole, boys and girls, is a hole in the rock on the shore. And when the huge waves crash around, they hit the hole and BAM go straight up in the air. It was pretty cool. There were cliffs and rocks that we climbed all over, and the view was incredible. The ocean was such a beautiful blue.
8. Bushwalking. Our last morning in Jamberoo we went for a walk out in the bush. It was pretty great, and I'm not even going to try and pretend like I didn't imagine myself in Middle Earth. Australia's landscape is so bizarre, and so different than anywhere else that it's so hard to accept that it's normal, you know? The jungle, the mountains, the ocean, the fields, I could get used to any of that. But Australia is all sandy, but there are plants growing in it, and really tall grasses, and really tall twisty trees randomly sticking out. It's just crazy.
9. Glowworms. These are the coolest things ever. During a walk at around 8:30 at night, we took a little detour off the road about ten feet, shine our flashlights around and then turned them off. And then there were fifty jillion glowworms surrounding us. It was like the sky was full of stars, and it was right in front of our noses. I feel like every time I look at the sky now, I'm just going to think, "Yeah, but it's not as cool as those glowworms."
10. Not being at school. I know I've kind of said this before, but not living in a dorm or at school makes college feel so different. I don't get to spend a whole lot of time with my friends and classmates outside of class, or unless we're doing some activity that we planed. There isn't very much room for just hanging out. But I got to spend time with friends, and we just sat around and played cards, and it was great.
I tried to put pictures here, so if it doesn't work I'm sorry that I never paid attention to CSS or HTML or whatever in class.
current song: Your Love is Strong by Jon Foreman
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