Back in the USSA

I've been home just over a month - so I thought I'd wrap everything up with a final post. My time abroad was hands-down one of the best experiences of my life thus far. I learned a lot about myself and my temporary host culture down under and half a world away. Normally, I wouldn't share such things with the world at large, but in this case it seems appropriate.

You don't realize how much your surroundings are a part of your state of mind until you experience the contrast of going through your daily routine in a strange environment. Stepping off the plane in Sydney wasn't a huge shock - more exciting than anything else. The part of my life that required the most adjustment was being cut off from the environment, people, and activities that had become a part of my daily life at home. It's easy to take your daily being for granted. My routines were basic, comfortable, and - might I say - a bit boring. It's refreshing to see your life from another perspective.

The biggest advantage of being in an all new place and making all new first impressions is that I could try things I had been afraid to or unwilling to try. I was forced to figure out public transportation, and while I had lots (and lots) of trips that could have been shorter, I can read a bus timetable like a pro and would feel comfortable doing so here at home. I obviously screwed up a lot trying out all this new stuff, but what did I have to lose? Time? I didn't care, and I was in good company throughout the four months I spent there.

I really don't need all the junk I've got. I left for Australia with one checked bag. When I was packing I couldn't think of much else that I might need. I had a bunch of clothes, a few books, and a laptop. You know what? I was perfectly happy and didn't need much else the whole time I was there. I look around my room at home and see all the 'stuff' I've accumulated over the years. A lot of it is useless, and only some of it holds any sentimental value.

There are lots and lots of things I miss about Australia, but that list is pretty boring. Here's what I won't miss:
- crap internet access
- relying on public transportation
- cheap things that for some reason cost much more in Australia
- shopping carts with 4 wheels that turn
- trash. everywhere.
- the lack of school spirit

Six things that I can think of right now. I think that's pretty good in contrast to the amount of things I'll miss - which I couldn't even begin to start, much less stop. My biggest regret? Not buying a Christmas ornament at the Sydney Opera House. My mom would have loved it.

The photo at the top was taken by friend and fellow study-abroad-er Lindsey Ritchey

I'm halfway round the planet in a most unlikely place

I'm heading out this morning for the far side of the world. It's been a lot of fun, but I think I'm ready to go home. I've spent way too much money, and probably owe my parents a lot too, so getting back to Knoxville and generating some income sounds pretty good.

Our exchange group had a little farewell party at The Lighthouse on Saturday. Kelly, our exchange adviser, opened a 400 dollar bar tab for us and we shared stories, watched a slideshow and drank the afternoon away. I'm really going to miss these people.

None of us could really leave the rest of the group, so we wound up playing spoons and talking until early morning. Ah, Australia, I'll miss you.

If you know me even a little bit, you know I'm a massive Buffett fan, and his song "Far Side of the World" is especially applicable right now.

Stonefest: It's about a rock

Ah Stonefest. The reason behind it has been obscured (it's a celebration to mark the placing of the foundation stone by Prime Minister John Gorton in 1968) in favor of it becoming the largest music festival in Canberra. Bands and DJ's perform almost constantly from Friday night to late Saturday night on four stages on various parts of campus. Not only that, but the week prior to Stonefest (aptly named 'Stoneweek') holds events sponsored by the Student's Association. Each residence makes a shirt, usually a crude pun, and students wear them all week to the events. Unfortunately, my design didn't make the cut (they opted for this piece of crap) - as I had no idea drug references and sexual innuendo were the shirt of choice. I'll outline the various days of Stoneweek; all drunken debauchery included.

Monday - Nemesis Day: Tie yourself to a friend and go drink-for-drink with them from noon 'til whenever you pass out.

Tuesday - Trivia Night: Aussies love their trivia. Prizes included flavored condoms. +5 points if you peed in a cup and turned it in to be tested for chlamydia.

Wednesday - UCtoberfest: Band, beer, and BBQ on the lawn. Followed by 'Cowboys and Indians' night at the bar. Horrible grammatical pun of Oktoberfest.

Thursday - Case Day: You have from 10am to drink an entire case of the alcohol of your choice, but there must be 24 of them. Pizza and music provided.

Friday - Stone Eve: Beer and BBQ with your dorm, then head off to the concerts.

The concerts were great. With four stages playing simultaneously, there is always something halfway decent to listen to. Plus you can wander around to the food vendors and t-shirt stalls. I only knew of one performer, Scribe, so I was especially excited about that show. He's a hip-hop artist from New Zealand, and his show was pretty rowdy, which made my front-row spot excitingly dangerous. Saturday drew more bands who I'd never heard of, but which weren't too bad at all. I think I saw about eight concerts all together, and that's not counting Monday!

The John Butler Trio had been scheduled to perform at the University of Canberra back in August, but had to postpone the show for some reason or another. I couldn't afford the ticket then, and couldn't now, but the fact that they'd switched to an outdoor venue (actually a stage from Stonefest) meant that I could at least find a nice spot and listen from outside. I found a spot. Actually, I found an amazing spot. An elevated walkway between two buildings provided an almost unrestricted view of the stage while still being outside of the venue. Perfect, right?

Not according to the security guards for the concert. Apparently, the few of us who were on the walkway watching the show could see it too well and were asked to leave. We conceded and retreated to another spot where, if you ducked and squinted, could see the screen with closeups of the band. We were temporarily satisfied with this, but got to talking about how great the view was before we were told to move. We decided that, since we were outside of the fence surrounding the venue and on public property, they couldn't really make us leave, all they could do was ask politely.

So we kept going back - failing miserably each time to assert our right to be there, and making the security guards walk up the ramp lots and lots of times. We ended up hearing most of the concert, and seeing the best bits (with carefully chosen times to return to the 'sweet spot'), so I was pretty happy about it.

[note: I had class on Nemisis Day and didn't participate in Case Day. Such activities are more fun to watch from the sidelines with a beer, watching other people humiliate themselves]

STA Stands for [expletive] Travel Agency

[UPDATE]
Halfway through writing to the STA in Knoxville, I got an email from... the STA in Knoxville. The branch manager, Scott, read my post and sent me a message explaining what had probably happened with STA here, and even researched flights that I could switch to (the lowest being $219, nice!).
[UPDATE]
My overpriced flight has still not been canceled, as the STA here is apparently the only branch that can do that, and they're dragging their feet about it. If I can get in touch with United Airlines 24 hours a day, why can't they?
[UPDATE]
It's been 3 weeks since they put it in to be canceled and refunded. I did a little internet digging and called the STA corporate office in Melbourne. I spoke with an extremely nice woman in the refunds department (I think she might BE the refunds department), who assured me I would be refunded this week. We'll see.

I hate dealing with situations that should not need my intervention, especially if they are potentially going to cost me 800 bucks.

Here's what happened: Back in May I arranged my flight to Australia through STA Travel on campus at UT. Because I didn't know when I would be returning to the States, I arbitrarily picked a date in November for my return flight, knowing that I would have to change it later on. Not a problem, they assured me. It wasn't. The problem came when I tried to add another leg to my ticket this afternoon at the STA at the University of Canberra.

I hadn't booked a flight from LA to Knoxville because it's really expensive to change the dates on a domestic flight (usually more than 100 dollars), and I figured I would just book it when I figured out when I needed to come home. The one way ticket from Knoxville to LA was about 250 dollars, a perfectly acceptable price. $850, is not an acceptable price, but that is what they quoted me. I figured I'd pay it, and then look around online to see if I could find a better deal, and then cancel with STA. I should have checked online first.

The most expensive way I can find to get from LA to Knoxville is 609 dollars. Cheapest? 260 dollars.

I trotted back to STA to tell them I needed to cancel my flight, to which they said it was a non-refundable flight and that there was "nothing we can do, sorry." They couldn't even switch my flight to another carrier. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this something I should have been informed of before I shelled out 850 dollars?

Frankly, I felt like I was being screwed over, so I called United Airlines. Two different representatives told me that they don't even sell "non-refundable" tickets and that they could refund my money directly after they received the payment information from STA.

Back on the phone to STA, I explained the conversation I just had with United. Their reaction? "We'll call you back." About 15 minutes later they call me back, and suddenly they are able to change the flight and carrier. "I found a cheaper flight for you!" the girl told me, as if they were doing me a favor. At this point I'm so disillusioned with STA that I told them that I no longer needed the flight and needed it canceled. I don't mind collecting my bag and checking in at the airport again if it's going to save me 600 bucks. I've been told that they're going to contact their United representative and get back to me tomorrow. I'll make sure I post updates.

Skiing in the Southern Hemisphere

To prove my ignorance of Australia, I was unaware of the possibility of skiing in Australia until this year. Since being enlightened to this opportunity, it was added to my ever-changing and often forgotten list of things I'd like to do in my lifetime.

I thought I had missed the opportunity, as it is warming up quickly here, but Owen (an Aussie who studied at UT last semester, strangely enough) was headed to the mountains on the last weekend of the season, and Alex and I thought we'd tag along.

The guys at the rental shop suggested we go to Thredbo mountain - which had the most terrain open. I won't lie to you and say it was great weather, on the contrary, it was 35 degrees with winds at 39 miles per hour (to put that into perspective, it's almost fast enough to be classified as a tropical storm). The wind had blown the fresh snow from the night before into dunes, leaving behind nice big patches of ice.

After mid-morning, the sun started poking through the cloud (which was actually the snow getting blown around), and we found an area of the mountain with decent conditions, and even a few trails with the previous night's powder still unskied. Most people had given up on the day due to the weather, so we had the advantage of empty slopes and no lift lines. All in all, everything about the day in the mountains more than made up for the less than perfect weather.

This has nothing to do with Australia

I have a piece of chocolate sitting beside me that I don't want to eat. It's not bad, quite the opposite, actually, I'm still enjoying the last bit which I finished a few minutes ago. The lingering taste is still satisfying and rich. I wouldn't call myself a chocolate connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but I picked up a bar of Lindt Excellence 85% Cocoa last night and have fallen in love with it. Unlike Hershey's, which I've read is a little over 11% cocoa, it's satisfying in a much different way.

Byron to Brisbane - Part 2

After a late night of getting dressed up and checking out the nightlife in Surfers Paradise (which is amazing, by the way), we were all feeling like a lazy day on the beach, even if it was cloudy and windy. I can say one thing for sure about the people I traveled with - we're completely capable of entertaining ourselves without bungee jumping, skydiving, or giving some guy 100 bucks an hour to teach us to surf. Two or three of us were making a small sandcastle, when Jeremy came over and told us we weren't thinking big enough. We enlisted the rest of the group to help make our sandcastle bigger, so big, in fact, that people walking past on the beach would stop and take pictures, give us suggestions and (once they found out we were foreign) ask us about where we were from. It's amazing how friendly strangers are in Australia.

Sandcastle-ing is only fun for so long, so we would up body surfing through the big waves. One huge, particularly violent waved flipped me over and crashed me on my head, breaking a tooth. Ouch. Could have been worse (probably much worse), but still wasn't a pleasant experience.

So far, I've always had good luck with public transportation in Australia, but when we got out of our cab at the train station to catch a ride in to Brisbane, we found out that the track was under construction and the station closed. After a few moments of mass confusion (we already had our rail tickets), we found out that a bus would be driving us to the nearest operational train station, which was about 30 minutes away from seemingly anything. We accounted for most of the people on the platform, with nothing in sight but a parking lot and the bus we came on pulling away through the drizzle.

One long train ride later and we arrived in Brisbane. It's a beautiful city; on the river, warm (usually), and slow paced. I would have liked to spend more time there, but we were still able to make it out to Moreton Island (which is all sand) for some sight seeing and four-wheeling around the beaches and dunes.

One thing I love about Australian cities is that they have huge botanical gardens in the middle of the city (think Central Park, but with weird plants and trees). They make for great sights when you're just walking around town, and make great picnic spots. I was sad to leave Brisbane the next day, as I could have spent a lot more time there, but we were running out of money and had to get home for classes. All in all, it was a spectacular week with a bunch of spectacular friends in a series of spectacular places. This country is all right.

Byron Bay to Brisbane (Part 1)

I was able to catch one class last week on my one day back at school in Canberra between vacations. I'm not too concerned about missing classes, though. I could have taken them in the States, but I am here to get the whole experience of Australia, which is much more substantial than simply attending classes.

Seven of us exchange kids had planned this trip up to the area known as the Gold Coast. Five Americans: Alex, Jeremy, Lindsey, Madeleine and myself; Juan from Mexico, and Steph from Germany. Any other group of people might have taken the setbacks we had and turned them into a negative trip, but we were relaxed enough to make the best of our experience.

Our first hiccup came in the form of our "Free Pick-up" from the hostel not showing up at the Bellina Byron airport (really just a runway and a garage). Jeremy ended up bargaining us a good deal with a van driver to Byron Bay. Our hostel was "37 seconds from the beach" according to the guy who checked us in, so we threw our stuff in the room and partied on the beach until we were too tired to move. We walked all around Byron the next day, up to the lighthouse and the "Easternmost Point of Australia", and then ran into a guy named Crazy Alex and wound up taking Kite Surfing lessons from him. Basically, you've got this kite that you can control and it tows you around the sand or surf. Really fun stuff, but one of those things that would be way more exciting if you could skip the learning process.

Byron Bay is an awesome little town. It's small, picturesque, and quirky. Little hippie shops, surf shops, organic restaurants and gelato stands dot the town, so that if you decide to get off the beach you've got some other options available. There's no McDonald's or chains of any kind, which adds to the eclectic feel of the town. A little pizza place called Earth and Sea is responsible for the best beer of my life, which, unfortunately, is only available at the restaurant, and only on tap. Guess that means I'll just have to go back. It's not all so mellow though, Cheeky Monkeys, one of the clubs we went to, held a wet t-shirt contest and beer raffle while we were there - Byron is completely capable of a party.

I could have stayed in Byron Bay all week, but we had to catch the train to Surfer's Paradise (yep, that's the name of the city). The problem? The train stopped coming through Bryron about three years ago, so instead of a eight dollar train ticket, we each shelled out 20 for a van. Whoops.

Surfer's Paradise is Byron Bay's worst nightmare. It reminds me of Miami, with high rise residential buildings lining the beach (which stretches for about 25 miles), exotic cars, and an overwhelming nightlife. Again, our hostel was on the beach, across from the Sheraton Mirage and next door to the Palazzo Versace Hotel. Behind was a marina with million-dollar boats and high-class restaurants.

As expected, our hostel lacked a hot tub, so Jeremy and I thought we would hop the fence at the Sheraton and scope out theirs. The bad news: They don't have one. Seriously. 700 Dollars a night and there's no hot tub to relax in (we assume they have them in the rooms, but still...). If the Versace didn't look like a fortress we might have tried it, so we returned home and told the rest they would have to live with a hot shower instead.

I'm going to take a break here. I'm tired of writing, and I bet you're tired of reading. We've still got another night in Surfer's Paradise and have to take the train to Brisbane despite the train station having no track...

Hi, I don't know you, but I'm crashing here all weekend

I haven't really done much out of the ordinary and blog-worthy since about the second week of classes. There's a comfortable routine of weekly social events and class that had been making me very satisfied with my time in Australia. But like any routine, sometimes it's fun to break it and do something else. In my case, I skipped class for a week and took off for the beach.

Alex, Jeremy and I spent the weekend in Sydney with a few of Jeremy's girl friends (note the space) from San Diego who go to Macquarie University. It was amazingly fun even though (or because) I didn't know the people we were going to be bombing around town with. Annie, Brooke, and Christina were incredibly hospitable, giving up beds, blankets, couches and pretty much anything else to give three guys a free place to stay.

We hit up the Taronga Zoo, which, by itself is fantastic, but it is positioned on the side of a hill overlooking Sydney Harbor. We were watching gorillas and giraffes on a background that happens to be the most beautiful city I've ever been to.

Christina had organized a wine tasting tour for the next day. Now, I'm not a huge fan of wine (perhaps because of my ignorance of it), but wine country brings out part of you that you never knew you had. Suddenly I felt like a sophisticated 40-something refining my taste of 2001 Chablis, critiquing its blend and balance. It didn't hurt that the experience was shared with some of my best 'mates' from Oz.

I can't talk about Sydney without mentioning Pancakes on the Rocks. It's tucked away right underneath the harbor bridge, and they make some excellent dessert pancakes. I had fried cinnamon apples with ice cream, but everything the waitress carried past us looked delicious.

The weather was gorgeous all weekend - so much so that we though we'd go to Bondi Beach. Unfortunately, we overestimated exactly how warm it was and ended up shivering our way among surf shops and food stands. While still a great time, it made bundling up under blankets and watching movies later that night all the more enjoyable.

Back to Canberra the next day - but only to do laundry, re-pack and head up the coast!

There's always something waiting to kill you in Australia

Great white sharks, crocodiles, snakes, spiders, jellyfish, and kangaroos. All of these things are good at killing other things, and Australia seems to have the most deadly species of each. We've been warned about brown snakes and red-back spiders around Campus. Apparently, a brown snake will chase you down instead of slither away if you come across one, and a red-back spider (a close relative of the Black Widow) will hospitalize you for a while. If you should, god forbid, decide to go for a swim, be wary of crocodiles, jellyfish and octopuses (octopi? octopus'?) which will bite, sting, and squirt you into into the emergency room. Seemingly harmless kangaroos will charge at you if you're unfortunate enough to tick them off, which is a problem because they occasionally hop through the residential part of campus. And not to mention the drop bears.... geez.

No wonder Steve Irwin always had something to do down here.