Budgy Smugglers

I still can't seem to rationalize with Blogspot and get my pictures to appear in any sensible order.  Alas.   Things are going very well, but also very busy.  My commute, I've calculated, takes about 70 minutes in each direction.  Walk to/from Baalbergen residence is almost 40 minutes, even using my lankiness to the utmost. Train is 20.  Then a 10 minute walk to campus, and to my building.  This is becoming strenuous-- now that I've established a work routine with my professor, we've got loads to do.  It feels like I spend so much of my life on a train, or walking around in the dark.  I still love these walks, but it's hard when there are many things to do.  I just don't know how so many people commute every day to work such distances, or even more! It's amazing.  Kudos to those hard-working citizens.  I curtsy in your general direction. 

Right.  Well, since the pictures are just in what ever order pleases them, I'll tell you what there is and you can play the fun game of "match up pictures" yourself.  You'll do fine-- I believe in you.

Most of the pictures are of my building and the main quad it surrounds.  It's really a stately old place-- in fact, it is the oldest building on campus.  And, they tell me, Uni Sydney is the oldest university in the entire southern hemisphere.  I'm not sure whether I'm impressed by this or not.

The building does have a pleasing number of gargoyles, lions, and half-naked Greek men decorating the halls and doorways, though.

I mean sculptures of half-naked Greek men, of course.  *cough*

The picture of the large tree in front of an extremely ugly building is proof that, lest we at Notre Dame consider Hesburgh Library an atrocity, that worse does in fact exist in the world. What is it with university libraries and ugliness?

The picture of the clock/bell tower is still the philosophy building.  In fact, the department chair (Huw Price) has his office up there.  Formidable, no?  The three little houses in a row is part of the Aboriginal neighborhood I walk through on my way back to the train station after work.  Most of the houses are not in such good repair.

Finally, I've got pictures of my host parents, Arie and Ditta.  They are a most hilarious family.  Arie is a jolly Dutchman (he came to Australia in his early 20s and never left. Sounds good to me) who straight off the airplane got into a passionate discussion with me about politics.  This, I am finding, is not at all taboo in Australia.  In fact, they cannot understand why Americans are so polite with our politics and our politicians.  YES, they say we are POLITE.   Ditta reminds me a great deal of Kim Casseday. .  The first day I was here I went to church with them, and Ditta explained with much chagrin that their congregation had decided to do a study of Rick Warren's book on community for several weeks.  Then followed a hilariously long digression by Ditta on the particular merits (rather, demerits) of said author, including mention of her great dislike of the church's new obsession with giving "warm fuzzies" all the time, in keeping with Warren's suggestions (which Ditta feels are distinctly American). Ditta is a magnificent smart aleck, and we get along quite well.  Arie answers the phone with a different name every time.  "Hello, Ball-bearings!"  "Hello, Bell-burgers!" and so forth.   He gives me a hard time about everything.  It's great.

The last picture (I think) is of the second floor, where Jodie has here room and I have mine, as well as a kitchen, bathroom, and common area.  It's wonderfully cozy, and I've slept as well as a baby sleeps when a baby sleeps well, every night since I've arrived.   I also have skylights in my room that open! Onto the roof! 

Now, I know you're thinking, "I'll bet Elise climbs out the skylight and onto the roof and ends up breaking her ankles.  Both of them."  I'd be lying if I said the thought of scaling the roof hadn't crossed my mind on several occasions, but since the roof is covered with stoney-thingies and not frictionally-maximal shingles, and the slant of the roof is non-trivial, AND that Arie has warned me that possums like to wander around up there...all these things have dissuaded me from climbing out.  I do *not* want to stick my face right into that of a possum.  Ghastly creatures, they are.

Oh, and also there's a picture of the local spider enclave.  I wasn't kidding, as you now can see.  (Well, you can't exactly see the spiders.  But you can see evidence of spiders)









I'm afraid I've got to get back to work.  This was a boring post but for the pictures...sorry.  Guess I'm  just tired today.  Maybe later tonight I will tell you about my dinner at my professor's house on Sunday, or about the hyper kid on the train, or about my first and amazing experiences with Australian desserts... wow.  I mean, wow.  These people make cakes the size of a Trans-Am wheel made entirely of various consistencies of meringue.  But more on that another time.  

p.s. As per the title of this post: the first person who can guess (without cheating on Google or wherever) what this Aussie term means...wins.  It is by far the most ridiculous (and therefore my favorite) Aussie term so far.

14,000 Words +

Finally, some pictures!

I have more, but they're stuck on my laptop for the time being (the only internet access is on Ditta and Arie's home PC...and my flash drive decided not to work). Anywho, here's a bit to keep you coming back for more. But since this is my first time operating the "add picture" function on this blog, I accidentally posted them in reverse order. And since this is a PC and therefore...how shall one be diplomatic?....less "Type-A" about transferring large files, there's no way in heck I'm sitting here for another 18 minutes uploading the same 14 pictures to this website again. So you'll have to start reading this post from the bottom up. It's the Australian way *wink*. Oh, but the picture captions (which are ridiculously verbose...sorry! You can skip them if you want) are still below the picture they belong to. Ready, set, scroll:

This is the tree in Victoria park under which I napped for, oh, 8 minutes before I felt the need to continue my pedestrian exploration of upper Sydney. To be continued...
I noticed this graffiti the first time I walked home. I'm still unsure if I quite understand this particular version of Australian punk-ism: "Your mum is round-about! HAHA!" ??? It could be widely interpreted. However, my failure to understad the joke is neertheless overcome by the fact that I find myself cheered to see that the Australian sense of humor is still stuck in a moment America bypassed a good seven years ago. I do experience a bit of your-mom-joke ennui every time I see this sign, I must admit. I also still manage to get Yes stuck in my head every time I pass a round-about sign. Every. Time.

It's a good song, though. Nay-- a great one.There was a man serenely meditating (as if there were another kind of meditating? Sheesh, Elise) in the park. Behind him you can see part of a troop of 6-8 yr.-old girls and boys getting ready to play some rugby. No soccer moms here. No tennis skirts for your daughter, either. This country starts its kids on rugby, right out of the gate. Love it.
I have never seen so many different kinds of trees in single neighborhoods as here in Roseville. Some have the most gnarled, contorted bark I've ever seen. Some are palm trees larger than my apartment. There are many flowering trees, and some trees whose bark seems to be melting off in long, tired strips. Then there are the scary, I-belong-in-the-Bush trees. See above. If I were an evil person, I would procure some dark, forsaken lot in an otherwise cozy neighborhood in Roseville, where the house is droopy and the veranda's cloaked in spider webs (see prior post). And then I would plant an acre of this kind of tree on all sides of the property. And I'd pipe eerie music through speakers hidden in the trees--music like Saint-Saen's "Danse Macabre", Holst's "Mars" and "Uranus", and the larger part of Berlioz's Symphony Fantastic (man that piece freaks me out), and perhaps a good portion of the newest Grizzly Bear album. It would be fabulously weird.

I try to take a different meandering path back from the train station to the Baalbergen residence every day. Today I happened upon a lovely park.
That's right: they have Aldi in Australia. I was shocked to see this small, Chicago-area bulk-foods outlet in a back ally in downtown Chatswood. So surprised, in fact, that I took out my new favorite toy (my Canon Powershot SD870 IS--a wise suggestion, Matt and Vach) and obtained proof of Aldi's foreign foray. A tear came to my eye. I began to hum softly: oh beautiful for spacious skies...

I had lunch at an amazing (but rather expensive) joint called CherryBean, on my new favorite street, Glebe Point Road. It's the sort of street that an municipality with a university owes its students. It's long. It's colorful and loud and full of bizarre people and pretty people and ugly people and students. And today there was a guy driving a bicycle-taxi. To those of my friends who are bike-aficionados (you know who you are): I highly recommend you drop whatever silly esoteric thing it is you're studying and move here to become the proud owner of a bicycle taxi. I didn't get out my camera in time, but someday soon I'll catch a photo of these guys powering businesspeople through the city streets on their bike-carriage contraptions. In a city like this, where winter temperatures threaten to drop to a numbing 10 degrees Celsius at worst (that's still 50 degrees F, folks)...it sounds like the best kind of living.

Glebe street is full of such wondrous things. But then there are the shops. If a shop isn't a Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Lebanese, Thai, Fair Trade, Organic or Chocolate specialty cafe, then it's a used bookstore or a new bookstore or a new music store or a used music store. And if it's not one of those things, it's a park. In sum, it is a fabulous street. And so I stopped on Glebe for some lunch at CherryBean, and had a fresh pineapple-passion fruit-mango frappe with a bowl of mushroom, bacon, garlic, and chives Penni in a white wine sauce. Oh yeah, I've had to put my vegetarianism on hold while in Australia. Not only because my host family has been graciously feeding me twice a day ("when in Rome" or "beggars can't be choosers"--insert your favorite adage here), but also because so far the meat I've been able to have has been free-range. Aussies just do their meat better her. A LOT better. So I feel ethically and economically ok with reengaging in my erstwhile carnivorousness for the summer.

Boy, this is one LONG caption. Sorry. Here's the point: whilst at CherryBean, I had to use the Loo--and this is the amazing mechanism that greeted me. It's a device that the wise beings at CherryBean had devised to aid men-folk in raising and lowering the toilet seat. I here demonstrate.

As I said below, I did a lot of walking about today. Yet I somehow ended up back at Sydney University-- more precisely, I walked through Victoria Park, which frames the university on the Northeast side. I threw my stuff under a tree and hung out for a while. I guess in my heart of hearts I was secretly hoping a group of gangly youths would storm the park with Ultimate Frisbee. Alas, not even a lone Frisbee-er was to be found. Just park loungers strewn about the vast grassy expanse. Lazy loungers.

Jodie was baking this morning for a wedding reception of a friend. I'm waiting to do my "super touristy" stuff until she can take me (e.g., the Opera House, the Bridge, more of the Harbour, and so forth). So for today, I set off for Sydney proper--Town Hall (the shopping district, I gathered) just to find a cafe to do some work. The Aussies here are shocked--nay, dismayed by the amount of work I do/feel obligated to do. It's a different mode of living, I guess. Even compared to other students. We Americans are known, if not for our "many aisles of sugared breakfast foods!" (I've heard this comment often enough), then for our incredible industriousness and busyness to the point that it sickens them. I think I probably agree. Push push push. It's the American Way. It's why we need all those sugar cereals to begin with. How else does one start such a stressful day?

Speaking of sugary cereals, I tried to explain the concept of Reese's Cornpuffs cereal (my one, consuming (in all senses of the word) vice) to Arie, Ditta and Jodie yesterday evening. Try as they might it just didn't make sense to them.

"You mean you have little hollow balls of corn, coated in chocolate and peanut butter, in a bowl with milk in the morning?" Jodie was incredulous.

"Yeah, but..."-- I broke in--"...one bowl of that tasty treat gives you nine essential vitamins and minerals. NINE, I say!"

I said I'd mail them a box when I got back to the States. They said they'd put it in the Op-Shop.
More of the lovely Baalbergen kitchen. Mom, you'd adore it-- the entire wall is just windows facing out into a green, plush garden.
This beautiful and striking picture was taken this morning in the Baalbergen kitchen. It was also taken by Jodie (hence it's superior quality--she's got a good eye, that one). Arie and Ditta are both "retired", by which I mean they're ridiculously busy volunteering all over creation. Literally. But most of their work is done way up in Hornsby (north of Roseville about 40 minutes, and Roseville is north of Sydney about 40 minutes)--they own an "Op-shop"--a thrift store, that is. Guess where ya'll will be getting souvenirs from...

Speaking of Hornsby, I just have to tell you briefly that there are a few things that somehow manage to happen to me every time I visit a foreign country--and I mean EVERY time. I won't go into detail with all of them, but included in the list is getting stuck on a train somewhere. Notice I did not say lost. I..Elise Marie...do not get lost. Most of the time. I just...get to a place that isn't where I want to be.

So yesterday I took the train from Uni back to Roseville, but I became so engrossed in my book (I'm reading E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime...verdict forthcoming) that by the time I'd looked up, (again with the looking up) I was at Hornsby Station. Oops. Instead of a half-hour train ride from Uni to Chatswood station...I rode for an hour without noticing. So I hopped off that train, walked across a bridge to the other side of the tracks and took the Southbound back another half-hour to Chatswood. At least I can cross Obligatory Misadventure with Train or Other Mode of Public Transport off my travel to-do list. 'twasn't quite as adventurous as my Obligatory Misadventure with Train or Other Mode of Public Transport episode from the Netherlands, but then again, that's a hard story to top. Ask me about my Den Helder trip someday. It's a goodie.

This is Jodie's Peruvian friend, Edwin. Edwin is trying to learn English and earn his keep here in Sydney, but until he gets his feet on the ground he's staying in another spare room here at the Baalbergen Hotel, with me and the Baalbergens. He's a good guy. He begins every English sentence (heavily accented), with "My friend, let me tell you..." and then ends with "....you see my friend." It's great, because even a brief conversation about socks or rugby with Edwin leaves you in a friendly disposition. It's as though you've been psychologicall persuaded by hearing the phrase "my friend" so many times in one sitting. I wonder if this method works with other locutions...


These trees are scattered through-out the neighborhood I walk through every day. It appears to be some magical sort of green-bean tree. But let me tell you folks, those are not green beans. I mean, my tongue didn't go numb or my face swell up when I ate one of those dangly-things yesterday. But it tasted somewhat like grass. No-- not just grass. Grass that sheeps had been hanging out in. After a rainy day. Yeah, that's it.

Picture One: Arie and Ditta's living room. I'm not sure if it's because of the shade of leather or the fact that I'm always hungry, but I just...have this strange urge to nibble on the furniture in this room. I've abstained from this urge so far. But who knows how long I can hold out? Maybe these pieces remind me of banana-flavored salt-water taffy. Hmmm..that's a possibility-- but it fails to explain my desire to it them. I mean, have you ever tasted a banana-flavored candy that actually tasted anything like banana? Bet my shorts you haven't.