Livin' the Good Life

Wow.. what a week (or so) it has been. I hope everyone is happy to know that I finished both of my papers.. and the last one in time to go to the beach. Finally saw Manly Beach (other than Bondi, the most famous beach in Sydney). It was beautiful, and we had a pretty good day, hung around there for awile, went shopping, and ate an early dinner. Manly is also pretty cool because to get there (when you don't have a car) you take a ferry from downtown across the harbour and get to see the opera house close up, so that was cool!

Sunday 17 February-
Sunday we headed off as a group (about 120 people including instructors, coordinators, etc) to Melbourne. It was such a great experience, I couldn't start to explain it all. First of all, it was really neat to see the difference in the cities. Sundays, like in Sydney, are pretty dead in Melbourne. .. oh did I mention you don't pronounce it mel-born, it's mel-bin, i know.. very weird... I feel like everyone in Sydney (or almost everyone) is trendy and tan and you know.. the same. But in Melbourne, there were lots of sub-culture groups, and different people. Another cool thing about the city were the laneways. A laneway, how we would think about it is actually an alley. But in Melbourne, they're really different. First of all, there is grafitti everywhere, but it's pretty cool because it is sanctioned by the city and an artist owns a wall and can decorate it however they want. The other cool thing about the laneways is that there are bars, restaurants, cafes, and shopping. Some of them are bigger than others and you can clearly see everything, but others are hidden, and you would never be able to find a certain bar unless you were looking for it and knew where it was located. ...very interesting.

So Sunday we went to the Queen Victoria Markets, which is an outdoor market.. with lots of cheap souviners. I got some pretty cool pink sunglasses. :-) There's also a lot of food, and there were some Chinese New Year celebrations going on too. Later that night a bunch of us went to St. Kilda Beach which is a cute area, and actually not so much on the ocean, but on the huge bay that borders Melbourne. It was fun, we went to a pricey Mexican restaurant, and later went to a bar that was on a roof downtown and we could see the entire city.

On Monday I went on an "academic tour" (which we were required to do 2 of) with Pascal who is about the cutest and nicest man you'll ever meet. He coordinates all of the housing and internet and what not for us in Sydney. He took us around to all these different laneways and eventually we somewhat left the city and went to the really great/cheap pizza place. Glynnis and I did some shopping and made our way back into the downtown area. Later that night I went to "Little Italy" with a few girls and we had the most amazing gelatto I've ever had.

Tuesday was by far one of the most amazing days I've had in Australia. About 60 people from our program left really early in the morning to go on a tour through the "Great Ocean Road." We basically drove...forever... on this road that has the most breathtaking views of the ocean I've ever seen. We stopped in a lot of different places: beaches, sides of cliffs, outdoor koala place, aboriginal reservation, etc etc. The whole day I had this song called "Ocean" by Ten Shekel Shirt stuck in my head. Which always reminds me of driving to the ocean with Emily back in high school. Which basically goes:

"There's something about the ocean, that makes me rise up and praise,
There's something about the heavens that makes me stand in awe again,
There's something about the sunrise that reminds me of your faithfulness,
There's something about the ocean and i'm lost in love again"

Which basically just sums it up, everytime I'm able to travel around in Australia I just realize how big this world is, and how God created it all. It amazes me everytime... I can't really put it into words. Later I took a helicopter ride through the coast and these stones called "The 12 Apostles" which are basically huge land masses in the ocean where the land around them has slowly eroded and they are left, like islands, in the ocean just off of the coastline. It was pretty amazing to see it from that view..wow



On Tuesday I went on another academic tour that was at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. It was pretty interesting, but we just learned about everything... didn't really get to play with it all haha. Moving image, incase you were wondering, is just about any media: television, video, games, etc etc etc. There were a lot of kids there playing with all of the different things. We had a few hours left but it was gross out and really cold so we kinda just hung around and went to a few shops.

Saturday 23 February-
Went to another beach..of course. We took off to another beach called Cronulla which we took an hour long train to get too. It's the furthest southern beach I've been to that is still considered a Sydney beach. It was really pretty and an absolutely perfect beach day, not a cloud in the sky. My friend Nicole and I decided we were having a craving for hot dogs, so later that night we made hot dogs and BBQ chicken on the roof (there is a grill up there) and it was absolutely delicious. yum. And really fun to cook on the roof and just hang out up there.

Sunday 24 February-
Finally made it to church, finally. I went to this church that is absolutely huge.. its called Hillsong. They actually write a lot of their own music and it's pretty much known around the world, I know I've sung it back home. So it was pretty cool to see the church body that had actually come up with all of that. It was pretty big and overwhelming. To put it in perspective: there are two hillsong churches, one in sydney and one in the northern suburbs, the city one has 5 services each sunday and the northern one has 3 services. I guess I went to one of the smaller services (1:15 pm) and it still had atleast 300 people there. Wow.. what a nice change! The worship band was huge and included a choir in the back. It was a good change for me, I feel like I hadn't actually been to a church and taken the time to be with God in .. way too long. I met a nice girl who promptly sat next to me when she saw I was sitting alone and talked to me a lot and after the service. I got myself set up with a small group and she has my e-mail address. I guess the service at night has mostly 18-25 year olds, so I'll have to check that out at some point.

Now I'm back to the academic grind, presentation on Thursday, exam on Friday, paper due Saturday, exam on Saturday. But the good news is: I leave for spring break on Saturday afternoon!

So that leaves me with my final point: I'm so thankful that I finally was around on a Sunday to go to church. I feel like I've been thinking about God when I feel like it, and that is most definitely not the way to go about things. I was just reading Juliette's blog and it really hit home with me (she's talking about Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis): "I’ve realized how you just can’t compromise on what God has told us to do. You can’t just look at the rules, pick what you want and then convince yourself that you’re living the right life." So good stuff, thanks for the analysis Juliette. :-)