Macca's and Muesli

Day two in Sydney begins with a prompt internal-clock-awakening at 3:00am. Sit straight up for a moment or two and try to figure out where the sun is, eat a granola bar, then tell yourself it’s still time to be chasing fluttery dreams of koalas and kookaburras while you lay back down to go to sleep. 

For those who maybe haven’t caught on yet, I am studying abroad in Sydney, Australia this semester. While I read facebook posts of friends back at Judson being about to go on Spring Break, we are just beginning our semester here. We will be in class until the middle of June, when we will then travel to New Zealand for a bit before returning to the US.

Our second day in Sydney found us joining the other students at Wesley Institute (the school we are attending here) for their orientation sessions. We then all proceeded, as one massive migratory group, into the downtown area of the city for an afternoon scavenger hunt, followed by an evening boat cruise in Darling Harbour.

In Australia, they have a lot of “tea.” The first day we arrived, we all felt like we had stepped into Tolkien’s land of Hobbits when we were given breakfast, then “morning tea”, followed by lunch, afternoon tea, then “evening tea”, which is supper. And dinner. Lots of food. Also, coincidentally, a lot of tea! : ) Mmmmmmm food. By day three of this, we could barely go two hours before our stomachs clamored for yummy bickies (cookies), muesli bars (granola bars), or Macca’s 50 cent ice cream cones (McDonald’s). It’s a good thing we’ve been walking, on average, everywhere, in the we-have-a-hole-in-our-ozone-layer-here-so-it’s-much-stronger-and-brighter-than-other-places sun. Warmth is glorious, and I shall gladly share it with all who are preparing to get Chicago’s final, inevitable snowfall in late April, just when you think the winter is officially over (You all know it’s coming. Please don’t frown at me).

Our scavenger hunt led us to take pictures of things like the red telephone booths downtown (evidence of British take-over, or strategically-placed tourist decorations?), the aboriginal street performers playing didgeridoos, and our groups making human sculptures of the Sydney Opera House, which is where we all met up afterwards to go on the harbor cruise.

I should comment here on the wonderfulness that occurs when you get a large group of people together who all happen to be going to a school for the arts: Drama, Dance, Music, etc. When you are stuck waiting for the next event to occur, and you are in a wide open space, creativity ensues. I’ve included some pictures below of a grand ol’ game of charades instigated by the Drama students while we waited to board our boat. Just …. You know …. Sitting on the steps in front of the Sydney Opera House…. known across the world as the iconic symbol of this vast landmass ….. playing charades …. chillin’…….like …. whatever ….. no big deal ….

I needn’t say that it has been a really surreal couple of days.

I must be going! The first picture below is of me and my roommate this semester, Allana! She is from Oregon, but goes to Seattle Pacific University. Dual citizen of the US and Australia. Oober-sweet. Drinks too much V and loves both Milo and Brad. She introduced me to Shapes. And we both happen to like Nutella and Coke and hoop earrings. I would say it’s a small world, but if you, reading this, don’t like Nutella and Coke, then we must have a chat. 

Tin Cans

I have found that 14-hour plane flights are easier if you pull an all-nighter the day before, and then sleep for 9 out of the 14 hours in the sky-bound tin can. But make sure to have the people sitting next to you poke you when food comes by. And when you’re in the exact center seat of the entire plane, make sure to go to the bathroom when others are already up, and not try to climb over them with the grace of a drowsy and atrophied gymnast while they sleep. Brush your teeth before trying to convince the customs officers that they should let you into their country. Don’t try to bring peanuts into an island nation, or Tuberculosis.

Also, Qantas puts a video camera on the outside of their plane, so that you can remember that you’re flying in a miracle, and see the city as the plane breaks through the clouds to land. I think whoever thought of that should be given a hug, because it is an excellent gift when you’re in a non-window seat.

After months of expectations and impatient waiting, I am finally in Australia! Thank you to all who prayed, all who advised, and to all who keep loving me no matter what patch of land I wake up on from one day to the next. 

Goodbye Seattle

Life is excruciatingly and beautifully not fair most of the time. The rest of the time, when it IS fair, it is generally being lived in apathy or complacency, and so shouldn’t be counted as living anyways.

Today I have to say goodbye to my best friend. It has been wonderful to spend most of my school break in Seattle. I’m very thankful that we are often given amazing opportunities, but when it comes right down to it, find them to be wrapped in the nice neat gift of that which we deem as pain. Yes, it sounds strange to describe a study abroad semester in this manner, but there it is.

My last few days in Seattle summed up in my favorite writing style, a list! :)

Wide noodles at Thai Tom’s and Salted Caramel from Molly Moon’s

Wishing for a tripod during a sunset at Gasworks

Eric understands what isn’t meant to be understood in The Big Bang Theory

The Gypsy Wagon is being lazy

Pumpkin will probably be dead soon : (

Being in a house with a vegetarian, a Methodist Pastor, and someone who is Lactose Intolerant AND allergic to Gluten is the most awesome thing ever (and will be greatly missed)

Shampoo weighs a lot

There is never traffic when you want there to be

How to run into a wall

Some images from around Ballard, in Seattle.

 

 

 

Wear a wet suit

What do you do on a sunny day during a Seattle winter? Go to the beach! 

Eric and I ventured to Golden Gardens Beach today to experiment with his old Minolta film camera, and to soak up some of the sunshine. The stars are out tonight, so it should be a nice day tomorrow, too. While on the beach, as I took pictures, a man stopped and asked if my feet were cold. I looked down at the bare toes curling themselves up in their attempts to hide from the crisp wind that was shaping the sand around us, and told him that, yes, they were.

He thanked me for my honesty, buried his face in his scarf, and walked off.

My days in Seattle are winding down, but it has been glorious to spend some time outside, taking in final views of the Olympics and Cascades - sights that take my breath away anew each time the clouds clear. Yes --- it sounds cliche to say that. 

And, yes --- if you have not seen it for yourself, you should. 

Other things today included: 

Brunch with my roommates at the Rusty Pelican

Coaxing the cat the get off the kitchen table

McDonald's coupons 

Star Trek

Hot chocolate

British Comedy

I am sixty-one

 Thought I'd share an excerpt from one of my favorite books ...

From Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water (page 74): 

"I need not belabour the point that to retain our childlike openness does not mean to be childish. Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves. As of this writing I am sixty-one years old in chronology. But I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thrity-one, and forty-five, and .... and .... and ... 

If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be thirteen and sixty-one simultaneously, part of me has been taken away ... For growing up never ends; we never get there."

 

Zoo Moo Goo Boo Roo

On my way to Australia --- Monday! 

Oh --- This is an emu. 

In the zoo. 

In Seattle.

Guess I don't need to go to Australia anymore ...

In a State of Sunshine

  

Disney day two! No more rain! We:

drank lots of free Coca Cola

became crash-test dummies

blasted to pre-history in the company of Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye the Science Guy (with the help of Jeopardy's Alex Trebek)

slammed doors

applauded America

flew to California JUST to smell the oranges

avoided the the Aristocat 

Ponchos and Pipe Dreams

 

A couple weeks ago Eric and I embarked on a journey to Florida's heaven-on-earth with his brother, Peter, and Peter's fiancee, Sally. 

Our first day at Disneyworld was riddled with moments of the "OMG" variety (as my 17-yr-old sister Kayla would literately choose to describe them, if she were there): Things like rides that take your breath away, then give it back to you, only to take it right back away again and laugh at your joyfully petty fright. Things like torrential downpours of the deluge capacity that go on for 4 hours straight (never seen so many Mickey Mouse ponchos make so many individuals so ambiguous SO quickly in my life). I learned a lot about water-proofing that day. 

Moment one of ride number one on day one of Disney: we boarded a roller coaster in Animal Kingdom. Halfway through the roller coaster? The ..... abominable ..... snowman (I kid you not, family), and his silhouette-of-alpine-destruction eats us, and all the other coaster cars he can manage.

Moment two, finding ourselves on the same roller coaster as moment one, we actually manage to not grip the car for dear life in anticipation of having a potentially successful quest through the mountainous terrain. We get eaten again. 

I despise you, abominable snowman.

Moment three of day one is a safari, complete with a Rhino bypass and the answer to 40-DOWN on the airplane crossword: "A relative of the giraffe." The Okapi!

After moments four and five and six being spent huddled closely together with 50 strangers under an awning awaiting the rain, moment seven held a spectacular stage-version of Finding Nemo. Dory wears knee socks, fish fly like kites, and there is a song about Sydney. I am going there! 

Moment eight found us on our way to Disney's Hollywood Studios, where moment nine was comprised of strawberry funnel cakes for dinner. Yes, we are grown-ups. : )

Moment ten, tied with moment one for fright-factorage, was the ride in which you question sanity, engineering, structural stability, and ask the "Who on earth came up with this as a form of entertainment" question as you fall 30 stories in an elevator shaft. Quickly the Disney mantra of "Where your dreams come true" is brought to life as you recall all those dreams where you fall off of a waterfall, or a skyscraper, or out of an airplane, or down a cliff, or into the ocean ......... 

Hooray for day one! More on days two, three, and four later!  

Above: A Google-images Okapi, in case you are in doubt of exactly what one looks like. : ) Disney! Many things are stuffed! So I found this image to be fitting.

Bright Copper Kettles

Some favorite things lately: 

Bottlecaps

Raisins on granola

Pink bus transfer slips

"In a Sunburned Country" (By Bill Bryson)

Hearing the mail being pushed into the slot by the door

Hypothetical Bathrooms

An old man stopped me in the library yesterday, when he saw I was carrying well over the amount of books that someone with any notion of the time it takes to soak in a book should be carrying. You only get to check them out for so long, I'm sure he thought; and surely anyone with a schedule can only handle so much edifying reading in a day. 

The man commented on my books: asking why so many, and trying to mask his confusion (paralleled closely with his bemusement) as I fumbled through what I thought was an adequate explanation of the kind of break I'm having from school. I think he nodded his head to get me to stop saying so many words. 

I transferred half of the books to my other hand, hoping that by spacing them out, I would somehow distract the closely-packed readers and browsers in the small library from asking similar questions.

 Whenever I walk in a library, I am overcome by this overwhelming sense of anticipation at the amounts of stimulating possibilities. All of a sudden I want nothing more than to learn how to make a quilt, and master the Greek alphabet, and to conquer the classics in one sitting while deciphering the differences between ceramic and acrylic tile for my hypothetical bathroom floor. I want to become a writer, and a poet, and to be an expert at collecting antique coins and know all there is to know about the Black Widow Spider. Goodness, it frustrates me. 

I get frustrated walking into a library. I walk in, and I pick up all the books I can about all the subjects I desire desperately to drown in. With the giddiness of a five-year-old, I determine to be washed away by the colors and words and possibilities of pages soaked in knowledge that I somehow thought, before entering the library, I could never have. 

But the frustrating thing that I find, every time I do this, is that I can never, no matter how hard I try, come up with enough time to be the absorptive sponge I yearn to be. There. Is. Never. Enough. Or maybe I don't make enough time. Or maybe I realize later that, realistically, one book will never teach me all I need to know on the Greek alphabet --- so what's the use? 

This is why I so earnestly fumbled for words when the old man approached me.

I was so irritatingly sure that, somehow, he could see right through all my wonderful intentions, right down to the stupid reality of time, and my lack of drive and will. 

I think sometimes I love the idea of knowledge better than the fact of knowledge itself. How I long to acquire the Sci-Fi device that transports all information from a book directly into your brain at the flick of a wrist. I would be the best grocery store checker-outer. 

I brought this book (pictured below) home with me yesterday. 

The title hooked me right away, because I think I am falling in love with the fact that I get to, quite literally, "stay put" for the next month, before going to Sydney. For the first time in a long time, I have the opportunity to be as much of a sponge as I'll allow myself to be, with time out of the way as a belligerent barrier.

How I long for this month to inch along at the pace of a breakfast on a Saturday morning. For it to linger, and to last, and to fill me fully for what is to come. 

Sahara vs. Savannah

I don't really know if it's is a camel, or a giraffe.

But its ambiguity is endearing. 

I thought I'd take some time to highlight a few things in the house that I'm living at here in Seattle. This will be the first in my series of "What-You-Don't-Know-Is-Hidden-Behind-A-Closed-Door-Is-More-Likely-To-Make-You-Smile-Than-To-Be-A-Weapon-Against-You" posts. Important life lesson. True story.

Book worms are the friendliest harbors of smarts

I got a Seattle Public Library card today! BEST-DAY-EVER! 

Not because this library is particularly stupendous (it kind of smells like your gym shoes meeting a cup of tea in a musky basement), or because I was able to find any enlightenment on all the mysteries of this confounded collaboration of planets that revolve around a perpetually flaming rock.....

But because of my collection! : )

I once decided that I wanted to get a library card from all 50 states. This way, if I ever have to run away from life, I can rest assured that I have 90 free minutes of internet in each state a day, can read People Magazine each week, and can learn Arabic through book, CD, book-on-tape, OR dvd. Yes, the world is a horizon of options when you have a library card. 

However, all the kind people with whom I shared this lifelong dream of library card acquisition kindly kicked my brain into the acknowledgment that, in order to get a library card, you have to live in that state. 

But Ha! I now have four library cards. Thank you Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, and now Seattle, for taking me under your wing of free knowledge. I walk in the doors of your institutions and remember everything I don't know. And realize all I want to learn. For this I shall be eternally grateful. 

There was a very nice, albeit confused, old man I got to meet at the library. I'll write about him later.

All the jellyfishes

When convinced of a path in life that most certainly insists on cookie dough at the grocery store, one can't help but resist the smile of pudding. "Pudding" is an even more magnificent word to have tickle the tongue, probably, than "cookie dough" (which is, in fact, two words. I guess they shouldn't even be in the same food category.)

Mom, just wanted to show you proof that I am nailing the dairy block in my food pyramid. Also, maybe I will visit the pyramids someday, and figure out what all the fuss is about. Having bread make up the base of it all seems foolish to me. Unless it's sourdough. Sourdough is a bit more dense and supportive than the other stuff. 

Talk about building your house on the sand. 

Fluff. Like on toast.

 Silence is a beautiful obsession. When we strain to feel the silence, as often our minds beckon us to do, our efforts cause angered ears that clamor to be left alone. We tire of trying. We tire of twisting ourselves in directions we cannot find for the simple order of sacred silence. We know it’s there. We know that silence is that ominous simplicity that finds itself always just beyond the reach of our tired fingertips. Somehow, in the depths of our messy, bottomless, sinking hearts, we know full well that we cannot contact silence; for to contact it would be to shatter the very place we seek. To contact the sacred silence would be to invite it into our chaos, rather than allow ourselves to be invited, and drawn, into its solace. 

But we summon the silence until it finally agrees to show up. 

We have insisted that it come. We have stomped our feet and balled our fists and crunched our brows in biding its company. We wait in busy convulsions for silence to make itself known. If we can’t get to the silent place, then it must come to us. The sense of entitlement is intoxicating, for the more we desire the touch of silence, the further it seems to crawl into its unreachable shadows. The more our minds scream for the silence, curiously, the less silent everything becomes. 

But when it finally comes (and it does come, for it seeks those most desperate for it), we completely ignore it, and then entirely taint it. We completely shun the moments alone in the shell of a vacant car, solitary in our own thoughts, left to our own intentions. We intend the silence – but when it presents itself, we drive faster to get there sooner, or put music on to drown the space, or shove four more kids in the backseat who belong to another set of parents who need a ride home because it’s almost dark out and their dad was late and you live right next door and their dog needs to be fed because he is a carnivore who is lonely and has been in the drippy basement all day ……… 

At the end of a day, could it be possible that we fear silence? 

For to be silent means to be still. And we run from stillness as though faced with a pillow fight against a boulder. 

I have had three consecutive days entirely to myself. Hours upon hours with nothing scheduled for me, nothing being asked of me, and nothing being told to me. Right now- a half an hour ago- is the first time in these past few days that I have found myself truly, and fully, responding to the invitation of silence.

It began snowing. Glorious slivers of sky whispering as they were magnetically drawn to the bare branches of night trees. A match made in heaven. White on the silhouetted black of the sleeping street, creating the untouched glaze that makes all things dormantly new. 

I was ready. I was going to give up this day and go to sleep along with everyone else in the house. All the teeth had been brushed; everyone had sipped their last tastes of night tea and rounded off their comments on a days’ work. There was nothing else left to be done or said, really, as the lights were turned off, one by one. Check another day off the list of hours to graciously annihilate before I die. And there it suddenly was: The invitation. 

Silence. 

The snow had not stopped falling simply because we were done acknowledging it. Everything perfect and gloriously breathtaking outside continued whispering its purity, asking nothing in return. Requiring nothing in exchange. Tangible silence inviting a non-active response. Stillness. 

It was terrifying. 

I think I quickly tried to shove a couple more things in, to pretend like I wasn’t being told by my unstable mind that I should sit and watch snow for a few minutes. Watch … the snow? As in … “Yup, it’s still falling. Has been for a while now. Will keep doing so into the Yonder. Are we done yet, brain? Have you had your fill of nonsense? It’s …. Just … fluff. Like Winnie the Pooh. Or the stuff you spread on toast. It’s …. Just … snow. I’m from it’s-colder-here-than-Neptune-being-stuck-in-a-snowcone Chicago, for Heaven’s sake.”

And as I sat here,  just simply allowing the sight of the falling snow to saturate my senses, I could feel the silence like none other. I was in its territory now… being drawn into its presence. And what a beautiful obsession I’ve found. 

I am listening to the secondhand tick on a clock that is never quite on time. I heard a slight crumple, and realized this was the sound of the white being too cumbersome for skeletal branches. The heater in this old house yawns in spurts to no one in particular. I am willing this place of silence to go on for hours, scolding my head for its attempts to get me to sleep for the mere purposes of being able to wake up at the proper time tomorrow. How I loathe time. 

So as the snowfall slows, I follow it as one would a serenade; It draws to a close, and, silently, so must I.