Barefoot in the Park

We weren’t barefoot, but after classes on Friday Laura, Alex and I took a few hours out of the lazy afternoon to go see the botanical gardens. The day was threatening to rain, and showers were expected in the evening (and did later show… with reinforcements: the wind came on too). During the day we had an easy class that was only 40 minutes long (more than an hour shorter than usual) due to spending the time doing a computer tutorial, and turned in our assignment for that class, and I at least was feeling the need of a nice lazy walk.

The garden is a decent size: for those of you familiar with Clemson, it is about 1.5 times the size of the Clemson botanical gardens (the whole garden, not just the floral area). Those of you familiar with Bryn Athyn it is 1.5 to 2 times the size of the Mason’s Mill park (or what I’ve seen of Mason’s Mill).

It is a short 5-8 minute walk from our apartment and is free (unless you choose to go into the observatory). The Gardens are made up of well-tended paths between some very pleasant shrubs, flowers, and trees. Two highlights for me were the impressive rose garden (not yet in bloom), and glass house (or a very large and architecturally interesting greenhouse) for water lilies and similar plants.

During our walk through the very lovely plant-life, we let our thoughts and conversations wander. Our conversations varied from the girls discussing some details of the dream weddings (this time revolving around flowers liked and disliked for their wedding and why, as well as the conversation of venue for their weddings as a botanical garden being one of the options), to our individual beliefs on abortion.

The wandering ability of the human mind is quite amazing. I enjoy occasionally playing the game of “How did my mind get here” game where I take a tour of my train of thought to try to determine how I got on the subject I was most recently on.

One of these days I will go back and take some photos so that you all can see more clearly what I mean.

While there, we made a detour to the National Wine Centre next to the gardens and got some pamphlets of things we can do around here, including finding out some activities held at the NWC like self-guided tours and wine tasting programs.

There isn’t any deep thought in this post, and I apologize for that, but it was a great adventure and one I really enjoyed. This time let’s just be satisfied that you got some more detail of one of the things we have found to entertain ourselves out of doors.

Cheers!

School Work

I have so far been successful in avoiding the subject of school with you guys. I am now going to spend the next hour or so being successful in avoiding school itself as I procrastinate to write about it to you.

Daily school work is really simple: Monday, Wednesday and Friday each have one class that lasts about 2 hours. Tuesday we have no classes, and Thursday we have 3 classes (well, we will when our computer lab starts in two weeks – Inside joke: Sorry Laura, I’ll try to stick with just the red ball). We have no homework or any sort of regular school work required. Generally speaking, each class has 2 Assignments and an exam. So this means that, other than participation for some of the classes, most of our classes give us grades based upon a whopping 3 items handed in.

Over the next week and a half, all of our classes have our first assignment due, thus the greater need to clean my room regularly, write in my blog in more depth, and go for more runs: to avoid doing those assignments.

I don’t like having to adjust to this system so quickly. Because of the fewer graded assignments and complete lack of home work, I should be doing a large amount of work outside the classroom (much more so than I’m used to with the common American style of teaching). It is good because it really forces you (it forces you in the same manner the wall forces the crash test car to conform to the wall’s shape: flat) to manage your time more efficiently, and it gives you lots of opportunities to learn about the subject in as much depth as you would like. It is just unfortunate because I’m only here for one term and my grades don’t even transfer back to my home university (I get credit at Clemson for the classes I pass here, but it does not effect my GPA at all, so we just have to get better than 50% in each class and we’ll have the same results at Clemson as we would get if we got an A – called a “High Distinction” or HD here).  Thus I have a lot less motivation to do anything better than just passing, and I kind of want to avoid getting used to the system since I’m only here for one term.

It is not me to slack off, so I do plan on doing well in each class, but this pretty drastic change of system is an interesting experience; it’s just another part of the Adventure.

I would like to make a quick note for the benefit of those of you who cannot hear the thoughts in my head: From earlier blogs you know that I do believe that venting thoughts and emotions are crucial methods and steps in the process of understanding myself, forming my own thoughts, as well as to be able to overcome all that baggage I accumulate as I practice doing those things I later decide are not something I actually want to do. This blog has been one of my mediums for my venting. In many of them I describe being frustrated and other negative emotions. A majority of my experiences here have been at least average, and I have had more GREAT experiences than poor ones. I am enjoying myself and am still glad I decided to take this opportunity, however you will likely read about negative feelings. I’m not trying to be a Negative Nilsy, I’m just expressing myself when I feel it needs to be expressed. Cool? Cool. 

Give me a second – I want to go over my checklist: Gone on longer than needed and intended? That’s a check. Went into more detail than necessary? Check. Used some annoying complex sentences riddled with, fun but unnecessary, sub clauses? CHECK. Ended blog with an unnecessary, and perhaps annoying, sentence or paragraph trying to bring closure to what was said? Double Check! In any case…

Cheers!

7 Hours in the Hills of Adelaide

My thought for this post is going to be a rather short one… but the background required will more than make up for it…

Friday (15^th) after classes, while hanging out, some of us noted that Saturday was supposed to be great weather. I personally was feeling the need to go out and enjoy an active weekend doing something, since that past one was fun, but mostly spent in or around my apartment. In fact the… entertainment of last weekend was on Sunday (the 9^th) when Laura locked herself out of her apartment. And since they charge $120 to lend you a key when the office is closed (which it is on Sunday), she decided to wait until Monday morning to get into her room (when the office was open and she could just walk in and borrow it… not a cool system).

            And Alex’s boyfriend had been here last weekend, so we did go to Glenelg on the 10^th for another beautiful sunset on the beach (oh, and we went to a Footy match on the 8^th), but I was still feeling a little restless. So it was quickly agreed upon to go for a day hike into the Hills of Adelaide.

            Saturday morning was beautiful. Nice breeze, no clouds in the sky, a little chilly but with the promise of becoming a pleasantly warm afternoon. We hopped on the 10:03am bus and got off at the stop we thought would be the best to get onto the Heysen trail. Unfortunately, it was really hard to plan this part on Friday because the Heysen trial is a very broken trail at this point along it’s length. It is 1200 km long total and crosses past Adelaide closer to the Southern end of the trail. We did a little looking for a while, but it took us some time even after getting directions at the local convenience store to get on the trail at 11:05am.

            It was a pretty nice trial for the most part, but frustrating because several times we were walking on the side of a road (not a freeway, but no country road either). It was nice to get away from the busyness of the city, and to a place that was not touristy (we only saw about 5 people on the trail during the day). A very good leisurely hike.

    

Along the way we got to see a pretty cool lizard-like reptile, 

       some dogs, some horses, 

some sheep, horse poo,     

and a wild kangaroo...

...sign.

We also ran into some more bus stops. These bus stops that we passed every so often were nice because they meant that we could go farther afield and still make it back to a stop in time to get back to Adelaide for dinner (we had packed lunch).

After turning around at 2:45pm (and in retrospect I accurately have calculated our distance traveled at that point was 12.15km or 7.55 mi), we enjoyed our time back to the nearest bus stop. Some of us had blisters and/or sore feet by this point, so sitting there while waiting for the bus was a nice relief. After sitting there for 40 minutes we decided that the bus (on our timetable it was scheduled to pass every half hour) may not be coming. We walked a litter further into a tiny town (a local emphasized its smallness by stating that it had no pub… plenty of drinking, just no pub) where there was another stop and asked a lady at the local convenience shop.

            As we had started to fear, we were on a different road than we had thought, and the closest bus stop that could take us back into Adelaide was the one we got off originally, about 5.5 miles away (if we took the trail). This was not exactly welcome news, but I’ll go into that in more detail later.

            We looked at a map and, since there were no spares to take with us, Ryan took some photos of it for us to refer to as we walked. We took a rout that was hopefully faster than taking the trail, but slower than if we took the road (again, the road was busy enough and had no sidewalk that we didn’t want to walk on it). We took some winding, very pretty back roads until we connected up (unexpectedly) with the Heysen trail and took that the rest of the way. The country along these little traveled meandering roads was very delightful. We even got to hear (but not see) a Kookaburra along the way!

Tired and ready to sit, we got back into the town we started in at about 5:45pm… just after the 5:38pm bus left for Adelaide. Being a Saturday, the next bus was not until 6:38pm giving us almost an hour to wait.

Including several stops and a longish lunch break, we had been hiking for almost the past 7 hours, having covered more than 14.3 miles (23 km). The bus ride for me was a welcome trip back, and felt very short. We then finished off the day with a stop at Subway for dinner, and at Cold Rock for some ice cream.

I really did enjoy the trip, however, this is where the thought comes in, I again found myself a bit frustrated. From the point where we realized that the bus did not stop where we had hoped to be picked up all the way until we actually got on the bus, I felt like I had failed the group. I personally didn’t mind being out that long or for traveling that far, but I felt responsible for that extra effort that all the other members of the group had to spend. Both Ryan and I had noticed some things along the way the should have clued us into the fact that we weren’t following the same road as we had thought. My disclaimer for failing the group is this: the only maps that seem to exist that explicitly mark and follow the Heysen trail cost money and were not available to us so I was basing a lot of my judgments (both before leaving and on the hike) on the map provided for the bus routs. But I should have paid attention when Ryan noticed that we hadn’t passes a pretty major landmark (a major freeway), and should have paid more attention to the direction we were traveling (we were going South, while the road we thought we were following was going East). The most weighty factor that was on my mind was the fact that on the way past the small town (where we got directions on the way back) I looked at the bus stop sign and noticed that our bus (bus 864) was not listed among those that served that specific stop.

It was a very unfortunate damper on my mood on the walk back, as I felt this odd responsibility. I think it is related to a bigger trend I’ve noticed in myself: the need of plans and the importance of sticking to them. I have been trying, especially in Oz, to be adventurous as I have mentioned before. But when adventures have plans, I have some sort of need for it to work out as planned. I’m not talking about nit-picky details, but more prominent plans, such as the expected time of arrival back in Adelaide. And then I let this error of judgment eat at me for the rest of the trip. I tried to let it go, and it worked to an extent, but it took until the following morning for me to actually let go of the results.

But, I guess it was just another opportunity to work on discovering and strengthening (I hope) my character; or as Calvin’s dad would say in Calvin and Hobbs: “It builds character.” I enjoyed the experience and would not try to avoid it if I had had the opportunity. Until my next adventure, goodnight everyone. 

Cheers!

Photo Update

Here are some photos I've taken since my last photo post:

We went with the Exchange Society on a Dolphin Cruse in Port Adelaide

The cruse was fun and cheap, but half our time was spent waiting for the food that we ordered a few minutes after launching. And we only got to see a very few dolphins.

The dam that makes the river Torrens into the Lake Torrens a little West of Adelaide

Another trip to Glenelg to see the sunset. This time Laura, myself and...

...Alex and her boyfriend, David, visiting from the States.

Life Day by Day #1 (and Uluru)

Fun note: last night and this morning, the four of us and one friend, Dustin, booked our tickets and tours for a 5 day trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock). We fly Alice Springs on Sat Sept. 5^th. From Sunday to Tuesday we have a guided tour including an optional camel ride, seeing Kata Tjutu, Kings Canyon, and seeing one sunrise and one sunset over Ayers Rock. Then we fly back from Alice Springs to Adelaide on Wednesday the 9^th of Sept (except for Ryan who chose to skip more classes and fly back on Thursday). I’m sure I’ll give you more details after the trip itself.

A thought: I haven’t decided yet if it is a good aspect, but I think I live life on a pretty day-by-day basis. It is a good thing because I can (and I am speaking in general terms) focus on my present conditions (what is currently being required of me – like school assignments, duties at work, etc.) without too much worry about other problems/frustrations/concerns to distract me.

It is bad because it drastically affects my ability to be aware enough of long-lead decisions that I should make for something in my distant future. Sometime it is not that distant of a future, it is just that I’m focused on the small steps. For example: I am planning on getting a job while here to at least lessen the amount I am spending for rent and food. I was advised at Clemson by the Study Abroad agent to not worry about trying to get a job until I was here. Since we didn’t have school (except for orientation) I put off securing a job until after the first week – that was my first mistake. My second was turning to UniSA for advice about getting a job (leading me into doing some legal forms to get permission to work when I already had that permission), and my third was being a little lazy about it.

To summarize the rest of the story: I wasted two weeks on paperwork I didn’t actually need to do. Through each of these steps I was focused on that step, and each individual step was easy and partly because of this I took my time doing each one. I was living in the moment, enjoying it – or rather being lazy about it. So it took until today, over a month of being here that I finally handed out my resume to some places to actually get the work I had been planning to start right away. 

It frustrates me that I live like this because of it’s financial impact on me. This same general problem kept me from getting a job all year last year at Clemson. There are definite benefits of living in the moment (to be commented on at some other point), but today as I tried to find a job, I couldn’t help feeling frustrated that I AGAIN let myself down when trying to secure a part-time job. I just hope I can learn from my mistakes and not let it happen again. 

Cheers!

Nails #1

I have noticed that I have been biting my nails more in the past month than usual. Yes, the past month.

I will take a moment and interrupt myself for one brief reflection: This past Thursday we, unintentionally, celebrated our first month in Adelaide. It was a bit odd; for me, it has not at all felt like a month. In recognition of this landmark (the longest time I’ve spent out of the US… breaking my last record of a few days in Canada), I was asked a few questions:

“What is your biggest surprise?” A: The similarity to America. The differences are subtle which almost makes them more shocking, but overall, it is a very similar place.

“What is your biggest disappointment?” A: The high cost of living. Everything here, especially the alcohol, is much more expensive due to the high Australian taxes. 

“Favorite thing we’ve done so far?” A: Going to Glenelg, especially the sunset while there. 

“What’s your favorite color?” A: Green (especially dark green – and no, this question has nothing to do with Australia in specific).

So back to my nail biting habits: I don’t exactly know what it is that causes me to doing this, but I think there is more than one factor. For example, I admit that I bite my nails when I’m anxious or nervous, but not exclusively. Many times I’ll do it out of boredom too.

            One thing that has caused me to be more anxious is dealing with the traffic rules here. I have not yet had the chance to drive on the road, and I’m not sure I would yet try… maybe I would, but we deal with it in every day commuting. 

            There were two specific times that I have been riding in a bus (once in Sydney when we were just in from the US, and another as we were taking the tour to Cleland – where we saw the kangaroos and other animals), where I had a start. Twice my heart was in my throat as the bus made a left turn into oncoming traffic!... which of course was actually traveling in the same direction as we were going.

            But on a much more dangerous note, due to our familiarity with the traffic rules in the States, even crossing a road is hazardous. It has been difficult for us to retrain ourselves to look right (as compared to left) first before crossing a street. I personally try to only cross at the crosswalk for this reason, that way all I have to do is wait for the green striding figure to light up (and because apparently there is a $75 fine for J walking). 

            We are getting used to these rules, but even still – perhaps this is one reason why I have difficulty picking up a 5 cent piece from a smooth surface.

 

Cheers!

Oh, I'm running? Huh...

This morning I woke up in one of those introvert state; the state where I listen and think more, but talk less. I don’t claim to produce any sort of revolutionary thought by any means, but I think today is the day that I have put a name on a… fear of mine. I think I am a runner. No, I am not speaking of the physical activity, I’m speaking of the cowardice activity.

So I have always considered myself to be a Spiritual person. I have identified with the lessons I’ve been taught from birth and have strived to live by them. But in the recent past (since I left the safety of the Bryn Athyn bubble, where I was surrounded by people of similar beliefs and incalculable amounts of easily accessible support) I have found that I actually have to put more effort into practicing what I believe. For example, I read the bible less than I feel I should (and yet this is in part because I have too little patience to analyze the reading, so I’m at the stage where I think it is a good practice so that I get in the habit, with the hopes that the process of learning more from it will follow later on), I have been attending church less, and I don’t put much effort in guarding my mind (not editing it, I think I edit my mind enough, but I don’t work on keeping the evil thoughts in my mind at bay).

I have realized recently that this falls into my newly named category of things I run from. It isn’t that I feel secure in my spiritual standings (as in how good of a person I think I am) but just that I feel that there are many things I should work on and yet it is too daunting a task to face it. So instead I just ignore it, and in essence run away from the subject. Perhaps now that I acknowledge this fact, and while I’m in Oz where all of my life is already different, may as well add another struggle and tackle this challenge...

I don’t want to speak in dept about my past love life online like this, and for many of you I’m sure you’ve heard enough complaining from me in this regard that you couldn’t possibly want to hear more. I will spare you of this pain, but I’m going to speak of one general aspect of my love life because it was while thinking about this that made me realize my cowardice. I, like many people I'm sure, greatly tend to over-analyze any event that effects me emotionally (specifically in a romantic kind of emotion). In many many cases, the results that I find by this analysis causes me much frustration. Frustration like accepting how I feel for a girl and wanting to pursue these emotions and yet analyzing my motives, accepting that they are not necessarily COMPLETELY pure, and thus telling myself that therefore I should not pursue her. But this happens every time, and I can't help but feel that if I were to hold back every time because I acknowledge that I am not a perfect being, then I will never be able to commit and then find true love (or true conjugial love for those of you in the New Church).

To get back to the cowardice, this frustration is one of the many reasons I often think of ways to distract myself (such as read the current book I'm working on... by no means a harmful pastime, but let me put it this way: I have read more than 5 books in the past 3 months), and lay awake wishing I didn’t have to feel all the complicated emotions I do. But now I’m realizing that it is not that I have been trying/craving a solution to the problem, it’s that I am wishing the problem didn’t exist. In other words, I don’t want to fix the problem, I want to run away from the problem.

I don’t want your sympathy or empathy, and certainly not your pity (none of which can be properly communicated in any way other than face-to-face in any case), I just want to state what’s going on in my head. You benefit because you get to learn more about me (why you would want that, though, is beyond me!), and I benefit because I do believe that venting is something needed by more than just buildings, kitchens, and bathrooms. The only way I can accept and truly analyze my “problems” are by communicating them (even just to the ether world called the internet). So thank you for letting me vent. I have hope that God will help me figure this out. Even if it currently a passive effort, I do like to think that I'm keeping my mind open for Him to guide me with. I'm going to church tomorrow morning (not the New Church since they don't meet this weekend) so I guess that's a step in the right direction!

Happy August!

Cheers!

-Nils