Saturday Adventure

Saturday, March 6^th is where our story continues. It was a laid back day and the weather was really nice, which made it even better. I worked on my character profile for Jake for most of the morning. I went through the gospels and tried to find information on Judas. There really isn’t much about him, but I did find some very interesting things out about him. In Luke 22:3 it says: “Then Satan entered Judas” and in John 13:2 it says: “the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus.” The verses made me start to think about whether Judas had a choice in whether or not he betrayed Jesus? Was it freewill or predestination? Was Judas really that bad of a guy? I’m sure that one of my more theological friends has a better answer, but it just made me realize how we need to guard our hearts because all sorts of stuff can slip in. Judas opened himself up to greed and eventually it brought him to suicide.

After working on homework, I decided to head up to Wesley and I got on the Internet while I waited for it to be time for Hannah’s show. I met up with three ASCers, Carissa, Andrea, and Kristen who also came to see the show. Hannah is one of the third year drama students at Wesley. She wrote, directed, and designed her show. It was really good. It’s called “Absorbed in Quirktorium” and it’s about two elementary girls who get lost in a museum and go on an adventure through the different exhibits. It was meant for children, but the show was still heaps of fun for older people. The crazy colors of the set and lighting really added to the zany characters in the show. The actors were all so into their characters, which also made it fun to watch. I was really impressed by the production.

Once the show was over, I went to the Rocks with Carissa, Andrea, and Kristen. We went to the Hero of Waterloo, which is in one of the oldest buildings in Sydney. It was really impressive to see the stones that the building was made out of and then think about how convicts had carved each of them with hand tools. We all ordered Hero burgers. They were great! One difference between American and Australian hamburgers is that they put beets on hamburgers in Australia. After experiencing some Australian history we decided to go on a walk across the Harbor Bridge. I’m glad that we did. Seeing the city at night from the bridge was a cool experience. It was funny because we would sop every 10 steps it seemed to take pictures. The Harbor Bridge is a very impressive structure, and I can see why it’s a national symbol. On the other side of the bridge we went and walk around part of Luna Park, which is a famous Australian amusement park. I think there was a wedding reception going on because there were tons of people dressed up. Exploring was fun there is so much here to see. One my way back home I went through Circular Quay to catch a bus and ended up running into my roommate, Greg, and the girls that live at the homestay right by my house. Its weird that even though I’m in this big city you still can run into people you know on a frequent basis.

Sydney Harbour

Week 2

Wow, I haven’t posted anything in a long time. On Tuesday (March 2), I had View from Australia in the morning. We were supposed to watch a movie, but the DVD player decided not to work. We then tried to use several laptops to play the movie. Unfortunately, were foiled once again, because the regions set on American laptops is different than the regions of Australian DVDs. In the end we gave up hope of watching the movie and instead had discussion over our reading guide.

We talked about National Myths and how they have influence society. Australia’s national myth is that of their convict past, which as we learned has had a huge impact on Australian culture. Speaking in generalities Australians tend to be fatalistic in there world view and have a much more egalitarian view of society than Americans do. I learned about the myth of the convict past in an article called “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes if anyone wants to try and find it and read it. After The View, I had lunch and headed to rehearsal. I honestly don’t remember what all we did, but the show is moving along really well. I still wasn’t able to get my clothes off the line because it decided to rain again.

On Wednesday, I got to sleep in a little. I don’t have to be at school until 1, so I had some extra time and was finally able to get my clothes off the line. I know the epic tale of the laundry must be a thrilling one, but I figured that I had committed to it this far so I might as well finish the tale. I got to school in time to have lunch before The Gathering. The speaker was a dancer and choreographer. She had created some form of meditative movement to Bible verses. There were a lot of technical difficulties with the movie clips that she wanted to show. Overall it was an awkward chapel to sit through. Although, it was nowhere near as bad as The Singer of Israel chapel from freshman year.

After the Gathering, I went to New Testament class. We finished talking about our first lecture notes on historical context, and then we moved on to talking about literary context. Learning about exegesis is really interesting, because I feel like I’m leaning to read the Bible better. I was intimidated after the first week of class, but after the second week I felt much more confident about the class. Mark Stephens, the professor of the class, is a great lecturer.

Once NT was over, I had a 30-minute break before Theatre Secondment. I thought that Theatre Secondment was going to be puppetry for television; however, it turns out that it is with a one man or I guess I should say one-woman company called The Pupperoos. My teacher’s name is Kay Yasugi. Kay studied at the London School of Puppetry and now works doing solo puppetry projects. For class we are helping Kay workshop a story for the Wentworth Gallery, which is an aboriginal museum in Sydney. For our first day of class we got to play around a lot. We got to work with shadow puppets and see how different light sources affected the images. We also got to make some of our own simple shadow puppets out of cereal boxes. I’m excited to work on the project and I can’t wait to see how the story begins to come together.

Thursday is Easter show rehearsal day. I don’t really have much to report about the show. I’m in the process of learning my lines and working on characterization. I’m getting to know my character Jake more, but there is still so much more to discover. Wesley’s drama program is super focused on acting so it has been a really good experience to work with the students in the show. After rehearsal, I went out to the Thai restaurant by school and had dinner with a big group of people. We were staying around school because it was movie night. Once a month they organize a movie night for us so that we can watch Australian movies. We watch Ned Kelly, which had Orlando Bloom and Christian Bale in it. Ned Kelly is Australia’s most famous outlaw and is praised as being a hero. The movie was really interesting and was defiantly worth watching.

Let see, on Friday we had Indigenous Culture class. We began our day by going over our syllabi for our two ASC classes. Kimberly had gone to the states after orientation was over for a conference so we never got to talk about them. Once we finished talking about the syllabi we had a discussion over our reading of Volf’s “Oppression and Justice”. Volf is a professor at Yale Divinity School so his writing was very academic. It was an incredibly dense article to read, but it was interesting once I understood what was going on. My favorite quote from the reading was “There is a profound “injustice” about the God of the biblical traditions. It is called grace.” I found it to be an incredibly challenging statement, because it reminded me that God did not execute justice on us, but rather He chose to show grace. What would the world look like if we pursued grace? Anyways, after our Volf discussion we had lunch and we met our Indigenous teacher, Jennifer Newman. Jennifer is a great storyteller. I’m still trying to figure out why, but I think it partly has to do with how she uses her hand to act out things as she is talking about them. Our introduction to aboriginal culture went really fast. I was thankful for that because I was really tired and was ready to go home. It was raining and we didn’t feel like going out so I ended up staying at home with Greg and Ross.

The Honeymoon Phase

I’m sorry that this is going to be the longest blog post of life (And to my English Major friends I’m sorry for the missing commas). What follows is a weeks worth of updating. It’s a little disorganized so I hope that its still fun to read. My fellow ASC-ers and I are still in what is called the honeymoon stage of our trip. Everything is still new and exciting. There is so much of the city that I haven’t gotten to explore. I wonder what the next phase of the trip will be like? I can’t believe that I’ve only been here for two weeks. Everyday is so full of stuff to do. But I guess that’s what college is all about.

Lets see I need to start on Tuesday the 23^rd of February. I had class all day starting at 8:45. We had a guest speaker for our View from Australia class. She taught us about the history of Australia. I kind of felt like I was catching up on all the stuff kids learn in elementary school. After class, I had a 2 hour break and than I had rehearsal. It’s so weird to have rehearsal during the middle of the day. I feel like my brain can actually function. Bethel should look into daytime rehearsals. The Easter show is going to be really interesting. Wesley’s approach to teaching acting is so different than Bethel’s approach. They tend to do a lot more improv exercises, which has I am still getting used to doing. Being in the show is going to be a very stretching and growing experience.

On Wednesday Abby, Charlene, and I went to our service placement to meet with our supervisor, Judy. Working at St. Joseph’s is going to be really interesting, and probably really hard. Most of the people who there are highly disabled and don’t have much mobility. The meeting went really well and I found out that I was going to be doing my hours on Mondays. After our meeting we headed toward school and explored some of the stores by school. One of them is called the Ski Barn. I really wasn’t expecting to see a ski store in the middle of Sydney, but there it was. We got on campus in time to go have lunch and go to The Gathering, which is Wesley’s weekly chapel. When The Gathering was over, I headed to my 3 hour long New Testament class. I’m somewhat intimidated by it right now.

Thursday is the big rehearsal day for the Easter show. We start at 8:30 and run until 11:00 than we have a break until 2 and go until 5. I really can’t remember much about Thursday beyond the fact that I had rehearsal. I know that we went over to Carrie’s house. We had meat pies for dinner, which are supposed to be a very Australian food. They reminded me of a pasty without vegetables on the inside.

On Friday, we had our first Indigenous culture and history class. We started off by playing a game called Bafa Bafa. It was this culture assimilation game, one group was the Alphas and the other group was the Beta. Each group had it own customs and traditions, which it followed and we had to try and carry them out as well as we could. The point of the game was to show that one has to use observation in order to understand other culture, but that it is dangerous to make value judgments of another culture. Mel told us that just like an ice burg there is more of the unseen part of a culture than there is to the part that is actually seen.

After lunch we went to the Customs House where Mel gave us a lecture on the Rocks so that we would have some background information when we eventually made our way there. After the lecture we went to the Library of New South Wales to get our library cards. It was a very interesting trip. 2 of the librarians that work in the indigenous culture area gave us a presentation on what the library offered. Then they took us on a tour. It was really neat to get to go behind the scenes and see the stacks of books in the Library. The NSW library does not rent books out, but rather you have to ask the librarians to bring you the books. It was like going to the Library of Congress. Once we were finished with the library, we had to go to the Rocks, which is the historic district of Sydney. We were given a list of historic sites to find. It was really neat to get to see all the different places and to have an idea of what they represented historically. Once we were finished with the assignment we went to a restaurant called Pancakes on the Rocks. Dinner was pretty good, but I’m not sure I would go back right away. One interesting difference about dinning out here is that you don’t have to leave a tip at restaurants in Australia. In general you don’t tip here. When Greg and I tried to tip our taxi cab driver he wouldn’t accept it, which was an awkward experience.

On Saturday, I ended up waking up early. I always seem to wake up early here. Between the birds that sound like their being killed and the ones that sound like small children crying it can be hard to sleep in past 8:00. I went on a journey to find the one Christian bookstore in Sydney, name Koorong. It turned out that it wasn’t a very difficult place to get to. I walked up to Cressy road and took it to Victoria Road where I was able to catch a bus to West Ryde, which is where the book store is located. I needed to buy a book for my New Testament class. I was very fortunate because the store was having a sale so I got my book 20 percent off. After I acquired my book, I went to Wesley to do some home work and try and help work on a set. At Wesley they call it bump in, not load in. I was really glad that I went because I got to help paint.

Sunday I ended up getting up and doing homework. I did my laundry in the morning and hung it up to dry. Greg and I walked to a café and sat and talked for a while. Eventually we moved to McDonald’s because it is one of the few places that offer free Internet in Australia. We ended up running into Emily and Caitlin. We sat for a couple hours and did homework. I was able to finish a lot of my homework for my View from Australia. While we were sitting there it had to start raining, which meant that by the time I got home my clothes were all wet.

On Monday, I woke up at 6:30 to get ready for my service placement. My service placement is with the Sister’s of St. Joseph. They run a nursing home, which takes care of aging nuns as well as other elderly people. I ended up getting there really early. So I sat and read for an hour on a bench outside. I was really nervous to start working at the nursing home. The first two people I tried to talk to ended up getting up and walking away from me so I was quickly losing confidence in myself. On Mondays they hold Mass for the residents so I attended the service since I was failing at getting talking to be people. After mass Sister Pat and I started getting ready for the art project. I got to help a resident named Sister Mary paint. She is 94 years old and she used to study music. Working with Mary went really well, which was good since my first attempts of talking to people went so badly. I really enjoyed my time there, but I know that it’s going to be hard to work there some days.

At noon I left St. Joseph’s and I hopped on a bus to go to school. I had rehearsal from 2 to 5. We worked the scenes I was in a lot. I’m really that the director is pushing me. I think it going to be a really great opportunity to work with the cast. I’m really looking forward to getting to know them. The slogan of “I can’t. I have rehearsal” is just as true here as it is at Bethel. Of course it had to be a rainy day again so my clothes are still wet. Maybe I’ll be able to take them off the line on Tuesday.