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.