Of Fairy Floss, Pigs and a Rodeo

Fairy Floss!

Yesterday after class Rob and I got on a bus to the train station where we caught a train out to Olympic Park (yep, the Olympic Park from the Olympics in 2000) and got our tickets for the Sydney Royal Easter Show.  This is a huge 2 week long event that happens every year in the city and is basically like a massive fair/carnival.  We watched a cattle judging (which we left early since we had absolutely no idea what was even happening) saw sheep being sheared, chicks being born, really weird looking chickens and pigeons and the biggest pigs I have ever seen in my life; they were easily 5ft long.  We bought (probably way too much) Fairy Floss, which is just Aussie for cotton candy, and ate it while we walked around to see all the exhibits.  In one section the different regions of Australia had designed murals made only of fruit, vegetables and grains.  There was also an arts and crafts building where photos, paintings, quilts and even unique cake creations were on display, my favorites included a cake of the Last Supper and a jar of Vegemite.  While it got darker we wandered into a smaller stadium and found ourselves cheering for the New South Wales Woodchopping Team (who ended up losing to both Victoria and Queensland) in a wood chopping and sawing relay race competition. Then we spent some time watching a hypnotist show before riding the ferris wheel to see the lights of the fair at night.  Last we went back to the smaller stadium and watched a rodeo where a City team competed against a Country team in cattle lassoing, bronco and bull riding and barrel horse racing.  Overall, a pretty interesting afternoon/evening!

Murals made of fruit and vegetables 

Lots and Lots of Rocks

This weekend was the first excursion for my "Life Through Time" fossils class.  We left Friday at 1pm and after stopping once for dinner finally got there at 8pm.  My friends Jaclyn, Casha and I got an 8 person dorm-style room with 5 Australian girls who were really keen to teach us Aussie slang and hear about all the differences between here and the US.  We all went to sleep pretty early since we had an early start planned for the next morning.  The teachers had prepared eggs, toast, bacon and sausage for us to eat which made for an overall great start to the day, despite the pouring rain.  After brekkie and helping a girl from Michigan State school a few Aussies in euchre, we geared up for the rain and went to "Cathedral Cave" with our teachers and a tour guide, to learn about the history and the geology of the area.  Here I should mention that there are people in this class who are REALLY into geology/paleontology and spent the morning asking really good questions, taking tons of pictures and looking all over for fossils...needless to say I was not one of these people since all the rocks looked the same to me.  Some things that were sort of interesting were the layers on the walls of the caves that had been folded and warped, they said due to a fault line running through the caves, and finding some marine coral fossils on the walls from when the cave was still part of the ocean during the Pliocene Era (2-3 million years ago).

If you are bored by the geology already, please keep in mind that this was my entire weekend...

After the cave tour we had a few lectures and handled some skulls, teeth and other bones of animals of the area.  Then we went up to the kiosk for lunch where I got a steak sandwich with "The Works."  Around here this means that your sandwich/burger will come topped with the following: cheese, salad (literally lettuce and some carrot bits) tomato, beet root, bacon, pineapple and a fried egg.  Those who know me well would assume that I would have picked off all these odd toppings, but recently I've noticed that my tastes have become totally open-minded and most everything I eat is delicious.

Me, Jaclyn, Casha and Jess before heading into the phosphate mines

In the afternoon our class split into two groups and my group went into the phosphate mines to do some more exciting history and geology learning!  The mine was closed after running out of money shortly after World War II but reopened by palaeontologists/geologists in the 90s.  We saw "Bone Cave" which was just a large, excavated area with clay and limestone walls, but all the clay had white bits of bones in them.  The geologists who worked there had previously pulled out clay and dirt from the area, so when we went back to the classroom area, we spent some time sorting out fossils.  I found lots of rodent teeth and jaws, kangaroo teeth, bat toes and fingers and a very tiny tooth of a carnivorous marsupial.  In lab last week we  learned how to use teeth and vertebrae to distinguish between placental and marsupial mammals and herbivores and omnivores, so it was pretty neat to get to use those skills in the field.  Since it rained all day, I guess we had the perfect activities planned since we were either underground or inside.

That night we had BBQ complete with sausages, steaks, pasta, potato, fruit and normal veggie salads, chips, crackers and cheese and even devilled eggs.  We all sat around and ate (way too much), drank and talked...mostly about American history and Australian accents and all the differences we could think of between the two places.

The Bush!

Sunday morning we woke up early again to a big breakfast and got on the bus and drove even further into the bush.  When we had driven in on Friday night it was already dark, but today I noticed how much the landscape looks like some places in Appalachia, just with lots more sheep.  Finally we stopped along the road and walked up to some guy's house, a friend of the curator of Wellington Caves who also has lots of farmland.  On his land are tons and tons of Devonian limestone with marine invertebrate fossils.  We could literally pick up a random rock and expect to find some kind of fossil.  Like I mentioned before, there were a lot of kids who were way more excited about this than me, so I found a few cool rocks, took a few notes and then just sat with some friends, taking in the surroundings and the sunny day and watching the owner's pet pig, Hamlet, follow people around looking for food.  After a few hours we finally headed for home, this time missing the traffic and making it home in only 6 hours.

Last week was my busy one for assignments and tests, so now only 4 days of class and a plane ride separate me from New Zealand!

Meeting Marsupials

Kookaburra

Quokkas

Today some of the people from my church took me and Rob to Featherdale Wildlife Park in Blacktown, about an hour west of Sydney by train.  The park is an Australian wildlife reserve that is basically just a big petting zoo for Australian animals like kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, emus, wombats, etc.  Sadly, it is illegal to hold a koala in New South Wales (I would have to go to Queensland for that!) but I got to feed and pet everything else, and even got a hug from a kangaroo at one point!  We saw one kangaroo with a joey in its pouch...the bodies of marsupials are seriously amazing for what they've been designed to do.  We were told that sometimes kangaroos and wallabies can put off the birth of their joey for up to 2 years if there is a drought or other long-term danger, and just carry them around in the pouch since they know that the joey wouldn't survive outside...pretty incredible.  There were kookaburras just kind of hanging around as well, sometimes doing their "laugh" and one enclosed area had Flying Foxes which are really big bats that are pretty abundant here.  On any given night there are one or both of these animals in the tree outside my window!  The emus were very interested in the food (which was given out in animal-friendly ice cream cones) and would just come up behind you and grab the whole cone if you weren't paying attention.  The dingos were basically just like dogs, especially since they've been at Featherdale since birth, so they could almost be considered domesticated. The echidnas are like porcupines, but their spikes felt like plastic and weren't what I expected at all.  The echidna (along with platypus) is one of two mammals that lay eggs.  The wombats, I think, are definitely under-rated. They're "vicious" so I guess that's why people don't get excited about them, but the one I got to pet seemed really sweet and had such a cute face!  Probably one of the cuter animals there were the quokkas.  The Aussies we were with said they were just "really large rats" but I have never seen rats this adorable.

Bella the Koala

Wombat

Although I could have probably spent all day just walking around feeding the kangaroos and wallabies (especially the babies!) my favorite part were the koalas.  I had my heart set on getting to hold one but getting to pet them was still awesome. Koalas sleep 18-20 hours a day and have the smallest brain to body ratio of any animal (this is most likely because they sleep in the trees from which they eat, so they don't have to do a lot of cognitive processing in their lives..)  We were told that usually the koalas sleep the whole time people are there and you never see them move or even open their eyes, but today one of the younger ones named Bella was feeling pretty awake.  She jumped out of the tree and was walking around on the ground inside her enclosure.  The koala areas have a rail, but no fence so we were leaning over to watch her and at one point she walked right up to me sat on the ground and reached her arms up like a child being asked to be picked up.  I was dying to grab her, but I didn't want to go to jail so I just stood there and took pictures.  I think having a koala basically ask you to pick it up is almost better than actually getting to hold it, so I'll just go ahead and consider it checked off the list.

Off To The Races

Located near campus is the Royal Randwick Racecourse and for the next few weeks they are hosting the Sydney Carnival, three full Saturdays of thoroughbred horse racing. We bought tickets for the first raceday and made sure our outfits were ready for the black and white affair celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Australian Jockey Club Derby.  We were told that girls go all out for these races; tall heels, short dresses and big hats, so we had an excuse to go shopping!

So this morning we got up early, got ready and left for the racecourse, but carried our hats instead of wearing them because we thought we looked ridiculous.  As soon as we got there we realized that we weren't going to be out of place at all, so we jumped right in to the horse race scene and placed a few bets.  Of course we had no idea what we were doing so we only did about $1 at a time, but it was fun to have something to cheer for during the runs.  My brother had suggested that I find the one with the highest odds and put a dollar down, so I bet on a horse named Ducarius who had 201:1 odds (meaning that $1 would pay out $201 if he won).  He did not win, and in fact we realized why the odds were so bad when he ended up walking across the finish line almost a minute after the others had crossed.

Black Caviar taking the lead to keep
her title as World's Fastest Sprinter

The most exciting race of the day was the Sydney debut of Black Caviar, a 5 year old mare and the fastest sprinter in the world.  She spent most of the race in 3rd place, which worried the crowd (most of whom had come just to see her), but in the last 100m sprinted ahead of everyone, leaving us screaming, clapping and waving flags decorated with her jockey's signature colors; pink with black spots.  After today's race she is undefeated for all 13 of her race starts and her owners are even more wealthy.

Riding The Waves

In my wetsuit at the end of our lesson!
We didn't get any pictures while were out on the water...
but that's probably a good thing.

After class this morning and a quick lunch, Ryan and I jumped on a bus down to Maroubra Beach.  After a little time reading in the sand under the afternoon sun, we pulled on our wetsuits, grabbed our boards and followed our instructor down to the waves.  We started at the very end of the beach away from all the real surfers and learned about the rip tides, currents and some other safety things before learning how to paddle, balance and then finally stand up.

I knew that I was going to be pretty bad at this but honestly, for me, learning how to surf was really just learning how to fall off of a surf board in various (often acrobatic!) ways.  When you first start, you have to find the part of the water that the lifeguards have marked as a rip so it can bring you "out the back."  Here you lay or sit (sitting makes you look really cool, but it's actually really hard to do) while huge swells roll under and sometimes over you and in my case, scare the crap out of you.  I've been going to beaches all my life, but I've never gotten over my irrational fear of really big waves. Also, seeing rocks on the bottom through the crystal clear water made me think I was seeing sharks...enough said.

Our instructor, who has been surfing for 12 years was really great. He told us right from the beginning that everyone picks it up at a different pace and it was really obvious that he was used to people having no idea what they were doing.  With his stereotypical chill and patient attitude, he ended up being a really calming presence for me.  He was out in the water with us the whole time and somehow always managed to bring us to the right spot, tell us when to start paddling for the waves and sometimes even push the back of our boards for a bit of extra speed, all without ever tipping himself over.

The process of standing up is done in a few steps; the first two are basically like doing yoga (upward then downward dog) then the rest are the placing of your feet, all while looking forward, balancing the board and trying not to hit the other surfers around you.

Myth: Surfing is easy.
Fact: I'm a terrible surfer.

However, I did stand up on a few waves! But each time pretty soon after I stood up, I got so excited to finally be standing, that I lost my balance and fell.  I didn't realize how much strength is required for surfing; it always looks so effortless, but between the waves and the paddling and the mid-ocean floating yoga...I was exhausted.

At least now I can check one more thing off my bucket list!

Vegemite

Vegemite on a Ritz cracker

Somehow Vegemite has become a "famous Australian food" even though every Aussie I've asked hates the stuff.  It's meant to be eaten on crackers or toast and is a spread originally made from brewer's yeast and sold as a source of Vitamin B (1922). The name, Vegemite, wasn't chosen until later (1923). Soon doctors were recommending the stuff because of its vitamin content, and the invention of the toaster made it an even more popular household item (late 1930s-early 1940s).  In 1984, a jar of Vegemite became the first product to be electronically scanned at the checkout in a supermarket in Australia. In 1996 a statistic was released which stated that Australians went through 22 million jars of "our favourite spread" a year and that every household pantry had a jar.

So we finally tried Vegemite for the first time...and could barely finish half of a cracker.

In an attempt to explain the taste, I offer up these less than attractive photos:

Spontaneity And The City

So this weekend is the first one since I got here (over a month and a half ago...can you believe it's April already??) where I did not have anything planned to do; no daytrips, no hiking, no holiday to celebrate, etc.  Although I was feeling anxious about it at first, it has turned out to be a blessing as I've quickly found out that this is the ideal place to be for spontaneity.

On Friday night, after a full day of reading at the beach, Mona, Lorena and I cooked up some kangaroo steaks and mini-quiches for dinner and discovered an Australian satirical news show.  Then we walked into downtown Coogee and got gelato (I know I'm not in Europe, so I can't claim it as "real" but that stuff is SO GOOD.) We took it down to the beach with our notebooks and studied for our upcoming anatomy test...or at least tried :)  This "studying" was cut short when a friend of mine walked down the beach with his guitar and started playing for us while we chatted.  A few other friends joined us and we spent the rest of the night in the sand just stargazing and sharing funny stories, growing quiet at times to listen to the waves and the guitar.

Kangaroo Pizza!!

Today (Saturday) was terrible weather so my usual routine of going to the beach with my homework on downtime days was ruined and I ended up bundling up (it gets cold when it's windy!) in my room and doing some reading and catching up on some of my American TV show favorites.  Later in the afternoon we took the bus into Sydney to check out the weekend market at The Rocks and then went to the Australian Heritage Hotel, which has gourmet pizzas and a really lively, sporty atmosphere.  We got kangaroo pizza (with onions, peppers, capsicum, mozzarella cheese and some kind of native berries) and watched a little bit of a rugby game, which we tried to understand, but in the end could not.  I have plans to study with an Aussie friend tomorrow and he says there will be games on and he will teach me the rules.  So far it seems a lot like football (without pads or helmets) mixed with an adult game of Red Rover.

When the architect designed the Opera House,
slices of the orange in his lunch were his inspiration.
If you were to take all of the pointed pieces of the Opera House
and put them together, they can be made into a perfect sphere.

After dinner we went back towards the Opera House, stopping to buy pancake mix from "Pancakes On The Rocks" (still my favorite restaurant!) and various touristy gifts.  We walked along Circular Quay, got 50cent soft serve from Mackers (McDonalds) and then went up to the Opera House and hung out on the steps (a great place for rich-person people watching!) before heading back home on the bus.  On the way we stopped at the grocery store to get syrup for tomorrow's pancake breakfast, and found that bananas are still $2 EACH. They are claiming that the prices are due to the flooding in Queensland, which is a major area for banana growth. Although bananas are easily my favorite fruit, I have begun favoring pears which are also great with any meal and at anytime, but have the advantage of costing only $2 for 6 of them.

This weekend will be a first and last for spontaneity as I have things planned for all the weekends until at least May.  Our plans for semester break (April 22nd- May1st) have been finalized and we are officially travelling through the North Island of New Zealand!

Tomorrow will be Daylight Savings Time for us and we will be "falling back" an hour, making the time difference 14 hours between here and home!