I’m Yoooooooooours August 9, 2008

Tonight I went to see Jason Mraz play in Newtown, the equivalent of the village in Sydney.  It was a small venue and Anna and I got the last two tickets to this show… so we were in the very back, but we loved every minute of it and it was worth the ticket price.

You’ve probably heard Jason’s song “I’m Yours” because it’s on MTV and stuff.  It’s a reggae summer-

okay so I didn't take this picture... but he wore an outfit like that tonight haha

y kind of song that makes you think of being at the beach.  Or you might have heard “Remedy” or “You And I Both”, some of his other more popular songs.  He is a phenomenal musician.  Usually I don’t like all of an artist’s songs, but he is one of those musicians whose songs are ALL good.  He writes them himself of course and his lyrics are great.  Concerts are better when there’s lots of crowd participation and this was definitely one of those shows.  Anna is a diehard fan that’s been following him for years so it was wicked fun to go with her and catch her excitement for it.  Every time I go to a concert like that, I am just so thankful God gave us music.

Anyways… go download some Jason Mraz.  I’m gonna go throw a boomerang or something. : )

Let the games begin! August 8, 2008

Our boat heading to the Whitsunday Islands

What a week this has been!

For starters, I booked my “spring break” (weird, huh?) trip this week. Me and several friends will be cruising the Great Barrier Reef during our holiday in late September and my flight is now purchased. The sailboat we will stay on is all-inclusive, so we will sleep and eat on the boat as we travel from Airlie Beach over to the Whitsunday Islands, all along the reef. I’ve heard a rumor that the Great Barrier Reef is disappearing; I’m not a scientist or anything but I figure I better get myself over there to check it out while I can! It’s sad to think about these things, but the chances of me coming back to Australia in the near future are pretty slim so I am trying to live it up as much as possible. The boat also includes scuba-diving throughout the trip, so that will be a big first for me. Can’t wait.

I’ve just gotten back from SPIRO camp today. SPIRO means Spiritual Emphasis. They just “abbrev” everything thing here. I totes def fit in. Every year, the Wesley student body takes a retreat a few hours north. It is something that almost all students and faculty members attend, and it lasts for about a day and a half. I was really looking forward to it, not only because spiritual retreats always leave me refreshed and hungrier for the things of God, but also because I really wanted to get to know some Wesley students. We see them on campus but many of my classes are filled with Americans. Since Wesley only has a couple hundred students and our study abroad group is around 30, the ratio of yanks to aussies is a little higher than I’d like it to be. It’s easy to just hang out with Americans and never get to know the students that are from Sydney. So, the last few days helped us to do just that. Our speaker was actually a guy from Texas named Richard Farmer. I guess he’s pretty famous… I hadn’t heard of him before but he did a great job. He is a pianist in addition to being a preacher. Check this out: A few times, he’d be sitting at this grand piano on stage, and he’d ask someone in the audience to call out a favorite phrase from the bible or line from their journal – anything that he could use as the basis for a worship song. Then he’d ask another person to randomly call out 5 notes. Any 5 notes. One kid gave C, C#, D, D#, E – the chromatic scale. Kind of mean for writing a song, a tough set of notes to do something with. And then he’d take those notes and words and write a song right there on the spot. It was beautiful. He did an incredible job. We talked about being an artist as a Christian and what that means. Man, going to an arts school is amazing. We also had heaps of fun sitting around singing to the many guitars the guys would break out around the fire, and had lots of laughs and lots of hot chocolate. This camp food was also a grade A+. Kind of steam-rolled Pen-Del. All in all, it was such a great chance to get to know the spirit of Wesley. Their worship team played a bunch and let me tell you… seeing hundreds of students from my college jump to worship was pretty fantastic. There is a passion for God at Wesley that I wish you could see for yourself… it’s too hard to describe it. But let’s just say, this is such a neat time of encouragement in my faith. These students are excited about God and using their talents for him.

Tonight when my housemates and I got home from camp we watched the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The ceremony was crazy!! I mean, a GOOD crazy!! Um all I can say is my jaw was on the floor from start to finish. Sarah Brightman’s hair extensions were hilarious. So were the Australian announcers during the whole thing. during the part with marrionettes the one guy said in a tired voice, “So for any of you who have seen a real performance of these puppet operas you are probably glad to only see the reader’s digest version tonight…” and things of that sort. Australian announcers are one of the gems of this place. When Ecuador walked out in the country parade, I was so proud! It was neat to identify with another country at the games, and no doubt for the next olympics I will feel the same way about Australia. It feels like home too. We will be watching the olympics closely from here and cheering on both the Americans and the Aussies!

Well it’s way past my bedtime and I have a full day of activities tomorrow… including service hours and a Jason Mraz concert. Till next time!

Peace,

Andrea

Try Scary Traditional Aussie Food: Check August 4, 2008

Here it is. Tasty?

Tonight, for the first time ever, I did a very very Australian thing.

I ate Vegemite.

All I have to say is: ew.

Maybe it’s an acquired taste. We ate it how you’re supposed to eat it, spread very very thin on buttered toast. It’s made up of yeast or something so it’s very salty. Cristina described it as being like “eating dried-out soy sauce”. Our host mum said she used to eat Vegemite sandwiches as a kid growing up. Makes you all the more grateful for good ‘ole PB & J.

So this one time I went to Hillsong… August 3, 2008

The City Campus

Whenever I told people I was going to Australia this past year, the first response I would get would be, especially from the Frequency Youth crowd, “SO… DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE GONNA GO TO HILLSONG?!?!?!?!”

It’s funny how a continent can be associated with a church like that. Hillsong is internationally known. Their music is especially popular in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America. My church in Ecuador was always talking about how they wanted to model their worship ministry and even their entire church after Hillsong. It appears that they have “gotten something right” with such a following. But there are some weird televangelists with a following too and although I have always loved the Hillsong United CDs and used them often for our worship team, I was interested in seeing what the church experience would be like there.

Hillsong “The City”, the original but smaller campus, is located about half an hour’s train and bus ride away from my house. The church does a great service by sending a free bus to central station to pick churchgoers up and bring them to and from church. Probably because the church is located in Waterloo, which is a part of town we have been told not to go walking in at night by ourselves. Some of its surrounding sections are pretty rough. I have been to this campus 4 times now, two for my service placement on Saturday mornings and twice for Sunday church services.

My service placement is incredible. I don’t know if I already wrote about this but it’s a ministry through Hillsong called Hillsong Kids. It was started years ago as a way to reach out to children in the city, including many children from aboriginal families. Each Saturday myself and 10 of the other girls from the ASC show up around 8:30 and they feed us breakfast (namely, Nutella. goes over pretty well) and talk with us about different things to expect and disciple us. Then we split up into teams and hit different parks around the city, picking up children door-to-door and playing games with them at the park, as well as presenting the gospel and having a brief devotional. The kids are pretty bad, I’m not gonna lie. This Saturday at my park in Gleeb we had about 8 kids show up, mostly ages 6-12, who sprinkled their sentences with plenty of F-bombs and must’ve given each other the finger several times. But there were some incredible tender moments with them, when you would see their innocence, and realize how valuable this ministry is. Even if it is just a drop in the bucket of showing them Christ’s love. Anyways, that is my ministry through Hillsong and I am really enjoying it so far.

One cool thing about this semester will be going to church in the evenings. I asked Tyler, one of our ministry leaders who’s college-age, what would be the best service to go to for me. There’s like 9 to choose from so I wanted to ask. He suggested the Sunday night service, and I love it so much and I’m so glad he said that. This service is mostly people in their 20’s and 30’s, and it’s such an amazing experience. First you get the bus at Central, and when you walk onto the bus the driver is some young guy who’s like friendly to the nth degree, welcoming you to Hillsong and stuff from the moment you step on board. On the bus you realize what a diverse church it is. I think every nationality must be represented in a service. Which is amazing. You pull up to the church and there are tons of greeters outside, and the ushers walk you right to your seat, starting from the front and moving back. They have to do that to prevent chaos because so many people are flooding in, all wanting good seats. The building itself is nothing pretentious, it’s a brick building and a basic structure. They don’t have fancy furniture or anything. It’s a lot of black walls and gray carpet, a modern feel but no frills. The sanctuary seats about a thousand, maybe more. They add rows quickly for overflow congregation members during the services. There are around 16 extension services in other parts of Sydney and abroad. When the worship starts, it’s pretty fantastic. All the people that you’ve heard of like Joel Houston, Brooke Fraser and them are touring with the United Band, but the worship team is incredible and you think… wow this is just like the CD. They don’t just do their songs – last night for example we sang Open the Eyes of My Heart and Here I Am to Worship, along with My Future Decided and Saviour King. People go up to the front for worship and there’s plenty of jumping. The multimedia is incredible, with a big screen on each side and then a triple screen in the center that they use for lots of different parts of the service. Last night kicked off “Sunday Night Live”, a 4-week sunday night series that is an illustrated sermon format with lots of extra media (like video clips and stuff) and special effects. It’s designed to be a great service to bring friends to. It was amazing last night. God really moved. They had a painter on stage making this enormous painting during the beginning of the sermon, when the pastor read the creation account and there were all these effects and videos and such. And then at the end of the painting, the guy preaching walked over and was like, “Look at this painting. It is speaking to me. Look at the colors, I want to worship this painting. I want to give it awards… it has changed my life”, and being that it’s a responsive crowd, everyone is laughing because he takes it really far. Then he stops and says, “It would be ridiculous to praise this painting… and not praise the actual painter.” It was all about how we worship the work of God instead of God and fail to recognize Him as Creator. It was such a great message. They used lots of scripture and also quotes from CS Lewis and others. The altar call was powerful and lots of people were saved for the first time. They do worship at the end, too, and in between songs they’ll break out into spontaneous worship. then when church gets out everyone heads out of the sanctuary to the “garage”, a huge room that’s warehousey with a coffee cafe and places to chat. Last night me and a bunch of the other ASC girls were given hot chocolate and biscuits and plugged into connect groups by students from the Hillsong College. So Tuesday I am gonna go to my first connect group, which is like a small group for people my age (18-25 range). It’s pretty exciting.

I was telling my parents last night on the phone how neat is was to actually attend this church and be involved, but how I recognize that like any church, it isn’t perfect. I’m sure there are a lot of areas that need improvement. But it’s a great model of how to run a large church well, from what I’ve seen so far. Even though it’s huge, they’re so relational and it’s so simple to get plugged in. I may attend powerhouse on Wednesday nights (the 18-25 service) and I also might go to the women’s ministry on Thursday mornings, since I don’t have class then.

Well that’s enough for one entry… more than enough sorry haha… also apologies all around for my failure to blog in the last week or so. Honestly, life has been so busy that I have barely had time to call home once in a while. But that’s a good thing – I’m glad I’m busy and living it up. Hope you’re all doing well.

Love, Andrea

It’s raining it’s pouring but Sydney’s not boring July 25, 2008

My housemates and I cruising the harbor!

For all those of you shaking your head at my blog entry title, you will have to cut me some slack. I have the worst time with titling entries and I just went all-out cheesy tonight because it’s been a long day.

For my View from Australia class today, we had heaps of homework and I was up really late last night finishing it. We read hundreds of pages of different readings (which included several chapters of Blue Like Jazz so that was exciting) and had to answer reflection questions. Single-spaced, my answers came to 4 pages. That’s like writing an 8-page paper. And trust me I was not over-achieving. It was crazy. We’ll have to do that every week. But fortunately the readings are really good and this week all about social justice. After discussing the readings in class for an hour or so, we took off on a bus for the Sydney public library. Do you remember the library from Beauty and the Beast? With all bookshelves all the way up to high ceilings and spiral stairs going up the walls? That’s what it’s like kinda. It’s pretty cool. I prefer looking at books than actually reading them but it was a nice tour of the library, which will come in handy for some of our projects. From there, we headed to Circular Quay (which is the harbor where the opera house is located, and pronounced Key in case you ever need to know that) to begin our scavenger hunt. Today was around 50 degrees and rainy, so it wasn’t the best weather, but as a group we had to get a picture in front of all the main city sights. We all felt kind of miserable in the rain so we didn’t even try to run and beat the other groups, haha. But we got to see lots of sights and afterwards got free gelato in the Quay. From there we set sail for a harbor cruise. It must have been mad expensive but the ASC paid for it… well I suppose I paid for it but it just feels better when it’s factored in…and there was a man dressed up colonial like Captain Cook (who first discovered Aussie) at the dock. Photo ops around every corner. The cruise was beautiful and the weather improved for it. We sailed under the harbor bridge, past the opera house, and saw great views of the city. I expected it to be kind of dumpy but it was a really nice ship that served us coffee and cake and had all sorts of decks and things. Then we spent some time wandering around Darling Harbour, a different harbour in Sydney that is very similar to Inner Harbour in Baltimore. Our program took us out for Mongolian Barbecue dinner (aaaah so good) and we trained it back to Petersham.

Oh I also proposed to this boy in my program today. But just because his last name is Von Herbulos. Andrea Von Herbulos has quite a nice ring to it, I think. He went on to inform me that his last name means Great Warrior. And my name means Andrea. So either him or his brother who he also recommended needs to marry me so my name can mean Mighty and Womanly Warrior (Andrea means womanly). Man with a name like that you’re set for life. hah!

My housemates are I are going to get into our PJ’s and watch a movie so I gotta go. Later!

This blog entry is a welcomed homework distraction. July 24, 2008

Look! They even come in an assortment of colors! Just so you know... mine is purple.

In light of the weather being so cold this week (rain), our host mum has gone out and bought us all hot water bottles. The kind my grandma used to use. Yes, the rubber things that you thought had died out along with 8 track tape players. But they are alive and well in Sydney. These are the kind of things that come about when indoor heating is overlooked in an entire nation. What’s more, one of the female students at Wesley actually walks around with one during the day, just holding onto it for warmth. The brand of water bottles that is the most popular (these things sell like hotcakes, apparently) is called “Hottie”. How clever. Subsequently, you can make all kinds of “hottie” jokes. To the tune of : Hey look I found myself an Australian hottie. hardy har har, i know, i know.

Today I made a pal. She was a woman in her 70’s named Heather who was waiting at the bus stop with me today. What started off as simple small talk “Gee do you know why the bus is 15 minutes late?” -”No I haven’t the slightest idea” turned into a full-fledged heart-to-heart as our bus decided to arrive an hour later than the scheduled time. Heather had been to her first movie in 30 years the night before and was very excited to tell me all about it. Of all movies, she picked Mamma Mia as her re-entry. She said it was lovely and I assured her that I would see it after her high recommendation. She was a bit of a sad woman, with no family in Sydney and her children grown and far away. From what I gathered they are uninterested in her, unfortunately. She spends all day on Wednesday just getting her weekly groceries. She relies on public transportation, which accounts for about half of the day lost, and she must make two trips because the cauliflower is too heavy for her to bring in the first bag and home delivery would cost her $9 extra, $8.75 more than it used to cost her and $8.75 beyond a reasonable price for a service to the elderly if you asked me. She had the funniest way of speaking in that she was always looking grim and shaking her head, even when she was very excited and happy about something. I also couldn’t help but noticing that she applied blue eyeshadow quite liberally. She was quite the character. I have been learning that sometimes I have the choice to leave my ipod earbuds in and disengage, sealed into my own little world behind my familiar music, and at other times I have the opportunity to meet someone I’ll probably never speak to a second time and get one more glimpse at this culture that continues to surprise me every day. Heather was proud to be Australian but like so many others, seemed a bit amiss somehow. I wish I would have been brave enough to bring to the surface more questions about faith than I did. But nevertheless it was a good conversation and a reminder to seize the present.

first wednesday in Oz July 23, 2008

The first week of school is kind of like aaah i have so much work to do this semester. But I am thrilled about my classes so far and here’s why:

this morning i had the first meeting for my class called contemporary christian music ensemble, which is a fancy way of saying chapel worship team, basically. Wesley has a chapel once a week called The Gathering, which is optional but most everyone comes because they want to (fancy that! people willingly going to chapel!) and it’s an amazing time. So this class that I’m taking involves preparing the worship for that service, including sound, set-up, and music. We got to class today and the teacher was this awesome guy named David. He was really really cool right off the bat, clearly with a heart after worship and said he was so excited that we enrolled in the class. He is going to teach us all sorts of things about how to be better worship leaders so I’m like – heck yeah sign me up for that! I have so much to learn still! Well he mentioned briefly at some point that he was a worship pastor, then at another point he alluded to the fact that he went to a large church, then at another point he made a bit of a joke about Joel Houston (the guy that sings salvation is here). I didn’t really put two and two together and after class during our lunch break as we were both at the counter buying a soda i asked what church he pastored at, just to make conversation. He goes, “oh, Hillsong – the hills”. You’re probably sitting there kind of impressed that he’s a pastor of hillsong. but let me clarify that hillsong the hills is the big church out of the two in sydney, where all of the music is produced from. Not only does this guy teach at the hillsong worship college, but after googling his name (yes i suppose that was borderline creepy) came to find out that he co-wrote Glorify Your Name with Darlene Zschech and produced her solo album! I mean… this guy is like a big kahoona at this church that i have looked up to in the aspect of worship for years and here he is teaching this class i’m in! and it’s a small group of maybe 12 people so I will have plenty of opportunities to pick his brain! It was just one of those.. “pinch me i’m in freaking Australia and this worship pastor from hillsong is going to mentor me in worship leading for 4 months” kind of moments. the kind that happen when you study abroad. did i mention you all should study abroad? In my personal opinion it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

Tonight my host mum had a bunch of friends over for dinner, and these are the people that are in her small group bible study. So they come over every week. They were awesome. There was a young couple included in the group with an adorable baby named Ella and the husband was a hysterical man, about 6′5 or something, that talked with his hands in the most exaggerated way i have ever seen. if you have ever seen someone who uses their hands a lot in conversation multiply that times 73 and you’ve pretty much got this bloke. They were all really sweet and genuinely interested in how our experience had been here so far. They all go to the same church that was hosting pilgrims from world youth day when their flights were delayed, so they all swapped pilgrim stories which was pretty entertaining. The conversation went something like this… *don’t forget to image the aussie accent or it will lose it’s effect. and picture everyone interrupting each other*

“Well, my taiwanese gehls (girls) were just taking pictures right and left of my house and i have no idear why”

-”I presume they haven’t traveled much, then”

-”Yes and they did rock paper scissors for the beds which was another story in itself”

-”Well, the nuns we had were simply lovely. Did you notice they never interrupted each other?

“Not once?”

“No, it ’twas very odd”

“Well my gehls wanted a blanket late at night and i thought oh dear haven’t i given them enough already but then they said they always cover up mirrors at night because they don’t want to wake up in the middle of a night and have a fright”

-”Well, I have a fright every morning when I look in the mirror”

“Well I know but I just said okay and gave ‘em the sheet and went off on my merry way”

“They said it was a spiritual thing, though in their culture, dahling”

“Well the mexican pilgrims thought that ’twas quite strange we had kickboxing in our church..”

-”Yes, and do you remember when they announced that the gehls would be going to the homestays and the men would be staying at the church and that monk tried to go to a homestay under the qualification that he was wearing a skeht?!”

I could go on… but the dinner conversation was definitely amusing. I was content to be there… to soak it all in. And also content that I had found my way home, by myself, from school that day without any major transportation catastrophes (for which I deserve some sort of ribbon, believe me). Never a dull moment around here! haha.

dodgey July 22, 2008

I like the word dodgey. People use it here a lot. it means sketchy/shifty/iffy/shady. It’s a great word. I don’t even know if I’m spelling it right. But it’s a great word.

Anyways, today was my second day of classes and our first day of class for our View from Australia course, a course done by our study abroad program to acclimate us to Australian culture and help us to think critically about it. Today we played a culture-related game called Faba Faba. Just in case you ever play it I won’t give it away… but half the class goes to another room and both halves of the class become their own culture with their own set of social rules and customs, even language. The cultures send representatives to the other cultures to “observe” and try to figure out what they are all about, and the process repeats. It’s very complicated and it took over an hour to do but it was a great learning experience. We talked about how cultural values can be relative and how we need to be careful to avoid pitfalls like ethnocentrism (our culture is the best), naive realism (“there can only be one logical explanation for why they are doing what they are doing”), and stereotyping (EVERY australian is friendly, for example. even though it may be positive, it’s probably not true of every person and unfair to generalize.) It was a good first class and should be good throughout the semester.

After class I went with a random group of people from ASC to a few of the girls’ homestay. In this homestay, the four girls actually have their own guesthouse behind their family’s main house, so they have their own mini-kitchen and living room. We played cards, talked, and they fed us lots and lots of fruit. haha. It was fun to get to know a whole different group of people and we had the best time. Then I went with a few of them back to Flo Harris, which is the student housing unit. Everyone at the beginning of this semester could choose to live with a family in a homestay, or to live in a Christian dorm for students (some from Wesley and some from other unis). Most of us chose families, but there are about 8 of us living in Flo Harris, and luckily our house is located about 5 minutes walking-distance from it. It’s a sweet dorm, with its own cafeteria and sweet areas to hang out like the rooftop and patios, as well as a victorian house attached with pool tables and stuff. It’ll be a really great place to hang out and today I met a ton of Aussie students there. So today was spent mostly on meeting new people and it was a blast.

Then tonight Denning and Felicity ate dinner with us and we had a cool opportunity. I think I mentioned before that my brother was in the stations of the cross presentation. If you google it on youtube (try World Youth Day stations of the cross) it’s worth your while. He has been rehearsing for the cast for 7 months for this, which is basically a passion play that was performed in all of the main sights of sydney throughout the course of the day last friday. It was amazing. Denning was on the steps of the opera house, pouring the water into Pilot’s hands for the 4th station of the cross. Tonight there was a cast party and showing of the telecast for all the actors, and we got to go as guests of our brother. It was pretty cool to see all the actors, since I had already seen most of the telecast and was a bit starstruck to see these actors that had been viewed by half a million people worldwide. They had it in an amazing old theatre and it was really cool to go and support Denning, as well as meet some people who did an incredible performance that will be remembered by the world. We got free jackets, bags, all kinds of food and stuff for showing up and that also scores well in my book. : ) We had fun as a family being together.  I could not ask for a better situation.  They care about the little things.  For example, today our host brother left reeses’ peanut butter cups on all of our nightstands.  Just to be nice.  This totally made my day because you can only buy them here in international stores which are rare and expensive!  And our host mom has been wonderfully patient with us as we get used to transportation and has driven us all over creation to help us out.  I am so grateful.

Got to go to bed for class tomorrow!

Back to school July 21, 2008

Hi!

Today was quite the day.  Yesterday our host brother roped us into babysitting for him, so this morning Cristina and I set off down the street to a random family’s house to earn a little cash.  We showed up at the door and the mom said, “Oh that Denning.  I must’ve told ‘im three times I don’t need ‘im today!”  So she promised to call us when she needed a sitter in the future and sent us on our merry way.  Since we didn’t have class till the evening, we figured we were dressed and ready to go anyways so we might as well head into the city.  See we have this amazing thing… an unlimited transportation pass.  It gets us anywhere within Sydney (which is UUUGE) for free, including buses, ferries, and trains.  It’s pretty awesome.  So why not?

We hit up some thrift shops in the heart of the city, and that was an experience!  There is something really awesome about going to Salvo in another country.  Makes it much more exciting.  Plus, Aussies dress better so it’s more promising.  Our goal was to buy some sweaters because it is freezing in the evenings here.  Aussies don’t install heat in their homes because they need it for so few months out of the year, and they are far less wasteful than we are in all aspects, but those months are frigid at night.  I have a little space heater in my room to fight off the chill, but even so, i feel like i could never be wearing enough layers at night.  I wore gloves to eat dinner in our kitchen last night.

Then Cristina and I went to The Rocks, a very historic section of Sydney that as a history dating back to the late 1700’s.  Our ASC director told us that we aren’t to consume any alcohol during our semester, which would be a bad idea anyways, but that we should frequent the pubs because they are a cultural experience here in Australia, and that we should order something called a Lemon Lime and Bitters when we go.  This is a non-alcoholic drink, kind of like an Aussie shirley temple but very sour, that all the pubs will serve to kids and stuff.  Pubs here are a family affair.  So me and Cristina tried our firsts Lemon Lime and Bitters while some Aussies tried to explain the rules of Footie (Rugby) to us on the telly (TV).  It went way over our heads but it was quite the experience.  We were in the oldest pub in all of Australia, called the Lord Nelson.

Later we went again to the harbour to see the bridge and opera house since Cristina hadn’t yet, and the second time around was even better than the first because the weather was beautiful today.  We got lost for the next several hours, lost including multiple forms of transportation like buses, trains, and even lost on foot, but eventually we found our way home and thanks to those handy-dandy passes weren’t poorer at the end of the ordeal.  Also, we met a really nice Aussie named Claire with wavy blonde hair who helped us at one point when we were really confused.  Myself, being the cool kid that I am, decided to tell her she reminded me of Claire from Lost.  Wonder if a lost tourist has ever told her that before? But she works with a Christian club at the University of Sydney and invited us to church with her, which was cool.

Tonight we got lost again going to school and my housemates and I arrived at our photography class an hour and a half late.  It’s only 3 hours once a week so that was pretty bad.  But the teacher forgave us and i’m really looking forward to the class.  Tonight my host sister hung out with us after dinner and we talked about the Australian music scene and her job, which is babysitting artwork in a famous island by the bridge. Then Roslyn came home with two nuns, who are pilgrims that were here for World Youth Day and had no place to spend the night because of delayed planes.  Roslyn is an awesome lady like that… even with 3 houseguests she’ll take more on and feed them to boot.

Well, I’m going long.  Tomorrow I am leading a devotional for our first day of ASC class so I need to go prepare.  Love you all.

First entry from Sydney! July 20, 2008

Well guys…

I’m here!

I have been in Sydney since Thursday, but unable to update you all on the goings-on due to a stupid mistake on my part: not bringing a 3-prong adapter to Australia. I finally found one today in downtown Sydney, which caters more to tourists who also forget these little details. Now I am connected to the internet and have no excuse not to write.

okay so.. man where do I start? Well, Sydney is lovely. Be prepared for my vocabulary to change a bit because everyone uses British words here and it’s rubbing off on me. It’s absolutely amazing and I can’t think of a better city to live in. It’s always sunny and beautiful, it’s friendly, it’s clean, it’s safe, it’s diverse, it’s full of gorgeous waterfront views… it’s no wonder so many people choose to live here. I spent the first few days here at the Wesley Institute with the other people from the ASC (that stands for australian studies centre… that is the group of people i’m studying abroad with from the states) doing orientation. This was a neat opportunity to learn about the program from our directors and get acclimated to some things right away. It was fun getting to know the others from the program, and they’re all really cool people. There’s 35 of us, from all over the USA. My housemates, for example, are from Seattle and Iowa… so we pretty much cover the span. Their names are Christina and Heather and they’re both really cool.

There are many things to learn early on, like the Aussie lingo (tooootally different… but they have sweet words like dodgy and musely and servo) and the incredibly confusing bus system. But there are lots of exciting things to discover. We spent the weekend mostly exploring our immediate suburb of Petersham and Leichhardt as well, which is the nearby Italian district of Sydney. Our host mom’s best friend Sharon took us on a bike ride from our house to our school, which is a half an hour ride that I’ll do a few times a week to and from school because it winds around a gorgeous section of the bay called Five Dock bay. There are tons of cute coffee shops and a great park across the street. If we want to go to the opera house/harbour bridge area, it’s just a quick 20 min. bus ride into town. From there, we can easily take a ferry to Manly beach any time we want. It’s a great place to live.

Aussies are incredibly friendly, just as I hoped they’d be. They’ve got a funny sense of humor that we are all still getting used to, which is too hard to describe early on but i’ll take a stab at it later. Our host mom is the coolest lady. Her name is Roslyn and she is in her early 50’s with three kids. Their names are Jessica (25), Felicity (23 i think) and Denning (21). Roslyn is a school counselor with a calm spirit about her and a tranquility and hospitality that makes her the ideal host parent. Her voice sounds a lot like Emma Roberts’ (the lady from Stranger than fiction) if you add the Aussie lilt to it. I could just listen to her talk all day. She is a fabulous cook and always making amazing homemade things like vegetable soup and muffins and tea. Her best friend Sharon is always around and they’ve been friends since high school. She’s a school counselor too, and being around the two of them together is like living in a sitcom. They’re a hilarious pair. sharon is energetic and spunky, always on the go and with a great sense of humor. You never know what she might say and Roslyn says she needs 3 friends to keep up with her. Like most Aussies, she’s also got all kinds of animal attack survival stories, including a poisonous stingray attack and a spider bite that was very serious. She talked about these like they were bee stings, with a smile and “oh, yeah… well…” kind of ease. Felicity and Denning are really fun to hang out with and we’ve had a great time with that. Today we checked out one of Felicity’s paintings, which was a painted sculpture of Jesus on display in Darling Harbour. This is a very big opportunity for her and we all went out to see it and support her work. She’s very talented. Denning is a music student at our school which is cool. He’s very easy to get along with and promised to introduce us to all of his friends so that we can make some Aussie acquaintances.

This weekend Sydney has been upside down for World Youth Day. This happens every 3 years and brings in Christian “pilgrims” as they have been called from all over the world. Sydney is hosting the event this year and it is the biggest thing to happen since the 2000 Olympics. The theme of the event this year is the power of the Holy Spirit, and of course this sparked some interest for me. The Pope has been here all week, and this is his first time in Australia, and the first time a pope has been here for over 15 years. Naturally the city is chaos with hundreds of thousands of people walking around in their pilgrim gear, so we’d avoided the city until this morning. Their final event was a mass in a horse racing stadium, which the pope was to preside over. Our program gave us free tickets so we headed over. There were 400,000 people in the stadium from every country imaginable. This is the biggest gathering ever to take place Down Under – even bigger than any ceremony at the olympics. Heather and I happened to be in the right place at the right time and were stopped at an area where the pope motorcade… or dare I say… the “Pope-mobile” drove past. We got some sweet pictures of this which i’ll post as soon as I can. The mass was really cool and it was neat because the pope gave this message about receiving the baptism of the holy spirit, right on and straight from Acts. I hadn’t realized that the Catholic church was experiencing this kind of revival which is awesome. It was a cool morning. Then we went to see the harbour bridge and the opera house for the first time, which of course is just as beautiful if not more than every picture I had seen. We also hung out in darling harbour which is another beautiful well-known section of the city and had a starbucks while we people-watched. It was a long and busy day but full of once-in-a-lifetime kind of moments.

I have so much more to tell but I’m going long. hopefully i’ve caught up and now they’ll be shorter. Thanks for all of your continued prayers and support but know that I’m doing well and having the time of my life!