Well, week two has come and gone. And what a week it was!
Tuesday (January 27th): My first day of classes with Australians. From 9:00-12:00 I had Theological Foundations, there are about 25 students in the class, 20 or so Aussies. The “lecturer” informed us that the Theology department was having a luncheon for all of its’ students and everyone in the class was invited to attend. Free lunch?!? How could I pass that up? Oh the joys of going to a small university. So one of my fellow Americans, Ty Tuin, and I went down to Doytao Thai and had some wonderful Thai food for lunch (coincidentally, I’m pretty sure it tasted better because it was free). It was a neat opportunity to be able to interact with fellow students and also the lecturers. There were only about 20 people there altogether.
Wednesday: Thankfully I was able to work my schedule so that I have all my classes on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. It makes the middle of the week wonderful! I mean, err, it provides me with plenty of time to study and prepare for my classes. So, in order to get some good studying in, my roommate Charlie and I departed for Manly Beach. To get to Manly you first have to make it into downtown Sydney and then take about a 30-minute ferry over to the beach. The water was absolutely spectacular. Crystal clear, warm and best of all, free of jellyfish and sharks! While we were there, we met up with one of my friends, Liz, from APU who is also studying in Australia but at a different uni, right next to Manly beach. We spent the afternoon with Liz at the beach then she took us to her “school” and showed us around. I put the word school in quotations because her school is a castle! It was absolutely stunning. Then Wednesday night we took the ferry back to Sydney and went to an Ash Wednesday church service at St. James in Hyde Park. It was a High Anglican church and was very interesting to see how they performed the service.
Thursday: Believe it or not, Thursday was actually devoted, in part, to homework. Surprising, isn’t it? Then in the afternoon I went to my service placement project. We are required to fulfill 35 service hours as part of one of our classes. We are assigned to a ministry but then it is our responsibility to schedule the hours and accomplish them. My ministry is Wesley Youth Services. They have many different services and ministries but the part I am assisting with is the after school care program. Pretty much I just spend three hours hanging out with the kids, playing the games they want to play, and building relationships with them. It was definitely an enjoyable three hours and the youth seemed to warm to me fairly quickly. I did get my first taste of Rugby League. It is a very altered version of American Football. Although we played for probably a good hour and a half of so, I never quite got the rules. If I had the ball, I would run forward. If someone else had the ball, I would tackle them, it seemed pretty straight forward to me. I think the kids got quite a few good laughs watching the “clueless American” try and play their game.
Friday: On Friday’s we are all together as an ASC group and have “class.” We spent our class in downtown Sydney at a historical section called The Rocks. It was where many of the first Europeans lived and settled, right next to Sydney Harbor. We were given a list of about 20 things and we had to go through the Rocks and find them. As we learned, The Rocks used to be a very sleazy part of town, but the city has down a great job of revitalizing it, and now it is quite a quaint little community. After spending the afternoon on The Rocks, 8 of us went over to our Director’s house for “Family Night.” There are three family nights throughout the semester and each person can sign up for one. I signed up for the first one, figured I’d prefer to make my “family” know rather than later. We made tacos, ate, cleaned, sat around talking, and played some games. It was quite an enjoyable time, and the food was absolutely delicious!
Saturday: By far my favorite day down under. A group of 8 of us set out for the Blue Mountains. About 2 hours by public transportation west of Sydney. Upon arriving there, we really had no idea what we were getting into, we simply figured we would take it as it came. We walked down to Echo Point and from there caught our first glimpse of the famed Three Sisters. “Great,” we thought to ourselves, “now what do we do?” We followed a little path, away from the three sisters, off of the lookout that headed down into the valley and figured we would see where it would take us. Best decision we’ve made so far!
We spent the next 5 hours or so hiking through beautiful, lush forest. We passed picturesque lookouts, luscious green trees, and spectacular waterfalls. After reaching the bottom of the valley, we figured we would just go back and hike up the way we from which we came. Then we spotted and map and saw we could hike through the valley, up “The Giant Staircase,” and arrive in the three sisters. Giant staircase, that’s for sure. It was about 30 minutes hiking straight up stairs. After taking thousands of pictures looking out from the three sisters we decided to call it a day and head home. On the train ride home, we reasoned that we had such a wonderful day, why should it end there? So 5 of the 8 of us went home, grabbed a change of clothes, a sleeping bag and met at the Wharf. From there we departed to Manly Beach and spent the night on a more exclusive beach called Shelly. Although we didn’t get much rest, we had a fantastic time!
Sunday: When you think of sleeping on the beach, you think of awakening to the peaceful sound of waves crashing and the beauty of the sun rising. Wrong. I woke up to at about 5 a.m. to Jenna repeatedly jabbing her finger into my chest hurriedly telling me there was someone coming to get us! I looked up and saw this dark figure with a long pointy stick hastily walking towards us. But then he turns on a dime, and just as quickly heads the opposite direction. After the blur wore away from my eyes, we realized it was just the trash man picking up rubbish from the beach. Apparently he thought there were 5 large lumps of trash on the beach, but after closer examination, he decided to let us stay. After our little scare, and a little more shuteye, we returned home, did some homework, and departed for a commissioning Service for the university held in Sydney.
Monday: Bummer. Monday means classes, classes mean no exploring; rather it means sitting in a classroom, staring out at the warm sunshine, glazing at the brilliant blue sky, and awakening from your daydream of lying on the beach when the teacher announces pop quiz. But there is always time for fun, even on school days. As we were sitting around the dinner table, we were joking about what color to dye my hair. Clare, the daughter in the family we are living with, is a professional hair stylist. Well, you know what they say about how there is a little truth in every joke. I guess that’s true. I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but somehow my hair is now bleached blonde. After my new makeover was over, 12 fellow Americans came over to our flat and we hung out and watched a movie. For being a lackluster day of classes, the day surly did end with a bang!
Tuesday: Just another day of classes. I got quite a few funny
looks and stares because of my new hairstyle. There is one Aussie girl, Alice, who thought my hair was the funniest thing. At first she told me she was glad to see me because I put a smile on her face. Later she confessed the reason that I put a smile on her face was simply because of my hair. Thanks, Alice.
Here is some Aussie slang for those of you out there who want to have a conversation when I return:
Pram - stroller
Back of Bourke - a very long way away
Footy - football
lolly - candy
Joey - baby kangaroo
Now, you may be wondering if I’ve been learning anything while I’m down here or if I’m simply just having fun. Well, here is something that God has taught me over the past few weeks. During my time in Australia, I have realized that I have a very limited amount of time here. I am here for 4 months, approximately 120 days. Of those 120 days, I’ve already used 13. Although 107 days may seem like a lot, I know they will fly by. I want to make each and every one of them count. I want to be able to look back on my time here and be proud of everything I was able to accomplish. In the same way, I know that my days on earth are also numbered. I also need to make sure that I make each and every on of those days count, not simply because I am in Australia, simply because I don’t want my life to pass me by. Donald Miller states in his book, Blue Like Jazz, “I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time.” There is so much to live for, so much to accomplish, so much to enjoy. I want to make every single day count and enjoy use all the time I have, that it may bring glory to God.
Just to put all your minds to rest, I’m still alive and kicking, have not fallen in love, and I don’t have any piercings or tattoos, but yes, my hair is bleached.
Love to all,
-Ben
but so little time to write it all down. Since my last update, the two weekends prior to Canberra have been spent camping on the different beaches and backpacking through various towns. Sydney is a nice city, but once you get outside of it, the country is absolutely beautiful. We slept and swam on beaches that had brilliantly white sand, turquoise water, and were practically empty. Many people have asked if I’ve been getting homesick, but so far I’m doing very well. That’s not to say that I don’t miss home and all of you, I do, I miss you a lot, but I love being here while I have the opportunity. 
I think a big contributing factor to not being homesick is having a great group of friends here, the group that I go on these weekend adventures with. There are 6 of us and when we go, we really don’t have a plan, we just go and see where we wind up, what we experience, and then make our way back home. These have been by far some of my favorite times down here.
<--- See how studious we are in class?
This weekend we went down to the capital of Australia, Canberra (pronounced Canbra). It is about a four hour drive south-west of Sydney. Our house parents dropped us off at school at 5:30 on Friday morning and the 30 of us departed by bus for Canberra at 6:00. As with any road trip, we had to stop at McDonald’s on the way and use the bathroom. We spent Friday going to the New Parliament House where we saw the Senate, the Great Britain High Commission, eating lunch at a park, and going to the Indonesian Embassy. The design of the city is quite interesting and very symbolic; the New Parliament House has grass on its roof, accessible to all visitors, to show that the people are above the government. Also, the War Memorial is located directly out the front door of the parliament house so that the government will realize the decisions it makes can cost somebody their life. We arrived at our Youth Hostile about 5, ate pizza, debriefed for an hour and a half, and then had free time. Many of us went swimming, sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, the water was nice; it was the size that was a problem. The “pool” was a little bigger than a wading a pool, but not much. We spent the rest of the night playing cards and then retired for the night. Saturday was a whirlwind tour through all the hot spots we missed the previous day. We saw the Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the National Museum, and the War Memorial. Although all these were interesting, the War Memorial was exceptionally fascinating. The exhibits were very intricate and detailed and seemed to make it come to life. We then got back on the bus, and headed back to Sydney, after a required stop at McDonald's for dinner of course.
Here is some more Aussie slang for those interested:
