So last week I went to Canberra to visit my old friend from high school Natalie. She moved to Sydney a few years back and is currently attending the Australian National University. Our relationship truly blossomed after experiencing an insane and hilarious class together that involved my first all-nighter, first parking ticket and the first time I was one of probably four people in a class of about 30 to hand in an assignment – only to learn of an extension upon arrival. Her mom graciously offered to give me a lift to go visit her, and it took about 3 seconds before I kindly accepted. Being both a poor student and an eager traveler often leads to conflict between genuine experiences or eating dinner. Anything that makes the choice easier is always welcome.
So after taking the train to Pennant Hills (a little hung over from the previous night’s shenanigans that involved boxed wine, international relations and police), Natalie’s mom and sister picked me up from the train station and drove me back to her place. Her family welcomed me with open arms, feeding me dinner (Mmm… homemade Shepherds Pie? Yes please!); at around 7:00pm we hopped in the car and started the drive towards Canberra, with Natalie’s mom and younger brother accompanying me. We hit a small bit of traffic and made a pit stop at a McDonalds, before arriving in Canberra at around 10:30pm. We met up with Natalie, where she works at Unilodge as a CA (Community Assistant). After checking out her room, we set up a few air mattresses and then decided to call in an early night. Natalie warned us about fire alarms that had been going off early in the morning, but we dismissed this sort of tomfoolery. Low and behold, at around 12:30am the fire alarm decided to grace us with its siren song. If you’ve ever lived in residence then you know that – especially the first couple weeks of school – fire alarms sounding off at ridiculous hours in the morning are fairly common. Which, I think despite my continual insistence towards (maybe?) faithful readers, shows that wherever you go the phrase “same shit, different day”. Who knew something like a fire alarm would be alright?
The next day we woke up pretty early (7:30 am? Ridiculous!), and then got ready and rolled over to parliament. We got a little lost (as a Canadian in a foreign land – perhaps my sense of direction would be a little off?) but after some pretty awesome navigation by Natalie’s younger brother, we managed to get there in one piece. After doing a quick tour around the new parliament building and looking at the Senate House and the House of Representatives, we decided to head out and check out the Australian War Museum. Very cool stuff in there, and really cool shows. It’s pretty similar to the one in Ottawa, and pretty universal to have a war museum beside or directly adjacent to legislation. But nonetheless it was a really awesome experience. After all this walking, we headed back to campus, dropped off a few things and drove to Manuka (pronounced Monica… don’t ask) to meet Natalie’s boyfriend for dinner. I was planning on taking some pictures of the food (which was pretty good) but the service (which was pretty bad) threw a wrench in my plan and I only ended up getting a shot of the calamari. After heading back to Natalie’s apartment, her friend Faizan aka Fuzzy brought us an amazing Chicken curry. Definitely going to ask for the recipe next time I see him.
Finally, as part of my last day in Canberra, Natalie invited me to watch her residence compete in a inter-residence Cricket game. Being a North American with no experience of this ridiculous sport, I happily joined her for the three hour game. Natalie’s friend coached me onto the finer points of the game, and after about an hour I thought I got a hang on the game. It’s kind of like baseball, but possibly with more tea and crumpets involved. After a fairly one sided affair, Unilodge sent the other residence a one way ticket to the domination station and order was restored to the world. I told Fuzzy that the next time I get back to ANU, I’ll be a professional cricketer and we’ll kick some ass together.
After packing up all our goods, we jumped back into the car and we started what was suppose to be a three hour drive back to Sydney. What ended up happening was the two rather tiny lanes of highway ended up coming to a complete stop as a truck managed to hit a car and spill its contents all over the highway. The two lane highway became a half-lane highway, so traffic was backed up for about 5-6 km. And it was raining. At one point I had the opportunity to jump out of the car and take a video, but since the internet is so bad here… I’ll unfortunately have to delay that particular update. I’ll probably upload the video at another point, and just edit my posts so it looks like I was on the ball and not living in a third world country. (I kid I kid!) Seven hours later we arrived back in Sydney, and at around 9:30pm, I deliberated between going to the train station and taking another 40 minutes back to Newtown, and then walking another 20-25 minutes back to my place to crash, or just spending the night at Natalie’s place. At her mom’s offer, I decided to spend one more night with Natalie + her amazing and hilarious family. I woke up at around 6:30am, and Natalie’s parents offered to drive me to the train station so I could catch a train back to my place. It blows my mind how nice people are, and I hope that anyone who is cynical about humanity will read this blog and understand how nice people actually are. But, I digress. I took the train back just in time to run home, dump out my travel kit and swap it for my notebooks. I then sat through four hours of lecture. Beautiful.
I think this may or may not become a re-occurring trend with me, as I scramble to pack in both traveling and seeing Australia while at the same time trying to be a “responsible” student. I think balancing the two is manageable, but with my bank account dipping… perhaps it’s time to get a job? Who knows!
I think this deserves it's own little post, just to show how expensive life is here:
But otherwise, here are the elusive pictures:
Breakfast and Dinner of champions:
No comments:
Post a Comment