It has been too long since I last posted. The past couple weeks have been pretty filled down under. After returning from Melbourne, I spent a few days preparing for my final exam. Unfortunately, the finals schedule was not available when I purchased a U2 ticket for the night of the 16th. When the schedule did come out it turned out that my only final exam was both on the last day of finals and on the day after the U2 concert. Confident in my academic ability, I decided to go to the concert anyway.
The night of the concert was chilly in Adelaide. The opening act was Kanye West. How he ended up as the opening act, I am not sure, but it didn’t work. The 66,000 people in attendance were all there to see U2 and Kanye did not adjust his performance for the largely unresponsive crowd. His frequent requests for the crowd to “make some noise” or throw their hands in the air were met with minimal cooperation. I found it to be fascinating in the way people rubberneck at car accidents.
Eventually, Kanye West’s performance ended and after a decent intermission, U2 came out. I am not the biggest U2 fan, but I wanted to see the show and it was a decent one. The crowd was much more excited to see Bono & company. However, they were still fairly sedated compared to a lot of crowds I have seen. One notable exception was the woman who danced like Elaine in the “Cry Cry Again” Seinfeld episode. She was throwing out thumbs, kicks, and everything. It was quite impressive and amusing when she kept hitting the people directly behind her.
After a couple hours filled between new songs and old hits, the concert came to an end. I bolted for the bus to try and beat the crowd so I could get to sleep for my test. Luckily, I was back in the city before I knew it and just had to switch busses to get home. While I waited for the second bus, I got to see a little bit of the less attractive side of Adelaide. There was a girl (probably 15 or 16) semi-crying at the bus stop. Apparently some guy had stood her up like 3 nights in a row. As a result she was kind of spitting/crying/cursing and sure she missed the bus. Another guy at the stop reminded me of an Australian version of Billy Bob Thorton’s character in Sling Blade. For the most part I had no idea what he was saying. I picked up a few phrases related to jail, getting/giving the bash, and working in a mining town. At some point, he and the crying girl began a somewhat odd conversation that was occasionally interrupted when one would start talking to themselves. A fine example of how this worked involved crying girl saying, “I can’t believe I missed this f’ing bus.” To which Sling Blade replied, “No, I ain’t got a missus.”
The bus finally came, so I made it home and headed to bed. The next morning I made the trip out to the testing center. In Australia, they don’t have you take the exams in classrooms. Instead, everyone taking a test (in all subjects) on the scheduled day heads out to a giant warehouse where the county fair is held and sits in a giant room. This is apparently so fewer people are required to keep an eye on test takers. I found it to be a bit of a hassle as the testing location was not close to my apartment. I did, however, find the place and I believe did a fairly competent job on the exam.
Finished with school, I headed home to start packing. I spent much of the weekend trying to get ready to go and fit in the final things I wanted to do in Adelaide. Not to be left out were a trip to see part of a cricket test and a chance to go lawn bowling on my last night in town.
My first experience with live professional cricket was amazing. I didn’t know there was a sport that could make baseball look so fast. I noticed that even die hard cricket fans were commenting on how slow it was going. I happened to show up in time to watch a guy named Ian Bell bat for England. Apparently, Bell is known to be a “grinder” and spent about five hours getting his 132 runs (which is impressive). Eventually, the pace and Adelaide’s temperature convinced me to head out.
The next day I made it to a BBQ birthday party and then headed lawn bowling. Lawn bowls is a lot harder than it looks, but has a lot of potential. It is huge over here. Somewhat similar to bocce ball, lawn bowls has larger balls with a weighted side or bias. These are rolled at a smaller ball called the jack, which looks like a pool cue ball. After a couple hours of fun, I headed home to finish packing. The next day I would be leave my house in Adelaide for the last time.
Monday afternoon I caught a plane to Hobart, Tasmania. In Hobart, I was experimenting with my first official “couch surfing” experience. (www.couchsurfing.com) Couch surfing is basically a way for travellers to get a free place to spend a night and more importantly (per the mission statement) to interact with people from other cultures. It turned out to be great. A nice Tasmanian family took me in and put me up for a night while I figured out what I was going to do in their state. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to catch a bus across the island to the city of Launceston, where I could do a day trip to Cradle Mountain.
Tasmania tends to be the butt of several jokes for other Australians. There are references to Tasmanian family trees having few branches etc., but I thought the place was great. Maybe as a native Arkansan, I could relate to being from a state that gets made fun of. (Interesting connection, the license plates in Tasmania say “Your Natural State” and Arkansas is “The Natural State.”) I would like to think it was a little bit more than just this connection that made me like the place. The Tasmanian countryside is some of the most attractive I have seen in Australia. It didn’t hurt that the temperature was a few degrees cooler as well.
After a few days up in the Northern end of Tasmania, I headed back to Hobart. I spent the day wandering around the city and enjoying what it had to offer. Eventually I headed to my “couch surfing” home for the evening and enjoyed a BBQ and some good conversation. The next morning I was up early and on a plane for Sydney.
I have been in Sydney for the past few days and head to New Zealand tomorrow. I will try to post again this week about my time in Sydney.
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