TASMANIA!

Tasmania. What could I possible say about Tasmania to do it justice? It is simply beautiful. Tasmania is a not-too-little island located off the Southern Coast of Australia, straight down the Bass Straight from Melbourne. It is its own state, and is the place where the population of Australia began as its isolation attracted the location for many prisons to be built for English convicts.

Tasmania is very different from the rest of Australia. It's geography is supposedly a combination between England and New Zealand, although I wouldn't know since I've been to neither. We splurged a bit during this leg of the trip and decided to go on a 3-day tour throughout the "wild" west coast of Tasmania. Could possibly be the best part of Australia, in my opinion.

On the tour, we went on a lot of hikes. We toured many waterfalls and temperation rainforests. We also got to play on some sand dunes for awhile, which was fun, but... didn't compare to Namibia. We also went on a 4-hr. hike around Cradle Mtn. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy up there, but still beautiful nonetheless.

One of the best part of the tour was getting to know all the random people in our group. We had people from Switzerland, Slovokia, Germany, Denmark, Japan, England, etc. I felt pretty uneducated to only know how to speak Enligh, as the perfect English spoken by most of our tourmates was their second, or ever third language.

I don't know what else to say about Tasmania, because words just can't do it justice. Look at the pictures, and you will begin to understand! :)

Victoria, Australia

Moving on from Sydney, we first made a stop in Australia's national capitol city, Canberra. We checked into a hostel for the night and after an accidental 2 hr bus ride (don't ask, trains are much easier), we made it to the Old Parliament building for a quick 45 minute tour before it closed. Since the town closes down at 5, we basically didn't have much else to do for the night. We walked around to see some of the monuments and other Australia history, which was an important thing to witness. We also walked by what we presumed to be an aboriginal protest against the Australia government - interesting.

After our quick stop in Canberra, we made like a baby and head out (thanks Tara), down to the state of Victoria. When I arrived in Melbourne, I immediately knew that I was going to love this place. The first night we spent in a hostel and were initially disappointed to find out that the only thing available was an 8 bed dorm. Much to our dismay, it ended up being one of the best nights we had during our entire trip. We stayed with a group of 5 Germans, who were the coolest people ever! We spent the entire night (literally) with them down in the bar and talked about all the cultural differences and our different experiences and takes on Australia. We were sad to leave them in the morning, but not too sad cuz we were excited to go and stay with my roommate's aunt.

When we met the Ferguson's (my roommate's aunt's family), we immediately fell in love with their family. We felt so comfortable there, and had a lot of fun hanging out with their son Dave, who is our age. Dave and his friend Chris introduced us to Melbourne by taking us out for Thai food in Chinatown, and showing us the local casino which shoots up huge balls of fire every hour, on the hour.

Coincidentally, the Australian Open happened to be taking place in Melbourne while we were there. Because I'm cheap, I didn't pay to go, but merely enjoyed seeing the action of watching the games on the big screen in federation square and around the quarts. Tara however bought a ticket and got to see Andy Roddick and Serena Williams play!

We also went on a spectacular world renowned drive known as the GREAT OCEAN ROAD. The road curves along Australia's south coast and is very similar to what you would see near Cannon Beach, Oregon. There are many rock formations out in the water, the famous ones known as the 12 Apostles, the London Bride, and Loch Ard Gorge (a famous shipwreck where 2 of 50 passengers survived by climbing up the cliffs to safety).

We also went to Phillip Island, which is known for its area of burrows in which penguins come ashore every night. That's right, I got to see penguins swim in from the ocean in their natural habitat. Why, I even got to see a few mate, and well, "Penguins are noisy lovers". It was a very awesome thing to experience. I'm talking about the penguins in general here. Moving on...

Other cool things we did in Melboure were go up the Realto Rower to the observation deck (too bad it was a bit cloudy), browse through the Queen Victoria Markets, walk inside St. Paul's Cathederal, visit the local icons such as the Arts Centre and the Yarra River, go the the Hard Rock Cafe (yeah I even got a shirt!) and we even ran into our German friends on the city circle's free tram! Talk about random!!

Without hesitation, I can definitely say that Melbourne is my favorite city in Australia. If I were to live there (and I'm not saying I'm thinking about it), that is where I would want to be. It's a liveable city, there's lots of sporting activities, the weather is a bit more liveable, and there are lots of fun and different cultural things to do. And it's got that nice small town in a city feeling I like. I'll admit that the people there may have had an influence on this affair.

SYDNEY, Australia

After a restless overnighter on countylink's wonderful train system, we arrived back into Sydney for a week to explore the area! We stayed with my friend Shell from camp in a suburban area called Lakemba, which has a huge Lebanese influence. Trust me, Australia is the last place I expected to see a woman dressed in robes with a veil only revealing her eyes, but I did.

We spent most of the week seeing the touristy, "hey I'm in Sydney" sites. One of my favorite things we did was tour the Sydney Opera House (which is amazing), and walk across the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which was also amazing (I love walking across bridges). My camera had a long, hard day. One of the funniest moment was during lunch when Tara had a seagull divebomb and steal a piece of chicken from her sandwich, when only moments later my friend Shell had her ENTIRE PANINI lifted out of her hands by a swarm of seagulls. The entire time I was sitting in the middle laughing at them, when all of a sudden a seagull decided to leave me a nice little present and poop on my shoulder. What a wonderful souvenir.

From Sydney, we also took the train into the Blue Mountains, which is incredible (I'm branching out from the word amazing here). There are 3 huge rock pillars called the 3 Sisters which have an aboriginal story behind them which you can look up yourself if you are interested. Tara and I spent a night up there and walked to the 3 sisters lookout to see the sunrise. I felt more peaceful than I had in yonks.

We also celebrated my 22nd birthday in Sydney. We went to the world famous Bondi Beach, which surprised me when we walked in cuz the water was colder than Lake Superior in June. Yikes. But, the air temp was fairly nice (about 85-90), which made the water bearable. I was only sad that I didn't have a boogie board! The waves were awesome! For dinner, we went out to a place called Pancakes on the Rocks where I had Banana Pancakes (no Jack Johnson though, sad), and a Banana Daiquiri (can you tell that I like bananas), and it was great. We finished off the evening by walking around the harbor and taking lots of pictures of the opera house and harbor bridge at night. What could be better?

I must say, that as cool as it was to see the opera house and the harbor bridge and ride the ferries, Sydney was definitely my least favorite place in Australia. Besides the icons, its just like any other city - big, overcrowded, and smelly - and I'm not a city girl. Everything we did in Sydney was fun and incredible, but I wasn't hesitant to move on from the chaos.

Queensland, Australia

After only being in Australia for two days, we boarded a train and headed up north to the sunshine state of Queensland. The weather is much nicer up here, and I have a red belly to show for it. We spent New Years on the Gold Coast, which is very similar to the Miami, FL area. It was hard to believe that it was New Year's - I spent the day going to a rainforest and swimming in the ocean, only to commence the night by watching fireworks in the park. It felt more like the forth of July! It was a lot of fun though.

After being at the Gold Coast for New Year's, we headed up to Brisbane. Highlights included riding the city cat ferry along the Brisbane river, going up to Mt. Coot-tha to enjoy the city's views at night, and visiting Steve Irwin's famous Australia Zoo! It's been a lot of fun, and I think the best part about it has been the generosity we've received from the Earle's, and getting to know a bit of the real Australia, behind the borders of tourism.

While in Queensland, we also took a plane up to Cairns for four days, which is situated in tropical north Queensland, just inland from the Great Barrier Reef. It was very hot and muggy up there, and our hostel was a bit, well, nasty, but we had a great time. I got to visit TWO world heritage sites - snorkeling in the the Great Barrier Reef via a restored sail ship, and the rainforest, which I viewed from a gondala ride and a scenic train ride! Going to the reef was deffinitely the best part of being up in Cairns. This was something that I had wanted to do my entire life, and I finally did! Although, one day simply was not enough to satisfy me. Now that I have seen it, I only yearn to go back and see more and more and more. But money doesn't grow on trees....

Well, our time in Queensland is nearly up, and later this afternoon we take a train back down to New South Wales to spend a week in Sydney. I have had a great time here and and am kind of sad to leave, but I need to keep my eyes opened to the future to see all the wonderful things still ahead in Australia!

That's a Fierce plane, MATE!

After a 1.5 hr plane ride, a 3 hr. layover, a 4 hr. plane ride, a 6 hr. layover, and a 14 hr. plane ride, we finally made it to SYDNEY! Our big plane was a piece-of-crap compared to South African Airways. I have never been so tightly squeezed in my life. I sat next to a woman who had been in Kenya doing the peace corps for 3 yrs., so that was interesting!!

In the Sydney airport we met two guys from Manitoba who has similar plans to our for the month. It was nice to meet people who were doing the same thing to know we aren't the only ones! They helped us find a hostel, and we got a decent deal at a nice place in central Sydney. We walked around a bit our first day, and I went to bed at about 630pm. The funniest part of the day was within a 15 minute period at the park where we saw a car crash and a near lethal tree branch fall on the woman next to us! Our roommate at the hostel was from Germany, and she was very nice. She gave us some great advice about what we should do on our trip.

We got our rail pass taken care of and tomorrow we head up to Queensland to spend New Year's with my friend at a family beach house. Sounds real rough. I am excited, although the 11-hr train ride will be hectic. Then we go to Brisbane for a few days, and hopefully we will make it up to the great barrier reef!

Right now we are in an Internet cafe. We just met a cool guy from San Diego. I have to go now so Tara can get online. Pictures to come soon!

Namibian Children

As the academic part of our trip was centered around human rights and development, we had the opportunity to visit many local Namibian agencies, including 2 orphanges. Many of us agree that these visits were some of the most impacting moments we had while in Namibia.

Many people would expect to meet children with frowns and scars of depression across their faces when visiting Africa. To my surprise, the way the ads they show on T.V. for starving children depict the children in these experiences is far from true. Even though some of these children were orphaned, HIV-positive, or malnourished, just to name a few, every single one of them was full of smiles and eager to share their love to us.

At each place we visited, I focused most of my attention with a particular child I felt I connected with. At the first home, this was a toddler boy, and at the second a primary school aged girl. I regret to say that I cannot remember either of their names, part of which is due to my inability to understand african languages, to my defense. Both of these children made a big impact on me, and I don't think I will forget either of them for years to come. I played football with them, played in the home's park, read to them, and even let them braid my hair, which I might say is a talent they develop at a young age.


Saying goodbye to the children was hard, as in the few hours we were there, many of them managed to get quite attached to us. The little girl I spent time with started crying, and telling me that she didn't have a mother. I was confused at what she meant by this, as if she wanted me to stay to look after her and give her love and attention, which is something she probably doesn't receive much from adults. I have hopes that one day she will open her heart to the love of Christ and realize that the love she is longing for is and can only be fullfilled by Him.

Spending time with these children inspired me to take advantage of the opporunities I have been blessed with, yearning to help improve the situations of others I meet, whether that may be a close friend at home, or a distant memory in Africa. The few hours with them taught me more than I've learned from hours on end in the classroom. As it was with most of the trip. Leaving Africa was hard, and leaving the sanctuary felt by being around the members of our group was even harder, but life isn't about always living where it's perfect. I'm still figuring that out, but I am so thankful I had the oppportunity to travel to Namibia and have such an amazing experience that will live with me forever.

Swakopomund

Our second weekend excursion in Namibia was to the coastal community of Swakopomund. The town is located in the middle of the Namib Desert's sand dunes on the Atlantic Ocean. The weekend was probably my favorite part of the trip!

We started off by visiting Cape Cross, the spot where Portuguese explorer Diego Cao first landed in present-day Namibia in the 1400's. The area has somehow attracted the location for a colony of seals, which you can smell for kilos away as you are driving up to the place. Nevertheless, it was very cool to be at the spot where Diego Cao landed, and to watch the seals, which were cute, but some were gross and dead.

We finished off the first night by climbing what we were told was the highest sand dune in the world, even though we later found out it's actually like the second or something. Ah, I still say its the 1st!! The sand dunes are beautiful, and the drive was fun. I had to laugh when Bob, our driver, randomly yelled out "Look at the Sand Dunes" after we had been driving past them for about 20 minutes. Yup, thanks Bob, I see them. We went out to eat the first night at a restaurant called The Lighthouse, which was right on the coast (who knew?). The meal was good, and there was also a fun park we played in after dinner.

On Saturday, I spent the morning and early afternoon exploring the town of Swakopmund. Being a typical tourist, I went into many of the tourist shops, some African art shops, and taking a wonderful walk on the beach of the African coastline. For the latter part of the day, I went quad biking (4-wheeling) on the sand dunes!! It was super fun, and admittedly a bit scary. I got put in the slow group, haha. Unfortunately we didn't get back in time for me to take a swim in the ocean, but quad biking was worth it. We finished off the evening by eating at Cape de Cairo, and I had ostrich. Yum.

Sunday morning I woke up really early and couldn't sleep, so I went out to the beach at about 6am and jogged around with my ipod taking in the serenity of the African coast. I then sat down and just looked out at the water for over an hour, and just thought, about all kinds of things, such as where my life was leading me, trying to realize that I WAS IN AFRICA! On the way back from the beach, I ran into Chris and Troy and joined them for a church service in town. Part of it was in Afrikaans, so it was more of a cultural experience than a spiritual one, but I was glad to have gone! When we returned back to our hotel, it was time to pack up the vans and head out for our 3 hr. drive back to Windhoek. What an amazing weekend!