It’s been a rather hectic four weeks. If you read my last post, you may remember that my last day of classes at JCU was May 27th. That evening (technically early the next morning, thank you Greyhound) we left Townsville for Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. After spending a day in Cairns and two days on the Reef, Karen and I took the late bus back to Townsville on Monday, May 30th. For the next two and a half weeks, it was study study study at 30 Allamanda Crescent, Townsville. My first final was Saturday, June 4th, and my last final was Thursday, June 16th. Three months before finals started, I was already complaining about them. After getting through them, my opinion hasn’t changed much. Basically, my beef with finals in Australia is the extreme emphasis placed on them. None of my four finals were worth less than 50% of my grade. Thus 13 weeks of classes were boiled down to a high-pressure, 2-hour test. While my tests at Oregon certainly carry a significant portion of my grade, the most important ones are only worth at most 40%. Much more weight is placed on homework and papers, making the finals less stressful overall. For this reason, Karen and I had no choice but to study every day all day. What a way to spend your final weeks in a country.
We got through them, though not particularly gracefully. I’m sure we both got decent grades, but both of us agreed if we never had to do that again we would live a much happier life. All four of my finals were writing finals, so over the course of testing I ended up writing 39 handwritten pages. If you ask me, that seems a bit excessive. It was also the norm. I saw lots of people writing significantly more than I did, but my right hand was beginning to protest rather vehemently towards the end, so I decided not to push it (plus at that point all my finals had run together and I wasn’t entirely sure what else to write). But come 10:30am on June 16th, I was done and it was time to relax. Wrong! Karen and I had a flight to catch from Townsville to Melbourne at 12:50. So I hurriedly said goodbye to some friends and sprinted off on my bike to our house. We rushed over to the realtor to drop our keys off, and then rushed off to the airport. Not exactly the way that I had envisioned saying goodbye to life in Townsville, but c’est la vie.
We got into the airport baggage line to check our bags. Our $280 one-way tickets to Melbourne came with a 23kg bag weight exception. We unfortunately had two bags, so we knew we were going to have to pay a $15 fee for the next bag. Somewhat of a pain, but not surprising considering the cost of travel these days. What came next was a little bit more than we bargained for. It turns out, you can check as many bags as you’d like as long as they’re total weight doesn’t exceed 23kg. Unfortunately, when you have your entire life packed into two very stuffed duffel bags, said bags tend to weigh more than 23kg. Mine ended up weighing 30kg. All things considered, not bad right? Wrong again! Yours truly misread that $15 per extra bag fee. It actually said, which the lady checking my bags was all to gleeful to tell me, was that any additional weight is charged at $15 PER KILOGRAM! So my 7 extra kilograms ended up costing me $105! Now at this point in our five-month journey, I am low on money. And this lovely little fee I have to pay significantly cuts into the meager funds I have left. But what choice do I have? So I begrudgingly pony up the cash, feeling like I just got swindled. Karen ended up only having to pay $30 (when did I get more stuff than her?) but we were both fairly rattled by the whole experience. We made our way through security and caught our flight to Melbourne. If I haven’t made it clear enough already, avoid flying Virgin Blue in Australia. $15/kilogram, or $6.80/pound, is one of the more ridiculous baggage fees I’ve ever come across. After a layover in Sydney, we landed in Melbourne at about 5:45pm. After waiting for our shuttle for 40 minutes, we finally made it to our hostel at about 7:00pm. We quickly wandered off, looking for food.
Despite our baggage-fee induced foul moods, we were both excited to see Melbourne. Somewhat to our surprise, everyone we had met who had been to both cities said that Melbourne was cooler than Sydney. Melbourne did not disappoint. In some respects, it was a modern city crossed with an old European city. Many of the streets downtown were very narrow and lined with shops, cafes, and bars. In addition, and what I think Melbourne is known for, is its laneways. Laneways are what we would call alleys. Except instead of housing dumpsters and filth, Melbourne’s laneways are packed with tiny cafes and bars. The thing to do in Melbourne is to walk down alleys, up random flights of stairs, and around seemingly dark corners. I kid you not, it was totally bizarre for someone used to avoiding these places, but the farther into the labyrinth we got, the more likely we were to find an buzzing, friendly bar filled with the after-work crowd. After wandering the streets for about 40 minutes that first night in town, we came across this bright, cheery little bar that had individual pizzas for $5.90. I cannot express to you how much of a steal this is in Australia. Australia is exceedingly expensive, so if you can spend less than $15 on a nice meal, you really count your blessings. Instead, we paid $5.90 for artisan pizzas that were definitely large enough for one person. It was awesome. I would go back there in a heartbeat.
The next day consisted of much of the same thing. We walked all day, seeing the sights. We spent the morning walking through the botanic garden, which was, as per the usual Australian garden, stellar. We walked through downtown, Chinatown, and the Queen Victoria Market, enjoying being back in a happening city. Melbourne just felt important. I really really loved it. It felt much less touristy than Sydney, which I think in the end was the reason I liked it more. Don’t get me wrong, Sydney was an amazing city, but Melbourne just seemed more authentic and certainly more hip. Good lord, I’ve never seen so many hipsters in one place. Karen and I actually commented on the fact that we didn’t feel cool enough to walk on the sidewalks. We nearly felt the need to buy skinny jeans and pea coats just to fit in.
That evening, unbelievably our last night in the great country of Australia, we had a going away meal. Melbourne is somewhat of a food Mecca, so we had spent much of the day trying to figure out where we were going to eat. We had passed a bustling curry house during lunch and decided to go back there for dinner. Oddly enough, we were the only people there the entire time we ate. I think the fact that we ate at about 5:30pm went against the entire ethos of Melbourne, which may explain why no one else had arrived yet. But regardless, the food was good. After the food, we made our way to Docklands Stadium for one last truly Australian experience: Aussie Rules Football.
I can’t really explain Aussie Rules Football. Our roommates in Townsville loved it, so we watched quite a few games over the course of the term on TV. Because of this, I sort of understand what’s going on. But honestly, seeing is believing, because I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more ridiculous sport in person before. To start the game, the ref slams the football onto the ground as high as he can. A player from each team jumps for it, akin to a jump ball in basketball, and tries to tip it to a teammate. That’s where the comparisons to any American sport go out the window. While the jump ball is going on, all the other players stand around, literally punching and elbowing each other to gain position. This is not a sport for the faint-hearted. The gist of the game is to kick the ball through the middle goalposts. By doing so, you gain your team 6 points. The field is large and ovoid and the players run and run and run for 120 minutes, intermittently tackling and pummeling each other for seemingly no reason. It was great fun. The Western Bulldogs, the home team and thus the team we pulled for, outclassed the Adelaide Crows 100-69, sending the fans home happy. It was certainly an enjoyable and exciting way to end our adventure.
The next morning, we woke up at 7:00am to begin the long journey home. 7:00am Saturday morning is 2:00pm Friday afternoon West Coast time. Keep that in mind. Our flight left Melbourne Airport at 10:45am. After checking our bags and paying more fees ($60 this time, but at least I knew it was coming; we had double-checked the morning before), we entered the long line for security and customs. We arrived at the airport at 8:40am and finally got through security and customs at 10:20am. At that point, our flight was doing its final call. So we sprinted through the airport that seemed more like a mall for what seemed like 10 minutes before we finally got to our gate. We boarded the plane and officially said goodbye to Australia. About three and a half hours later, we touched down in Auckland, New Zealand.
Now I have heard Kiwis are just about the nicest people on the planet from many different people, but my very brief encounter with them was not a smashing success. As we got off our plane, Karen and I filled up our water bottles, not realizing we had to go through security again. Our connecting flight left in 20 minutes, so we were in a bit of a rush. When we got to security, they scolded us for filling up our bottles and wouldn’t let us pass through until we drank it all. I had just filled up my 32oz water bottle, so it took me several minutes to get down. At one point, I put the bottle down to catch my breath and the security guard yelled at me and told me to keep drinking. Sheesh, sorry. I sort of understand the whole no liquid thing, but at the same time, if it was some deadly ingredient that I was going to use to make a bomb, wouldn’t 16 ounces be sufficient enough to kill me? Why do I need to finish my full bottle that is clearly full of just water? And why do I need to pass through security again? I just did it in Melbourne. I haven’t left the airport. All of these retorts passed through my head, but figuring they wouldn’t get me anywhere, I drank my water in peeved silence. Once we had passed through security sufficiently hydrated, we sprinted back the way we had come only to get to our gate and realize that boarding that was supposed to have commenced nearly an hour ago hadn’t started. Eventually our flight left, but only after a 45-minute delay. At that point I started worrying about missing my connection to Seattle, but there wasn’t much I could do except sit.
And boy did we ever sit. The flight from Auckland to San Francisco takes about 12 hours. Los Angeles to Sydney is roughly the same length, for those of you looking to fly directly to Australia. That’s a long time to sit, especially for someone who is incapable of sleeping on planes. I got about 30 minutes of terrible dozing in the entire flight. It was rather miserable. Luckily, we must have gotten a tail wind because we landed when we were originally supposed to, despite the delay. We passed through US customs, which was by far the easiest of the trip and made our way to the domestic terminal. At that point it was Saturday morning West Coast time. I checked my bags one last time (only $40 this time, moving in the right direction), said goodbye to Karen for a few weeks, and went to my gate. My flight left at 12:50pm, and I got into Seattle a little less than two hours later.
My wonderful friend John picked my tired self up from the airport and drove me home because my parents had the audacity to be out of town at a wedding (not really, I would have killed to have been there, congrats Kevin and Susan!). I walked through the front door of my house at 4:00pm, 25 hours after we walked out of our hostel in Melbourne. But instead of doing the sensible thing and going to sleep, I hung out with my friends. It was my only night in town, so I was determined to see as many people as possible. I went to the Mariners game that night (hello America, I’ve missed you) and didn’t end up getting to sleep until about 2:00am. So for those of you keeping track at home, I was awake for almost exactly 36 hours. A new best for me! I won’t be repeating it any time soon, but some of those 36 hours was fun. The next afternoon, my parents arrived back from the wedding and got to see their baby for the first time in four and a half months. At about 4:45pm, my dad and I left Seattle and made awesome time, pulling into Eugene at exactly 10:00pm. Twelve hours later, I went to my first of 59, 2-hour physics lectures this summer. How jealous of me are you?
So in summary, the past few weeks have been a whirlwind. Between May 27th and June 16th, I took 2, 5-hour bus rides; spent over 2 hours underwater and slept one night on a boat; crammed for and took four finals; and packed up my life while saying goodbye to some close friends that I may never see again. Between June 16th at 7:00am in Australia and June 19th at 10:00pm in Eugene, I traveled through 6 airports and passed through security 5 times; paid $225 worth of baggage fees; boarded 5 different flights; spent about 21 hours in the air; I spent time in 7 different cities and 3 time zones; watched the Mariners lose an agonizingly boring game; drove 5 hours with all of my belongings packed tightly into my dad’s truck; traveled a total of roughly 10,622 miles; received a total of 26 hours of sleep in 104 total hours of day; and wrote 2560 words about my journey.
No wonder I’m exhausted. I still haven’t completely gotten over my jet lag. And all of that so I could get back in time to take physics all summer. The professor should just give me an ‘A’ for effort and call it good.
