Hello Everyone,

Yet again it has been a week since my last significant update. It was another long, tiring week, but as always it was a lot of fun.

Monday was my only lazy day, and probably so for a while. I was able to do some more shopping and organizing and did a fair job at trying to pull my life together here so that I am ready to survive for the next six months.

Then on Tuesday the O-Week (Orientation) festivities started. As I live at Saint John’s College this means a lot more than some welcoming ceremonies and club sign ups that the University arranges. It started by helping a lot of the Freshers (First years at St. John’s, mostly freshman) move into their rooms. Then we are got into formal attire (khakis, dress shirt, tie and academic gown) and were informally greeted by our Rector (the head guy at the College). Next, we attended a wonderful Mass in our beautiful Chapel. This was followed by our Matriculation Dinner. The Matriculation Dinner consisted of all the Freshers, along with some families, and all the staff at the College eating in our fairly small Dining Hall. At the end of the dinner each new student came to the front of the Hall and signed their name in the Matriculation book that holds the names of all students that have ever attended St. John’s College. This signing was followed by a short reception and then our real St. John’s O-Week festivities began. Without going into too much detail, most of these festivities involved drinking and activities intended to get all 107 Freshers to get to know each other.

On Wednesday, O-Week festivities continued early, after breakfast. We had signing practice in our Pub. This may sound very formal, but it really is not. The songs are mostly joke songs and crude songs intended to insult another College at a sporting competition later in the year, or to cheer on our College. Afterwards, we all attended the official welcome by the Chancellor of the University in the Great Hall and then explored the hundreds of tents set up on the main lawn, filled with clubs, teams and other activities offered at the University. Back at St. Johns there was a pool party in our ‘lemon grove’ (so named because the existence of lemon trees some forty years ago). This was good fun, as all the other Colleges at the University came and joined us. For dinner all the Freshers (I am counted as a Fresher, but not truly) went to Sancta Sophia College (the all women’s sister College to St. John’s). After dinner we all came back to St. John’s and our on site pub, The Dail, was opened for the first time this year (there is a photo from The Dail on the previous posting).

Next on Thursday we had breakfast in our Dining Hall with the Freshers from the Women’s College. That afternoon we all walked to King Street (I mentioned this street previously) and shopped for the worst outfit possible. The reasoning for this was that we were having a harbor cruise that night with Wesleyan College and the theme was worst bad taste outfit. After spending the afternoon shopping we all had a quick dinner and made our way through the City to the Opera House and hopped on our four hour cruise of the harbor. The cruise was a lot of fun and the City is beautiful at night from the water. Unfortunately I do not have any photos from this, because the risk of bringing my camera with me was too great.

Friday came and changed the entire feel of the week. Since I was going away for the weekend in the afternoon with my program, I skipped most of the activities in the morning. At about 3:45pm about 35 kids from my program and I left on a bus for a two hour drive to the Blue Mountains. We actually stayed in a down called Eltham, at a Christian Youth Camp (not for any reason other than its location and cheapness, though the Bibles in every bed were a nice touch). We arrived around dinner time and the food was terrific. After dinner some of us watched at movie called Looking for Alibrandi, it is about an Australian-Italian teenager in Sydney. It was a decent movie, and passed the time. We played some games before heading to sleep in the most uncomfortable beds that have ever been made.

I woke up early Saturday morning to get breakfast and to prepare for the long day ahead of me. At 8:30am I left with fifteen other kids for our difficult hike through bush/rain forest and up to what is called Evan’s Lookout. It is an amazing view of part of the Blue Mountain Valley. The hike was actually fairly difficult, but unbelievably beautiful. Unfortunately, I was taking so many pictures and not paying close enough attention and slipped while crossing a creek. I slipped on a rock and banged up my knee (mostly just a big cut). The worst part is that I had forgotten to zip up the pocket on my jacket that I had my camera in and it fell out of my pocket and onto the rocks. Before I noticed it, and before the guide right behind me could grab it, it slipped into the water. It was only submerged for minimum of five seconds, but that was enough to stop it from working for now. I have gotten it to react a little and will be bringing it to a shop to be cleaned and hopefully fixed. Needless to say though, I do not have access to any photos that I took before this accident and obviously could not take any pictures for the rest of the weekend. My friends are nice and take plenty of pictures, so I will soon have access to tons of pictures of my adventures, but I do apologize in advance not only for the delay but also for the quality of the pictures, as I did not take them myself.

I finished the hike up to Evan’s Lookout (which, for those of you planning on visiting, can be easily driven to) and got an amazing late-morning view of a beautiful valley that is actually called the Grand Canyon. The group and I hiked back to meet the bus and traveled back to the camp to have another great meal. Then in the afternoon my group and I got onto a bus and were driven to what is called Scenic World at the Blue Mountains. It is actually a series of cable cars and trains that take you to places in a part of this rainforest and provide you with spectacular views of the Blue Mountains and most specifically the famous Three Sisters. The Three Sisters is a natural rock formation that sticks out of the side of a Mountain and is a huge part of Aborigine folklore. We got to take the railway down to the rainforest, and this particular one-minute ride in basically a coal mining train, is the steepest train slope in the World. The entire slope you go down is at 52 degrees to the ground and it is an amazing ride down (accompanied by the Indian Jones theme song in the background). After getting to the rainforest we all walked on raised wooden walkways through an intricate maze, seeing many different parts of this one section of rainforest. When we were done we all piled onto a giant gondola, called the Flyway, and were given an amazing view of the rain forest and valley below, as well as the Three Sisters as we rode back up to the base at the top.

Following this we were aloud to stop in the small town of Leura and walk down the one main street of stores and shops. It was not very exciting at all, but a short break nonetheless. From there we drove to what is called Echo Point. This is a viewing spot that is at the same height as the Three Sisters and is closer than the first place we saw them from. As well, it is a spectacular viewing spot for the rest of the Blue Mountain region. (I do not think I have mentioned it yet, so I will take the time now to explain the short reason for why the Blue Mountains are called that. It is because there is often a fairly noticeable blue haze hovering above them. This is not pollution; rather it is chemicals being let off from the endless eucalyptus trees that cover the mountains.)

After leaving the Echo Point viewing station my group and I took our bus back to our camp and had another great dinner. This night instead of a movie, we had trivia night. It consisted of an overly paid women coming in and asking us trivia questions. We split into small teams and competed. We made it into as much fun as was possible, but it was great. Even our program coordinators were bored and upset.

On Sunday it was another early start. At 8:15am my group and I took the bus down the road into the bush. We met some rock climbing instructors and were given a crash course in rock climbing before take a rather long and dangerous hike down a valley to a rock face called New York. We all broke down into small groups, mine had just two others in it, and we took turns climbing at different positions on this one rock face. As one person climbed the other two were in charge of taking in the slack on the rope and being prepared to hold the rope if the climber fell. As well, the two at the bottom controlled the decent of the climber once they reached the top. I climbed the face at four different spots and did it fairly easily. It was fun, though I did not get to enjoy it too much at the time, as I found it easier not to think about it as I climbed. That mindset combined with my lack of confidence in my sub-par teammates below made everything a little more nerve racking. Nonetheless, I did not get injured and had a great time (photos of this will soon be available as well).

After rock climbing, we all had lunch and then got on the bus for the ride back to Sydney. I arrived back at St. Johns in late afternoon and had enough time to unpack, shower and organize a little before heading to the lemon grove for the last activity of O-Week, a bbq. It was very nice to get away for the weekend, especially all the O-Week festivities as they began to grow tiring and annoying. Also, it was a lot of fun doing the adventure weekend in the Blue Mountains.

The pretty much brings you all up to date on my activities over the last week. Classes officially start tomorrow. However, I currently am not registered for any classes that meet on Monday. Though I will be waking up early on Monday morning to sort out my schedule (there is a peculiar clash of courses to be sorted out) and to find out the location of three classes that meet on Mondays that I would like to sit in on and decide whether I would like to take or not.

Other than classes I am still trying to get fully organized here. I do have complete access to the internet (if anyone would like to use Skype with me I think it should work, though I have never tried it before). I am also going to be booking my trip to Canberra this weekend. I am planning on going Friday until Sunday and having a good time in the nation’s Capital. I have been warned not to get to excited, but I feel that I will be able to find enough interesting things to do.

In case anyone was wondering, the Tropfest short films are not available online as far as I know, however I do own a DVD with them all on it and will be willing to lend it out once I return to the States.

Again, I will be hopefully posting pictures that correspond with my activities from this weekend soon. And as always I thoroughly enjoy all of your e-mails and responses (and my apologies for not always responding promptly, as the combination of the time difference and my tendency to only read and enjoy the e-mails and not immediately write back seems to make the delay become substantial.)

Hope all is well with everyone and best wishes.

Love

Jon