Cultural Re-integration.

So, I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but I've had it explained to me a few times through the study abroad program, or my cultural class, or whatever. It's a chart what happens to almost everyone when they go to a different country. They teach you about it because if you know it's coming, you know why you're feeling that way, and it's much less frustrating.

It's a big capital W. (Yes, I did just spend about 5 minutes trying to make one out of dashes and slashes. You're going to have to use your imagination, I'm sure you're literate.)

The chart goes like this. You just arrive in a foreign country. That's the first peak. You're excited to be there, everything is new and awesome. You're so busy running around you don't have time to be bored or miss things from home. That's called the "honeymoon period". Most of the people that go on vacation just start to leave this period by the time they go home..it could take anywhere from a week to six...or longer, I suppose.

Then, things start to go wrong. You miss home. The coke tastes different. The grocery store is different. You can't make the food you're used to. Things are expensive.

You hit the bottom. Everything you're looking forward to is back home. You're sick of your surroundings. The girl you've been hanging out with says she doesn't want to date you anymore because you're leaving in two or three months. You're not there long enough for anything good, just long enough to really miss home.

Things start looking up. You appreciate minor details you missed before. Stuff like how awesome the money system is, or you find some food that you don't have back home and you can't get enough of it. You find some new hobby, like surfing, and some new friends, and you're busy again. The weather gets better :)

Then you hit the middle peak. Everything is great. You don't want to leave. Ever. Of course, you're scheduled to fly out sometime in the next three weeks. You take care of whatever needs taking care of and hop on a jet and say goodbye to everything.

Then, you go through the same thing all over again when you return home. People say it's much harder to come home than it is to go away, and I am beginning to see what they mean. My first week home was a whirlwind of awesome. I slept strange hours, I was busy whenever I was awake, I was unpacking, visiting friends, taking care of things that needed to be done, always busy.

Now, I'm definitely on the slope downward.

I really, really miss some of my Australian friends. I called Bronwyn, who told me how wonderfully warm it was and how the surf was. My board is gone, the beach is gone, the warm is gone, my friends are gone. My spicy chicken place is gone. Now that I don't have anything to do, I've pretty much just been sitting inside doing whatever because it's far too cold to go outside. It sucks.

Just about the only redeeming point at this point is knowing that I'll be out of it soon and back into the swing of things...I hope.

Three Days to Go!!

This week has really been awesome, I've had fun with my friends and really just relaxed, really exactly what I had in mind when I decided to stay an extra week! It's been rough saying goodbye, but that was expected!

Today, I met with a Promotions and Marketing dude from the study abroad department. He phoned me yesterday and asked if I was interested in helping them out with some future promotion stuff. Of course, I said I'd do whatever I could! I'm really thankful for the program they've set up and all the hard work they put in, so if I can give an hour or two of my time to make this experience for future students, I'm happy to!

He e-mailed me a questionnaire to fill out about my time in Newcastle and then we went to the beach and he took some pictures to use in future publications. I told him I'm usually on the other side of the camera...haha.

Here's a few of the shots you can expect to see in the Study Abroad 2009 catalog!

Beach Party and a Down Under Birthday!

Yesterday was Beach Party at the University, which is supposedly the biggest university party of the year.

They cart in 400 tonnes of sand and fill a parking lot and then there are three stages set up, and bands play all afternoon and evening. It was really a great time!

The pre mixed drink cans seemed a little expensive...there was a $1 deposit on each can in order to encourage you to recycle the can after you consumed the contained beverage. Return the can, get $1. Well, for whatever reason, there were cans...everywhere. After the last band was done playing, I wandered around for 40 minutes and grabbed some cans and made almost $100. I'm pretty sure there were people that did that the entire day and came out with well over $1000!

Today's my birthday. Well, technically it is the 30th of November, but if you think about it, I will not have been alive for 23 years until the 30th of November back home. I have decided to celebrate twice! Today I've done nothing but lay on the beach and go for a swim. Shame the surf was so choppy, hopefully it will improve by tomorrow before I have to sell my board! :(

We've all moved out of the apartment now. Of my six roommates, three of them are in America, or on their way. The remaining three have shacked up with different friends for the week (me), 8 days (Nate), or three weeks until their parents show up (Krysti).

Deep Sea Fishing!

We chartered a boat to go deep sea fishing. There were five guys and it was an afternoon trip. We departed a dock near our house at 1:00PM.



We headed out the mouth of the Hunter River aways to a location on the GPS and dropped anchor. We were using frozen shrimp as bait, two hooks and a sinker to a line. Drop the line to the bottom and wait. As soon as the first line hit the bottom, there was a fish impaled on it, and it began. I caught a fish the first time I dropped my line.

It was not big enough to eat.



I dropped my line again and caught what would end up to be the biggest fish of the day, who informed me he was disappointed with being caught by bleeding all over my boardies. Thanks fish.


A few minutes later, I hooked another monster. It was either a shark or a very large snapper. It took the line out, stronger than the clutch on my reel would hold...there was really nothing I could do. The fish took the line around the reef and cut it on the reef. The line was frayed off when we got it back up. Crafty lil bugger. The skipper informed me that a fish that size would have gone for around $70 had I been able to land it. Oh well.

Speaking of hooking monsters, I grabbed this ugly thing at one point. Rather than unhook him, the skipper just cut the line above him. "I don't mess with eels", he said. We caught three or four of this bright red fish with giant spikes down it's back...apparently extremely poisonous. We let the skipper unhook those for us as well :)


Checking out downtown Newcastle on the way back in.



We ended up keeping 19 fish. I got the big one in the back, one of the ones in the middle, and one of the green/purple leatherjackets up front. They feel like they're made of leather and they have a unicorn spike up top. Lots of interesting colors on these interesting fish way out in the salt water!


We cleaned em and grilled em with some garlic and onions and they were delicious :)

Winery tastings, Dolphin Boat, Warnervale Farms

We took our final two field trips with Catherine in the last two days.

On Thursday, we went on a local wine tour to some of the local wineries that had free tastings. We visited four wineries and probably sampled 10 wines at each. There were some really good ones! I used words like "spicy", "full bodied", "big", and "grapesque" in order to make it seem like I knew what I was talking about. I also tripled my previous wine knowledge! (read: none).

We paid $5 to get an actual tour of the wine-making process,which wasn't happening because it's out of season, but was still pretty interesting. I also grabbed some shots of the gorgeous rolling countryside.























On Friday, we headed up to Nelson Bay.

The area from a local lookout.








After a quick lunch of fish and chips, we hopped aboard a dolphin boat to head out and sight some dolphins.

The telephoto lens was fantastic for this! I was taking three pictures a second whenever there were dolphins around. I ended up with 678 pictures, and all of them have dolphin parts in them! My roommates all attempted to take pictures with their point and shoot cameras, and mostly ended up with pictures of splashing, thanks to shutter delay.

The deckhand told us that the dolphins know her because she goes out every day. Dolphins are very smart, inquisitional animals with great hearing. Clapping and whistling on the deck got them to come right up to the boat, but with us on the front of the boat and her on the back, they went right for her every time.

There's a net on the back of the boat that sits about a foot deep in the water. They allow passengers to chill in the net while the dolphins around. I didn't go out at first because I was taking pictures, but the dolphins came within a few feet of the nets. Cool.

They left the net out behind the boat while we cruised in. I hopped out there then...it was pretty cool, the water is pulling you into the net so hard, it's very hard to move!

































After this, we headed to Warnervale farms, which is a petting zoo, more or less. The dangerous or large animals were in enclosures, but everything else, all the baby animals, were more or less free to wander. They were very, very friendly, and it was a lot of fun! I'm pretty sure the entire park was tailored to 10 year olds, but we all had a blast!

The girls wandered off and Nate and I played with some baby goats for awhile. We kept walking and eventually gathered a giant entourage. It was comical to see all the different animals chasing us....at one point, we probably had between 25 and thirty animals following us! This included four baby goats, some ducks, some geese, a cow, an emu and a sheep!

















Stanley!



Furry Chicken!



Om nom nom, it are food time!



So lazy. nap time.



We finally lost this goat when it figured out how to eat with the big cows!



Texas Longhorn and one of the birds that always hangs out with these.






We headed to the spot where all the kangaroos were chilling. They, like most animals native to Australia, are ridiculously lazy and wouldn't really move. The cow would NOT bugger off and was constantly nuzzling Nate, trying to get at his food. He kept this up for two hours. I kept tripping on ducks and the goats were nibbling on my shorts.

This is part one in a two part series. Notice the duck eyeing up my food.



Part two. Notice the shocked look on my face, the chunk missing from my finger, and the smug look on the duck's face. Stupid duck!



DUCK STACK!













Wookie?!










The water buffalo know how to fit in!



Nate and some of our entourage.



Dingoes!