Rainforest ramblings

Living in the rain forest for three days practicing yoga, meditation and deep ecology can really restore take its toll on your mental health. Sounds like a spa retreat, right? Aside from the meditative practices, the trip involved classroom sessions learning about the 12 Philosophies of Ecology. Viewpoints ranged from economic globalization to ecological feminism, and were all completely different from each other. Its bizarre to think that in order for the environment to be restored, 12 different mindsets and values need to be overcome or changed. The underlying theme of this program seems to be that the world requires a fundamental shift in values in order to make any difference in the planet. At this point in time that sounds pretty intimidating, change the values of every being on the planet?

The absolute most terrifying part of the trip was the excessive amount of terrestrial leeches that popped up anywhere and everywhere. I thought everyone on my trip was such a weakling for screaming when they saw the leeches stuck on their ankles...until I got one. It was one of the more scary moments of my life.

During the workshop, our teacher introduced us to a cleansing method called "truth mendala". In the middle of two circles of  people sitting on the ground there were four objects representing different emotions. Leaves-sorrow, Bowl-despair or hopelessness, Stick-anger and Rock-fear. One by one, people sat in the center, picked up which ever object, and expressed what was making them feel that way. The goal of the exercise was to not let any positive emotions in the circle. When things get bad or sad, our natural tendency is to say positive things and try to make it better. However sadness and despair are emotions that need to be expressed too, no matter how hard it is to talk about. The mendala ended up being extremely upsetting and emotional. It was incredible how much people opened up about their emotions and personal lives and how comfortable everyone was with showing their deepest fears.

So you can see how this trip ended up being a pretty exhausting one! With the leeches, mendalas, sleeping in tents and this sucker....

....it ended up tiring all of us out!

Orientation was...not very orienting! We didn't do the whole go around the circle and say each others names until the third day, at which point we had all already learned each other's names, schools, hometowns, interests, etc! We spent a lot of time on the beach in our free time, including a midnight walk under the moon last night.

 One of my first and foremost goals on this trip was to learn how to learn how to surf. Lessons, for a group, is $45 AUS dollars! Amazingly, our academic director surprised us with free lessons today! Everyone miraculously managed to get up on the board, while 12 year olds who have been surfing their whole life whizzed in and out between all of us glubbing in the water.

Brisbane Insane

After hours of inpatient and anxious waiting, I finally found my abroad group!! Although we didn't have cool green luggage tags like those punks from Austrilearn, we all had extremely humongous backpacks towering over our heads--dead give away.


We spent the day trekking across Brisbane, finally arriving at the night's hostel--Brisbane Backpacking! Pool, hottub, dance floor and club! What were we missing in España?! We walked through the city, where I bought my first legal drink--a genuine hard cider--and met up with our directors for some Thai food! Our academic director is pretty much just an Australian Alan Alda except more tired, and our bus driver Davi is your run of the mill drunken sailor. BOTH great guys!! Tomorrow at 8 am we begin our journey across the beaches of the Golden Coast for four days. No phone, no email, no nuthin. Love you so far Aussieland

Never watch 127 Hours on a plane

This adventure begins in a window seat. Having just crossed the International Date Line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I have officially crossed into the world of all things opposite! Criminals run the country, kangaroos hop across your fence instead of that old news squirrel, and toilets flush backwards!! (actually, that’s to be determined. I’ll let you know if the rumors are true.) So far I have met about twenty people going to Australia, but none are in my program. The Austrilearn program (not mine) gave out green baggage tags to everyone so they could find each other in the airport. But my program believes in the element of surprise, apparently, so no fellow SITers yet!

So far every real-life Australian has already been smothered by my obsession with their accent. I managed to get an Aussie couple to carry a ten minute conversation with me about how planes are boarded just to listen to that sweet melody of an English accent with a boomer-twang. More later when not 11,582 meters (metres?) in the air. Or 38,000 feet. Can’t wait to take a whack at the metric system!