University of Richmond
Spider Diaries

Archive for February, 2008

On a Friday

Today, I bought textbooks…and by that I mean all manner of reading materials, etc, for my classes, which begin next Monday.  $273.25, if you were wondering.  This includes a subject reader 300 pages long, six fiction novels, a HARDBACK 50Lbs textbook for microbiology that I will have to lug from class to class all day three days a week, a lab coat (yes, I typed that correctly), safety glasses, and a couple notebooks of recycled paper.  Not too bad, considering.  And I received a 15% discount off my purchase because I am a Student Union member.

Tomorrow, my friends and I are scheduled to take part in a city-wide scavenger hunt for six hours.   It should be a blast, I hope.  And if it isn’t, we’re in small groups anyway so we can just bolt.  I joined the campus film society AND saw the best poster ever–of Michelangelo’s mural in the Sistine Chapel.  It’s the Creation of Adam scene where god is reaching down and Adam is reaching up.  Well anyway, this poster has Adam reaching up but instead of God there is a flying spaghetti monster!  I was so happy I could have stolen it (I didn’t, I didn’t.  Stealing is bad).

As it stands right now, I am enrolled in four classes:  Victorian Crime Writing, Australian Wildlife Biology, Principles of Microbiology and Immunology, and Experimental Microbiology.  I’m very excited about it!  I’m not excited about lugging textbooks about like a mule, but I will–all for the sake of science…and Victorian Crime.

Well, this is a quick posting before lunch, but I will write again soon!

 chris-in-panties.jpg

This is one of the hosts from the Melbourne Welcome, Chris.  He was gracious and secure enough to put on women’s panties at the request of some tourists.

 group-at-shrine-of-remembrance.jpg

This is my Melbourne Welcome group on a tour of the city.  This is the Shrine of Remembrance here in Melbourne; it is a WWI and WWII memorial.

cherry red infinity,

Jordan

Quote of the week:

“Without evil there could be no good, so it must be good to be evil sometimes.”
Satan, South Park episode

If anyone can guess where the spaghetti monster comes from…they win a computer hug from me.

Peace and love.

Published by Jordan on February 29, 2008 in Study Abroad. 1 Comment

Settled in Melbourne

Quick overview of Melbourne Welcome events:
1.  I can officially say I stood on the highest platform of the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere—the Eureka tower here in Melbourne.  The tower is not corporate; it is actually the tallest building and tallest residential building below the earth’s belt.

eureka-tower-view.jpg

View from the top of the Tower!

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2.  Learned how to surf at Ocean Grove in Geelong—about an hour and a half from the city.  I stood up three times!

ocean_grove-surfing.jpg

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3.  Visited the Queen Victoria open-air markets.
4. Forced my overheated body to walk the entirety of the Melbourne Zoo—the largest in Australia.  It was AMAZING! 
5.  Took a City Heritage Tour.  Saw a lot of churches and learned quite a bit about Melbourne Architecture.  Went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and learned about Catholic symbolism in architecture—I now know what the pillars and faces represent. 

st_patricks-melbourne_tour.jpg

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6.  Went inside an office building with a sculpture that makes me think of Dante’s Purgatorio.  Actually, it’s a representation of the corporate ladder by Victoria Nelson.

corporate_ladder-purgatorio.jpg

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6.  Learned that American teenagers really do go crazy when they go to countries that have a drinking age of 18.  NOT a good thing.
7.  Learned that Australians love showing off their wines, beers and continually exceeding their drinking tolerances.
8.  Met a bunch of nice people.

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With the Melbourne Welcome program concluded yesterday, there was only the first of many smaller steps to take in my journey to becoming a study abroad student in the University of Melbourne system.  This step (and really, it was just a baby one) was to move into the International House, the residential college near campus that will be my home for the forthcoming months—and I succeeded admirably in settling into my wedge-shaped teal-painted room.  The space is cozy, the bed is comfortable (although sleeping in this extraordinary heat is not), and I have internet access again (yay!).  The most fantastic aspect of the setup here is the view.  As I said in my last posting, the city was spreading away from me.  But here, in this room, the entire skyline is engulfed in the panes of my wall-to-wall window.  The building is a decagon and faces the city on this side.  I’m snug in my new living situation; this R.C. is a little out of the way, but there is a tram a block away and the campus is only three blocks from here.  The food is spectacular.  And it’s nice to live in a place that already anticipates 50% occupancy of vegetarians.  I’m eating healthier than I ever have and I love exploring my city.

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View from my room!

Color I’d be,

Jordan

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Quote of the week:
I said: “What color do you think that is?”
One of my new friends, Meredith, looked out at the color of the water where we went surfing and replied, “Indigo.  If I was indigo, that’s what color I’d be.”

Published by Jordan on February 19, 2008 in Study Abroad. 0 Comments

Firsts

Listed below are some of the firsts I noticed from my first twelve hours in Australia:

1. This is my first time in Melbourne—and my first day.
2. The first piece of fruit I ate was a delicious, ripe banana drizzled in maple syrup.
3. The first time I didn’t understand the words coming out of someone’s mouth was with the concierge in the lobby of my hotel.  (the second happened when I ordered lunch).
4. This is the first time I have ever really been by myself in a different country.
5. My first hotel is named after an American city—Miami.
6. I ate my first meal at a little restaurant called The Broken Poppy—which is a line from one of my favorite poems and why I chose to eat there in the first place.
7. The first unusual facet of Melbourne I noticed was the intersection of Errol and Victoria Street.  Walking through that jumble of intertwining roads filled with left-hand drivers and trolley cars, I felt like I had not just spent twenty two hours flying around the globe but stumbled into the breezy streets of New Orleans instead.  The buildings are low here—only two stories—and multicolored.  They have that old French Quarter appeal, the kind which would seem caricature-ish if you didn’t know there was something natural in the evolution of the aesthetic design. 
8. In the center of the intersection, I walked through my first park—a twenty by thirty grassy space with two gigantic lumbering trees.  Hanging from every tiny branch in bunches were seed pods that resembled underwater mines.  The trees were landmarks on their own.  Their leaves were the brightest green I’ve ever seen and from a distance, the trees seemed fluffy.  Like the trufaluf trees in Seuss’s The Lorax.
9. In the park, I came across my first random sign.  It read:

Male
Female
Unisex
Handicap
Public Toilets down the stairs

This would have been fine, except that the sign watched over a flat piece of concrete, guarding the filled pit where once a stairway existed.  This bed of concrete was traced with a beautiful rod iron fence and had two parental companions in the trees; their broad branches protected the lost entrance to the abyss from the prying eye of the sun.

That’s enough for now.  I’m going to bed.  The city spreads away from me.  Tomorrow I will journey into the city with the Melbourne Welcome program and make friends with the streets that will feel and feed the reverberations of my vibrating, living imagination for the next four months.

Anticipate the past.
Jordan

Quote of the week:
“Minds are like parachutes.  They only work when they’re open.” - Tommy Dewar

Published by Jordan on February 14, 2008 in Study Abroad and Miscellaneous. 0 Comments
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