University of Richmond
Spider Diaries

Archive for April, 2008

Tram Conversations

So.  I just held a very interesting conversation with a drunk Bohemia man and a homeless man with many imaginary friends on the tram as I was coming home from what has become my Tuesday night ritual.  My friends Dean, Zoe, and I have made it a weekly fun-night during which we go to a place a few streets away called “Bimbo.”  Bimbo–you probably couldn’t have guessed–is a bar lit entirely by red lamps and a big ball of Christmas lights and whose mascot is a a half-naked, masochistic, leering, evil little doll baby that is plastered everywhere across the walls.  Though the decor is fun, that’s not the reason to enjoy this little hot spot.  The prices absolutely cannot be beat.  And while I just sounded like a used car salesman, even one of those would fall down at that creepy baby doll’s feet and worship it.  Every Sunday through Thursday 12pm-4pm, 7pm-11pm Bimbo has $4 pizzas.  And these aren’t just sad little microwave pizzas either.  They’re made to order and each carries enough toppings to have at least crippled the Titanic if it struck the side of one.  Tonight I bought myself a margarita pizza; last week I had a Taleggio, which is a potato pizza; the week before it was zucchini.  They taste wonderful and the prices make it unbeatable for everywhere, not just Melbourne. 

 Anyway, as I was coming home tonight, my friend Dean and I were talking about a little writing project that I’m about to undertake when the nice homeless man began to clean the automated teller machine and talk about dragon paper and how thin it is.  The drunk guy, obviously enjoying the conversation, began talking about the paper with the man.  Then they began to talk to me.  Yes,  I attract the good ones.  It’s a track record I’m going for, you know.  hehe.  No, no.  They were great, intricate characters each of them–and it’s nice to get to know people.  The drunk man gave me a lot of good ideas for my story and so did the homeless man and his twelve invisible best friends. 

 Then, as I was waiting for a second tram, I saw a man on the tram before mine that looked exactly like the character I had dreamed up in my imagination.  So now I know that he exists I’m going to write my story–there are too many signs not to try at this point.

I turned in my first piece of real homework on Monday.  It was a 1500 word essay about the Victorian crime novel Old Goriot by Balzac.  I recommend it if you want a summer read.  It’s a pretty quick novel to get through and it’s very well written.  Anyway, that’s what I spent my weekend doing.  I have two exams on Friday that I’m studying for right now.  So I have to go.  But I’ll write again soon.

Oh yeah, and I just found out that classes are already done for Richmond (?!?!?!).  And here I am not done with midterms yet.  Hehe.  Well, I only have a month left of school here and then I’m off to the hot Hot HOT tropical north of Australia–Cairns and Port Douglas and Magnetic Island!  And my 20th birthday is less that three months away–scary how time flies–and I get to celebrate in the same spot I celebrated my fifteenth.  Magnetic Island here I come.  BUT I JUST REALIZED THAT I’M A TEENAGER.  And now I’m drifting into that not-quite-teen-not-quite-adult zone until I’m twenty-one.  I’m going to enjoy myself!  Yeah.

translucent shadow,

Jordan

st_kilda-pumpkin_ln.jpg

 This is just a sign in St. Kilda I loved.

st_kilda-tree_bark.jpg

Look at the pattern of the bark on this tree!  Isn’t it fantastic?  No, I’m not high.  But it really is a masterpiece, if I’ve ever seen one.

Quotes of the week:

“I learned that the interior of life was as rewarding as the exterior of life, and that my richest moments occurred when I was absolutely still.”

- Richard Bode

“Do everything with a mind that lets go.  Do not expect praise or reward.”

–Achaan Chan

Published by Jordan on April 29, 2008 in Study Abroad and Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Apple green seas…

Warning to all study abroad students:  ALWAYS TAKE YOUR CAMERA WITH YOU WHEN YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE!!!  I don’t regret not having it this weekend, but so many beautiful and poetic events happened that I feel sorely silly for forgetting it…but I’ll get to that in a minute.

My mid-term tests are fast approaching.  I have a paper due next Monday and two exams next Friday (one of my classes only has a final).  It’s amazing to think that I’ve already been here three months.  I can’t believe that my Central Australia trip was a month ago.  It’s scary that my finals are in a month and a half and they STILL HAVEN’T POSTED A FINAL EXAM SCHEDULE!  

So my Saturday passed without much disturbance.  I did homework (what little there is) and I studied for hours.  But when I woke up on Sunday to a completely cloudless blue sky, I decided it would be insulting to my host country and torturous to my state of mind to sit in my wedge-room and study until the hours of the days had dripped away one by one like the grease and fat sizzles and slides off a steak onto the flames of a grill.  So instead, I took a blank notebook, pens, and my iPod, bought a Sunday Saver metcard (it’s a cheap, all day tram card they sell on Sundays for $2.90) and rode the tram all the way to the sandy (and chilly) shores of St. Kilda. 

This beach area is spectacularly quaint and hippy-ist (which, if you guys know me by now is sort of my favorite combination).  There is a main street with really nice restaurants and quite a few really cheap clothing boutiques; there is a beach with soft sand and no (absolutely no) waves; and there is (I’m thrilled to say) a new hideaway for yours truly.  St. Kilda happens to have a B-E-A-utiful (to use an old My Girl reference) pier at the end of which exists a colony of penguins and a large jetty of black rocks that looks out on the sea.  I sat on a flat black rock overlooking the sea for five hours on Sunday and watched the world move around me.  I wrote poetry, lyrics to a song, and meditated and now I feel refreshed and ready to take my exams next week. 

There were also two particularly beautiful scenes that I would like to describe to you (since I have no visual evidence) and I should be able to dole out an adequate description of them.  The first involves what happened as I was walking the long stretch of pier to that table-top stone.  I stopped on the pier at the point where the beach extending in both directions away from me met that almost calmy anticipatory apple green sea; I stood above the zone where white crests should break.  I gazed down into the translucent otherworld and saw…stars.  As far as I could strain my neck in either direction in the water, it looked like day’s reflection of the night sky.  Hundreds of sea-stars were gathered in front of me.  At first, I could only see the creatures that had bold colors–the oranges and purples.  But then layer upon layer of camouflage came undone, like the packaging of a well-wrapped gift, and I saw stars with darker and lighter tones.  I even picked out several black ones I hadn’t been able to see on the tan sand moments before.  Yet again, I let my eyes adjust to their world and spotted more stars.  These proved to be my favorite illumination; these were the terrestrial bodies that most closely resembled the earth on which they lay.  In fact, there was one star in particular that was the exact tone of the sand–I could only see it because the ridges on its back caught shadow.

The second, but no less impressive on my mind, occurred once I began moving down the pier again–this time practically at a trot.  I must have looked ridiculous as I dodged elderly couples, bicyclers, and Asian tour groups, racing a sailboat into Melbourne harbor.   But there, probably a kilometer from the pier’s head, two dozen small, white sailboats were riding the waves that never made it to shore.  The wind was blowing, the air was cool, and the flock of white boats was breath-taking in the afternoon sun.  Except that they weren’t alone.  One sailboat, shaped like all the others, flew a bright red sail.  That boat moved away from the others, quickly, nimbly, and raced me to my stone–showed me the way, actually.  I never saw who was sailing it, but that is insignificant really.  It contained a life of its own and steered itself, that bright red puffed out, pulling it forward.

oxfam_.jpg

I signed up to support an OXFAM program here in Australia called Close the Gap.  They are trying to get national health insurance to the indigenous groups in Australia.  here is a picture of the “brand” they gave me–the fake tattoo that was beautiful.  ah if only I wasn’t scared of needles…or maybe if only I liked tattoos.  Hehe.

Jordan

Quote of the week:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein

Published by Jordan on April 22, 2008 in Study Abroad and Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Apologies for being honest

So, I’ve received a very honest and yet very misguided, I feel, comment for my “Hope for the Future” post and I feel I should immediately rectify the situation by first pointing out that:

1) this blog is meant to be an experiential one.  It follows me through the ins and outs of my college experience–not just through the anticipated positives of being on my own for the first time. 

2) There is no need to be rude when identifying what you feel, dear readers, is a flaw in my topics of choice.  I have said before, as always, that if you want to hear about something specific, leave me a comment.  This particular comment is no exception so for the rest of this blog (I refuse to remove a post unless the school requests it for appropriate reasons) I will not share myself so openly and participate on the blog as a human being does and instead just write about college life.  I suppose that is my duty. 

3) And this is the big one–this semester’s blog for me has to deal with the study abroad student’s experiences.  As the comment has suggested, this is a blog about Richmond, however I am not in Richmond this semester–I cannot give you information about what is going on there because I am ten thousand miles away.  If you would like to read about Richmond itself and what the students are doing there I refer you to one of the other great blogs listed under the Spider Diary umbrella.

I am an honest writer, or try to be.  I enjoy sharing myself with my audience on a personal level beyond the factual information.  I want you to feel the experience with me–whether it be the happiness derived from being in a new city as intricate and entertaining as Melbourne or acknowledging the difficulties a student might have being across the world from her friends and family during a period of upheaval for her.  Everyone experiences joy and sorrow so while I admit that yesterday’s post was a “downer,” it was realistic and an attempt to connect with my readers from a more personal and less flimsy “everything is wonderful at college” perspective.

As I said above, I meant no disrespect to the intention of this blog.  For all intents and purposes I accept that I may have crossed over a boundary you feel comfortable with, however my intentions were pure.  I don’t apologize for the post itself, but your discomfort has made it an unnecessary one.

Please feel free to ignore any posts with which you feel disappointed.  This is just a resource of personal college interaction, not test material.  You are not required to read anything I write, but I hope that you will participate in–all of–my college experiences with me.

Thank you for your comments.  I’m just grateful I have readers, haha.

Peace and love,

Jordan

Published by Jordan on April 16, 2008 in Study Abroad and Miscellaneous. 4 Comments
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