Over the course of this trip, its hasn’t necessarily been the things that I knew would be great that I’ve enjoyed the most, but the pleasant surprises. Most of the grand attractions I’ve seen look exactly as they do on a postcards – perhaps even better. I would say it’s the connections with people that I have valued and enjoyed the most. I love these random connections. Just when you think you have met enough people, had enough joy or enough frustration for that matter, a pleasant surprise pops up.

This pleasant surprise happened in Sydney and came in the form of Marc from Barcelona, Spain, or Catalonia as he would probably prefer I say. Marc is 26, a IT guy and in Australia for a year to better his English. We met my first day in Sydney on a free walking tour (because free is my middle name). And let me tell you since it was the last few days of my trip, I was pretty keen on keeping to myself and not meeting any new friends. What I am tired of most are the top three questions I have been asked 1,000 times : where you from? How long you have been traveling? Where have you been? Since its late it my trip, that means I would have to list 16 countries. Ok back to the story. Low and behold, I spark up a random conversation with Marc and we end up walking and talking pretty much the entire last half of the 3 hour tour. Mostly, I am helping him with this English words and trying to understand what the tour guide was saying. Oh and the tour was great too, we saw the old parts of Sydney (The Rocks), I took some pics of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge etc. Random fact: Sydney began as a British penal colony. Britain sent all their prisoners here to serve their time and they built much of the city.

To make a long story short, Marc and I hit it off and spent the rest of that day and the entire next touring around Sydney together. I love how when traveling you do things you would never do at home. Like meet some random person and spend two days traveling with them. Since I left Thailand, I have either been on a tour or solo sightseeing, so it was quite a blessing to have a buddy. A funny one at that, who just happens to LOVE old school hip hop. We sang many old school hip hop songs and compared our favorite artists.

We visited Bondi Beach — which is beautiful and absolutely full of people with perfect bodies and tans.

Million Dollar Question: How do you know you are in white western society?……………………….

Answer: People are jogging. I hadn’t seen joggers since Europe really and there were many of them as we took the 3 hour coastal walk to a few other beaches. There were many laugh out loud moments because Marc’s English is pretty good, but many things are still lost on him. Like when I pointed out all the joggers, he said “what is jogging? He was like a little kid, learning many new words, as we talked he repeated all the new phrases I would throw out there in fascination. My favorite explanation was the difference between “beach“ and “bitch“- Marc “What is the difference between beach and bitch?” Me — “Well, those are two VERY different words, do you want to know the difference in meaning or pronunciation?” “Pronunciation, when I try to say beach, its sounds like bitch” Indeed it did. We worked on that one for about 10 minutes and his beach still sounds like bitch. Oh, the subtleties of language. Its funny how mispronouncing one syllable and you can say something completely different. Marc told me a story of him talking to someone imitating a “rapper” and saying look “I am a “rape-r.” Ouch. Or what you learn from talking to people that you would never learn from a book. Like 100 bucks or 1 Grand or a G if you are urban or hip. There were tons of things that I suppose would make sense, but I explained that you would never say that in the US when talking to someone.

Anyway, the next day we went 2 hours outside of the city to the Blue Mountains. This is like the Grand Canyon of Australia. This included a 3 hour bush walk in the mountains to see the 3 sisters, which are 3 rock formations in the mountains. This included walking through mud, up and down stairs and looking over the sides of cliffs. The scenery was nice and interspersed with waterfalls and cascades. After much translation, talking, some poetry, hip-hop, food, a beer and much good conversation, I bid Marc farewell. We had different plans for the next few days. I’ll probably never see Marc again, but we had a really nice few days and he was such pleasant surprise that added a pinch of joy to my last few days in Sydney. And of course he is now my face book friend and I video taped him reciting the “Where I am from” poem.

That evening, I switched from my Hostel and stayed with a Servas Host. This is exactly what I needed, my OWN room and a double bed. Oh to be in a home/house. Isla made me a late dinner and then I was fast to sleep, and I think I slept for about 10 hours.

The next day, I was so tired after walking continuously for two days, that I couldn’t do much. I met up with another Servas Host (Ulli) that evening and went to the an event as part of the Sydney Festival. It was a free Symphony on the Domain (a big park in the center of the city). It was nice, you bring your own food and alcohol and camp out with friends. Thousands of people were there. I had a girls night out with Ulli and her 5 friends ranging from 30-50+.

Now, I am an a train coming back from Tea Gardens. I met up with Bek whom I volunteered with in Kenya. It’s a few hours away from Sydney on the train, but I would much rather hand out with someone familiar than roam around Sydney solo on my last few days. It was great finish to my trip. Her parents own a restaurants, so I had some fine dining for dinner and breakfast. We also went on a mini-safari, where I spotted about 10 Kangaroos (we even saw one with a joey (baby) in its pouch), a 3 foot long lizard (I forgot the name), a dingo and a few dolphins. Tea Gardens is small but very pretty summer town with a lagoon, lake and beaches. This morning we went canoeing and came within 5 feet of a pair of dolphins.

Ozzy Lingo Part 2

They say “Where abouts are you from?”

They say “hey” after a lot of things. For instance one might say “this meal is really good hey”

Chucking a Whoobly = Playing hooky

Lollie=any small sweet, not a lollypop

Biscuit=cookie

Singlet=Tank Top (or wife beater as we call it)

Brogan= now I am not exactly sure what this it, I asked someone and they said it was like a “chap” a word they use in England, which I also don’t know the meaning of. I think its like a showy guy who dresses a certain way, leisure suits and drives a pimped up pickup. I’ll let you know

Randomness

Australia has very colorful money(purple, reds and blue) and its made of some non paper/plastic material that you can wash and it very hard to rip.

Since I always have toilet commentary, I might as well continue. Australian toilets have two bottoms at the top of the tank. The smaller one uses less water and is for number 1. You can figure out the rest.

I forgot what the last entry I wrote was about, but to rewind for a second, my last few days in Melbourne weren’t anything spectacular. I went to a couple of Art Museums, watched a bit of the Australian Open in thee downtown Federation Square and learned a little more about Aborigines.

At some point what I learned will be turned into a poem, but its churning and I have yet to pen it. Just a few crazy facts:

How did they get to Australia? From what I have read, its thought that some 40,000+ years ago during the ice age, when the sea level was down, they walked over from somewhere in Asia. Who knows what the world was like then because they look far from Asian.

Fast forward to the 1800′s and 1900′s when Europeans arrived. Over a number of years, about 100,000 aboriginal children were taken from their homes and put into foster care as a method of forced assimilation and cultural genocide. The children were removed at 7 or 8 initially, but after it was learned that they could remember where they came from it was reduced to infancy.

Up until the 1960′s they were basically treated like children, many of them lived on reservations, they couldn’t vote and they needed special permission to do things like marry. Many of these injustices continued until the 80′s and 90′s. Until more recently, history books didn’t reflect that there were people groups inhabiting Australia before it was colonized. Because so many people were killed a lot of pre-European history is lost.

Aboriginals are pretty much assimilated into Australian society, but even today, while they are only about 3% of the population, they suffer from 31% unemployment, 66% poverty rate and only 30% of the men reach the age of 65 (50% for women). These are much higher than the national averages. Drugs and alcohol also have taken a toll on these communities. In Cairns, most of the people you would see loitering or drinking on street corners are Aboriginals. Again sad, but I just wanted to give you an essence of the not so bright side of Australia.

I think this maybe be my last or second to last blog readers. After flying 10,000 miles in 3 flights and 2 (4) hour layer overs for a total of 30+ hours of travel , I will arrive in NYC on the 26^th. I plan to hibernate in continuous sleep for 10 days in addition to celebrating my birthday, thanksgiving and Christmas with my family. I’ll be down to C’ville to sort out/unpack my life and then start work again. You will get a final trip update newsletter soon and if you want to hear all about my trip and see pics– Mark your Calendars for March 5^th, 2011 for an informal summation. This will be in c’ville and probably be early evening. Thanks so much for all who have been reading, all those who commented and special thanks to Danielle, Vashawn, Missy, Mary Joy, Evan, Tom and Khadija for making plenty of comments. Sorry if I missed anyone those are the names that come to the top of my head. God willing, I will see you all soon.