Wow... have we really been here in Australia forty weeks now? I apologize that this week's entry is being posted a few hours late... we've been busy trying to make the most of our last ten days in Sydney. It's such a weird feeling to be at the end-side of an experience like this-- homesickness has been a constant companion over the past nine months, but now that "home" is just a few weeks away we have to face up to the fact that reverse culture shock awaits us there. And, it's a little disappointing to realize that simply going home to be with the cats and see all our friends and eat hot dogs that taste right is not magically going to solve all the rest of the problems in our life. Particularly the thesis- wedding- and finding-a-job- related problems.
Strangely, we've been very productive the past few weeks, especially Chad. Either we've finally found a groove1 or we've finally realized how late in the year it actually is2 and the pressure is doing its job. D is seeking closure in her own way-- by furiously working on the Australia scrapbook and mentally packing everything in the house ten times over.3 And making casseroles, in a desperate attempt to compensate for the lack of them at the potluck two weeks ago... and to use up all the random food left in our fridge.
We also have a list of things we'd like to in Sydney before leaving... and now that D's final payment from Fulbright has come through, we can actually afford doing most of these things.4 Last Thursday we visited Chad's favorite Chinese food stall (Happy Chef) in the Sussex Food Court (in Chinatown) to try the laksa soup that is practically legendary in his estimation. (Laksa is a little spicy for D's taste, but she tried some of Chad's soup.) Then, we went downtown to walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens and see the bits that we hadn't gotten around to seeing yet. The Botanic Gardens run alongside the CBD of Sydney and stretch almost out onto the artificial peninsula on which the Opera House is built... so we've both walked around that end of the gardens. There's a whole lot more to the gardens, though-- so we walked through the upper areas, and visited the tropical rooms and the fernery. And, we got to see the fruit bat colony!5 We even have a few now living on our fridge.
D even got to see a Wollemi Pine in a cage, since only Chad got to see one in Canberra. The Wollemi Pines are the extremely rare "dinosaur" trees that were found in a tiny stand in Sydney's Blue Mountains in 1994. The trees were only identifiable through the fossil record, because they were thought to have been extinct since the dinosaurs were around. Now, they are firecely guarded in the wild and cuttings have been carefully cultivated in gardens like these-- but the trees are so rare that they are caged to protect them from animals and human thieves.
Down the street just a block from the Botanic Gardens is the State Libary of New South Wales. D wanted to stop there because she had heard a rumor that there was a statue of a cat on the windowsill of the library... not just any cat, but Trim Flinders, a seafaring cat who circumnavigated Australia.6 Sure enough, there on the windowsill, behind a six-foot bronze statue of Matthew Flinders, is a one-foot bronze statue of Trim and a plaque explaining his presence there. It's good to see a cat get the official appreciation he deserves!
On Saturday, we had the opportunity to meet up with the 2005 class of US Fulbrighters who were living in New South Wales. D had emailed them all and invited them to meet us for yum cha7 at the last big yum cha restaurant downtown that we hadn't yet gotten to try. As it turned out, all six of the Fulbrighters in NSW (six if you include D) were able to make it, even the one from Newcastle, who happened to be in Sydney for a conference. In general, Fulbrighters from all different programs have proven to be some of the most interesting people we've met, so the company was virtually guaranteed to be good. It was a little strange, too-- most of them had only been in Australia for three months or so and had another eight or nine months in front of them... and we were less than a month from leaving to go home.
It is positively odd to know that you have less than ten days left in a foreign city, when every night you come home not to a hostel or a hotel or someone else's place, but to your own apartment. Even with the clock winding down, we still sit at our computers most days and watch our Buffy DVDs and our CSI broadcasts on TV most nights. It almost doesn't feel real, but it definitely is...
Three weeks to go!
;)
- D
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NOTES
1Just as we're about to be bumped out of it, of course.
2Very hard for us northern-hemispherers to realize when the days are getting longer and the weather getting warmer.
3In ten different organizational arrangements, you understand. One of them will have to fit! (It must be the UPS gene...)
4Okay, let's be honest-- the only one that is going to create an economic hardship is the "end of our time in Sydney" celebration dinner at the second most-expensive restaurant in Australia. All the rest of the stuff on our list is more or less free. But probably not as nourishing.
5Alert readers might remember D's excitement at seeing the fruit bat colony at Paronella Park in far north Queensland (see 28 June entry until I get the photos posted). If she'd known there were so many living so close to her, she probably would have gone to see them before now and more than once!
6Trim was assisted in this monumental endeavor by his loyal master, the explorer Matthew Flinders.
7Australian for "dim sum," a more or less Cantonese style of Chinese food that is served in little servings on plates of three-- great for large groups as you get to try a little of everything!
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