First and foremost, I must apologize for the delay in blog posts - it has been a whirlwind first four days here! But after a whopping 21 hours of travel, Joe and I are safe and settled in Sydney! And may I say - we have received the warmest welcome two students in a foreign country could ask for! We were met at Sydney International Airport by our lovely home stay families, complete with a little sign that read "Emily & Joe," and proceeded to move into our new homes for the next six weeks! After unpacking a bit and taking a most appreciated shower, I went downstairs for some breakfast (which is the same here as America - cereal, fruit, toast, eggs, granola, etc) and chatted with Rachel and Sarah - two of the four Pooley-Pow girls I am staying with. Rachel is 22 years old and finishing her studies in Social Work, and Sarah is 19 and in her second year of college, studying Occupational Therapy!
It was so enlightening and just plain fun to chat with them - they are so friendly and their accents are so lovely. Rachel's voice reminds me of Claire from "Lost" :) We mostly chatted about the differences in our education systems and about travel. For Aussie's, only the senior year (or year 12 as they call it here) counts when applying to college (that plus their version of the SAT... They put the senior year grades together with the test, and it produces one mark). From there, they choose their Uni ("Aussie" for "College") based on programs/majors, as most people commute. They were surprised when I said aside from trades such as culinary school, broadcasting, the military, etc., people usually choose their college in America based on how comfortable they would be living there!
We also chatted a lot about travel - as everything is kind of far away from Australia, Aussie's pretty much always travel far. The Pooley-Pow girls have been to so many incredible places, from New York to London to Bali to Jerusalem to South Africa to Tokyo! They said people don't travel around Australia for vacation like American's travel around The States - they said Australia is not as diverse as the US is in its cities so there isn't always something new to see.
After breakfast, Rachel and I picked up Joe and his homestay sister Sarah (yup, two Sarah's) and we drove to the famous Bondi Beach! This is where they held the beach volleyball event during the 2000 Sydney Olympics if you can picture it! Anyway, they have a cliff walk called "Bronte to Bondi" (almost identical to the Cliff Walk in Newport) that goes for a few miles along the cliffs on the Pacific. It was BEAUTIFUL! We enjoyed watching the surfers as they tried to catch the huge waves. The rocks on the cliff were eroded in incredible shapes too. The water was crystal clear like in the Caribbean, which was strange to see such nice water without the 90 degree weather (it was about 65). We had lunch in a little "club" on the cliff overlooking Bondi Beach and then went for hot chocolate (and churro's for Joe) in town and drank it on the beach! It was perfect.
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| Bronte to Bondi Beach Walk! |
Wednesday was fabulous as well. Joe and I met Sr. Rosemary, our contact from the past eight months, and we were greeted with huge hugs and the sweetest little accent - she is so cute! We went to her office and gathered around her little portable heater (it is so much colder inside buildings here because they don't have central heating) and she made us "Morning Tea," complete with "Tim Tams" and "Anzac Cookies." The incredibly lovely and funny Mrs. Jane Sulis (one of the teachers/coordinator of Social Justice at Santa Sabina) joined us too - she and Rosemary seem to be best buddies. We all walked over to the Catherine Sullivan Center - a center for hearing impaired babies where their parents come to work with professionals in order to help them to communicate with each other. We dropped Joe off there and then Jane took me on a tour of Santa Sabina - the K-12 school where I will be spending most of my time during my Fellowship - showing me everything from the Pre-School/Nursery all the way to the High School. It is such a beautiful campus with such a rich history! Jane was excited to introduce me to everyone as "Emily from America, who wants to learn how we do it "Dominican" here in Australia!"
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| Santa Sabina College - was your high school this nice? |
After our tour, Jane took Joe and I to the Santa Sabina "Canteen" where she bought us Meat Pies - an Australian dish, which is like a less extravagant version of Shepard's Pie. We brought them back to Sr. Rosemary's office where we all talked for hours about everything from food to health care to service work to Dominicans! Then Sr. went over our schedules with us and sent us on our way - I met up with Louise and caught a ride home with her! Then Elizabeth and I enjoyed some "Afternoon Tea" and chatted about differences in the American and Australian education systems.
Thursday was perhaps my favorite day of the week - no, YEAR - thus far! I went into Santa Sabina early with Louise for daily mass, after which I was met by Mrs. Dominique Marturia - Santa's coordinator for Mission and Identity (just like we have Mission and Ministry at PC, which runs the Smith Fellowship Program!). What. A. Gem. Dominique will be my mentor for all of my work at Santa Sabina, and I could not be more blessed to spend time with such a gifted woman. We spent hours chatting about education, teaching, pastoral ministry, and Catholicism, and she really was incredibly encouraging of my desire to work with teenagers and college students in a school setting in the future! Together with Dominique and Michael, the coordinator of the Religious Education program with a beautiful Irish brogue, we planned out what exactly I will be doing during my time at Santa Sabina. It looks like I will be visiting the Religion and History classes and offering lesson's that provide the "American perspective" on what they are learning! I am really excited to do some research and create some Powerpoint presentations this coming week in preparation! I will also be helping Dominique plan and execute the Year 11 Retreat, which will take place on the last three days of Santa's fall term (2 weeks from now) at an off-campus retreat center owned by Santa Sabina! Finally, I will also be helping Dominique with the "Wisdom Mass," which celebrates the grandparents of the Santa Sabina students!
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| The girls from Pastoral Care! |
After morning tea with Michael and Dominique and all of their faculty friends (side note: it is awesome being a college, ahem, sorry, UNI, student at a high school - the teachers see you as a colleague and the students see you as a peer!), I joined in on a "Pastoral Care" class (our version of an hour long homeroom class), in which the girls were writing pen pal letters to their sister school in South Africa. Here I got to meet a few Year 12 ladies - Sara, Laura, and Rita - who were incredibly lovely and invited me to enjoy some lunch with them and their friends! During lunch the girls were adorable, asking me to just talk so they could listen to my accent. After telling them that I am from New York, they began squealing as if Justin Bieber had entered the room - "Have you ever met anyone famous?" "Is Gossip Girl really how the Upper East Side is?" "You must see celebrities, like, every day!" "Do you shop at all of those designer stores?" - they were hilarious! But it is incredibly easy to connect with everyone here in Australia, as all of our entertainment (music, movies, TV, etc.) is the same. It was awesome to discuss the pro's and con's of Suzanne Collins' "Mockingjay" with two 17-year-old Aussies!
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| Kate's Year 11 Geography Class - they were incredible! |
After lunch, I joined Mrs. Kate Corcoran's Year 11 Geography class, where I was met with nine incredibly enthusiastic young ladies, all eager to discuss the differences between Australia and America. Kate's husband is a native of Baltimore, so she was incredibly helpful in facilitating a fruitful discussion for her students as well as serving as an Aussie lingo translator for me! Kate's class was probably the highlight of my day - the girls, just like the one's from lunch, had a whole slew of questions for "The American"... "Why does everyone drink from red cups at parties?" "Are there really cheerleaders in high school?" "Is there really such thing as the Jersey Shore?" We realized that most Aussie's knowledge about America comes from the media - movies, television, and magazines - and it is all rather accurate. On the flip side, the girls were shocked to hear that American's know Australia for the Crocodile Hunter, kangaroos, the Outback, and koalas! It is truly interesting how much of Australian culture is focused on the American way.
After school, I met up with Joe and we headed over to the Matt Talbot Hostel, a homeless shelter in downtown Sydney, with Emmanuel and Rocco, two teachers from Santa Sabina. We helped to serve and clean up dinner, and it was truly incredible to see how many people were fed in just one hour! Very rewarding work.
Today (Friday), Joe picked me up from the Pooley-Pow's and we walked over to Sr. Rosemary's office (conveniently located on Santa's campus). She took us over to the Kuri-ngai Partners Support Group - an organization committed to the outreach and advocacy of the Aboriginal population in Australia. It was very inspiring to hear the work Sr. Rosemary and her committee were doing to help establish better relations between the Aboriginal people's and the general Australian population! Afterward, we enjoyed some coffee and sandwiches and discussed politics - a very informative day!
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| After the Kuri-ngai Partners meeting! |
Today (Friday), Joe picked me up from the Pooley-Pow's and we walked over to Sr. Rosemary's office (conveniently located on Santa's campus). She took us over to the Kuri-ngai Partners Support Group - an organization committed to the outreach and advocacy of the Aboriginal population in Australia. It was very inspiring to hear the work Sr. Rosemary and her committee were doing to help establish better relations between the Aboriginal people's and the general Australian population! Afterward, we enjoyed some coffee and sandwiches and discussed politics - a very informative day!
It has been an incredibly rewarding, enlightening, and simply perfect first week here in Sydney. I really could not ask for more - we are so incredibly blessed to be surrounded by such warm, welcoming, and loving people. Here's to a wonderful weekend of sightseeing, birthday celebrations (cough, Joe, cough), and heaps and heaps of love.
Ta!
Em
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