This one is ancient - from way back in the day when I had no idea that Swanston Street was parallel to Elizabeth or where Bourke was in relation to anything else in the entire city. This guy was amazing. His pastel of Medusa was uncanny.

Mish at our weekly writing group. It's basically just an excuse for us to sit around and eat good food and talk about how bad our writing is, and then have everyone tell us we're crazy. It's wonderful. Hannah's house on Tuesdays or Thursdays at 8:30. Be there.

The Unimelb campus. It took a lot of getting used to but I think I've finally gotten the hang of the complex maze of brick and concrete and sandstone buildings and which serve what function. I am, however, still unimpressed by the Baillieu library. I'm sure I've just been ultra-spoiled by Collins Memorial and this place really isn't that bad, but since I've seen the wonders of a cozy library with and outlets and available computers and comfortable and couches and a well-organized shelving system, it's hard to settle for anything less. Oh well.

A Day in the Dandenongs

The format of these blogs is so awkward. Every time I post I think I'm going to outsmart the system, but then I end up with the exact same problem I've had every previous time. The very first pictures I upload are always the last ones to show up on the blog, so if I'm telling a story I have to start with the last pictures and work backwards, which is really hard. So hard, evidently, that once again I've started at the end and now have to come up with a clever way of making it seem like the beginning. So here it goes: I spent another night at my friend Mish's house near the Dandenong Mountains. On Saturday morning she took me on a drive into the ranges and we spent the afternoon hiking and eating and strolling through cute little shops. This picture is on our way back into civili(s)ation via a very narrow, very pothole-tastic dirt road.

Before dropping me off at the Boronia train station on her way to work, Mish took me to her favorite lookout point. It was a bit cloudy (obviously) and fiercely cold, but so gorgeous. This was the first time since I arrived in Australia that I saw such a large conglomeration of green. It's just not the color of nature here, which I'm starting to appreciate a bit more than I did. This is quite the challenge for me though, having spent the last seventeen years of my life in the Evergreen State.

Mist through the gum trees. It had rained the previous two days so the path was muddy but everything smelled earthy and green (believe me, green does have a scent). We walked a 500-meter loop to this waterfall that was once a powerful rush but now Mish refers to it as an "intense trickle." She said her dad used to attach a plastic cup to the end of a stick and from the bridge over the falls he would collect water in the cup for Mish and her sister to drink.

Fall in the Dandenongs. Mish told me the story of when she was younger and used to come here all the time. She was terrified of this pond because back then the water level was higher and it came right up to the top of the grassy islands (as in, there was no bank--just grass and then water). I then told her the story of my fear of the beaver pond at Right Place Pottery and how I was petrified that I would somehow be sucked down the steep embankment and into the water where I would never be able to escape.

We stopped at these gardens just outside of the main town, and went on a walk down a grassy knoll, around this pond, into a gazebo, and up approximately 7,000 stone steps back to the visitors cent(re). The autumn leaves were gorgeous. Not as many reds and oranges as there are at home, but still extremely pretty. It should also be noted that it was freezing. Legitimately. There was wind. And lots of shivering.

This is just a parrot. Outside Mish's kitchen window. Hanging out in the fuchsia bush. While we ate our breakfast. No. Big. Deal.

We decided to play Scrabble again. Awful, awful decision. Not only are we incapable of spelling simple words (this time it was "bath" which I spelled "baht"), we were also playing with a set Mish's parents bought in Amsterdam, and evidently the Dutch language doesn't really like vowels. After two attempts at playing, we had to give up. Defeated by a foreign board game. I have reached a new low.

Hodge Podge

This was at Johanna Beach along the Great Ocean Road. It was SO hot that day, and as luck would have it it was the day we drove home. Five people and all our gear crammed into a tiny 4-door sedan in the scorch of an Australian summer. Not my ideal combination. But at least we sort of had radio reception. And by sort of, I mean we had one station and it cut in and out of static on the hairpin turns.

Birds are crazy. I like to imagine that this seagull has lofty dreams of big city living. He's gazing out longingly across the Yarra River into the heart of Melbourne, telling himself that even a small nuisance of a bird can have giant aspirations. You go, birdie. You go.

Anzac Day after the dawn service. I don't think I've ever witnessed in person such a gargantuan assemblage of people. It was still dark when we got off the tram and climbed the hill to the Shrine of Remembrance. As we neared the top, we heard music and saw literally thousands of people huddled together in the cold singing the national anthem. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful moment of my life. I wept like an infant.

I spent a lovely night at my friend's house out in the Dandenongs, about an hour train ride from the Melbourne city business district. We took a gorgeous walk through her neighborhood and into the forested foothills of the mountains at night, and she showed me her favorite lookout spot where you could see the entire suburban sprawl layed out at the feet of the city skyline. After dinner, dessert, and a game of cards with my friend's mother, we started a rousing game of Scrabble. We got this far in the game before we realized that the very first word we put down was spelled incorrectly. Needless to say, there is no such thing as a "panad." There is, however, a panda. Also, note Farfencougar--the tiny plastic animal thing that came in the Kinder Egg Ellen bought for me. He's our equivalent of the gnome in Amelie. He goes everywhere we do.

This is the side of one of the Brighton Beach bathing boxes. This latch perplexed me, as it just hung there with nothing to hook into.

I don't fully understand my fascination with Brighton Beach. I've been there three times, yet each time I feel the need to take approximately 300 pictures (on average) of the exact same things I took pictures of the previous time(s). At least I'll never forget what the Melbourne skyline looks like from a suburb that's 20 minutes away by train.

"To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."

-Mary Oliver

Royal Park

I don't know if words can really do this justice, so I'm going to leave this with a (censored) quote from a friend freshman year: "Why do we have to pick apart nature? Why can't we just let it be a miracle and leave it the f*** alone?"

This reminds me of the beginning of The Lion King (not to be confused with The Lion King: an Existentialist Musical created by myself and Jessica Rice for an AP English creative project). The gum trees look vaguely African, and the color of the sky is a shade I've only seen in images of the Sahara at sunset. Also, I'd just like to say that I love my camera. That's all.

There are three things I have encountered in my life that seem too perfect and absurd and unreal to actually exist: shadows, reflections, and light splintering through clouds. It almost hurts, how beautiful this is, hurts in the way that makes you think nothing you dream or build or imagine will ever burn like this.

I am a very sarcastic person, and I tend to exaggerate way too frequently for my own good (to me, everything is "the greatest thing ever!"), but I am completely serious when I say that this is my favorite tree in the entire world. It looks like the magical tree in Big Fish, and every time I run past it I imagine Carl the Gentle Giant standing idly beside it, waiting for something that won't ever come. Godot, maybe. I also like to think that if I were to climb up into its branches that no matter how high up or how far out I go, I'd never reach the end. The branches would just keep growing and curling and sprouting leaves and eventually I could crawl across them and wind up home.

There's something about the moon that I find ominously fascinating, how you can be anywhere in the world and it looks exactly the same. How can that even be possible? Mama, remember the morning you and Daddy drove me to the airport to go to Europe, and the first thing you said once we got in the car was, "I wonder what the moon will look like from all the way over there." Well this is what it looks like from all the way down here. Ceaselessly beautiful.

Footy!

This banner was infinitely more entertaining that it should have been. It rolled up into each of the handles, so whenever the Hawks scored we pulled the handles apart...but this was us, so we got creative. We wound it up more on one side than the other so we could either encourage our team with a cheerful "Go!" or show our intermittent support for some guy named Al. "Go Al" became our slogan of the day. We also opened it to "Oa!" if we felt an unnecessarily aggressive play had taken place. The other side of the banner says "Flash for cash" and during halftime if you had a banner you stood up and opened the "Flash for cash" side toward the broadcasting screen, and they picked some person at random and gave them free money. Some little kid sitting on his dad's shoulders won $5,000! How insane is that?!? It should also be pointed out that the two men sitting behind me and Laura were two of the most highly amusing fellows that have ever graced me with their presence. They deemed every play an absolutely necessary occasion for spewing out strings of choice expletives about how the Carlton Blues (by the way, what the hell kind of a mascot is a Blue?) were bleepy bleeps who should bleep off to bleepin' bleep because they can't bleepin' bleep worth bleep. Exact quote.

I think we can all learn a little something about fashion from these jerseys. Mid-thigh spandex with short shorts and a tight-fitting striped top. I know what I'm purchasing the next time I need clothes.

Laura sporting the Hawks scarf...and her pimpin' shades that turned everything into a kind of peachy orange watercolor. It made for a highly disappointing experience when you took them off and realized the world doesn't actually glow like that.

I just need to point something out here. This is the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds) when we went for a cricket game during our Melbourne Welcome orientation. We were the only spectators in the stands, and I am not exaggerating in the least. The ONLY ones. Now allow me to show you what this stadium looked like for the Carlton/Hawthorn footy match...

Oh yes. Out. Of. Control. As Laura put it, we had a very lovely afternoon with 69,000 of our closest friends. The energy in this place was unfathomable.

So it's 11:07 pm and I'm waiting for the latest episode of House to load on the free illegal website I use to download television shows, the website with Chinese subtitles that I always scrutinize way beyond my normal capacity for comprehension. I have these lofty hopes that I can teach myself the characters if I just see them enough, at frequent intervals. I don't really know what I'm still doing awake. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the screaming drunkies sitting out on the balcony below mine, chain smoking and letting the thick grey plumes waft upward and through the crack at the top of my door that's always there, even when the door is locked. My room reeks of cigarette smoke and I accidentally drank caffeinated tea and I can guarantee you I won't be going to sleep for quite some time.

I wonder what it's like in Seattle right now, if the rhodies are blooming, if the grass has grown enough to need mowing. I miss driving to the grocery store and being able to load my purchases into the wayback and drive straight home without the inconvenience of a crowded (or as my friend Laura and I like to call it, a "fully hydrogenated") tram with hardly any standing room. I miss my oversized feline and my crazy bi-polar fish who sometimes follows my finger along the glass but most of the time just flares his gills and darts psychotically in and out of the plastic Greek ruins my mother bought for his bowl when I was in Europe. I miss the slope of my bedroom ceiling. I miss the incessant clicking of my dorm room heater that would wake me up multiple times in the night and that I swore I'd rip from the wall and dropkick to Tucson. I miss sharing a room with one of my closest friends, laughing about things that were probably only funny at 2 a.m. when we were already sleep-deprived from the night before. I miss my mama's pottery studio and going to shows at my daddy's theater and helping my brother stir his wine and cork the bottles. I miss my weekly chats with my advisor. I miss the Metropolitan Market--in particular, the heavenly mozzarella basil panini and tomato soup--and the way my campus looks when it's snowing and everything is crisp and pure and fragile and all sounds settle and the sky never really gets dark.

My time in Melbourne, while I would never trade it for any experience in my life, has ultimately made me more aware of how much I love my life in Washington. Nothing can compare to the animals and plants and people and architecture and natural phenomena I've seen here in only three months, but my home has cultivated within me a love for myself that I never really noticed until I saw Lake Washington disappear beneath the clouds as my plane took off. I love my life here, don't get me wrong. I love it more than I can say. But believe me when I say that "I want to go home" can't begin to express the extent of my homesick sentiments. To everyone reading this at home, I love you. I miss you. Please don't change without me.

I think my favorite thing about being in Australia is the nothingness that lasts forever, the miles of emptiness that feel anything but empty, the way you can feel so humbled and so empowered at the exact same time. This is a place where humanity hasn't won. No one is going to come plow down the trees to make room for a high-rise building complex or a strip mall. This land must know what it feels like to get a good night's sleep.




After an action-packed 3 1/2 days in Tasmania, we were given the afternoon to explore on our own. Naturally for me that meant grabbing my camera and exploring Hobart on foot. I went with a friend and we had every intention of finding the botanical gardens...but somewhere in transit things went horrible awry. I take full responsibility for the situation in which we found ourselves: smack-dab in the middle of what we called the Compton of Hobart--the sketchy outskirts that left no choice but to either turn back or cross the freeway. We chose the latter, assuming that the gardens were on top of the large hill in front of us. Well, we made it up the hill...but the gardens didn't. It was a delightful walk nonetheless, and when we finally made our way back down to the bottom we were rewarded with a rose garden. Nevermind that all the roses were inundated with thousands of aphids. They were still pretty. The roses, I mean, not the aphids.