A room with a view...

Yesterday I found out I have an ocean view from my room on campus. Why I only found out yesterday and not the day I moved in?? Well, I sort of have to lean to the side and look past trees and other units to see a little bit of ocean, but it’s there nonetheless!! My place has an ocean view… awesome :)

Anyway, where I left you last time was at Melbourne airport and I was on my way to Adelaide. So this is where the story continues… On the plane I happened to be sitting next to a very talkative and very self-absorbed German guy travelling all around Australia. I know all about his trip so far, his future plans for his trip and his future plans for when he gets back to Germany and all that in just one hour or so!! The ‘smile and nod’ technique proved to be very helpful after a while :) Jenny, the lady who organised the whole seminar, was waiting for me at the airport to pick me and this other guy called Matts up, so in the 36 degree heat we squished ourselves and our luggage into her tiny little car. Thank god it was air-conditioned :) As I arrived at our accommodation when it was almost dinner time already, I basically only had time to drop my stuff in my room, meet the other people on the seminar and then we went straight to Glenelg for Fish & Chips at the jetty. Of course putting 23 orders of Fish and Chips in at the same time took the shop a while to prepare, but that gave us time to watch the beautiful sunset over the ocean from the jetty and wander around a bit, get to know some people. It was a lovely evening.

Next morning came early and Monday was also the first official day of the seminar. The theme of the day was indigenous Australians and their history and issues in Australia. We started off with having our picture taken with the Vice Chancellor of Flinders uni and then we had a talk by a professor of Aboriginal descent about First Nation Australians and Leadership. I found it very interesting, especially coz we don’t often get to hear the issues from an Aboriginal point of view. So that was good!! After a short break we had a workshop on Issues in Indigenous Australia which was also very interesting. A beautiful lunch came and went (the food at the whole seminar was so good!!) and after that we were on to the Warraparinga Wetlands / Kaurna Cultural Centre. Official policy required us to stay inside and not do a guided walk around the wetlands as we were supposed to (when it’s over 35 degrees outside you can only do outside stuff for a limited time on official programs/tours because of the dangers of the sun). So we had an indigenous guy tell us the history of the local Kaurna people and tell us a bit more about the indigenous population in general. He was very talkative, so there was a bit of information overload at some point, but it was good. Awesome dinner and after dinner all of us went to the beach. Some people had gotten a bit drunk over dinner and decided it was a good time to strip to their underwear and go for a night swim in the ocean :) There were patrols along the coast as well though, so when they got close to the people in the water, everyone just ran out and it was such a funny sight to see semi-drunk people scrambling out of the water, haha. Good times :)

Tuesday was again an early one, but as the first speaker was late a few of us went down to the beach for a bit instead. Very relaxing :) When the first speaker finally arrived she did a talk on Placing South Australia’s History in a Global Context. Very boring as she could barely make herself heard and she was laughing all the time at things that weren’t even funny (or at least not as far as we could tell…) So we were happy for the break to come and after the break there was a talk on multiculturalism in Australia which I found fascinating. Then we all piled onto the bus, which took us to Port Adelaide for lunch, a visit to the SA Maritime museum and a Port Princess Dolphin River Cruise with Aussie style BBQ dinner. The Maritime museum was alright, it took us back to the 1840s immigrant ships and what the journey to Australia was like back then. Made me appreciate my 22 hour air travel so much more!! The river cruise was a bit of a disappointment, as it only took us past industrial areas, so there was no nice view to enjoy. And as the sun had disappeared behind a deck of clouds as well, there wasn’t really any sun to enjoy either. But the BBQ was good and we did get to see a few dolphins. When we got back to our accommodation I went for a lovely quick swim and the rest of the night we pretty much all spent at the beach having fun until we went to bed…

Wednesday was the last day of the seminar already and it began with a talk about the role of the media in the report of both the Paris riots of 2005 and the Cronulla riots in Sydney. Again interesting stuff. Then on to the Migration museum in Adelaide where we had a really good guided tour. Next up was a guided walk around some of the sights in Adelaide which wasn’t actually all that good as we had students as guides who obviously hadn’t done it too many times before. But oh well, they have to learn to give tours some way :) It was just a shame, coz it could have been quite good I think. Lunch followed and after lunch it was time for us to prepare ourselves for the debates we had to do later that afternoon. Me and my team had to be pro Australia’s form of multiculturalism as opposed to assimilation or a melting pot. It went alright I guess, even though our team lost ‘by the smallest of margins’ according to the judges. To end the seminar we then had a formal dinner, which was great. It went on till the venue we had the dinner at closed, so you can imagine we had a pretty good time :)

So that was the seminar!! All that was left was packing up and saying our goodbyes to everyone. All of us who stayed in Adelaide got taken to campus to move into our places and so that’s what we did!! So far I love it here. My house mates are really nice… There’s one Aussie girl Sarah, an American girl called Heather and then there’s Philippa/Pip who’s an English girl. There’s still one more person moving in some time soon, but we don’t know when and we’re not sure who, so we’ll see. Something’s been happening almost every day since I got here, either people coming over or activities organised for Orientation week, so it’s good fun. Meeting heaps of new people and though I really try to remember all the names, I’m forgetting lots all the time. I’m slowly improving though :) I also went into the city this week and bought a cheap guitar so I can play again. Love it :) The atmosphere in the city was great by the way, coz there’s this festival on at the moment which is called The Fringe Festival, so there were a couple of street performers around doing their thing. Yesterday we had a Aussie movie-marathon here at the village. Good stuff :) I watched The Castle (love it…) The Tracker, Two Hands and ended with Wolf Creek. Last one was pretty shocking to say the least, haha… Tonight will probably be a big night out with all the ‘Village people’, so that should be good. Sunday I’ll be going on a surf trip and I’m really looking forward to that, and then Monday uni will start!! I enrolled this week and I’m doing the subjects Media, Power and Globalisation, Media and Cultural Identities: Gender, Race & Sexuality and Sex, Gender and Identities in Australia. Think it will be interesting. I’ll keep you updated!! Hope everyone’s happy and well. Take care!!
Love Carine
xx