The end of my year in Australia passed by extremely quickly, and as I was occupied with school work and making last minute visits, I never got around to writing this last journal entry. So, here are the highlights of my last 2 months in Oz.
After my trip to Cairns in September, I went to Floriade in Canberra with one of my flatmates. Floriade is Canberra’s annual flower festival, and this year there were thousands of spectacular flowers arranged in shapes of Australian films. The following night we went back to Floriade to watch films from the Melbourne Comedy Short Film Festival on a big screen setup outdoors. My favourite film was a monologue by a single dad of twin boys who gave his philosophy on raising twins. In it he said that if a parent tries to spend equal time with each kid, both kids will turn out average at best, so it is important to choose a favourite twin and invest lots of energy and attention into him, so that at least one son turns out to be a winner. I thought it was hilarious!
Later that week, I volunteered with Rotaract at the Nara Candle Festival. Nara is Canberra’s sister city in Japan, and the government has been hosting this candle festival for several years to honour that relationship. I wore a hapi jacket, sang karaoke, pounded rice, and helped to light over 2000 candles.
The next week, I had to give up a trip to Dunedoo with my university because I needed to used the long weekend to work on my Language Acquisition paper. So, I stayed on campus and gave my essay its basic structure. Later that week, I had dinner with Ngaira, Asmono, Mark, Dave, and Emma. Asmono cooked scallops in a tomato base sauce. It was delicious!
On Sunday, some Sydney Ambassadorial Scholars cycled into Canberra, and several Rotarians hosted a small event to help them raise money for the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund. I helped setup the room, and I prepared a slideshow presentation to show everyone what the Ambassadorial Scholarship was all about.
In late October, I spoke at the Rotary Club of Cooma, a small, country town south of Canberra. The presentation went really well, and I also met the District Governor Elect, who told me about the Rotary Institute that would be held in Christchurch, NZ, the same time that I would be there with Melissa. I gave him my contact information, and he was able to get me an invitation to the Institute.
On the 25th of October, my friend and classmate, Coleen, and her husband hosted a barbeque to celebrate my birthday. I invited several classmates and friends, and we had a great time chatting outside of the classroom. The highlight of the evening for me was when my friends sang “Happy Birthday” to me in 6 different languages, English, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Bahasa-Indonesian.
The next week, Ian took Pam and me out to dinner at the Green Herring to celebrate our real birthday. They gave me two wonderful gifts: a special edition of the Australian poem, “My Country” and a John Williamson CD full of Australian bush music.
That weekend, I went to the Rotary District Conference in Sussex Inlet. It was a really good and informative conference that served to remind and inspire Rotarians and their spouses of the importance of Rotary’s work around the world. I found one speaker, the principal of a school in Shoalhaven, very inspiring. He talked about servant-leadership, and after listening to him, I decided that in whatever I do with my life, I want to be a leader who is first and foremost a servant. The keynote speaker at the conference was the author of Mao’s Last Dancer, Li Cunxin. He wrote an amazing book about his life’s story growing up under Chairman Mao’s regime and later as he became one of the world’s best ballet dancers.
Tuesday, 4 November was Melbourne Cup day, a day that the country seemed to wait for the whole year. It was the day of the biggest horse race in the country, and although the horse that I betted on didn’t win, it was an exciting day full of Australian food, games, and friends.
That weekend, I went to Cooma again, so that I could spend time seeing more of the town than just the building where the Rotary meeting was held. Prasan invited me to spend the weekend with her family, and we had a really lovely time together. A friend of Prasan’s offered to take me up to Mt. Kosciusko, the highest mountain in Australia, so on Sunday, we drove to Thredbo, caught a chair life to the beginning of the walk, and then hiked about 13 kilometers to the top of the mountain. It wasn’t too difficult of a walk, but it was definitely good training for New Zealand. The scenery was beautiful, although barren, and there was still snow on parts of the mountain.
The next week and a half were mostly full of visiting friends and Rotarians and saying last goodbyes. I tried not to count the days but to just live the moments fully. It was a really difficult time of the year because I realised that I was seeing some of my friends for the last time for a long time. I have grown really close to my church friends and the Rotarians, and I miss not being near them anymore. On the night of my last Rotary meeting, my club gave me a beautiful pair of opal earrings, an Australian stone that will remind me daily of my time down under.
I went to New Zealand for the next two weeks, and I’ll write about that in another entry. After those two weeks, I returned to Canberra for two days where I spent the time doing laundry, running errands with Ian, and spending lingering moments with friends. Ian hosted a barbeque at his house, and I invited the Rotarians, my church friends, and two of my closest uni friends. We hung out for several hours and then decided to go see Australia the next night, so that we could spend just a little more time together.
On the 7th of December, I flew home but at the same time I was leaving a home, for “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains; of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains…”
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