gOiNg nUtS!?

hmm...it's possible I'm going crazy. It's also possible I'm staying unreasonably sane. Anyway, it's a strange time. We're busier than we've ever been, yet because we're so busy, we've been careful about how we spend the little free time we do have - which means in some ways, i'm much more relaxed than I was in the beginning. But I think I'm saying that now because I've just had a lovely weekend. So of course I'm relaxed!

So that's the good news - the past couple weekends have been free and i've had the wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends - mostly the girls - and have enjoyed some down time, including sleeping in. Last weekend I had a calm night out with Jovina and Elise on Saturday and Sunday was spent enjoying some down time with the team! The two youngest boys, John Paul and Chris, were confirmed at the Pentecost Mass (what a good time for it, huh?!) and we all went out to lunch afterwards.

This weekend I spent Friday night in and relaxing, then spent Saturday night at Sarah's house (Sarah is the girl who stayed with me in Indy in January!) and I met her parents, who are lovely, and had a very nice dinner with them. Today (Sunday) we went to Mass then a BBQ at a friend's house - Amy. She's leaving tomorrow for Europe for 7 weeks, so she had a BBQ to say A bientot! (see you later en francais). It was very nice and relaxed. But now it's back to the grind!

The retreats are going well, but there are many of them, and I think it's actually beneficial for us to be crammed with our schedule, because we actually get work done! It's amazing - we're much more on top of it this term. mostly because we have to be.

I missed the last retreat this week, the one on Friday - I was a bit sick...strange stomach pains with no related symptoms. We're not sure what it was! It's gone for the most part now, thank goodness! It was annoying, but at the same time, maybe it was good to have a bit of an extra rest. It gets a little bit tough by the end of the week!

We've also started preparing for WYD (finally)- we had our first meeting and music practice last Monday night. O yeah, I'm leading the music for our catechesis site....should be interesting...

only 58 days to go!!! It's getting crazier! They've started showing ads on TV (which you can see on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm2mvKwc06o)...good promo!

Not too much else to report. The future is looking bright with events. This week, 3 retreats again. I'm leading 2 of them! eek! Then Saturday we launch an event called Activ8 Sydney, where we go into the streets to promote WYD - streets, train stations, bus stops, shopping centers, supermarkets...ALL over the city! hopefully we'll get more people registered and engaged. That night is some gig with the Cardinal...not sure what it is, but we're going along anyway!

Then Sunday is the feast of Corpus Christi, or The Body of Christ, and they're having a Eucharistic Procession through the Central Business District (CBD) of Sydney - basically the main area of the city. The Blessed Sacrament will be walked all around - I'm very excited to see how the public will react!

Of course, that is the eve of my 21st birthday....I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M TURNING 21 IN A WEEK!!!! I think the tentative plan is to go out for karaoke with friends that night. maybe dinner before hand. I didn't plan anything big for lack of a)time b)money c)resources and d)interest...for some reason, possibly the nature of the work I'm doing, I just don't really care. Even though EVERYONE is telling me I should since it's my 21st! O well....we'll have a good enough time. Jovina is celebrating with me, because her birthday is the 31st of May, so we're having sort of a double party, to save each other the hassle of planning something separately. Should be fun!

Hope all is well at home! I've been thinking about Indiana a lot this week, with the approaching Indy 500 in the news, even over here! AND I've eaten corn on the cob THREE times this week! I realized I actually really like corn...but when it's the primary crop of your home state, and you eat it too much growing up it can get old.

And that's why I love being in Australia - it gives me a fresh perspective on things I took for granted.

Until I write again, may God bless you!

Crikey! It's been a while...

It’s amazing how things never turn out quite the way you expect them to.

For instance, my two-week “break” ended up being almost busier than normal busy times when we’re working on ministry! I was shocked at how much I ended up doing, how little down time I had, and how LONG it’s been since I wrote on this blog! However, the amazing thing is that it hasn’t felt nearly as long as it actually has been. Which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it….

The run down of my break goes something like this:

When I last “blogged” I had gone to dinner at the international WYD volunteer house and ate South American cuisine, which was on the first Wednesday of the break. That Thursday, I made a trip to the city, had lunch with some friends and then met up with Jovi, Amy, and Sarah for some girly chats over a ridiculously good dinner at a vegan café! We even managed to splurge on desert. I spent the night at Jovi’s and the next day we went to see a movie. The title? “Hey, Hey, It’s Esther Blueburger” It’s an AUSTRALIAN film, and as might be expected as a result, it’s crap. Actually, the previews looked quite good, which is why we chose to go see it, but it ended up being one of those movies that starts off ok, gets worse, but leaves room for hope of improvement. However, the improvement never came, and so we left the theater disappointed. BUT we had a GREAT lunch at this fish and chips place I had been wanting to go to forever. THAT did not disappoint! Then, dinner in the city with friends that night was anticlimactic….

Saturday, wasn’t feeling too good, but got talked into going down to the shore with some friends, and even though it was a windy, chilly day, (even the sun took a vacation), it turned out to be quite nice. I sat there and wrote a poem, while the others drew. We then took a walk around that graveyard that is visible from our house (see a picture from second blog post) and it was SO peaceful! I was so glad to finally have gotten to go there, and even better, my friend Beth, who claims it was one of her favorite places when she was on team, was with me, and I had refused to go there if it wasn’t with her the first time, so that worked out nicely!

I stayed in that night and thought I was home alone, but forgot that there was a father and daughter up from Canberra for the weekend staying in the house, so I got a bit of a surprise when they came downstairs while I was cooking dinner for myself. However, it was quite lovely to meet them – they were very nice people, and we ended up watching a movie together. It turned out to be a lovely evening, and not lonely at all, like I thought it might end up being.
That Sunday and Monday I spent the day getting things around the house caught up, before my little trip on Tuesday! It was a great day, despite the fact that it poured down rain the whole day.

Dave and Elise, two good friends who are very committed to giving me the best taste of Australia they can, decided to take me and Rachel on a day trip up to Gosford, a little place about an hour and a half up the coast from Sydney (I mentioned this was happening in an earlier post.) It just so happens that Gosford is home of the Australian Reptile Park, and I was dreading going there, but can I just say that it ended up being such a blast. Of course, that may be because I forced it to be fun with my camera and my wacky knack for taking goofy pictures and turning them into a photo journal…It poured and poured, but we each had our umbrellas and proceeded through the park anyway, viewing a reptile show (VERY SCARY! The guy leading it was a Steven Irwin wannabe…I really thought he was going to need to be carted away on a stretcher!) taking a gander at lots of reptiles and Australian animals…which are apparently “reptiles.” Like a kangaroo? Koala? Wallaby? Wombat? Tasmanian Devil? I’m convinced that any sort of animal enclosure there is around the whole of Australia contains at least one native Australian animal…most often a wallaby or kangaroo and some assortment of koalas. Some people reckon it’s because there are so many running wild, they can afford to cage quite a few of them up. Who knows…crazy Aussies. We also got to witness a crocodile feeding, and here’s the scary thing about that: the pool the croc was in was filled with shallow, murky water, and after staring at it for a few minutes, we deduced that there wasn’t actually a crocodile in there, that they would bring it out when the show started. HOWEVER! As soon as the keeper started dangling a dead chicken over that water, a HUGE FOUR METER CROCODILE came sauntering out and snapping its jaws!!!! The SOUND that croc made when its jaws snapped shut was incredible! While the show was fascinating, we all learned a very important lesson: Just because it doesn’t LOOK like a croc is in the water, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

*note to self* don’t swim in any water that might have a crocodile in it….aka don’t swim in Australia.

After squishing back to the car, soggy shoes and all, we made our way to a little town called Avoca, where we had a late lunch/early dinner at this quaint little teahouse we found on the side of the road. Lisa, the owner, was the only person working there, and she had made everything we ate herself. It was incredible to see how much work she had put into her little business, but it certainly paid off! We tried to go there again when we were up that way on Friday, but it was closed for the public holiday, ANZAC Day. That stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps, and I suppose would be the equivalent of our Memorial Day, but celebrated like the 4th of July. I felt very un-Australian that day. That’s ok.

So all in all, it was a lovely little day trip to Gosford, and it was quite nice to see a bit more of New South Wales, the state I’m living in. Wednesday I visited a familiar area – Sydney University J That night I went over to the volunteer house to make meatloaf, sweet potatoes (complete with brown sugar and marshmallows on top – that was alana’s creation!), “cornbread” , and zucchini bread for dessert. Now let me tell you about this experience. Cornmeal doesn’t exist here, in the general stores anyway, so we had to settle for cornflour as we attempted to make cornbread from scratch. Neither of us had ever attempted that – who needs to when you’ve got Jiffy?!? So the recipes we found were interesting, and in theory sounded good, but in the end, what we got was a pancake flavored muffin with a hint of “corn”. Riighttt….people liked it anyway, but again, it’s because the poor things have never had the real deal. Maybe that’s a good thing – that means we don’t get criticized for our attempts!

The next day I caught up with Sarah over breakfast, then had lunch with Jenelle, my pen pal of over 7 years. She lives in the Blue Mountains, just about an hour or two outside the city of Sydney. I hadn’t seen her since I got back, so it was really nice to see her again and catch up over lunch on the harbor. A good afternoon! I'll post a picture of her on here later.

I just sort of vegged out that night and Friday, before heading off to the retreat up near Gosford for the weekend. Some pictures from the weekend are in here. Without going into too much detail, basically, the retreat was everything I needed and then some. The Dominican Sisters from Nashville are amazing, and it was such a blessing to spend a whole weekend away from the world with them. And for once, it was COOL to be American!!! I had people on my side haha It was so physically and spiritually renewing, and after that weekend I was able to start back up with the team that Monday in high spirits. In the pictures below, you'll see the retreat center, and the whole group, as well as a picture of Sharon and I (she's my roommate on team!) and the 5 Americans! From L to R: Alana (Texas), Sister Mary Rachel (Pennsylvania), Sister Anna (Connecticut), Sister Mary Madeline (Maryland), and of course, Miss Indiana :)

Since then, understandably, the spirits aren’t quite as high, but all in all things are going all right. We’ve just been busy going here and there for ministry, doing this, preparing that, trying to get some sleep at night, and get some work done during the day. We have had 4 retreats in the past two weeks, and have 6 in the next two weeks….the schedule is PACKED! Also, we’re starting to prepare for WYD and the catechesis site we’re animating.

I realize I haven’t actually explained what we’re doing for WYD as a team, and that’s probably because before last Saturday, I didn’t fully understand it myself. Basically, the mornings of Wednesday (7/16), Thursday(7/17), and Friday(7/18) during the week of WYD, they have almost 300 locations all over Sydney that will be hosting catechesis sites, which means a bishop from somewhere on this earth will be spending a portion of the morning speaking and teaching about the Catholic faith – to Catholics. So he will be deepening the knowledge these Catholics may or may not already have on their faith. OUR job in all of this is to coordinate the site, make sure it’s all set up, greet the bishop and make sure things run smoothly for his talk, and run the Mass that he will say at the end of the session. We also have to provide about 45 minutes of entertainment, in the form of a drama, testimonies, skits, and mostly music. SO, this past Saturday we had a training session for what we are required to do, and got it laid out for us logistically, so now the task before us is to put this together…eek!! As if we didn’t already have enough to do…

Last Friday Alana and I went to dinner for her birthday - there are so many May babies around here! It was really nice to spend time with just her – we had a really nice conversation, and it’s always very apparent that both of us are so glad for each other. Of course I can’t speak for her, but for me, she’s been such a good friend, and it’s pretty cool how we just immediately had this strong bond, simply because we were two Americans far from home. It’s nice to just talk about random American things even, and not have to explain them, but instead have someone who knows exactly where I’m coming from, frustrations and all!

Sunday night, a few girls met up for our Catholic women’s book club. Which sounds more proper than it actually is. It’s basically a group of us who were already friends and who needed even more of an excuse to get together, haha! What happens is a book is picked for us to read, and read we do, and when it comes time to have the meeting, we spend about 10% of the time discussing the book, and another 70% of it just chatting…20% of it is us munching on biscuits (cookies) and sipping tea. This “month” the book was Pride and Prejudice – a girly favorite! Next month, Little Women…listen to us! We’re such girls…

Monday was the 8th Theology on Tap in Sydney, and it was moved to a bigger bar so it could accommodate all the people who come out for it! I’m not sure how many people made it this time, but the talk was given by none other than the 3 lovely Nashville Dominicans! It was a great talk, well-received, and I got to meet Sister Anna’s parents! They were here visiting her all the way from Connecticut. However, that night, I got to talk to the Sisters about even more exciting news: two of them, Sister Mary Madeline and Sister Mary Rachel, will be staying in Sydney! The Nashville Dominicans of St. Cecilia are starting a house here, which will be really good for the girls of Australia – now they’ll have a good order they can join if any of them decide to be nuns! Lots of people are really, really happy the Dominicans are staying, and I’m happy as well, but also sad, because now if I ever went to visit Nashville, I wouldn’t know 3, I’d only know 1! But that doesn’t actually matter…it’s more important that they’re here!

We had 3 retreats this week, which completely exhausted all of us, and we have 3 next week and the week after that…it is truly an intense spiritual time! We’re also helping on Wednesday nights at the Cathedral with the Pilgrim group leader formation courses for WYD – which is just a few talks over three weeks that are designed to prepare the people who are leading a group of pilgrims for WYD for the experience. It’s been interesting, but also time-consuming...but it’s all for the cause!

Ahead, not too much is coming other than LOTS of busy times! We’ll see if I get the chance to report much over the next few weeks…and if I’ll actually have much to report other than that I’m going nuts!

My last thought for the post is on Australianisms. Of course there are many things in any country that set that culture apart from other countries, little quirks that any foreigner would find intriguing, funny, or strange. Australia, to an American’s eyes, is no different. However, as with any place, the longer you’re there, the more you adapt to fit in, mostly because communication must be done in the native language, in a way that the locals can understand. I’m afraid that, after all this time in Australia, I am really beginning to not only communicate like a local, but even become like a local…and now I’m beginning to find Americanisms strange! My ponderings on this point come from an incident today at a retreat:

The most typical Australian meal you’ll ever have is a “barbie”, or a “sausage sizzle” which to us might normally be called a cookout, or grilling out. Now you would expect, to hear the word barbecue, even, to be served hamburgers, hot dogs, and bratwursts, should you be in the States, but in Australia, you can expect only one thing: sausages. They’re unlike anything we have over there in the US, and that’s quite a good thing – they don’t actually taste all that great. Along with these sausages, you might receive a slice of bread to act as the “bun” or if you’re at a gourmet sausage sizzle, you might get a sausage roll. Mmm…. Usually there might be onion, but more often than not, there will only be “tomato sauce” and BBQ sauce. And there you have it!

Today, one of the teachers was standing there with the two bottles of condiments, and I walked up and asked for the ketchup, which still gets a laugh, every time. However she chuckled saying, “The longer you’re here the more you’re going to pick up terms like ‘tomato sauce’ so when you go back to the States, you’ll forget to call it ketchup!” And what a tragedy that will be, should she (God forbid) be right! I’m getting so accustomed to the way they refer to things here that I’m forgetting how they’re ACTUALLY referred to…at home that is. And that’s just one little example!

So if I come home, and together we go to a restaurant, and I ask for tomato sauce, please explain to the waitress what I really mean!

Until I write again, may God bless you!