Week 2 – Shawna Shane

Week 2 was full of changes. We went from warm, relaxed, slow-paced Cairns to the big city. The pace is faster, the air is cooler (and rainy), but the people are still relaxed. Wherever we are, all of us know where the nearest Gloria Jeans coffees or McDonalds are because of the free Internet. Last night several of us were at McD’s checking emails and a man with a goat on a leash walked by…and a second goat was running to catch up. Seemed odd in the city, but kinda fit. We still see several people walking around without shoes, but much less than those in Cairns. We have seen all the sites of the city that we could fit into the last 4 days. It has been fun and exciting. In Cairns we walked or rode buses, here in Sydney we have learned to master the train system and the ferries and how to get around that way – but still a lot of walking. On the whole it has been a great week and now we are winding down and looking forward the the things we have planned this week and ready to come home.

BridgeClimb

Today Rachel and I got to experience the Sydney Harbour Bridge to its fullest! We took a 3 hour bridge climb to the very top of the bridge. We started around 4:30 p.m. Just towards the end of sunset and reached the top around 6 p.m. when the festival lights on the opera house were starting. The view of the city from approximately 440 feet above the Harbour is breathtaking.

BridgeClimb n. Ascend 134 metres above sea level in 252.5 metres horizontal distance, with no barriers, no sense of time, no going back, just onward, upward, the ferries below the size of matchboxes, the Opera House shrinking away across the harbour. 1,337 stairs, 1 and a half football fields above the water, and a breath taking view of Sydney, surrounding suburbs and all the way to the mountains. My heart pounds, my legs shake, I feel every breath… and I climbed it!

We climbed the bridge with 4 others and our guide Graham. It was an unforgettable experience.

Cheers!
Amber

Sunday ramblings

Hunter valley

3 individuals decided to explore the wineries of the Hunter Valley area, located about 2 hours north of Sydney. The weather was a perfect fall day to tour this area. We got on a tour bus and off we went to our first stop on wollombi.  This was a tiny place wheee we could get a scone and try a wine called Dr. Jurd’s jungle juice.  Let’s just say the name says it all. Next stop was Lindenman’s winery. We sampled several wines. Nothing really stood out for us. This winery is owned by Foster’s, which is the largest beverage company in Australia. So it would be similar to the Gallo company.

Our third stop was at the Hunter Resort, where we had a wonderful lunch. We were served brochetta, ceaser salad, trout, roast beef, pasta. To say the least, we were full!  Since the day was so sunny, the resort had a guitar player named Claudio Meyer playing outside. We enjoyed a cup of coffee and listened to some good music.

After lunch we went to the Oakvale winery. Again, nothing that stood out. We were able to take some photos in the vineyards.

Our final stop was the Hunter Valley Gardens. We were able to buy some homemade chocolate. The day was wonderful and the scenary was magnificent. It was good to leave the city and see the beauty of Australia.

We are finishing our final week on Australia. We have experienced many different things; some are resonable and other things mysterious

For example, why do the Australians have two different flush buttons on the toilet?

Why is Australia bread so hard to digest?

Why don’t austrlians understand the concept of lining up?

Why are pedestrians sitting ducks at any intersection?

Why is everything so darn expensive?

Why do the stores close at 4 o’clock everyday but Thursday?

Why can’t restaurants provide individual bills for people sitting at the same table?

Why is there a 2 dollar coin, which is smaller than a 20 cent coin?

Wildlife Excursion at the Taronga Zoo

Today, Dr. Ermler, Stephen, David, Kassidy, and the two of us went to the Taronga Zoo here in Sydney! Originally, there were going to be more of us but the rainy weather knocked out half of the group, so they went to the aquarium instead. First, we took a bus down to the harbor to catch a ferry that would take us across the harbors to the zoo. Once arriving, we took a skyrail to the top of the zoo. The skyrail gave us a beautiful view of the city skyline as well as the Sydney Opera house and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It also took us across the zoo, so we had a bird’s eye view of some of the animals. There was a bit of construction, as they are working on bettering the zoo, so we didn’t even get to see all that they had, but what we did see was well worth our time! The animals were fun and exciting and the scenery and habitats were absolutely beautiful! Despite the weather, we had a wonderful time and it only spit on us a few times throughout the day. The animals were split up into groups based on the geographic region from which they originate. There was the African waterhole, the Asian wildlife, Australian wildlife, and the most interesting to us was that in the zoo they had chickens, roosters, quail, and deer! All in all, we had a wonderful and exciting day and were able to see many animals we didn’t even know existed!

Ashley & April

Kassidy, Ashley, & April with the giant koala!

Look at this koala’s feet. He was completely relaxed during this nap!

This one’s for Ashley’s mom!

Luuunnnccchhh!

Gorilla love!

Stephen was in the wrong spot at the wrong time!

Skyline facing back towards the Sydney harbor with the Elephant exhibit.

Taronga zoo

Several people in our group set off to the taronga zoo. I have been to many zoos, and this one is quite spectacular. To get to the zoo, you usually take a ferry across the Sydney Harbor. The ferry allowed some spectacular views of Sydney city skyline. When we got to the zoo, we had to take a gondola, into the zoo. At this point we got down to viewing the animals. The zoo had some great show (bird show). Since the weather was cool, the animals were all out and very active. The zoo just had a new addition – a baby elephant who was the star of the zoo. Just before we left the zoo to return to Sydney the giraffes were being fed. Quite an amazing sight and good fun to watch. Hopefully all the students in the group will have a chance to go before we return to the states.

Olympic Park

Go ‘day from the busy city of Sydney,
We had the opportunity to see the Olympic Stadium today. We took the local train to the park. The first view of the stadium and park was breath taking! How amazing was it to see the area all the athletes saw for the 2000 Summer Olympics. We gathered in front of the stadium and were taken off in a motorized cart that told us a lot about the area. We went across the way to the tunnel that the athletes took to get to the stadium. It was a tight squeeze into the tunnel but it was worth it. The tunnel was pitch black and quite. Then a laser show and clips of the Olympics were shown on the walls of the tunnel. There was music that went along with the clips to bring the feel of the Olympics to life!! Once we reached the end of the tunnel we entered the part of the stadium that no one really knows about. It is where the heart of the events was run. It takes around four and a half thousand people to run it all. There is a total of seven different entrances to the field its self. The underneath side of the stadium is where maintence vehicles, worker vehicles, and other equipment is held. We were able to see the blue line that was painted for the athletes to follow when the event they were in finished in the stadium. The woman who was disqualified during the speed walking event was so close to the finish. The whole group got to enter as VIP guests for the day. Starting at the sixth floor we watched a short film on the over view of the completion of the stadium and what it transformed into during the Olympic Games. Eighty three and a half thousand seats are what the stadium holds today. It held well over 100 thousands seats during the games. This stadium housed 199 countries, 13,000 athletes, and 10,500 events during the Olympics. USA had the most metals with a total of 97. These Olympic Games were the first games to have Paralympics. The track was taken out the January of 2001 right after the games ended. There was no roof when the stadium was first built. After the games were completed a roof was added which is suppose to look like the brim of an Australian hat that is well known around the country. This roof does not close. There is a water system that allows the water to catch and flow into four large tanks that are placed in the four corners of the stadium. This water is later used for watering the field and running the plumbing system of the complex. There was a large, white, heating lamp on the field when we were seen it. It is used to help parts of the field grow if it is having trouble. These are used when the temperature is freezing. They call freezing about 10 degrees celcus. This would be about 50 degrees Fahrenheit! There are two LED screens that cost a million dollars each and they are the largest in the southern hemisphere. There are two other big screens that are the original screens of the stadium and they are currently now used for commercials and advertisement during events. The seats in the field can be moved in an out for different events. For rugby union, league, soccer the field is moved in and for Australian Football League (AFL), and Cricket the field is moved in. The field is mowed and groomed each day. As we walked on the field they played music to get a feel for what it would have been like to be an athlete in the Olympic Games. Once we got on to the field we got to stand on the medal stand which was the actually medal stand that was used in the Olympics. And if you where to step foot on the really grass it could be up to a $5, ooo fine!! Going to the Olympic Park was a great experience; we all had a great time and really enjoyed the tour!!
Our next stop was the Australian College of Physical Education. We meet the Dean of the college which basically ran the whole school. She had a bunch of job titles. She gave a presentation over what the school has to offer such as degrees, programs, qualifications, prerequisites, and professional development. We got a chance to try a traditional dessert, which was a white cake covered in chocolate and coconut. After finishing our afternoon tea time we went on a tour of the school. In the gym where students were playing volleyball, next we went into the commons area and then finished the tour in the library.
After exiting the school some of the group when back to the city in search for China Town and the other half stayed to further explore the Olympic Park, where they saw the Olympic torch, skate park, and the softball/baseball field where the US one the gold medal.
Most of the group has made plans to go see Wicked the musical on Wednesday; we are looking forward to seeing this.
Cheers!
Kassidy, Hannah, and Kira

Livin’ it up in Sydney…

Well, we made it to Sydney! We had a welcome dinner at the Blackbird Café in the Darling Harbor last night and today, we made our way around the Sydney Harbor. The city is definitely a LOT different than in Cairns. Cairns was laid back and the weather was beautiful. Sydney is fast-paced and it has been raining off and on throughout the day. We would compare it to a New York City back home.
However, we learned a lot about Sydney and Australian history today. Our Phi Beta Dingo guide, Tasha, walked us down George Street to reach the harbor. George Street is the longest and oldest street in Australia, also known as their main street. Once we reached the Sydney Harbor, the pictures began. We could see the Harbor Bridge and the Opera house both from where we were standing in The Rocks community. We met outside the Contemporary Art Museum and began our walking tour with a woman named, Annette. Annette stopped us on our trip, explaining how Australia was founded and other interesting side notes.
Basically, the American Revolution was a big part of how Australia was colonized. After we gained our independence in 1776, we told the British not to send anymore convicts to the States. So instead, they began sending them to a newfound land south of the equator, Australia. James Cook, who the university we toured the other day was named after, was one of the founding fathers. However, it was not until January 1788 that Australia officially became known as Australia.
The first currency was rum and the town was split between convicts and military families. The only thing to build with was sandstone rock, so many of their buildings are still made with this today. The first colonize village was known as The Rocks, and still goes by this today. We saw proof of this in several of the buildings on our tour.
The next sight we saw was the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It took them six years to complete the job and it was not open for service until 1932. It includes eight lanes of traffic, two trains, and a bike and pedestrian path.
We walked through the Royal Botanical Gardens on our way to the Sydney Opera House and saw several bats sleeping in the trees. It was just like seeing birds filling the trees at home. The last stop on our tour was the Opera house itself. It took 16 years to build and after being estimated at seven million dollars cost, it was not finished until 102 million dollars had been spent.
For the remainder of the day, we were able to tour the Australian Museum and catch a train or bus back to our apartments. That was a trip in itself! Just trying to find the correct platform confused the heck out of us and I’m pretty sure we were lucky to have found our way home. With a little more practice, however, we’ll probably have it figured out by the time we’re ready to leave!
Kira, Hannah, David, Stephen, April, & Ashley made a trip back down to the harbor after dark to view the light show they have going on for the next couple of weeks. The light is projected onto the Opera House and changes and moves through different pictures every ten minutes or so. We ran into glow stick guys, giant lit up flowers, florescent liquid heads, and light bulb umbrella men. We took pictures with all of the above and will post our fun as soon as possible.
The first full day was packed with stuff, but it was a good kick off to our time in Sydney!

Too easy,

April, Ashley, & Amber

Group outside Opera House with Harbor Bridge in background

April & Ashley

Inside the tank was colored water

Pictures

I will be continuely adding pictures to the mobileme account that I posted earlier. The internet is not that easily accessable here so sorry if it doesn’t update everyday, but check back for more picture updates.

Cheers,

Annie

James Cook University

James Cook University
5.25.2010
Anne Steven

Okay, I’ll try my best to provide a description but this day was a bit different from the others. The first speaker, Dr. Patrick Schaeffer, joined us for a video-conference. The video conference thing was really neat. Dr. Schaeffer is definitely an intelligent man working in biochemistry and microbiology. He is doing research through James Cook University in Townsville on the detection of diagnostics of diseases including Parkinson’s disease and malaria. Their research is hopefully going to produce a tool that will be able to provide a diagnosis for those diseases approximately 20 years in advance… They are hoping. They just received 1.5 millions dollars in grants to research those diseases. He had a strong French accent and was difficult to understand; so sorry I don’t have much more to report about him. Still very interesting.

The second speaker was Dr. Alex Lucas gave a presentation on “Human helminthes (worms) vaccines, cancer and a cure for autoimmunity.” In short, they are using worms or parasites to cure autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), arthiritis, celiac disease, MS, diabetes, and allergies.

The research is in the beginning stages of research using mice. They induce IBD in mice and then provide the enzyme the hookworm (which is the parasite we discussed the most) secretes and noticed that the mice did not suffer from IBD or the symptoms were stopped. Impressive! However, the research Dr. Lucas is working on is using the enzyme of the parasites rather than injecting a parasite. We were told to lookup OVANED. That is where people can buy parasites and self medicate. In 2003 it was found that Crohn’s disease symptoms were resolved with pig worm or trichuris suis. They only live in pigs so it dies after about 3 weeks in a human. Of course, moving the medication process along comes down to funding. Dr. Lucas said that if they had the funding they would possibly be able to market the worm enzyme in about 5 years to help autoimmune diseases.

Too many parasites can hurt a person and cause health problems. When there are hundreds of parasites, the parasites feed on the blood or hemoglobin of humans and cause extreme exhaustion and anemia leading to death due to the inability to fight off other illness. Right now they are doing human studies (approved by ethics, FDA, and is all volunteer) in a village in Brazil that has approximately 75% of it’s population suffering from extreme worms problems. They are injecting a medication that will prevent the worms from processing the hemoglobin (like humans do food) causing them to starve. They have witnessed good results thus far.

Sorry for the lack of pictures with this post. I forgot my lens. Dr. Ermler is supposed to posting some. Thanks.

Cheers,

Annie

Richard

Richard
5.25.2010
Anne Steven

The group had the morning off to prepare for our trip to Sydney tomorrow. I of course used up all the time for packing my beach towl, my book, and some sunglasses to head down to the pool (hahaha). It was a bit too hot for me today so after about an hour I decided to actually use the time as intended and pack for Sydney. After packing it was time to make my way to the lobby to meet the group for our trip to James Cook University. When I got downstairs I found Dr. Ermler having light conversation with a man that looked aboriginal but I wasn’t sure. Dr. Ermler introduced me to Richard whom I soon realized is an extraordinary man.

Richard is from the “cape” or the aboriginal areas of Australia. He is from an Aboriginal community located at the most Northern tip of Australia (I can’t remember the community name, sorry). He was dressed in a sweater vest with a long sleeved shirt, and Dr. Ermler informed me that Richard was COLD! I couldn’t stand more than an hour outside, and here was Richard, fully clothed and dressed for our fall season in the U.S. Richard explained to me that where he and his family (who were all on vacation with him, including grandkids) are from it is a different type of heat and very hot with hot winds.

After talking a little more Richard revealed that he is an elder for his community. He is from an area of 500 people and he is the elder of 100 people. Yesterday we talked with the Queensland Health group and the elders are the respected people of the community that make the decisions. Richard expressed some awesome ideals or stories that I’d like to share. First I should explain that Richard is from a legacy of educators. His father and grandfather were educators. Richard’s father and grandfather were elders of the tribe and the grandfather was so respected that he is buried with a monument in the middle of their community. Both respected people left behind ideals that have obviously influenced Richard.

First, Richard expressed the explanation of their community. The first tribes were “Pure Tribes”, but now all tribes are mixed. Richard thought this was a good thing and referred to his community as a “fruit salad” with a variety of fruits. He provided another metaphor. He said, “Imagine a garden of white roses. At first glance a garden of all white roses is beautiful, but when you add other flowers and other colors the garden is beyond beautiful. It is gorgeous.” I liked that.

Second, story was the explanation of the importance of education. Richard’s grandfather always encouraged education. This was what Richard’s grandfather told him. “Picture yourself as a fish in an aquarium. The water is murky, so murky that it is difficult to see. You run into the coral and the walls because you cannot see your way around. When you get an education that is as if new, clean water has replaced the murky water in the aquarium. You can now swim and see your way around and get to where you want to go. When you finish your education and experience what education can provide you are not a fish in an aquarium, but a fish ready for the ocean. No walls or boundaries.”

Third was the concept of money. In his community if he were to catch a fish, and his neighbor had some fruit; they would share their goods. Money was not anything to them. They lived through their sharing of goods within the community.

Yesterday we were taught about the alcohol and drug problem in the aboriginal communities. It is severe. Richard explained that he is (I think) 57 years old. He left the community for 30 years to get his education (and I don’t know what else). When he returned to his community all of his mates were dead due to alcohol and drug abuse. He explained that they never left the community and never got their education so they never evolved outside the tribe.

Richard is now the owner of Men’s Sheds Australia . This is a men’s group organized to help the youth men and adult men of the tribe. Richard strongly encourages the youth of the tribe to further education. Dr. Ermler asked what majority of their youth is pursuing university or college and he said quite a few, and he hopes that this generation will lift up and motivate the next generation. They all have to go to James Cook University, which is the closest university. James Cook University is now trying to expand to the aboriginal communities through online courses and Richard is excited about that.

It was a great experience, and a terrific way to start a day of education. I kind of wish we could have stayed and talked with Richard a while longer. When he told a story it was impossible not to be intrigued. He was a nice little surprise. ☺

No Worries,

Annie