Third Week Down Under

Sunday I woke up early and Amy made us omelets for brekky (Aussie slang for breakfast) and then we made guacamole. After filling ourselves with the guacamole and chips, we headed down to Westfield (the Burwood shopping center). I was in search of a water bottle and Tim Tams. Tim Tams are the most amazing thing ever invented and I can't believe the United States doesn't sell them. Anyways, I found the Tim Tams for a pretty good price and I also found a nice water bottle for only $4 AUD! A very successful trip. Sunday night I was going to go to Hillsong and participate in their live recording for their next cd, but something I ate (the guacamole, I'm sure of it) made me feel very sick to my stomach, so I pretty much laid around the rest of the day and did homework and such, nothing too exciting. I was bummed to miss out on the Hillsong thing though.

Monday was the start of the third week of classes! Time has gone so fast, but so slow at the same time, if that makes any sense. For ASC class we watched a movie called Gallipoli. It's an Australian movie about the Battle of Gallipoli over in Turkey. Mel Gibson is in it when he was younger. It was a very depressing movie, good, but sad. The Australian's don't "sugar coat" their movies like America does. American war movies typically end with at least one main character reuniting with their loved ones, or at least a little message that say "they lost this battle, but..." Gallipoli had no such ending. I will not spoil it on here by telling how it ends, you'll just have to go watch it for yourselves. For photography class, we took a field trip down to the Bay that's just down the road from the school and took some pics. We were messing around with different shutter speeds for this class.

Tuesday we had a very inetersting discussion in my theology class. The lecturer talked about how we are asking the wrong question. We shouldn't be asking why God doesn't reveal himself to everybody or why everyone doesn't have access to the Word, we should be asking why God reveals himself to anybody, why does anybody have access to the Word? We do not deserve anything, but through God's grace and great love for us, He provided a way for us to live with Him for eternity. Wow, praise God for that!

Friday for ASC class we took a field trip to the Parliament House in Sydney. We were shown around by the Honorable Reverand Doctor Gordon Moyes. We got to sit in on a session too, nothing too exciting was happening, just some dedications and such for the bush fire victims, but it was cool to get a glimpse of how their government works. The ceiling in one of the rooms was absolutely gorgeous, there was a huge panel of stained glass in the middle.
Friday night, a couple other ASCers came over and we had cookies and ice cream and then watched part of Finding Nemo, but didn't finish it because they had to go home.

Saturday I had my service project with Hillsong again. This time I went out to a women's refugee house to help repaint it. It was fun, I met a lot of new people and painting is something I love to do. There was a communication problem between me and the leader about getting back to the church. I was under the impression that he was going to take me back with him when he went to go debrief the other teams because the rest of the ASCers with Hillsong would be waiting at the church. Well, come 12:30, I found out he'd already left so I didn't know what to do, so I asked one of the other leaders what I should do and he found someone who was going back to the church and said I should just go with him. So he dropped me off at the church and left. Well, the only people in the church were the guy at the front desk and a few people washing windows. Not only did I not know the area, but I didn't know where the ASC people were or what I should do. Long story short, my leader had driven the 5 other ASCers over to the house because he thought I was still there, so I ended up going home with a Hillsong student to their apartment and hanging out until the rest of my group finished up and came back to the church. The girl who's apartment I went to is from Germany. She was very sweet and it was interesting to talk about how things differ between the States, Germany, and Australia.

Sunday, I got up really early to get ready to go to Palm Beach. Amy, me and another ASCer (Becca) caught the 8:30 train and then caught a bus that would take us to the beach. Altogether it was a two hour trip, but it was so worth it! We got off the bus a few stops before the beach and hiked this trail called Stairway to Heaven and it went up over a ridge type thing and then down a road until we hit the beach. It was about a 30-40 minute walk and it was gorgeous, but my goodness there were a lot of stairs! I am in love with beaches and the ocean, I love swimming in the ocean! While we were at the beach there was a shark siting and so everyone had to evacuate the water while the lifeguards went out in their boats with harpoons and looked for the shark. They didn't find it so the water was opened up again and it was back to swimming. Palm Beach has definitely become my new favorite beach!