artist is a women named Yayoi Kusama. One of her exhibits was a room that was furnished like a living room, so sofa, table, tv, etc. and everything (walls, ceiling, floor and furniture) were all black. The only source of light was black lights and there were little round stickers that were all different colors (red, blue, yellow, green) and they glowed under the black lights. It was so cool looking, I really wish I could have taken a picture. Here's another link to what yet another of the rooms looked like, this room had the walls, ceiling and back of door as solid mirrors and there were strands of colored lights hanging down. After that I walked around the outside of the Opera House a bit. 
erdale day. Featherdale is a wildlife park where I was able to pet Kangaroos and Koalas! It was super fun and I saw so many awesome animals! And of course it was fun to get so close to roos and Koalas. They both have really soft fur. After Featherdale, me and my American friends Jess, Chantel, and Keri and my Aussie friend Emma went to the Opera House because the Star Trek movie world premeir was happening that evening. We got there early because we expected a crowd, but there was nobody, so we got a spot right up along the red carpet! It was awesome! However, because we were near the top, after the press, by the time the actors got to us they were running late, so only a few stopped for autographs. I got Eric Bana's, who was in movies such as The Hulk, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Castle and I got Karl Urban's, who was in 
movies such as Lord of the Rings, the Bourne Supremacy and Doom. I did not get Zachary Quinto's autograph, but I was about 4 feet away from him and on his way by, he waved and said "sorry, I've got a movie to get to". It was very exciting! The other celebrities there that passed by included, Chris Pine, John Cho and the producer and director of the Star Trek movie J.J. Abrams. Thursday night, my fellow ASCer, Jason, came over for dinner. We had stuffed peppers, well, my host mom called them something else, some Greek name, but basically it was peppers with a rice/meat mixture inside of them. They're pretty good! Then we watched the movie Dodgeball and played some Phase 10. Friday was Good Friday. I was originally going to meet up with a few other ASCers at Wesley to work on a group project we have to do, but when we got there we discovered the school was closed due to Good Friday. So, I went over to one of their houses (Keri's) and we worked on the project there for a while. Then we headed off into the city for the Wesley choir/drama/dance Good Friday production. It was an amazing production! It started out in Martin Place and they acted out the betrayal and the trial and then Jesus picked up the cross and walked through town to the Wesley Mission with all of us crowd following behind. Once at the Wesley Mission there was more service. It was really good! Afterwards, I was meeting up with Emma to work on my photography project. We went out to dinner at Macca's and then got some coffee at Starbucks. Then we headed to Darling Harbour to try and take some good pictures of a place called Luna Park, it's a sort of amusement park. However, the pictures weren't quite working so we were going to try another place. We decided we'd take a ferry there, however, we must have gotten on the wrong ferry, because it never went to where we wanted to go. The ferry arrived at it's last stop and we had to get off. We then went to catch a bus to the nearest train station and the lady driving the bus was in a BAD mood. She was super grumpy and kind of rude, not to mention a bad driver. Finally we arrived at the train station and we parted ways and made our way home. It was a very interesting experience, but a fun one nonetheless. It is so fun to listen to the differences in accents between American and Australian on certain words. It provides endless entertainment!
en we got back on the ferry into Darling Harbor. From there, we decided we wanted ice cream and wafer cookie things, so we went in search of a Maccas. However, on the way there we decided to instead get a big thing of ice cream from a store and share it. So we got 2 liters of ice cream and some chocolate wafer cookies and sat in Hyde Park and dug in! By the time we were through we all felt rather full and somewhat sick, haha, the price that is paid for eating so much ice cream I suppose.
ly going to go to Hillsong with a friend, but she missed her bus and so wasn't there to meet me at the train station, so I decided I'd go ahead and just go by myself. Well, I got off the train in town, but couldn't find the place where the shuttle leaves to go to Hillsong (last time I took the shuttle I was with my friend and didn't pay attention to where it was). So I ended up walking all around that area for about 2 hours, it was great fun, I just wandered wherever I felt like. Then I went to Bronte beach to meet up
with a few friends from Hillsong for a bbq. I was going to go swimming, but the lifeguards, when we first got there, said that we could swim if we wanted to, but if something happened they weren't going in after us because it was too dangerous. So, we did not swim and then they ended up closing the water part for the rest the time anyway because the water was just too rough. They had two different people get rushed to the hospital because of the rough water. Sunday night was Hillsongs Live Album Recording at the Sydney Entertainment Center. It was super awesome! Darlene Zschech was there and so was Brooke Fraiser. I sat in the deaf section with my friend, because she is learning sign language. It was very interesting, I think I'm going to have to start learning some sign language, because I find it quite fascinating. In Australia, they have a completely different sign language than America, I never knew this, I thought sign language was universal, but apparently it differs.
I had to write this blog for my ASC class.
The idea for this movie came from a poem that had been written years earlier by a man named Banjo Paterson. It is only loosely based on the poem, however, several elements have been added, expanded on, or changed. For example, there were no women mentioned in the poem, but in the movie, some of the main conflicts that arise have to do with women.
This movie starts with a father and son living in the Snowy Mountain Region of Australia. Right away, the dad gets into a logging accident and dies, leaving the son to fend for himself. In order to keep living on the family farm, the boy, Jim, has to go down from the mountains to earn money. He works on the farm of his friend, Spur’s, brother, Mr. Harrison. Jim has no idea at the time that his friend and Mr. Harrison are brothers; he does not find this out until later in the movie. While there, he falls in love with the daughter, Jessica. However, Jim’s friend and his brother have not talked for 20 years and when they meet up again, tempers flare. Jim and Jessica are caught in the middle of this feud and are told they cannot be together and that Jim needs to leave. Meanwhile, some of the other farm hands do not like Jim very much and are constantly trying to get him in trouble. Jim does not let this faze him, though, he keeps pressing on, trying to prove that he is an honest man and that he is capable of doing any job asked of him. In the end, Mr. Harrison tells Jessica that she and Jim cannot be together, but Jim tells him that he’ll be back to claim what is his and looks at Jessica while saying this. That is where the movie ends.
One of the common themes throughout the movie is horses. At the time of the dad’s accident, Jim also loses one of his horses to a wild herd of brumbies. He is determined to get back his horse and to capture the rest of the wild brumbies. Several times throughout the movie, Jim encounters the wild horses, but fails to catch any of them. The other station hands release one of Mr. Harrison’s prize colts and try to frame Jim; this colt soon joins up with the wild brumbies. This results in a group of men heading out to find the brumbies and bring back the colt. Jim, despite much objection, joins the group and ends up being the one and only person from the group to not only bring back the colt, but all the brumbies as well—every single one of them.
Jim demonstrates strong Australian characteristics throughout this movie. First, when his father dies, he could have decided to simply give up the farm and move to the low lands, but instead he chooses to find a way to get the farm back up and running again. Second, when he gets to the Harrison farm, he is the underdog, an outsider, but he doesn’t let that stop him or get him down, he keeps trying to show what he can do and works extra hard. Third, despite the odds against him, he never gives up; no matter what is thrown his way, he perseveres through it and continues in his work. There was one point when Mr. Harrison was going to fire Jim, but Jim finished the job he had started despite the fact he knew he would be fired as soon as he was through. Fourth, Jim shows the typical Australian attitude of not wanting to rise above the group and stand out as the best; he was not trying to be a hero, nor was he looking for recognition. Jim had a reason for each action. At one point in the movie, he is seen as a hero for rescuing Jessica from a cliff side, but he was not doing it to be noticed, he did it because he cared about Jessica and did not want her to die. Another example is when he captures the brumby herd and Mr. Harrison’s colt at the end of the movie, he was seen as a hero, but he only did it to clear his name, to get his horse back that he had lost earlier and to have a group of wild horses to train and use on his farm.
Sources used for this blog:
1) http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/movies/manfromsnowyriver.html
the Labor Party is most like our Democratic Party) was stating her opposition to a measure the Labor Party was trying to pass. She mentioned that she didn't know if it's just that they have a good federal Labor Party and a bad state one or what and one guy yelled out "they're both bad!" It was fairly entertaining. After watching them, we went up on the roof where there is a grassy area and some of the group made a pyramid. After that we went to the British High Commission (in Australia, if a country is part of the Commonwealth, then their buildings are called Commissions, whereas if a country is not part of the Commonwealth, their building is referred 
to as an Embassy). We listened to a Scottish man talk about Britain's relationship with Australia. We weren't allowed to take pictures at the British High Commission, but at the Indonesian Embassy, we were free to take as many as we wanted, so the pictures to the left are of the Indonesian Embassy. Then, we moved on to th
e Indonesian Embassy. This Embassy was gorgeous, created in a style that reflected Indonesian culture. However, when the guy was talking to us, I had trouble following what he was saying because of his thick accent, so I hope I understood the important points.
ow they treated the Aborigines. It is appaling to me to see how the government feels they can treat these people, they treat and have treated them is more like animals than people. The government has offered an official apology to the Stolen Generations, but the Aborigine we talked to felt that so far, it was just words and that's it, that it was more for show than anything. The picture to the right is the Aboriginal flag. The red stands for the red land and the black stands for the Aboriginal people.
money, etc. 
And here is a picture of the front of my school.
