Thursday we did a cliff/beach walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee which was breathtaking. I went swimming in the ocean (that's right... in winter) and we had fish and chips and class sitting outside.
Friday we trekked up to the blue mountains. They are a little bit like the Appalachian mountains in many ways. We met a man named Evan Yanna Muru at the station after an hour and a half train ride and we had an amazingly enlightening cultural experience. He led us on a traditional Aboriginal Walkabout tour of the Blue Mountain area that his people lived in before the invasion of the Europeans. We saw some amazing cultural and ancient sites and learned an unbelievable amount about who they were and how they lived. I won't go into a bunch of detail here but feel free to ask me about it! The whole tour was one of the most physically enduring hikes I've been on. There wasn't really a trail for a majority of the trek and at times we were even scaling some pretty intense cliffs.
Most of us stayed up in the mountains all weekend. The Katoomba YHA (youth hostel association) was really nice. We did some hiking around on the local trails, we played Monopoly (I won, of course).
On Sunday, the 7 of us who stayed took the train a little bit down the mountain to meet up with Nick (the architect we met earlier at Constructive Dialogue). He had invited us over for breakfast to his weekend cabin he built for his parents. He met us at the station with his really cute 2-3 year old son Toby, and we trekked through the bush (aka, took the scenic route) to the house. He gave us the tour and we all were really impressed. A large majority of the walls and windows slide completely away from the frames. We sat on the back porch talking about current events and drinking tea. We met his wife and children (Toby, and 2 month old twin daughters) which was a very nice opportunity to see a professional architect being a normal person.
As for pictures... be sure to check out Dan's blog: ausi09.blogspot.com and Dannielle's blog: australianewzealand2009.blogspot.com They seem to post more images, and you can also see other sides of things that we do.
so.... back to writing out my outline for Adrian's Class. Have a great Tuesday in the States everyone!
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