Fiji, Australia, New Zealand ALUMNUS BLOGS

Fall 2007 SOPAC Semester

Saturday, December 8, 2007

The Scuba trip

Our last week we arrived in Port Douglas it looked amazing. We arrived pretty late so some of us decided to go swimming in the pool. The next day we meet Gary our scuba instructor he’s a hilarious guy. So we watched some videos about scuba diving and near the middle of the day he took us to a pool and put us in the water with our scuba equipment on. For dinner we ate at the hostel it was pretty good. The next day Gary took us on this amazing and huge dive boat for our fist dive we went 40ft the visibility was pretty good we saw lots of fish. The third day Gary took us back to the pool for more practice. The forth day we went back on the boat with Gary we did 3 dives all around 60ft and above each dive we had to go higher. The forth day was like a free day so allot of us just slept in and went to the beach and walked around town then we all had dinner together. That night we were told we had to wake up at 4 in the morning for a surprise trip. So the last day we woke up at 4a.m. and jumped into a bus then we had an hour drive. When we arrived we were so excited we were going hot air ballooning it was awesome it was definitely worth waking up that early. So we all are in Cairns for one more night this will be our last time seeing each other. Here's to an awesome trip.

 

 

The Chenrezig Buddhist Center

For one week we stayed at the Chenrezig Buddhist Institute in Brisbane. The Chenrezig Institute is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside of Tibet. The institute had about twenty nuns and four monks. Every morning we had breakfast and then had an hour of yoga where we learned the sun salutation. During our first day in Chenrezig we explored and relaxed in the Garden of Enlightenment. The next day the group went to the beach. We had a blast even though we got thrown all over by the waves, which were at least 9 ft high. After our day on the beach we spent time asking one of the nuns, Jeung Chook about the basics of Buddhism. Luckily she had a lot of patience and mixed Aussie humor into our lessons. Next we went to Steve Irwin's zoo and spent the day exploring. We checked out Steve's famous crocodiles (as well as the other animals) and got to feed Kangaroos and Elephants and pet Koalas and Wombats. Then we went back to learning about Buddhism. We had two more lessons with Jeung Chook, as well as hearing two talks by Lama Yeshe, the most senior teacher in the center. We also took a couple meditation classes, which were hard for some us, but rewarding in the end. Our most intense day involved hours of lectures where we struggled to absorb all the new information while sitting crosslegged on the floor. It was a new and challenging experience for us to be in such a focused and quiet place, but we all adapted (slowly). We ended our stay by re-exploring the main temples and getting a sneak preview of the newest temple. From Chenrezig we went to Cairns for the last leg of our trip at the Great Barrier Reef.

 

 

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Life With a Tazmanian Devil

Kangaroo Valley is a truly breathtaking place. It is beautiful, filled with wildlife, and the best part is all the people around you are badass. They are sweating every single day to make it a better place. The volunteers we met were really inviting and kind. They were from Korea, Japan, Austria, Sweden, and Germany. Our group was given a leader by the name of Taz. He was a hogriding, chainsmoking, whirlwind of a 47 year old man. He had two responsibilities, to keep us safe, and to start shit.

During our time with the Conservation Volunteers of Australia we worked on weeding invasive species of plants, building fences, putting in restriction posts (to keep people from driving closer to the beach and over time eroding the dunes). The first week we spent "camping" in a trailer park. I thought we were going into the bush, but it turned out we would have to be quiet because father time was vacationing less than fifty feet away. Halfway through that week we met up with Green Corps, an organization working on similiar tasks as we. I got to meet two skateboarders who after we were done working, showed me some spots in the town of Moruya. When we were done there we headed back to Chakola in Kangaroo Valley, and had a beautifully chill weekend.

The next week we worked for these three private land owners who lived close to very important conservation sites. During this time I really saw the group kick ass. We started to really work as a team and work with efficiency and speed. Taz was amazing at digging holes, I thought he must haved killed someone in the past. Anyway, what was really cool about this section of the trip was we got see tangible work, we could see the mark we made on the world. On top of that we got to Taz, who wouldn't even touch a man at the beginning of our stay, dance with Kipp and say he loved the guys and just really see him open up and joke around, as opposed to be the serious badass that he was. All in all it was an amazing time, beautiful weather, beautiful landscape and beautiful people. This has been off the record, on the QT, and very hush, hush.

Yours Truly, Andy