Chasing the Sun

Aloha party people! Let's get to some blogging.

A couple months ago at my mom's ceremony, someone told me that I would begin to see blessings sent from heaven in the form of sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, and other spectacles of that nature. She said that these would be little pieces of my mom, bestowed upon me to remind me of her unfaltering love for me. At the time, I just nodded my head and muttered the appropriate thank you's, but now I realize that these words have resonated with me more than anything else. Since that conversation, nature has presented itself to me in ways that I have never before experienced. The colors have become more vibrant, each landscape is even more picturesque than the last, and being outside evokes a strange sense of peace and calm within me. I have found myself actively seeking out sunrises and sunsets, waiting for those special moments when the sun touches the edge of the Earth and explodes with color, and I know that my mom is with me. There's no feeling quite like it. So this one's for you, mom.

This week began bright and early Monday morning when Ruthie and I woke up at 4:30 am to go see the sunrise at the beach.  The struggle was real to get up, but once we got to the beach all previous regrets disappeared. We planned our sunrise beach excursion so that we could do the Sculpture by the Sea walk (mentioned in the previous post) as the sun rose over the water and it was probably the best decision ever. When I had done the Sculpture walk the day before, it was hot and crowded, making for a pretty unpleasant and rushed experience. But at sunrise, the weather was cool, the beaches were empty, and the backdrop was breathtaking. Have a look.

When we returned from our adventure, I got an email saying that my class for the day was cancelled and I physically jumped for joy. Life is just great sometimes. After a nice long nap, I spent the rest of my day grocery shopping and dabbling in school work to prepare for my week at work. And another week of work down means a new installment of...

Garden Talk

Oh man, what an eventful week at Lucas Gardens! Considering that Lucas Gardens is probably more involved/excited about Halloween than the rest of the Australian population combined, the school was abuzz with energy all week.

Trick-or-treat table filled with treats that mostly
went in my tummy

On Tuesday, Kaitlin and I traveled with the Purple class on an excursion to, once again, the shopping mall near the school.  We, once again, bought some Halloween decorations (kind of) and went to Maccas (that's McDonald's for you silly Americans).  The trip went smoothly and we arrived back at school in time to finish decorating the classroom for the next day's Halloween celebration.

Even though Halloween wasn't until Friday, we celebrated on Wednesday at school.  All the kids dressed up in the most adorably scary costumes and the teachers went all out with face paint, wigs, and masks. I wore a toned down version of my Hamburglar costume that I made for the weekend and was definitely the least scary person there, even compared to the students.  Regardless, I had a blast (and so did the kids obvi). The senior school hosted a haunted house and trick-or-treat for the primary school and all the kids loved it. After all the classes had a chance to go trick-or-treating, the whole school gathered on the lawn outside for the judging of the pumpkin decorating contest that each class had designed a pumpkin for. Of course, each pumpkin won its own individual prize, but I'll let you all decide which one you like best for yourselves.


The rest of the week was pretty routine after Halloween, but it flew by. I've started to realize how much I'm going to miss these kids when I have to leave them in four weeks. But I'm sure I'll talk about that more in a later blog post so here's some of my favorite pictures from Halloween @ Lucas Gardens.

These pictures are from the bi-weekly school newsletter which I will post a link to as soon as it is put online.

Well that's it for this week! I hope that everyone had a great Halloween!!

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In the world outside of Lucas Gardens, the rest of my week was pretty eventful as well. On Thursday, a group of us went to a Halloween party at a bar called Frankie's dressed as...dead things? It was all very last minute. We made our best attempt to be scary and fit in with Aussie Halloween traditions, but as soon as we walked into the bar everyone knew we were American. Literally. We stepped one foot inside the door and a guy approached us and asked us if we were from The States. Ugh, being foreign is hard.

Lucas Gardens goes scary

A robber, a dead flower, a dead monster, and a dead flapper

On Friday night, BU hosted a Halloween party for the entire program. It was super fun to see everyone all dressed up in American style Halloween costumes and here's the kicker, there was an open bar! My tuition is being well spent. At the end of the night, they announced the winners for best costume and I got third! Hamburglar comin' in clutch.

The winners! Hamburglar, Darla, and Ms. America

Honorable mention to the grandmas and The Obamas + their Secret Service

The three gypsies and a rugby player

Quite the night indeed.

On Saturday, we awoke for our 7 am departure to the Blue Mountains to go abseiling and canyoning (we clearly didn't think this sequence of events through very well, open bar + hiking = ?). On the bus ride there, we had some crazy deja vu from our first trip to the Blue Mountains with our lit class, bringing to mind countless hours of hopelessly climbing up stairs while Natalie suffered from a seemingly unstoppable infection on her leg. Good times. After a quick pit stop in our favorite town of Katoomba, we made our way to Boar's Head where we were supposed to spend the morning abseiling down the cliff face. We got out of the van and began to unpack all of the equipment when our instructor told us all to come take a look at a small bushfire that was burning just beyond the road barrier that we were standing behind. Suddenly, right before our eyes, the bushfire began to grow as the strong winds picked up the flames and blew them across the highly flammable trees. Our guide immediately called the fire brigade and instructed us to quickly reload the van and get in because it was no longer safe to be in the area. Thank goodness we got out of there when we did because the fire grew to 'out of control' status.

Obviously, we could no longer abseil at Boar's Head, so we headed to what was supposed to be the location of our afternoon activities, Wentworth Falls. Here, we wiggled into wet suits and began our canyoning adventure. For those of you who don't know, canyoning is basically walking through the rivers and streams at the very bottom of the mountain valley and falling a lot on your face. But in between falling, laughing at each other, and falling again, we did some sick rock jumps and saw some amazing views. 

Matrix jump aka running on a wall. Dat centripetal force doe.

We're soarin', flyin'

 When we finished the canyoning trail, we found ourselves at the top of a waterfall that we had to abseil down. Abseiling is basically repelling down the side of a mountain while attached to a rope, pretty intense stuff. But it was tons of fun! The instructor sent me down the rope that was directly under the waterfall the entire time so I got drenched. And in case you all were wondering, abseiling is actually quite difficult. Muscles I didn't even know I was using are sore and the wedgies that we all had afterwards from the harnesses were all too real. Since we didn't get to do the morning abseil, the guides let us do the canyoning and abseiling down the waterfall twice. I definitely felt more confident the second time and even managed to do a little singing with Darby on the way down (s/o to Ke$ha). 

Me doing abseiling wrong

I would love to say that I came out of this trip unscathed, but then I would be lying to you. In addition to many bumps and bruises, I managed to smash my hand into the rock on my first abseil, cutting open most of my knuckles on my hand. It would have been too good to be true to leave Katoomba without an injury. But I didn't let it stop me, I still did the second abseil and had a great time!

  

The rest of the weekend has been pretty relaxed because we all have two papers due today, ick. I guess I better go to the grocery store now so that I have more in the fridge than Jell-O. 

Thanks for reading! See ya next week!

Sculpting Young Minds

Hola amigos!

So not surprisingly, this week has been pretty similar to last week, with my internship Tuesday-Friday and beach related activities on the weekend. Life is just oh so hard. Now for a new segment that I like to call:

Garden Talk

He loved this mask with all his heart

This week marked the second week of our internship at Lucas Gardens! As we become more familiar with the school, the students, the teachers, and the daily routine, I have come to enjoy the school even more. The kids are just so stinkin' cute! As Halloween is quickly approaching, Kaitlyn and I embraced our position as able-bodied-wheelchair-pushers and partook in two separate class excursions to the nearby shopping center. Our goal was to find Halloween costumes for the kids as well as decorations for their classrooms. As you could probably imagine, pushing wheelchairs through crammed and crowded Halloween stores is not a simple task, but after our second trip we were pros. We even get to go AGAIN on Tuesday. I literally know these stores front and back by now, but I'm not complaining. Thankfully, both trips went quite smoothly and I even managed to find some things for my Halloween costume :)

Kaitlyn snapchatting our first intern-esque coffee run

For the rest of the week, we helped the classes decorate their classrooms in addition to their regular curriculum. I'm just going to say right now that Halloween at Lucas Gardens is horrifying. Apparently Halloween has just recently become more popular in Australia within the past couple years, but Lucas Gardens truly embraces the holiday. The decorations throughout the school are probably some of the scariest that I've ever encountered. One classroom has noise-activated mummies/bats/other scary things hanging from the ceiling that cause the entire ceiling to shake when someone walks into the room. It scares me every time. Side note: In Australia, Halloween is a scary holiday (clearly), and they think that it's weird that Americans use Halloween as an opportunity to dress up as anything they want, as opposed to something terrifying. This has resulting in an ongoing argument between us and the teaching staff as to who does Halloween better. Obviously Americans do, no question.

Each class is also partaking in a pumpkin decorating competition so we have gotten to help decorate some of the pumpkins. Again, Lucas Gardens is taking this competition super seriously, including trash talk amongst the teachers. But their trash talk is not futile. All of the pumpkins look amazing, although my personal favorite is the one that I put the most work into which looks something like this:

Crayons are just amazing

Also guess what guys! Sidra got to come to Lucas Gardens on Friday!! One of the therapists at her internship makes trips to our school so that some of the kids can get their physiotherapy at school. We got to do a therapy session together and then Sid came and shadowed me in one of the classrooms for about a half hour. We cut out pumpkins and ghosts and then helped the kids glue decorations onto them. Sidra loved/hated every minute of it. But it looks like she'll be able to come to LG every Friday! I can't wait!

Next Wednesday is our Halloween celebration so I need to get my costume together! I don't want to disappoint the Halloween crazed teachers.

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Friday night was this:

Somehow Sid has managed to be more Asian than both Ruthie and I

On Saturday, we took a trip to the Glebe Markets which were basically just a giant garage sale with live music and food. The atmosphere of the markets was really cool, unlike the weather that was blazing hot. This paired with my general disinterest in shopping produced no new purchases for this girl. Not that I could have fit into any of the stuff that these people were selling because EVERYONE HERE IS SO SKINNY. Sorry for yelling. When we got home from the markets, we all crashed and napped until dinner time.

Sunday was a beach day, obviously. A bunch of people from the program got together to go to the Sculpture by the Sea exhibit, a two kilometer long temporary sculpture park featuring sculptures by artists from Australia and across the world. The walk goes from Bondi to Tamarama beach and it was so cool. The artists that are selected to make sculptures for the event are each given a piece of land in advance either on the beach or along the cliffside to place their work. This makes for a gallery that is truly ingrained in the land and uses each original aspect of the beach to accentuate the art. So fascinating.

 

Yes, that is a giant frying pan 

I hope you all enjoyed that artwork as much as I did! Isn't the world such a beautiful place?

Til next time readers :)

A Week in the Gardens

Howdy all! This week was the first week of my internship at Lucas Gardens, a school focused on the education of children with special needs. So yeah, that is what this blog post is going to be about :) Unfortunately I'm not allowed to take pictures of the kids so all of the pictures in this post are from the Lucas Gardens website, which you can find here if you'd like to read/find out more about the school.

On Monday, the second half of our semester began, which meant a harsh return to classes after a week long vacation to paradise. I am taking a Sports Management class and I honestly cannot tell you much about what that means. We just talk a lot about sports and different issues within the sporting world. It's pretty interesting and I like it a lot. Well I mean as much as I can like a class. After finishing up class on Monday, I mentally and physically prepped myself for my first week of work.

Luckily enough, my friend Kaitlyn and I got assigned to the same internship which is super convenient in terms of transportation, knowing what to wear, and sharing stories. Otherwise I don't really like her that much. Jk love you Kait!

Tuesday morning, we hopped on the bus to work and suddenly we were part of the real working world (except we're not getting paid...). When we got to the school, we were given our timetables for our seven weeks there and directed towards the purple class which was where we would be spending our first day.  Lucas Gardens is made up of a primary school and a secondary school so the ages of students range from kindergarten (adorably called kindies here) to year 12 (senior year). The purple class is a class of 15 and 16 year olds so we were thrown in with the big dogs right away. There are about 5 students in each class, accompanied by a teacher as well as a teacher's aid who takes care of most of the dietary and sanitary needs of the kids. Their job is tough I'm not gunna lie. Fortunately, Kaitlyn and I have a little bit of an easier job. We mainly help the teacher with whatever they need during the day, whether that be feeding a student, gathering materials from around the room, fixing the malfunctioning technology, or assisting a student with the lesson. We even got to take the kids on an excursion to McDonald's so that they could get out of the classroom, something that they don't often get to do because almost all of them are in wheelchairs. The kids were so happy, it was adorable. I also have the opportunity to sit in and help with the physical therapy sessions of the students. Even though I have only gotten to go to one of these so far, I have already learned a lot and I am definitely looking forward to participating in more. 

The rest of our week consisted of us going to a new classroom each day as we got to know the layout of the school, our coworkers, and the students better. I think I finally have all of the students' names down (yay!) and I can honestly say that I love all of them already. Every member of the staff has been super welcoming and helpful, and they are all teaching me a lot about Australian society and life in general. 

In addition to the amazing personalities of the staff and students, I have also been very impressed with the usage of technology throughout the school. Each classroom is equipped with a smart board, iPads, and other computers that the students are able to use for learning. The smart boards are especially cool because the students have learned how to touch the boards in order to play a song or produce other stimuli that is pleasing to them. That said, I have learned a lot of kids songs that are going to be eternally stuck in my head. Not that that's unusual for me. I'm also learning a lot of sign language (Australian sign language, not American, yes they are different) because many of the kids are non-verbal and although most of them cannot sign themselves, they have come to understand the signs that the teachers use. It's honestly so cool. Some of the students are also able to communicate through an app on the iPad where they can touch icons that represent what they wish to say and then the iPad says it out loud. It's crazy how much technology has changed these kids' lives. 

As I said earlier, Lucas Gardens defines themselves as a school for "fragile students with intellectual and physical disabilities, some of whom also have sensory impairments and complex medical needs," meaning that many of the children are very low functioning. Most of the students have epilepsy, resulting in various forms of cerebral palsy and/or autism spectrum disorders/other mental disorders. I decided to take this internship because I am strongly considering working with children with disabilities as a PT after I graduate. While I have interacted with children with disabilities before, this internship has already been an eye opening experience for me. Never before have I been present as someone has had a minor seizure, been so heartbroken as I heard the backstories of children that I have become insanely attached to within this short amount of time, or been so elated to see a student accomplish something as mundane as following an object with his eyes or making a choice between two options. I have never felt like my singing of a song about jellyfish on a rock has been so important or that my simple smiles could bring so much joy to the face of a child that is all too often filled with despair. There has not been a day where I have come home not feeling physically and emotionally drained but also so full of happiness and hope for these children. And this is just week one. I really cannot wait for the next six weeks of my internship at Lucas Gardens so that I can continue to create a relationship with the students and learn more about working with children with disabilities, both as a physical therapist and a person. 

My awesome first week at work was topped off this weekend with a professional soccer game and a trip to the beach. My Sports Management class took us on a field trip to the Sydney FC vs. the Western Sydney Wanderers soccer game so that we would be able to experience the true culture of Australian sport. The game was intense and Sydney FC ended up coming back for a 3-2 victory, but the real spectacle was the fans. First of all, the visiting team, Western Sydney, occupied about half the stadium and had a fan section that paralleled that of Sydney FC. And quite the fans they were. Both fan sections were insanely loud throughout the entire game, no joke. There was never a quiet moment. All of the fans were in sync with their cheers and the fan section was just a huge party the whole time.

Sorry about the obnoxious woman at the end that rudely told us to get out of our seats

The other team even set the field on fire at the beginning of the game!

The fans were just straight up insane. American sports do not compare to this even in the slightest. 

Today, Sunday, we took a trip to Manly beach and it was beautiful. I'm honestly getting way too used to this beach lifestyle and I am probably going to go into a deep depression when I come back to the States and it is the dead of winter and there's not a beach in sight. I'm crying just thinking about it. 

Well that about does it for this week! I'll leave you with this inspirational insight for a time when you might be feeling down: Whenever you feel sad, just remember that there are billions of cells in your body and all they care about are you!

Haha wow I'm weird. 

Also have a look at Ruthie's blog, it's amazing!!

Spring Breakin' in Cairns

Hello everyone! Long time no blog! I've decided to do this post a little differently since this week was chock full of activities and adventure. So here's a video recap of our week long vacation to Cairns, the home of the Great Barrier Reef.

Other things not included in the video
Day 1
-Activities: Flight to Cairns and checking into our hotel
-Stories: Our hotel was kind of weird but it had a kitchen and three separate beds (no repeat of the Gold Coast) so there were no complaints
-Notes/Observations:

Day 2
-Activities: Trinity Beach. Dinner with Ruthie, Dante and Augustin @ Fetta's Greek Taverna
-Stories: We were roped into participating in some random girl's birthday celebration at dinner. This consisted of us all getting into a circle and dancing with her to a Greek song while other patrons of the restaurant threw plates at us and broke them on the floor. I have never seen a group of people look so uncoordinated
-Notes/Observations: The beaches in Cairns are nowhere near the city which is kind of weird. Also for how big of a tourist destination that Cairns is, the city is quite small and run down.

Yummo

Day 3
-Activities: Boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef with Down Under Dives. Dinner with Ruthie, Dante, and Augustin @ the Night Markets
-Stories: We purchased a package which included two scuba dives along with snorkeling gear for our trip to the reef. Unfortunately, our boat ride to the reef was very rough and almost everyone felt sea sick. On the bright side, a group of boys from our program were also on our boat so it was fun to hang out with them all day.
-Notes/Observations: Scuba diving is scary!! I wasn't really nervous at all until we had to perform safety test underwater in case we were to get water in our masks or our mouthpieces. But once I got that down (and got used to breathing underwater for the first time), it was smooth sailing. Also, I'm pretty sure that the Great Barrier Reef changed my life. It was honestly one of the coolest things that I have ever seen and I'm still in shock that I actually got to experience it.

BU does the GBR

Day 4

-Activities: Palm Cove Beach. Pizza and an unsuccessful viewing of Nashville with Sid and Nat for dinner
-Stories: Palm Cove was beautiful and pretty empty which was kind of surprising. Also the sun is very strong here so we were all feeling pretty toasty after two days on the beach and a trip to the reef.
-Notes/Observations: Although the beaches in Cairns were pretty and definitely way better than the beaches in the States, they didn't compare to those in the Gold Coast. So far, the Gold Coast has undoubtedly been my favorite beach spot and I really want to go back.

Day 5
-Activities: Grade 4 whitewater rafting @ Tully River. Dinner @ Grill'd.
-Stories: Soooo sorry that there was no video of our whitewater rafting adventure. Literally right as we were about to begin walking to the river, I broke my GoPro case, therefore rendering it susceptible to water. This made me very sad. But it's okay because we still got some great pictures! Other than that, our trip was pretty awesome. Our guide was super fun and we had some very cool people in our boat. We went through some rapids backwards, got very wet, and even flipped over once. Such fun!
-Notes/Observations: A lot of Asians come to Cairns. That's all I'll say about that.

Day 6
-Activities: Trip to Fitzroy Island (kayaking, snorkeling, paddle boarding, and hiking). Homemade dinner in our hotel.
-Stories: When we weren't kayaking or paddle boarding, I basically spent all my time snorkeling around the island. The GBR is so diverse and interesting, I couldn't get enough of it. Also the turtle!!! Probably one of the most magical experiences I've ever had. The turtle wasn't bothered by me at all, he just kept eating his lunch on the ocean floor as we bonded and became best friends. We swam together for about 30 minutes before he waved to me and was gone forever. We also saw a wild echidna while we were hiking to one of the beaches! For those of you who don't know, an echidna is like a cross between a porcupine and an anteater that walks like a little bear. He was so cute and some guy that was on the trail behind us even stopped to pet him. There was no way that I was going to do that though, that thing has some scary spikes.
-Notes/Observations: Fitzroy was breathtaking. The water was the exact color of blue Gatorade and some of the clearest I've ever seen. There wasn't much sand on the beaches, only this weird calcified coral looking stuff that sounded like glass when stepped on and was super painful on your feet. Still really cool though.

Day 7

Activities: Kuranda Rainforest. Naps on naps on naps. Questionable night. 

Stories: We took a bus to the rainforest expecting, well, rainforest, but instead we were met with a small town filled with markets and restaurants.  We went to go fulfill my lifelong dream of holding a koala (which was amazing) and then shopped around the town for the rest of the day. No rainforest hiking was involved. 

Notes/Observations: Holding a koala is illegal in all of the Australian states except for Queensland, isn't that weird?

Because I just love this so much 

Day 8

Activities: Cairns Lagoon. Flight back to Sydney

Stories: The lagoon is just a giant swimming pool with some sand around it located next to the ocean. It was pretty convenient though because my skin was tired of being in salt water all the time. Lake Michigan did not prepare me for this. After a couple hours lounging by the pool, we did some souvenir shopping and then headed to the airport for our flight. 

Notes/Observations: While we were gone, the state of New South Wales (where Sydney is) had day light savings time so now I'm 16 hours ahead of Chicago instead of 15. Why different parts of Australia do day light savings time at separate times is a mystery to me. On another note, we're happy to be back in Sydney!!

This week we start the second half of our semester here in Sydney which means the start of our internships! I will be interning at Lucas Gardens, a school for kids with special needs. I will be working in classrooms of all ages and basically helping the teachers with whatever they need, as well as observing and aiding the PT that is on staff at the school. It should be pretty fun and I'm looking forward to it! I shall update you more on my internship in my next blog once it actually begins. 

Til next time readers.

Peace. Love. GBR.