January 12

Basically we were supposed to have 8 hours of class today...

We started off with Coastal Resource Management, and learned about the Adaptive Environmental Management. I was a little hurt when Ron (our prof) said something to the effect of engineers tend to botch up environmental management by being stubborn and insisting that our way is the better way. The thing is though, we were essentially learning the Express-Test cycle, only you have the input of community members instead of a single company. And you test and re-test until you get something that you're relatively happy with--it's the essence of good design engineering!

Luckily, Ron let us out early after 2 hours of lecture, so most of us wandered over to the library to set up our internet. It was pretty funny to see all of us sitting there in the library with all of our laptops. It's amazing how much the internet has grown in the past 10 years--now it's something that's essential to communication, and we all feel kind of lost from home without it. Even when I was abroad in Japan a few years ago, I never felt like I needed internet--I was fine just calling home and writing postcards...

After lunch we went back for a whole afternoon of Australian Studies. I got food coma, so I was nodding off for a bit, unfortunately. The history and culture of Australia is pretty interesting and very different from America. An interesting concept that has been thrown around is the idea of cultural inferiority. I have absolutely no conception of that because everyone tends to admire American products, etc, but apparently Australia is still a colony of Great Britain, and many still feel inferior to the British.

After dinner we watched Rabbit Proof Fence, which is a story about the "Stolen Generations." I missed the beginning of it, but I think the premise (based on a true story) is about how there used to be a law where all half-castes (half white/half aboriginee) became custody of the Australian government. We think it was partly to "civilize" them, but another racist concept tossed about was how to control this "third race." They contemplated returning them to the natives, or "breeding" the aboriginee out of them. Anyways, it's the story of these 3 girls (2 sisters, 1 cousin) who get sent to Moore River Camp and they basically run away from the camp and make their way back home. It's pretty interesting how the oldest one, Molly, (who was only 14) kept them alive and away from the tracker. Their cousin got captured because she split off to find her mother, and was never seen again. Molly and her sister Daisy made it back home, where they went into the desert to hide for a bit. They grew up, and she married and had 2 children and all were sent back to Moore River Camp again. Molly escaped with her children, but then 2 years later, her youngest was taken (at age 3) and was never seen again. It's really amazing to hear that she made this journey TWICE! It's really sad though to hear what happened to everyone. I guess every country has some sort of dark history of how they've treated the natives.

After the movie, DS and I were walking back to Henderson (our building within Emmanuel College), and we saw a possum! It was really not shy at all. BK came out and INSISTED that it was a baby kangaroo... We took pictures of it for a while. The nightlife here is really interesting. They've got bugs, of course, and bats and cane toads and tiny geckoes and possums and random birds that I've never seen--only heard. The nights are still hot and humid though... if we get lucky there'll be the occasional breeze, but it's most definitely summer here.