To the Tropics!

July 18, 2012

ROCKHAMPTON, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA – It was another early 6am wakeup call for the delegation, with a 630 checkout from our hotel. All of our luggage was loaded and keys collected by 704am – pretty impressive for our first checkout thus far!

We had breakfast at the hotel, then departed on the A1 motorway north for the Rockhampton area, some 600km+ away. The A1 motorway is the primary road up the east coast of Australia (and in fact the entire country of Australia), and goes from Sydney to Cairnes and beyond – we will be spending most of our trip driving up and down the A1. For the first time, it is actually raining during daytime, but since we’re on the coach it isn’t such a big deal – if it’s going to rain, we have pretty good timing actually.

Four hours of coach riding and contemporary pop hits later, we arrived at Gin Gin, a small country town right off the motorway. We visited the Gin Gin Primary School, grades 1-7, which has 372 students from as far as a one hour bus ride away – quite the daily round trip commute! For the past 21 years, People to People students have been visiting the school, donating school supplies (as we did), books (their library has more on American history than most US school libraries do), and money in the form of lunches. As we were having lunch at Gin Gin, they get a small profit from each lunch, and the funds are put back into the school. Over a thousand delegations worth of lunches later, and the school has gone from below-average to the second-best test scores in all of Queensland! We ate our lunch (with a delicious mini meat pie) over a short lecture, and then got to meet and play with the students during their recess. They were all smiles, and plenty of waves and high fives went around. It was definitely another unique “People to People moment.”

July 18 - Visiting Gin Gin State School, Queensland

Our entire delegation donated several large bags of school supplies as part of our community service

After our school visit, we continued north along the A1 until we eventually made it to Rockhampton, the cattle capital of Australia, and the Tropic of Capricorn! Upon entering the tropics, we found that most of the students had never been to the tropics before, which was cool for them. We got off the coach and took photos at the sign, just as the rain held off for a bit. 

We made it to the tropics!!!

Beaches and Aquariums, Aussie Style!

July 17, 2012

CALOUNDRA, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA – After we all got a much-needed full night’s sleep, in a bed, we woke up to a traditional English breakfast at the hotel, and a few students tried out the vegemite. Most of them were okay with it or even seemed to enjoy it!

July 17 - Our lovely hotel from brekky!

During our free time after breakfast, I headed out for a run! As readers of this blog know, I am currently training for the Chicago Marathon, and as such, while it is inevitable I will miss a few runs, I am going to try as much as possible to get some runs in. I only needed to do four miles today, so I found the beach path a few blocks from our hotel and took it down and back from central Caloundra, all while the sun was reflecting off the waves towards us – it was beautiful, with more good weather on our side!

After the run (and a quick shower), we boarded the coach and ironically had lunch at Sizzler, of all places. In any event, it was quite good, and most of the students got to try traditional Aussie dessert pavlova, which I have had before and like a lot! It is very sugary but once in awhile, that is great!

Amazing TL's at Mooloolaba Beach (from left: Stephanie, Kelly, Me, Kerri, Paula)

From lunch we headed to Mooloolaba Beach for the afternoon. Everyone put their feet in the water, took some photos of the waves, got some sun, collected seashells, and threw around a Frisbee or an Aussie-rules rugby football. We had a couple of hours in the sun and water, and then we went to nearby Underwater World, which is essentially a world-class aquarium in a small town on the water, much like Monterey, CA or Seward, Alaska.

Students learning about salt water fish at Underwater World

At Underwater World we had a special private twilight after-hours tour, another one of those unique things People to People gets, and it was really great to see all of the exhibits without fighting crowds or anything. We had two tour guides with us in the exhibits, and we got a private seal show (that was really impressive – the seal standing on one arm while balancing a ball on its nose, that sort of thing), where one of our students got to actually feed the seal! We saw sea otters (one’s name was Kaos, with a K, and another Mayhem, haha), and we got to hold a turtle, starfish, and other sea creatures too!  We had dinner at Underwater World, then received program completion certificates, and retired back to our Caloundra hotel for the night. 

Sweet, Cuddly Koalas...

July 16, 2012

BRISBANE, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA – We had an absolutely fabulous day on arrival to Australia! Brisbane had seen rain every day for two weeks straight, and we were quite prepared for some lousy weather, but as we descended and the sun came up, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! Once we landed, we had a brief quarantine on the plane (something new for me), then did the standard painful hour wait for no reason at immigration. We all got our stamps, nobody lost any luggage, and then did the K-9 sniffer dog lines for customs, and luckily everyone listened and the dogs didn’t find anything.

We turned the corner into the public area of the airport, made a left, and there was our Delegation Manager, Anthony! To give you a little background, Anthony just did this trip with another group before us, and in total we are his fourth People to People delegation over two summers. Beyond that, however, he has some extremely impressive travel experience, having been to six continents (I am giving him a bit of a hard time about Antarctica, haha), but he has also been to some 85ish countries, WAY more than whatever number I am at (I think around 30).

After we met Anthony, some of the students exchanged $USD to $AUD, and we headed off to meet Rob, our coach driver while we are here in Queensland. We loaded the coach and set off on our first coach ride as a full delegation – our first destination? The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary!!!

The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is a private non-profit that started off with just two Koalas, but has since grown to the size of a large zoo, protecting all kinds of Australian animals – some are popular, like the koala and the kangaroo, and others are rare birds and other species that most people don’t even know. Everyone got to hold a koala, which was awesome! When I was at Taronga Zoo in Sydney in August 2011, I paid extra for the “koala experience” that got me very up and close to them, but I wasn’t allowed to touch the koala. Here, not only were we touching them, but holding them in a big koala hug! It was really quite awesome – the koala smelled horrible, but that’s mainly a product of them eating nothing but eucalyptus leaves all day long. Their cuteness and the softness of their fur was more than worth it, even factoring in the smell. In addition to the koalas, students fed kangaroos and their baby joeys, saw a very active platypus, a Tasmanian devil, and other animals. We also saw the “Birds of Prey” show, where one of our students actually got to have a bird land on her arm, which was impressive given the wingspan of the bird was about as wide as she is tall.

July 16, 2012 - Holding an ADORABLE Koala at Lone Pine, Queensland!

After our first real Australian meal at Lone Pine (chips with tomato sauce = fries with ketchup), we had a short city tour of the city of Brisbane. Brisbane is the third-largest city in Australia (after Sydney and Melbourne) and is the capital of Queensland, which as a state essentially covers the northeast corner of the country, along with the Great Barrier Reef (which runs adjacent to the Queensland coast). In addition to Brisbane’s Parliament House, one really interesting place we passed by was General Douglas MacArthur’s US Pacific WWII HQ, a building in the CBD (CBD = Central Business District = “Downtown”). By hosting the US HQ for the Pacific theater of war, Brisbane became the most important city between Honolulu and Tokyo. Everybody knows all about the battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Did you know their preparations and logistics were made from Brisbane? We also saw Cathedral Square and Brisbane Square, the two main central parts of the CBD, and the Botanical Gardens, which lay adjacent to the Brisbane River. In late-2010/early-2011 the Brisbane River flooded to historical levels, due to torrential rains combined with poor dam management upriver. The resulting floods made international and even US news, which you may recall – standing some 30+ feet above the current water level, Anthony told us we would have been underwater at the height of those floods. Pretty hard to imagine all of that water flowing through the middle of a major city.

Next stop is Caloundra, a small town an hour north of here on the coast, where we will be staying two nights.

LAX-BNE

Hey Everyone! I'm FINALLY hooked up to some decent wifi, and as such am going to start posting my blog entries going back to last week, in order, as per Antarctica. Here's the first one!

July 14-16, 2012:

SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN – Well, nearly a year of preparation later, we are finally underway! Having only been to Sydney, I am most excited to head to Queensland and see a lot of a new part of Australia.

After one last In-N-Out burger, Paula and I met our delegates at one of their houses, took some departure photos, loaded up the coach, and we set off for LAX! Most of the students were a bit sad to say goodbye to their parents, but after a few minutes on the coach we were excited to be officially on the People to People Exploring Australia trip! At LAX, check-in and security were smooth, our gate was very close, and after about 30 minutes we met Kerri, Kelly, and Stephanie, the three other Teacher Leaders on our trip with Paula and I, and the rest of the students from Pennsylvania – we have 44 in total. Those guys flew from Philadelphia to Dallas and onto LAX – needless to say, they were pretty tired by the time we even met them.

About an hour later we all boarded our QF (Qantas) flight 16, a classic Boeing 747-400 double-decker jumbo jet to Brisbane! A few of our students had never even been on a plane before, so they sure got quite the introduction to flying with a 14-hour version!

July 14, 2012 - Our CA delegation departure photo!

Most of us were seated together. I was next to R’Rian, one of our LA-area students, and we had a bit of an adventure from the start. She had a safe lock on her backpack, which is fine, except what she swore was the code, 1-2-1, was not working. Uhhh… uh oh! I tried fiddling around with it for a bit and nothing was doing. After 15 mins of random guessing, I got a little methodological with it and decided I would try every combination, starting with 0-0-0. About 40 mins later, 2-3-3 did the trick, and needless to say she won’t be using that safe lock anymore!

That bit of fun aside, most of us started watching our movies and we were in the air to Australia! To the right we could see the lights of Ventura, and then that was about it! Nothing but the largest ocean in the world, the Pacific, between us and our destination. I watched 21 Jump Street, which was actually quite good, and had some decent chicken breast for dinner. Most of the students were pleasantly surprised by the food as well. After dinner I dozed off to sleep…

About seven hours later, I woke up to see we were over halfway into our flight, had crossed the international date line, and as such it was July 16 – July 15, 2012 will never exist in our lives. Kind of crazy. Dawn slowly approached the plane from behind as we were served breakfast, and we began our descent into Brisbane! 

Next Stop: Queensland!

SAN PEDRO, CA -- Well, only two more days until I am off and at 'em once again! I know, I know, not all that surprising or impressive at this point, but I am finally wrapping up an incredibly busy week of work and starting to get excited about this trip!

I will be traveling with People to People Student Ambassador Programs, as is usually the case when I am not traveling for work or personal vacation, and I am thrilled for all of the students I will be traveling with for a couple of weeks! For most of them, they have never left the United States - indeed, most of the passports are so new you can hardly open them. Many of them have never left their home states of California (half of the group is from the LA-area) or Pennsylvania (the other half is from PA). Needless to say, jumping on a 14-hour flight from LAX to BNE (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) is not something anybody does everyday, and for an 11 or 12-year old, it is a truly life-changing experience to do this with your peers and in an academic setting.

I will save most of the preview for the trip for now, since I will be blogging as much as possible from the trip itself and it will be more fun to read "live" and with pictures, but in short, our itinerary takes us to Brisbane, up to Rockhampton, MacKay, the Great Barrier Reef via Daydream Island (yes, that is the actual name of the place), Toowoomba (yes, another real name, and the second-largest inland city in Australia), back to Brisbane, Sydney, and then back to LAX. My next post should be from Queensland!

Since my last post, I have actually stuck around the LA area for a change. Had a nice Independence Day in Santa Monica with some Penguin Highway members and other friends. Mainly, I have been RUNNING the past few weeks, and I am currently halfway through week six of 18 for my Chicago Marathon training. This week's schedule: Monday was a rest day, Tuesday I ran 3 miles in Burbank in 95F heat, yesterday I ran 6 miles in Burbank in 91F heat, today I'm running 3 miles down here in San Pedro in much cooler weather, tomorrow is off, and then Saturday morning I am doing a whopping 14 miles in Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Marina del Rey, and Malibu first thing in the morning before our Australia trip! Saturday's run will actually be my longest pure running run ever (I've done more distance, but with significant walking involved). A couple more stats... June was my second-best running month ever, at 79.2 miles, and as of last night, I have now crossed the 800-mile running mark since I started tracking and seriously running in August 2010!

Beyond that, work has been going really well, but as I mentioned earlier, I have been insanely busy - mostly a good thing though. Roger Federer smoked then-#1 Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon semifinals and then dispatched hometown favorite and world #4 Andy Murray in the finals for his record 17th career Grand Slam win, tying him with 7 career Wimbledon wins, and restoring him to his rightful place as the #1 tennis player in the world. On Monday he will set a new record for 287 career weeks at #1... do the math and think about how insane that is. Oh, and he's 30. No big deal. Check out this excellent article on Roger that was posted today. Also, check out another excellent article focusing on Novak Djokovic, who was the world #1 for the past year, posted yesterday. I'll tease you with a couple quotes:

Article 1:

For me, the separation of Federer from everyone else comes in what he's done when he hasn't won. True, the 17 Grand Slams are bananas, but it's the 33 consecutive quarterfinal appearances in those Grand Slams that remain beyond comprehension and -- to me it is this fact that trumps almost all others' feats in all other sports -- that seven-year period in which Federer reached at least the semifinals in 23 straight Grand Slams. That is like Woods going seven years straight and never coming in worse than fourth in a major. Just let that marinate for a minute. Finished?

Monumental and epic, even. It really affirms the one element that characterizes greatness more than anything: Consistency. That separates Federer from sports icons and transcends into non-sports categories when trying to universally determine precisely what greatness is.

Article 2:

"My ass would get kicked so fast and so hard," says Ivan Lendl, the No. 1-ranked player through much of the 1980s.

"The level of play is mind-boggling," says John McEnroe, commentating for NBC during a recent match. "I'm still trying to figure out how these guys do it."

Here's how: In his rise to the top of his sport, Djokovic has turned himself into a case study of what it now requires to be No. 1. Every detail is crucial. Every angle is considered. Every moment a chance to gain an incremental edge.

His food is gluten-free. His drinks are a combination of half a dozen vitamins and minerals. His sleep sometimes comes in a hyperbaric chamber. His reading material is about body awareness and mindfulness. His stress is tested using a biofeedback device. His water is lukewarm during matches because cold fluid idles too long in the stomach. His free time is, in fact, "recovery time," arranged by a professional scheduler. His celebratory beer in the locker room after winning a tournament is just that -- a single beer, a reward meant to entice performance.

On that note, I am off for my next run. Have a great couple of days everybody, and I will post next from Australia!!!