leaving on a jet plane

I am currently writing from a Hampton Inn in Jamaica, NY, right near JFK airport. Mom, Lois, and I drove down a day early to beat the potential ice storm. (My mom: "I prayed to the gods that there wouldn’t be a weather event on the 28th, so what do I get? A weather event on the 28th!") I fly out of JFK tomorrow at 4 PM. The first leg of the trip is from here to LA, then from LA to Brisbane, then from Brisbane to Cairns. Quite the journey! Hopefully, the snow/ice won’t prevent any problems with me getting from here to LA.

I spent the day packing. It was a bit last minute; I had been visiting Skidmore on Sunday and Monday, and originally thought I would have an extra day to pack, but I think I’ve squeezed everything I need (and probably a few things I don’t need) into my pack and a duffle. The painted wine glasses I bought for my host family are taking up a bit of space in my carry-on tote, but I think I will be able to manage everything. I’ll meet the other 13 members of my group (12 girls, including me, and 2 boys) in LA, and hopefully we’ll all be able to sleep on the plane!

While I’m not quite sure if I’m been mentally preparing for my semester abroad, I have been academically preparing. I just finished reading The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson to have a greater sense of ecological principles. I also read The American’s Survival Guide to Australia, a useful book which also provided a humorous "American-Australian Dictionary," and parts of Australia for Dummies, a gift from Katrina.

In addition to those texts, on Wednesday, exactly one week before I was to hop on the plane, I discovered that there are 12 introductory articles that I need to read before arriving in Cairns. Unfortunately, the second one that I opened was 53 pages long! It was three chapters from Geoffrey Blainey’s Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia. A lot of the information found in those chapters reminded me of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. So I’ve been reading. Here are some things I’ve learned from the five articles I’ve read so far:

~Aborigines often function under kurruwarri kujarra—"two laws"—Aboriginal laws and laws of the Australian government. Australian customary law is in radical conflict with European law in almost every aspect. After serving 20 months in prison for manslaughter, Stephen Barnes Jungarrayi was released to face yawarra, or "blood." The family members of the man he killed and his own family members beat him as payback and so that he could be accepted back into his community. Such multiculturalism in Australia creates controversial subjects: the preservation of ancient cultures vs. human rights issues.
~Aboriginal Australians inhabited the continent for thousands of years, long before the end of the last ice age. During the last ice age, when much of the world’s water was held in icebergs around the world, the oceans were much shallower. Therefore, the continent of Australia was actually much larger; it would be unrecognizable from its shape as we know it on maps today. As the icebergs melted, aborigines watched the land change as some of their sacred sites were covered by the sea. Aborigines also witnessed the formation of two volcanoes, Mount Eccles and Mount Napier. Such changes in their physical environment not only changed the Aborigines’ way of life, but also the way they viewed the world.
~Aborigines lived nomadic lives. A clear advantage of this lifestyle was the fact that when food was scarce, they could easily move to areas where it was abundant. Curiously, while agriculture developed in nearby areas like New Guinea, Aborigines never adopted such practices. At the time of European arrival, Aborigines were actually better-fed than many people in “more civilized” countries in Europe.
~Pmara kutata = everlasting home. It may be a sacred place in the Australian landscape. Much of the mythology of ancient Aborigines contains accurate ecological information.
~"Ownership of the land in the European sense did not exist: aboriginals were part of the living systems because through their mythology they understood that their ancestors created the landscape and the life on it, including themselves, with each part playing a role in the maintenance of the whole dynamic world. The most important role that an individual could play in this system was that of custodian of the common environment."

I will be continuing to read while waiting for my flight, on the plane, and during layovers, and hopefully I will be able to finish all 12 articles by my arrival. I’m very excited for a semester filled with completely new material, and I’m definitely ready to get my hands dirty! I will continue to enlighten you throughout my time in Australia, and hope that you’ll enjoy reading my notes. Please keep in touch!