I Can Find the Desert Anywhere

Wow, now this is a surprise, and a pleasant one.  My most excellent friend Kerry Noonan found pictures on the CIEE website from the Silk Road professional development tour that I took several years ago.  Kerry and several other folks from Champlain were in China at the same time - we all met up in Beijing - but they took off on a separate CIEE trip, leaving me to go my own way (which is the norm).  Here I am bestride a camel out in the wilds of western China.  As my friends like to point out, even when I go to China I end up drawn to the desert or the Islamic world.

I'm doing my best Aurel Stein impersonation.

Australian UFO?

No, just a really cool exhibit outside the National Gallery.

It did catch my attention.

Big Brekkie

One of my peculiarities - well, one of my many peculiarities - is that I always take a picture of the first meal that I have in a country.  Why?  I have no idea.  It's one of those odd traditions which people have whose origins are lost in the hoary mists of time.  Anyway, I arrived in Canberra last Sunday around noon, and by the time I made it out to my hotel it was early afternoon.  The Tall Trees Best Western was out in the midst of a pleasant but nondescript suburb, and the options for eating were few.  In the end I ate a couple meals at the Ainslie Football Club, which doubled as a casino.  However, my first meal was at a cute little cafe in a strip mall.  Here's the resulting picture of the Big Brekkie.  I don't normally all of my goofy first meal photos, thank god, but I'm posting this one because 1) I love the name Big Brekkie, and 2) every meal I ate in Australia featured a pile of meat like this.  It's normally the Americans who insist upon a small mountain of meat on every plate, but apparently the Australians don't take a back seat to anyone.

After a return to my normal breakfasts of fruit, yogurt and Cheerios I could use a Big Brekkie right now.

Exhaustion

Every so often I come across an old picture which amuses/amazes/intrigues me.  Tonight I was searching around on my computer for a Powerpoint on preparing annotated bibliographies and, as one would expect when faced with the tedium of discussing annotated bibliographies, I became easily distracted and wandered into one of my picture folders.  Here's one from my trip to China a few years ago, which was right in the middle of an epic seven week seven country trip.  I think the picture was taken somewhere in western China, although I'm not certainly exactly where.  What strikes me about the picture of how absolutely exhausted I look, and how I feel much the same way right now.  Some of my current exhaustion relates to the manic travel I've been doing lately - as we discussed earlier, I ended up travelling around 7/8 of the way around the globe in around a week. Having said that, travel is a funny thing.  In today's world we complain about how tiring the thirty hour trip from Canberra, Australia to Burlington, Vermont is, while losing sight of the fact that it's going to the opposite side of the planet in a little more than a day.  Imagine how long that trip would have been a hundred years ago.  That said, I am exhausted at the moment, both physically and spiritually.  For the second straight semester I have an overload, although that is tiring in a good way - I do love to teach, and it feels great to be back in the classroom full-time and not fighting the endless battles of running the Global Modules program.  I think I'm so exhausted now because I'm just tired of waiting for my life to begin.  I tore up my life a few years ago - and caused some real pain to people I care about a lot - with the goal of finally finding some peace and happiness.  Truthfully, I feel that I'm on the right path and I think that the next few months will bring me where I need to be - just wish I were there already.  However, just as with travel, I guess it's all perspective.  It wasn't that long ago that I was pretty miserable with seemingly no hope of anything better - and wallowing in the unhappiness that I probably so richly deserved - and now I'm in a really great relationship, and that's what I try and focus on.  As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, life is only what we deem it to be.

I think if you go far enough down the itinerary  you get to Happy.  The key is to keep travelling.

Tweet Dreams

At the recent SAFFIRE Festival in Canberra I experienced a new (at least to me) phenomenon at conferences: tweeting.  Now, I've been tweeting for a while, as the hundred people who follow @scuddertravel know (which, I guess, is still more than read this silly blog).  Last year I became quite fascinated with the concept of tweeting, mainly because I started following some really interesting folks from the Middle East, as especially from Yemen.  The immediacy of the views and responses is sometimes startling.  A number of times I would hear about events days before it made Aljazeera or the BBC (I've essentially given up on CNN).  There is obviously a dark side, in that you will often get an almost hysterical overheating on topics, some of which don't really exist and have taken on a life of their own.  For the first time this semester I've incorporated tweeting into a couple of my classes, with mixed results - although I suspect some of that is my fault as well. Anyway, at the SAFFIRE Festival we were encouraged to tweet, even during the other presentations, which was a little disconcerting at first, mainly because I find it rude to tweet or play on the smart phone or tablet or laptop when someone else is presenting.  Still, it did lead to some instant feedback, which I guess was supposed to inspire more conversation.  The tweets popped up continually, in sort of a swirling prezi-like fashion, on screens around the facility, including the big screen at times.  It was a little bizarre to be sitting in the audience and suddenly see your comments spring up on the screens while the person was still talking.  My good friend Cinse tells me that this is starting to become the norm.  I'm not quite certain how I feel about it, but, as with most things, I'm open to the experience.

Of course, it almost inspired me to talk smack about other groups at the conference, knowing that it would splash across the screens.

New Friends Down Under

One of the great things about attending conferences is making new friends, and this is especially true when the conference is an international conference.  I've been really fortunate to make so many great friends overseas, and they have proved to be wonderful contacts both professionally and personally.  And often they are so generous in sharing their time and their local knowledge with you.  I'll talk about my new friends Mikaela and Ruth soon, and the fun day we spent last Thursday travelling all around Canberra and beyond.  In the meantime, let me post a picture of three great folks that I was fortunate to meet and spend some time with.  I met Justin Brow, on the right below, at the SAFFIRE Festival.  He was another one of the featured speakers and we were on a panel together Monday night, and then spent most of Tuesday at an educational jam.  At the end of the day on Tuesday I was heading out to catch a taxi when Justin asked if I wanted to a) go see a kangaroo (more on my quest for kangaroos later), and b) grab some dinner.  The answer to both was yet, and both adventures were a great success.  We eventually made our way downtown to meet a couple, Tina and Roger, who were friends of Justin's.  It ended up being a great time, featuring adult beverages at a couple bars and then dinner at a local Thai place.  I really like Australia, and, as I often say, I suppose there must be unpleasant Australians somewhere, I just haven't met them.  Imagine the opposite of the normally reserved, if not cold, Vermonters and you'll about have it.

Tina, Roger and Justin.  Great folks.

Old Man in Australia

I snapped this odd picture while spending Thursday on a lovely driving tour with my new Australian friends Ruth and Mikaela, which I will have to devote substantial time to documenting.  This unique little rock formation reminded me of its more famous, and now deceased, cousin in New Hampshire.

Maybe Australia has room for another old man.

Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia Redux

And just to finish up my earlier posts relating to the Champlain College Iron Chef competition.  Our team, the Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia, did, in fact, finish dead last.  We were not as ripped off as our excellent friends Steve Wehmeyer and Mike Lange, who clearly should have won.  Still, it was an excellent time for a great cause.

Sure, we lost, but it's not over.

Yeah, I Was in Australia

And the wildlife gives it away, really before anything else.

And these guys, and around twenty of their friends, were right on the University of Canberra campus.  More kangaroo postings later.

Black swans are the norm in Australia.  Oddly, I had my students watch the entire  Swan Lake ballet in my Heroines & Heroes class while I was out of town.

And this guy was hanging around right downtown outside the amazing Australian War Memorial.

I Think I Was in Australia

Just back from a whirlwind trip to Canberra, Australia to speak at the SAFFIRE Festival, an educational conference focusing on educational innovation and sustainability.  The good folks at the University of Canberra contacted me out of the blue and asked me to fly down and it was a wonderful experience.  It was only my second visit to Australia, having gone there for a couple days seven or eight years ago.  Back then I came back with the worst jet lag I've ever had, and I swore that I would never go back to Australia unless I was going for at least three weeks.  And, of course, I did go back, for essentially a four and a half day visit.  I couldn't be happier that I went.  I made some great new friends, saw some amazing things, and learned a lot (and may even have contributed a bit) at the conference.  Expect lots of posts.  To get me started, I was really struck, as I was last time, by the glaring similarities and subtle differences to life in the US.  I really like the Australians and, as I've said before, I'm sure there are unpleasant Australians, but they must keep them hidden away (essentially I think they just send them to the UAE, although even there I met some wonderful Aussies).  The trip was a blur and I can't believe that I'm back here in my little apartment in Winooski, after my Burlington-JFK-LA-Sydney-Canberra-Sydney-LA-JFK-Burlington odyssey.  Adding in the trip the week before to Abu Dhabi, and I think I covered about 7/8 of the globe in a week.

I guess you know that you're in Australia, or at least another member of the  British  empire (other than the US, obviously), when you come across cricket batting cages.

Or pick-up rugby games in the park.

Missing Rome

Just made it back from a week in Abu Dhabi last night, and am grinding my way through the mother of all jet lags.  I made myself get up at 5:30 and decided to push myself through until I collapse tonight, which is my usual approach.  I had a wonderful time in Abu Dhabi, including a belated and lovely Valentine's trip to Liwa with the excellent Miss Laura.  Doubtless there will be more on the wonderful spring break trip.  Today, for some reason, I'm thinking about Rome, and not simply because 1.2 billion Catholics are waiting for the new Pope to be named.  To be fair, Laura is entirely responsible for Benedict stepping down, but that's another story.  Anyway, here's a picture I snapped in a lovely square where we stopped for drinks.

I don't know why I like this picture, but for some reason it really captures the mood of a lovely day.