Jul 2008

I said I'd keep my posts interesting, and this might be one of the more incredible ones.

Last Thursday, I got hit by a car.

Here's what happened:

A group of UTS students - Bonnie, Awa, Anja, Erica, Nizam and myself - met up for lunch in Glebe, a trendy neighborhood not far from UTS. The weather was horrible - pouring rain - even though it had been pretty sunny throughout the week. We decided to brave the rain and head over to Paddy's Market for some light shopping and cheap groceries. We walked down Broadway with me and Nizam walking further behind, deep in a passionate conversation about how San Francisco's politics and ecofriendliness compared to Sydney's (dorks much?). We had just crossed Jones St and were approaching UTS when, out of nowhere, a BANG sounded behind us. Before Nizam and I could turn around, a white sedan sideswiped past us and knocked me to the ground, spun 180 degrees over the slippery ground, hit an Asian couple who had been walking in front of us, and finally came to rest on the side steps of the main UTS building.

It was insane: people starting running towards the scene, pulling out cell phones and yelling for the police as sirens wailed in the distance. I got up shakily, clamped a wad of tissues onto my bleeding arm (I had a deep cut on my elbow - thank goodness I carry so much random shit in my purse) and walked towards my friends, my swollen knee throbbing. The man who was hit, a young University of Sydney student from Hong Kong, was bleeding from his head and kneeling over his wife, who lay motionless near the car. Apparently she'd been hit and thrown against the building, so she was in a lot of pain. Paramedics arrived quickly and took her away in an ambulance, with me and the man in a second ambulance. Despite the situation, the paramedics were actually quite humorous, and because they were on strike that week, the ambulance ride was free!

We stayed in the hospital for a good four hours (my new friends are absolute saints) while I got stitches in my elbow and waited to get my knee x-rayed. The woman, being in critical condition, was whisked away to the operating rooms (I've since learned that she survived, but has several fractured bones throughout her body.) The man was bandaged up and sat in the waiting room with some friends who arrived sooner after we got there. The whole experience was terrifying and left us shaken up for hours, but what really helped was talking to each other. Had it not been for my friends (especially my flatmate Awa, who rode in the ambulance and stayed with me the entire time), I probably wouldn't have mentally recovered as quickly.

Physically, I'm pretty much fine - my stitches came out on Tuesday, and most of the swelling on my knee and hips has gone down (thanks to the bags of frozen vegetables I laid on for hours.) The university has been amazing: I've received several calls and emails from folks in student services, the counseling center, and the international office, plus a personal visit from a couple housing people who brought me a teddy bear and a box of chocolate truffles. I've never felt so supported by a school in my life, so this was overwhelming but wonderful

The driver, a punkass guy who looked about 20 or so, is being charged on two counts by police thanks to the accounts of 16 witnesses. The cop told me he'd been driving about 80 mph...no wonder he lost control on the rain-soaked road.

My friends have since tried to convince me that not all Aussie drivers are crazy, but I'm starting to think they're worse here than in San Francisco - something I never imagined could be possible.

See? Told you I wouldn't bore you.

• UPDATE: 18 June 2009: I attended the court hearing today as a subpoenaed witness and the driver was charged with two counts: reckless driving and causing bodily harm (turns out the woman who'd been hit suffered four fractured vertebrae and a fractured pelvis - ouch. She was on crutches for three months and in a back brace for six. She still suffers frequent back pain.) His penalties were: an $800 fine, loss of his green-P license for a year (which means he didn't have his full license yet), and a strike on his criminal record.

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After checking out of my hotel on Friday, I caught a cab to UTS and lugged my bags (yes, there were a lot of them) to the Housing office to find out which apartment I'd been assigned to. My complex, a 58-student brick building in Chippendale called Geegal (an Aboriginal word for "shelter") is a 10 minute walk from the main downtown UTS campus (fortunately, one of the RN's - residential networkers - had a car and offered to drive me and my suitcases to my place. Thank goodness.) The building's great - there are several one- to three-story flats surrounding a BBQ patio area, a rec room with a tv and pool table, laundry facilities, and just about everyone has their own room. My flat, a third-floor, six-bedroom place on the corner, has a balcony that overlooks the BBQ area. My room (which has to be one of the biggest, I love it) is towards the back, so it's very quiet and overlooks the street next to Geegal. The surrounding flats are so cute, very artsy-San Francisco and a great view to wake up to every morning.

The outside of my building - I live at the top, above the rec room.

So far, my roommates seem great. There's Awa, the RN who is an Aussie but spent six months interning in Ethiopia before enrolling at UTS; Ethan, a Chinese guy I just met yesterday; Will, another Aussie native from the country (inland, basically); Melissa, who I met briefly but seems nice; and Ronald, the last guy I have yet to meet (I think he's still home in Zimbabwe). Our flat's pretty big, so I doubt it'll ever feel too crowded.

Awa and I on top of the Univ. of Sydney parking structure at sunset - the Univ. of Technology Sydney is the eyesore in the background

Moving into an apartment with absolutely nothing (besides sundresses, a few jackets, and 14 pairs of shoes) is a bizarre experience: all I had was a desk and chair, a closet, a shelf, a set of filing drawers, and a bed (a king single, which are wayyy better than the narrow extra-long beds I remember from the dorms). I had no towels, no sheets, no alarm clock or hangers - everything was bare. Fortunately, my downstairs neighbors Janett (a girl from Germany who'd lived in Geegal for a semester already) and Zach (an Aussie from Manly Beach), the sweethearts they are, took me to Target (!!!) and the grocery store. This was a completely normal experience except for four key differences: 1) Both Target and Coles, the grocery store, are located in the same mall - a mall that also includes a K-Mart, a movie theater, and a liquor store; 2) Instead of escalator stairs, they have ramps between levels - and apparently you're not supposed to take your shopping cart up them. Whoops; 3) You cannot order "a house coffee" here - it has to be "a flat white" (coffee and milk), a "tall black" (straight coffee), or some sort of flavored coffee - and it all costs at least $3 (a mocha at Starbucks is $4.25!!); and 4) We loaded up our shopping cart AND TOOK IT HOME WITH US. Yes, people take shopping carts from the mall, wheel their purchases back to their apartments, and leave the cart outside their complex to be picked up and taken back to the mall. Now this is a country that caters to the needs of college students!

We had a BBQ in Geegal that night in honor of a guy named Mune (I think that's how you spell it), who was moving back to Japan the following day. A "typical" Aussie BBQ, as they called it, consisted of sausage and grilled onions on slices of white bread, potato chips and beer. I shared some wine with a guy from Paris, swapped stories with a guy from southern Italy, chatted with a girl from South Korea, and couldn't believe how at home I felt.

I spent the weekend between Target (where the manager, a UTS postgrad student, now knows my name, major and home country because I've visited so many times) and various apartments. Geegal reminds me of the dorms: people are always milling around each others' places or hanging out in the downstairs common room, and everyone's eager to meet everyone else. Dylan and James, two Aussie flatmates, introduced me to some great Aussie music (Silverchair, the Potbellies, and of course ACDC) and gave Bonnie (a friend from SF State who also happens to live in Geegal) and I our first tastes of Vegemite. It's served on a piece of toast spread with marmalade and to be honest, it tastes a lot like soy sauce...but one bite was enough.

Orientation Week, or O-Week, was actually kind of fun: we spent the morning/afternoon listening to presentations on campus, then had BBQs and pub crawls with the other international students at night. Because the drinking age is 18 here, everyone from the residences and O-Week is able to meet up at the bars and night clubs, making it a great way to meet people. Most of the European students I've met, namely from Germany and Denmark, have perfect English; the Spanish speakers seem to struggle a bit more, but they're still loads of fun to talk to.

Since the rain has finally stopped (it's been pouring for the past three days - hello, winter), some of us are going to spend the weekend exploring Paddy's Market (a kind of farmers' market upstairs and compacted Canal Street downstairs) and walking the famous path between Coogee and Bondi Beach. Classes start next week, so we need to fit in as much as possible this weekend!

So, it's been a few days since I said goodbye to all of you and flew 13 hours to the southern hemisphere. Here's how I got here:

First, United Airlines told me my flight was overbooked by SIXTY PEOPLE (because of World Youth Day and the Pope's presence in Sydney), that I had not yet been assigned a seat, and therefore might have to fly out the following night instead. After waiting anxiously by the gate and watching the waiting area empty, I was the second-to-last person called to the desk...where they handed me a business class ticket. I flew to Sydney in a reclining chair next to a sweet Aussie lady, with white tablecloths and free wine, for just over 700 dollars.

My sister/best friend Katie and my loving parents in the SFO elevator.

Once I got to Sydney, I was able to navigate my way (with two suitcases the size of me) to a van that took me and a bunch of other college-aged people to our hotels and hostels. The driver was crazy and made a lot of random stops, but I had a blast bonding with everyone in the van: two guys from the Univ. of Arizona who were going to spend two weeks backpacking and longboarding around Australia, a British girl from Nottingham (Robin Hood!) who's going to the Univ. of New South Wales, a girl from Germany going to study marine biology in Darwin (northern Australia), an Austrian girl in town for her boyfriend's piano competition, and a girl from South Korea...we were a melting pot on wheels. We were all staying in different areas, so this was a nice way to briefly tour the city. I was dropped off last at my hotel by the Circular Quay, which is kind of like Fisherman's Wharf at Sydney Harbour. I could see part of the Harbour Bridge from my 12th floor window.

Since I actually slept a lot on the plane (thank you, melatonin sleeping pills), I felt awake enough to quickly shower at the hotel and then set off to explore my new city. I started at ANZ bank (right across the street), where I opened an Australian bank account before continuing my exploration. I walked though this little square at Martin Place adjacent to Pitt St (where my hotel was; it's one of the main streets downtown), past Sydney Hospital and the Library of NSW (both of which look like castles), and ultimately hit the Royal Botanical Gardens. That place was beeeautiful - lots of exotic plants (the only one I recognized were the Birds of Paradise), lawns, fountains...and people jogging. It was probably 11 or almost noon and there were tons of people running through the park or having business meetings while walking along the paths. The weather was amazing for winter - sunny, probably 65 degrees Fahrenheit - so I'd probably do the same thing on my lunch break.

I saw the Harbour Bridge and Opera House just ahead of the gardens and my god, those are two incredible pieces of architecture. The bridge is a good 10 stories high and 1,650 feet long (although according to my current traveler partner Bill Bryson in his book "A Sunburned Country," it is 0.25 inches shorter than the arched Bayonne Bridge in New York. Whoops.) Like the Golden Gate Bridge in SF or the Statue of Liberty in NY, the Opera House and the bridge are the monuments that show you've really made it to Sydney. I took a ton of photos then, and returned the following morning at sunrise (thanks, jetlag) to take more. I hope to see a show at the Opera House, but like Bryson, I'm pretty much obsessed with the bridge. It's stunning and powerful and probably the scariest thing to climb, but I still hope to do that too.

The lovely Opera House and proof that I really made it to Sydney!

Other cool things I've done...

- Saw the Pope TWICE. I technically can't count the first time because I wasn't even sure which car he was in (coming from a service near the Royal Botanical Gardens), but I definitely saw him in his little "popemobile" waving down Pitt St that evening. Whoo hoo!

- Met a nice guy from Colombia who was in town for World Youth Day - we went to a bar and had a couple VB's (Victoria Bitter - a beer I actually really like here) and taught each other essential phrases in Spanish ("Quiero una cerveza" - I want a beer) and English (I taught him "party foul" when he spilled his beer. Haha.)

- Had dinner and breakfast at a cafe overlooking the harbour at the Circular Quay. Beautiful view and funny people watching...all the people from World Youth Day travel in packs by country, waving their national flags and singing anthems or something.

Stopping to capture the sunrise over the harbour.

- Took a walk through Hyde Park (reminds me more of Central Park than Golden Gate Park though), past St. Mary's Cathedral (where the Pope has held a couple services), through Paddy's Market (downstairs is like a confined, indoor Canal Street) and saw, in the distance...UTS!! My university is on the outskirts of the city, and from the outside it's not the most attractive building. I walked through it and past a bunch of the offices and classrooms, which made it look better. I have orientation next week and classes start the last week of July.

- Since I was in the area, I also took a walk to Chippendale, where my apartment is located. It's a student housing building made of townhouses for 58 or so students, and while the area looked a little dodgy at first, the street itself is actually nice. It's hard to describe, so I took lots of photos. The area, with its little avenues and sweet terraced homes, reminds me a lot of a quaint little neighborhood you'd see in England.

- On my walk back, I passed a ton of shops - one of which was Kookai, a store I'd been to in Paris when I was 13. I walked in and was just browsing around when one of the salesgirls started talking to me (she liked my accent.) When I said I was from CA, she flipped - apparently she'd just spent the winter in South Lake Tahoe as a ski instructor and absolutely loved it. Oh, and she goes to UTS. Small world.