Straddie take two!!

10.17.10

Well,

I had another eventful weekend, though, the weekdays…not so much. I had a paper due Tuesday and was stressed out about turning it in and everything. Once I was done with that a weight was lifted and I started relaxing and calming down knowing more stress is on the way. One of those stresses includes a “Places of Worship” paper. For this assessment, I have to visit three different places of worship and compare contrast them. While in Sydney with Erica, I went to the Hillsong church. This past weekend I went to place number 2, a Buddhist chanting service at the Amitabha Buddhist Association (AMB).

The chanting service was completely in Chinese so, I had no idea what was going on. The place was gorgeous, though. I did get a little lost trying to find it since it was hidden in a neighborhood and I could not figure out through Google maps, or the public transportation website where the bus was going to drop me off in reference to the AMB. After wandering or 10-15 minutes, I finally found it. After a little bit of an awkward introduction, I was guided around by one of the receptionists. I did have to take off my shoes in all of the buildings and had to wear a haiqing (a robe) while in the chanting space. The service was 2 hours long. The room had the Three Buddha’s at the front with two other statues. All five were covered in shiny gold clothing and adornments. There was a table at the front and a podium behind it. Most people used the cushions on the floor rather than chairs. They used a lot more percussive sounds than I was expecting. Almost the entire two hours was full of either chanting or bells and drums. It was quite an experience. On top of that, my journey involved getting soaked in the rain since I decided it would be a fantastic idea to leave my umbrella in my room instead of grabbing it when I realized there was a high chance of rain.

Saturday was a lazy day for me to work on more assignments and continue relaxing until more stress hits. I also decided to find the Southern Cross (constellation only visible in southern hemisphere) for Erica since she did not get to see it due to cloudy weather. Saturday night was the first night in almost two weeks that I could see stars and was able to find it. Unfortunately, my camera is not awesome enough to photo graph it well. I am hoping I will get into a darker part of the city and try taking a picture once again.

Sunday, I returned to North Stradbroke Island. QUEST, the international student org at UQ, planned a day trip across Moreton Bay to Straddie. Once again, I got to take the vehicle ferry. Once we got to the island, we parked and had a boomerang workshop. This included painting boomerangs and throwing them. Once we got done there, we headed out to point lookout. The views were awesome. Thankfully, it was clear and not as rainy and muggy as Friday. While there, we saw two whales breaching and 6 dolphins catching waves. It was awesome. After that we headed back to the park where we were throwing boomerangs since there was a beach there for us to swim. We were there for about an hour and a half and I continued throwing boomerangs and played catch with both a rugby football and an American football. I had a great time.