Happy Australia Day!

'ello mates! Today is Australia Day which is an Australian national holiday celebrating the day in 1788 that Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney cove with the First Fleet of eleven convict ships. Australia's first settlers were British convicts but no worries... a lot has changed since 1788!

Now you've had your dose of Australian history for the day! I've been reading the book In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson because it's required that I read it before I get to Australia. There's going to be a test over it for one of my classes. There are many more interesting things I could tell you about Australia but I have more important things I need to get to. So if you're interested, go buy the book.

The real reason for this post was to tell you that I now have a place to live once I arrive in Australia! I will be living at the home of Marina and Michael Glinatsis in the suburb of Burwood. They are a Greek couple who have three sons that are grown up and living on their own. It's seems kinda funny that I will be living with a Greek family in Australia, but then again, Sydney is a very ethnically and culturally diverse place. And since they are Greek I'm assuming they aren't descendants of British convicts which is a very comforting thought! Burwood is about 5 miles from my school and 7 miles from downtown Sydney. This translates to about a 30 minute bus ride to get to school.

I also just got my community service placement. The study abroad program requires that I do at least 40 hours of community service. This is cool because it will give me an opportunity to see a different side of Australian life and be more involved with locals in the community. Anyway, I will be serving at Hillsong Impact Kids (www2.hillsong.com/kids), where I will be helping with a Saturday morning program. 

practice blog and Peru

Well... here it is! I made a blog! There are still 5 long weeks before I hop on a plane bound for Australia. In the meantime, i don't have much to say about my experiences in the land down under (which I am sure will be very exciting and produce many extremely interesting tales to tell later). 

I have had this blog a month and I really want to try out this whole idea of posting and uploading pictures. Every so often I check to make sure the blog is still here and every time I have to sadly look at a blank blog just sitting here in cyberspace waiting to become something of interest. So I have decided to post about my last international trip. Peru isn't quite half way around the world like the title of my blog says but it's halfway around the world from someone and it's not exactly the land down under. Nonetheless, it is still a very beautiful and fascinating place in the world. 

I went to Peru with the women's soccer team at Grace, where I go to school and play soccer. It was a sports ministry tour meaning we did evangelism, played in Peruvian futbol (soccer) tournaments, helped with futbol clinics, and did some sightseeing. We were in Peru the first two weeks of August 2008, which, looking back, seems like an eternity ago! I saw and experienced  so much in those two weeks that I don't think I'll really be able to give you any detail at all without writing a novel. Since this post is mainly for me to get the hang of blogging and posting pictures, I will just try to post a few of the hundreds of pictures I took. A picture's worth a thousand words, right?

First thing to understand about Peru is that, even though it is a relatively small country, it is

 very diverse. There are three main regions: the coastal region (bordering the South Pacific Ocean), the mountain region (the Andes Mountains vertically split the country in half), and then there's the jungle with the Amazon river and miles of rainforest-like land and remote native settlements. I got to see a little bit of all of it! We first landed in the large coastal city of Lima, the capital of Peru. 

Though Lima is interesting, we didn't spend much time there which, to be completely honest, didn't bother me. From there we flew over the Andes to the recent jungle-side boom town of 

Pucallpa, stayed there roughly a week, flew by a tiny sea plane to the jungle village of Santa Rosita where we stayed about 3 days,  then made our way in a dugout canoe back down the Ucayali River (which is the father of the Amazon) to Pucallpa , flew back across the Andes to Lima, drove up the mountains to Huaraz in a sleeper bus... somehow 

after our whirlwind of  traveling we eventually landed back in the States two weeks after leaving, feeling very worn out and satisfied with all we had seen and accomplished. 

Traveling with my soccer team was a blast! Take a soccer team of 20 something college girls

traveling anywhere and you will get lots of curious glances. Put them all in matching bright red shirts and you will definitely get stared at. Now throw this group of fun-loving American college soccer girls in bright red shirts in another country where they don't even know the language and you end up turning lots of heads, getting gawked at, waved at, and whistled as if you were a group of celebrities or possibly from another planet!

The people of Peru are amazing! It is almost impossible not to fall in love with all the adorable, smiling, dirty, little faces of all the Peruvian kids looking up to you with their trusting big dark eyes. Most of the people we met don't have much, but they are content and haven't ever known any different lifestyle. In Peru I saw third-world poverty for the first time. I had imagined that I would feel very sorry for the people and end up giving away all the belongings I had with me. This was not how I felt at all! More than the material poverty I noticed the spiritual poverty of the non-Christian Peruvians. John 10:10 was our theme verse for the trip and by the end of the trip I saw this verse in a whole new light! What these people need is abundant life in Christ, not material possessions that are temporary anyway.

This is longer than I intended but at least now there is something to look at and I have figured out how to post a blog and how to upload pictures. Before I leave the topic of Peru let me just

 quick fill you in on a few of the crazy things I did... just to make you jealous! I tried lots of new foods including cow tongue, alligator, guinea pig, fresh cocoanut milk, fish with their eyeballs still staring at me, banana cooked a million different ways, and quite a lot of other good tasting delicacies. I can now say I have hiked through the Andes, been wrapped up in a live anaconda snake, survived the jungle, hunted alligator on the Amazon (we actually caught a baby alligator and ate him for lunch the next day!), I've been on Peruvian TV, danced with Peruvians, explored an ancient pagan temple, and have joined the ranks of being a world traveler!