First National Rubgy League Game!

Last night, Katy, Olivia, and I went to a National Rugby League (NRL) game with the Sydney Rabbitohs playing against the St. George Dragons. The Rabbitohs home stadium is at the ANZ Stadium, which is where the Olympics were held in 2000! The stadium is in Sydney Olympic Park, which was built just for the Olympics about 11 years ago. It was amazing walking up to the stadium knowing that records were broken and history was made in the same place I was about to enter. Luckily, we got to the stadium about 30 minutes before the game started, so we walked around for a bit exploring the complex. Right outside of the ANZ Stadium, there were hundreds of colored poles sticking up out of the ground. As we walked up to the poles, I realized that alphabetically, each one of the athletes who participated in the Sydney 2000 Olympics names were inscribed on the poles.

Being my very first rugby game, I was extremely excited to go. We had to take a train to the Olympic Park, which let us off right in front of the stadium. The design of the stadium was awesome, because the outside structure reminded me of a roller coaster how it goes up and down, up and down.

Right when I walked into the stadium, it reminded me of being in America and going to a sporting event. There were huge screens all over with thousands of people filling in wearing their team colors. I am not sure how, but we had amazing seats. I realized that buying tickets for sporting events in Australia is not like buying tickets for sporting events in America. In America, the more you pay for a ticket, the better seat you have. In Australia, there is only one type of ticket you can buy depending on what category you fall into (adult, child, student, senior). Our seats were right in the middle of the field, and 19 rows up. Another thing I noticed was that sporting events in America attract a lot more people. The stadium was not even close to being half full, and there were only 22,700 people that attended the game. When I go to the Saints football games in New Orleans, the stadium is packed and there is probably triple the amount of people.

It was awesome going to a rugby game, especially in Australia, since I am taking a sports class at Sydney Uni. We learned about the differences between National Rugby League (NRL), Rugby Union, and the Australian Football League (AFL). It took me a while to remember all of the rules, but eventually I started to understand what was going on. Luckily, my friend Katy, who is originally from England but moved to the United States when she was 16, sat next to me. Since she grew up there and rugby is popular in England, she explained most of the rules to me and what was going on. I learned that a "try" is the rugby equivalent of a touchdown in American football. You get 4 points for a try, and then you get to kick a "field goal" for 2 extra points. To score the 4 points, you have to actually touch the ball in the try zone (endzone), or it does not count. The player holding the ball would dive into the try zone when they were about to score. I also learned that a team has 6 tries to run the ball down the field for a touchdown, and if they do not do it, they have to kick the ball to the other team. I know it is possible to score 2 points by kicking a field goal, but I am not sure of the rules of when you can do it. Passing in rugby league may only be in a backward or sideways direction. Also, when a player gets tackled, the ball is still in play, which is different than American football. A player from the other team can strip the ball out of the hands of the player on the ground, but I think they only have so much time to do so while the opposing player is on the ground. After getting up from being tackled, the player with the ball has to send it backwards behind them, usually done by putting the ball on the ground and using the bottom of their foot to roll it backwards.

As I said before, I definitely caught on by the end of the game, but I still have a lot of learning to do about rugby. Of course, I had to root for the Sydney Rabbitohs, even though their mascot was a dinky rabbit that did not look very fierce at all.

The referees wore pink shirts, in which I feel that in America would never happen. Since football is supposed to be a tough, man's sport, wearing pink even if you were the referees would not be acceptable in society. I loved the pink shirts though!

It was also interesting to see that there were only about 5 players sitting on the bench to sub in. The entire game, I think each team only substituted their players 2 times each. These men play the ENTIRE game for 40 minutes halves. Since there are 13 players who are out on the field for each team, they were getting super tired by the end. People wearing either green or orange shirts would run out during the middle of the game to bandage up any wounds or to give these players water. I feel that if they substituted their players more, the men would not be as exhausted by the end of the game or even during the game.

I could tell there were different positions, but was not sure what the role of each of the positions were. All I knew was that when a team was close to scoring, the entire stadium would scream and cheer. The way these men were built was very interesting to observe because their legs were HUGE, but they were not very tall. Each of them wore short-shorts and a very tight jersey, which is something very different from uniforms for men in America!

Overall, I had an amazing time watching a sport being played that is different from American sports. I am going to a Australian Football League game with my sports class in a month, and am excited to see the different rules and the way the game is played. Here are some pictures of rugby in action!

The Rabbitohs ended up losing 16-0, but I still had an amazing time.

This will be the last blog entry until about May 2nd, since I leave tomorrow morning at 3:45 a.m. for NEW ZEALAND! I will be gone from April 20th- May 2nd, but when I get back, expect some adventurous blog entries with new experiences! I miss you all and have a good 2 weeks!

Heaps of Love,

Heidi

Why is this Night Different from all other Nights? Because it is Passover in Australia!

Last night, Clair, Adam, and I (the Jews in my apartment) decided to have a Passover dinner. Even though Passover did not technically start until tonight at sundown, none of us were going to be around. We then thought we could do it Tuesday night, but Wednesday morning at 3:45 a.m. I am leaving for New Zealand. As a baby, I always have celebrated Passover at my house with my dad's side of the family. My mom cooks an amazing meal which takes her days and days to prepare before the big night. Since my dad's side is growing and growing, we sometimes would even have up to 30 people over for a Passover dinner. When I went to Colorado for college, I have gone to Chabad to have a real passover sedar the past 2 years. Lets just say, I have never missed a year of passover even though it is my least favorite Jewish holiday. This year being half way around the world, I wanted to keep the tradition alive and celebrate Passover with my fellow Jews.

Since we do not have an oven or did not have any of my mom's famous recipes, we decided to chip in what he had and make things that we all would enjoy. With that being said, lets just say things got a little interesting. Adam really wanted to make latkes, so he went yesterday morning to the grocery store to get everything we needed. Clair decided to make the charoset even though she had no clue what it even was (we looked the recipe up on the internet). Me, not being the best cook in the world to say the least, had no clue what to make. You have to give me a break though; I started cooking for myself last semester in my house in Colorado, and went from not knowing how to crack an egg to making scrambled eggs in the morning. I know how to make quesadillas, grilled cheese, pasta, sandwiches, and all the other essentials now. Patience is a virtue and eventually I will be able to cook like my mom! My goal in life is to not have my kids tell me my meals taste like airplane food on the way back from India (Yes, Jordan told that to my mom last year about one of her meals). I thought and thought of what to make and then it hit me. PASTA! Yes, I know it is not kosher for passover, but it was all I could offer. Leaving for New Zealand on Wednesday, I did not have much food in the fridge or any time to go to the grocery store. I really wanted to make Koogle or Matzah Ball Soup, but did not get my mom's recipe in time. It was okay though that I made pasta because Passover technically had not started yet. PHEW!

We started cooking around 4 p.m. and did not end cooking until 8 p.m. with 3 people in the kitchen the entire time. 

 My other roommate Adam is also Jewish and we wanted to invite him to our sedar, but he was not around. Yes, 4 out of 5 of us living in my apartment are all Jewish! What are the chances?! Not wanting to leave the 5th roommate out, I decided to ask Dash to join us, who is Hindu. When I asked her if she wanted to join, she looked at me like I was crazy because she had no clue what I was talking about. Dash is from Singapore, and she told me last night she had never met a Jew until she arrived here in February to study at Sydney Uni. Lucky her, she got 4 of us to room with! Clair's sister lives in the apartment right next to us, so of course we invited her too. Then, Andrew, who is Catholic, walked in and I asked him if he wanted to join us as well. Wanting to keep it small since we did not want to spend any more time in the kitchen, we thought it would be nice to have a small sedar. Everyone was invited under one condition: they had to dress up! We like to keep things classy :).

Adam bought everything needed for our Passover sedar plate, but no one but me knew what to put on it or why we put the things on it that we do. I guess all of those years in Hebrew School and Sunday School paid off. I was in charge of cooking the chicken to use as the shank bone on the sedar plate and for everyone to have as a main course. I guess I didn't reiterate it enough to my roommates that my cooking skills are not par. I tried putting oil on the skillet then placed the chicken legs on top, but I quickly learned that legs take forever to cook and my method did not work at all because the chicken began to burn. I got frustrated and  told everyone I tried cooking the chicken enough, but to not touch the sedar plate or chicken because it was still raw. Hey, it's the thought that counts, right? I even learned last night how to make a hard boiled egg to put on the sedar plate. Here it is, the sedar plate with the shank bone, the hard boiled egg, the parsley, charoset, horseradish, and celery. On the side, we had the salt water to dip the parsley in. I hope we did not leave anything out!

Lucy, Clair's sister, brought the Matzah. Weirdly enough, they do not sell any Matzah in the city of Sydney, only at Bondi Beach. Bondi Beach is takes about 1.5 hours on a bus to get to, and to me was way to far out of the way. Luckily, Lucy did not think so and went all the way over to get us Matzah for our sedar.

After hours and hours of cooking, this is what our meal consisted of: Latkes with apple sauce, Pasta, Charoset, and matzah. I wanted to make peas and corn, but everyone stuck up their noses. Plus, why mess up our carbohydrate meal with something healthy?! Grandma Jody would be so proud of me.

Before eating though, we wanted to say all the prayers and do the traditional ceremony. Since we did not have a haggadah, we looked one up online but it was 50 pages to print out. We decided not to print out the 50 pages, just do the four questions and the other basic prayers. Lucys only job was to print out the four questions, in which she did, but she left out the answers. Therefore, as each person read the question, I would make up the answer to the best of my ability to what I thought the right answer was. Adam and I even sang the 4 questions in Hebrew, while Dash and Andrew sat there confused. The entire time, I tried to remember to explain the process to the 2 non-Jews, but I think I made them even more confused with my explanations. I wanted to do the part of the service where you dip your finger in the salt water or your wine, and recite the plagues while placing the droplets onto your own plate. Since we did not have a haggadah, I tried to remember the ones that came to my mind. When I began to forget, I started making up my own rendition of Australian plagues such as, kangaroo kicks to the stomach, box-jelly fish sting, koala clawing, and a stone fish bites. After this, we ate our meal and then at the end of the meal, Adam decided to hide the afikomen. He did not do a very good job because everyone saw where he hid it earlier, but we still had a fun time "trying" to find it. I really wanted to let Elijah in to drink the wine, but we realized that we would have to go all the way downstairs to open the main door to the apartment, then walk all the way upstairs to our main apartment door to open it. Elijah, sorry you could not experience Passover with us in Australia but our laziness outnumbered your presence. After all of the "prayers," it was time to eat! The meal actually came out pretty good, and the latkes were a huge hit!

Yes, you counted right. There were 4 Jews, 1 Hindu, and 1 Catholic celebrating Passover together. As I have stated many times before, studying abroad is about experiencing new things and doing something I have never done before. This Passover sedar definitely fell into this category, because it probably will never be like this ever again. 6 people from different places around the world who celebrate Passover differently or even another religion all formed together for an amazing night. I got to learn about Dash's religion of Hindu while I explained Judaism and Passover to everyone else. Even though our service was not 100% the correct way to do it, all our efforts combined made a Passover I will remember for the rest of my life. We were laughing the entire time and enjoying each others company because on a day to day basis, everyone is doing their own thing and we never have a sit-down meal together. Passover 2011 in Australia, you will be in my heart forever.

Happy Passover,

Heidi

A Tour of the University of Sydney!

Last night was Adam's birthday, so we went to dinner and then went out to the bars to celebrate. Since we were up very late last night, I decided to sleep in and just relax today instead of doing something out in the city on our day off. I also realized today that in the next 5 weeks, I will be gone 4 of those weekends and parts of the week. I am going to New Zealand a week from today for 12 days, will be back in Sydney for 4 days, then head to Bathurst for 3 days, then will be back in Sydney for 4 days, then head to Tasmania for 5 days. Therefore, I think catching up on all my schoolwork might be a top priority on my list of things to do :). 

Instead of going to the city to do something, I decided to walk around the University of Sydney campus and take some pictures. The lighting is not very good in some of these pictures because it was cloudy some of times I took them, but you will get an idea of the campus. Since the entire university is extremely huge and some of the parts you have to take a bus to, I did not take pictures of those campuses. For example, if you are studying music, the campus is all the way next to the Opera House, which is about a 25 minute bus ride away. Luckily, all my classes are walking distance and only take about 10 minutes to get to, but I know some friends that it takes then over an hour to get to class. 

Enjoy the pictures and welcome to the University of Sydney!

My Apartment Village called Sydney University Village:

My Room in my Apartment:

 

The Living Room

 

The Kitchen

This is the walk to my classes. Along the way, there are athletic fields where rugby and cricket are usually played:

This is the Wentworth Building, which is the place where the academic advisors, international office, and other offices are. For everyone who reads this and knows what the UMC is at the University of Colorado, this is what this building is here:

The Education Building with another athletic field. This is where my Sports and Learning in Australian Culture and my Social Work Psychology Class are:

This building is called the Old Teachers College and is where all of my tutorials are:

This is the Manning building where a bunch of restaurants and one of the bars on campus is! I got major culture shock when I learned about this because they are allowed to have bars and alcohol allowed on campus!

The Mungo MacCallum Building which is where most of my professor's offices are:

Fisher Library:

 Back of Fisher Library:

A view from outside the library of the city from campus:

This is the Main Quadrangle where classes are held and there are museums inside. This is the central meeting spot because everyone knows where this building is. Unfortunately I do not have any classes here, but most of my friends do. I wish I did though because it looks like Hogwarts from Harry Potter!

The Main Quadrangle is designed so that there is an portion that is cut out from the building with a grass area outside. Here are some pictures of the inside:

School of Medicine:

School of Physics:

There is a huge area on the outside of the campus with swimming pools, a park, ponds, and a huge grass field where people are always laying out and playing sports called Victoria Park. Something like this would be amazing to have in Colorado because it is so nice and relaxing to go to and enjoy.

I hope you enjoyed the tour, and if I take more pictures on campus when it is a nicer day I will definitely post them!

Heaps of Love,

Heidi