Skiing... In July!

Went skiing this weekend on JULY 28th.  Take that, all you lame North-Hemispherians!

This Saturday, I went skiing with Sarah and a couple of her friends she knows from work. This adventure involved waking up at 3:30 am, catching a bus from Canberra to the ski resort and then "hiring" skis and boots (known in more civilized areas as "renting"), which was all part of a pretty good package deal.  However,  the place where we were renting our skiis had an alarming lack of... snow.  In fact, we still had to catch a TRAIN that went, as near as I can tell, straight up through a mountain before we finally got to see actual white stuff!

http://www.perisher.com.au/

I know what all my Colorado and skiing friends are wondering... no it's not as good.  It wasn't bad though, especially the second half of the day when we moved to the "tough" mountain where there was some actual powder and some nice ungroomed blue runs.  It was really quite fun!  The runs are about 1/8 to 1/4 as long as the runs in Colorado though, that was the main difference that I noticed.  That... and there wasn't much snow.  And it wasn't very steep...  Australia is the flattest continent in the world, did you know that?  I bet it was still better than any skiing any of you did this weekend!  (Hopefully no one from South America or New Zealand is reading this...)

The other thing that was different was the T-bars!  Fully half the lifts we used were T-bars, and I had never used one before.  It's quite a different experience - you actually have to pay attention so you don't take out the person next to you and your legs don't get quite the rest that they would on a lift, but it is much warmer as you are well ensconsed in the Earth's viscous sublayer, if you know what I mean.  Sarah attempted to kill me several times on the T-bars, to which I retaliated by taking her down runs that caused her to fall, quite spectacularly, many times.  Good fun.

Sarah!

Pretty good weekend!

First Day of School!

Today is my first day of teaching!

Lake Burley Griffin

Canberra is a planned city, designed by an American, Burley Griffin.  The entire city is situated around a man made lake.  It's winter here, and Canberra is the coldest major city in Australia, but Aussies are big wimps when it comes to winter - it feels much more like fall to me.  After all... there's no snow and it still gets into the 50s and 60s almost every day.

I went for a 12 kilometer run (I know, I'm starting to think in kilometers now) around the lake on a sunny day, and it was awesome.  I had forgotten how nice it is to run in a place with trees, water, and beautiful scenery, and this is all starting from the front door of my apartment.

Of course, I didn't actually bring my camera with me, but here are some pictures I found that are representative.

The Captain Cook Fountain.  It shoots hundreds of feet into the air.  On the left is the National Library, and behind the spray you can see Parliament.

The National Carillion

There were a whole bunch of awesome nerdy older Australian dudes racing RC sailbots all over the lake.

A Black Swan (with an awesome red beak).  There are lots of these.  Even the swans in Australia are much more exotic than they are back home.  The Carillion is in the background.

The Land of Yes and the Land of No

For those less interested in sport, I went to see the Sydney Dance Company the other night with Sarah to see this performance:

http://www.sydneydancecompany.com/work/the-land-of-yes-and-the-land-of-no/

It was really good!  Probably the best contemporary dance I've ever seen... not that the sample set is all that large.

The State of Origin

Instead of watching fireworks, eating hot dogs, and getting drunk on the 4th of July, Aussies get drunk and watch the "State of Origin", which is, as far as I can tell, akin to the Superbowl, at least for the two states of Queensland and New South Wales. 

http://www.nrl.com/RepGames/StateofOrigin2012/tabid/11131/Default.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Origin

For those who don't know, there are actually FOUR kinds of "footy" in Australia, and I haven't figured out how to tell which one someone is talking about when they say the word "footy" yet.  Oh, and American Football (here called "Gridiron") is NOT one of the four...

There are two kinds of Rugby:  Rugby Union and Rugby League.  Rugby Union is what Americans are thinking when they think of Rugby, and as I understand it is the upper class version, considered more boring by the masses, played mostly by snobby private school kids.  Rugby League is kind of a mix of Gridiron and Rugby Union, as they have downs and a lot more movement, and is the "public school" game.  Both Rugby League and Rugby Union are primarily enjoyed by the two Eastern States previously mentioned, NSW and QLD.  The State of Origin is a Rugby League game, but it is a thrice a year event that pulls the best players from all of the assorted teams to play for thier home state (or... "state of origin"). 

The other two kinds of footy are Australian Rules Football (AFL) which is very different, and is a lot more like soccer than rugby, albeit with a lot more contact.  I find it more boring than either kind of rugby, and it is evidentally mostly popular in the "south", meaning Melbourne and Adelaide (states of Victoria and South Australia).  The fourth type is soccer, which, amazingly, is also called soccer here.

Don't even get me started on cricket...

Visiting

I've had a few people ask me when would be a good time to visit.  I am teaching two classes, one is a normal class that runs through the middle of November, but the other one is an intensive 4 week class where I'll be teaching all day, everyday.  That pretty much runs the entire month of August.  So, probably the best times to visit this year are November and early December.  Around Christmas I'll be back in the US.

Update:  "Spring Break" is the week from 1 - 6 October

Hash House Harriers

This morning I went running with a group of Hash House Harriers, which is a running group that combines drinking beer with thier running.  Two of my favorite things!  (Although, I only had one beer because I am still driving on the wrong freaking side of the road)

My Apartment

I picked up the keys to my apartment yesterday.  It's a cool place, fully furnished cause I didn't want to buy all new furniture, but that also makes it quite expensive.  I definitely couldn't afford to live here longer than about a year... but for one year it'll be fun.

As you can see from the map, it's quite close to a lot of important places!

Kangaroos!

Today I went hiking in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve (not totally sure I spelled that correctly).  It turns out Canberra is one of the best places to see Kangaroos, and that certainly proved to be the case.  It was a fantastic day for hiking, nice and cool (although everyone from here complained about how cold it was).

The Kangaroos are really overpopulated I guess, and so the Australians aren't very impressed by them at all, but I thought they were really awesome.  The trails we hiked were very well travelled so the Kangaroos seemed very docile and let us get up quite close. 

Full disclosure:  This was part of a date that I set up on the internet.  The girl (Sarah) is very nice!

This guy was standing right on the path and wouldn't let us pass.

I was maybe 10 feet away from this guy.  We had a staring contest.  I lost.

Action shot.

Tidbinbilla Nature Preserve (this is where we were)

Finally, some pictures

My Office.  It's not much, but it's a lot better than a Raytheon cubicle!

The car I'm gonna buy, hopefully today.  Rik really wanted one of these, so he's going to buy it back from me if/when I leave Australia.

A view of King's Avenue and the Parliament building from Mt. Ainslie

Downtown Canberra from Mt. Ainslie

Work

So, I've had a couple days at work now, so I thought I'd write a bit about that, since it's the reason I'm here.

It feels good, and it reminds me a lot of my time at USAFA, which is, of course, what I was looking for.  It's definitely not going to be easy, I'm teaching a couple classes that I've never taught before and I'll basically be learning the material as I go, which isn't the ideal way to do it.  I know from experience that I won't feel really comfortable with it until about the 3rd time through, but who knows if I'll be here long enough to teach it more than once!

I'll need to put in some really long hours to get it done, but that's cool, after August I should have a lot more free time.  Preparing lessons is a lot more fun for me than the stuff I was doing at Raytheon.  I have almost 6 weeks before school starts, so I should have plenty of time.

However, I do have my own office, I don't have to keep track of my hours anymore, and I have a lot of freedom to design and teach the classes the way I want to (although I probably won't be making any drastic changes the first year...)

There is some possibilty of staying on to do a phd while teaching full time, and the phds here are "research only" which means no classes, no qualifying exams, etc...  Which, of course, sounds perfect.  But, we will see how things go.

Overall I'm very happy with work, even after a couple days.  It feels much more right than what I was doing at Raytheon (sorry JP and anyone reading this from Raytheon - those who can't do, teach!).

Canberra, First Impressions

I've had a few days in Canberra now, so I'll give my first impressions.

It's definitely different than any city I've ever been in before.  It's a planned city, which you would think would make it orderly and easy to get around in, but that is far from the case.  It is one of the most confusing cities I've ever had to drive in (more on driving later).  However, it must be well planned because traffic doesn't seem to be bad at all.  It's a very welcome change from Tucson, which had the worst traffic planning of any city I've ever lived in.

I walked around all day on Sunday (still without a camera, unfortunately) and it's a pretty great outdoor city, and I think it will be an amazing city to go running in once the weather gets a little bit nicer.  There is a lake running through the center of the whole city with a path along both sides - there were lots of joggers, walkers, and dogs when I was there.  There are parks everywhere as well; they call the city the "Bush Capitol" because so much of it is green.  It's pretty awesome.

The weather has been pretty cold and rainy, but I guess that's typical for this time of year.  The first day I got here really reminded me of Seattle - low overcast and drizzly with temps in the 50's.  The next day (the day I walked around) reminded me most of a late fall day in Colorado Springs - cool, crisp, and sunny.  It was really nice.  Unfortunately the last two days have been back to Seattle weather again, with lots of fog in the morning and low overcast in the afternoons.  I like it though, I haven't been in weather like this for... 4 years?

The city is also extremely clean and immaculate.  I've only seen a few neighborhoods so far but it is easily the cleanest city I've ever seen.  No litter, no graffiti, nothing.  It's actually quite... utopian.

It's also the Nation's Capital, which is striking after just visiting Washington DC a few months ago.  The apartment I'm staying right now is walking distance to Parliament, and you can walk or drive right up to it with no problem or traffic.  Rik drove me around and showed me the equivalent of the Pentagon, which was a bunch of buildings on the other side of the lake.  It's strange to have these really important buildings in a city smaller than Reno.

Dinner last night

For dinner last night I had Weet-Bix with milk and Vegemite on bread.  I like the Weet-Bix... Vegemite not so much.

The trip

This was several days ago now, so I don't remember all the details, but obviously any story about moving to Australia is incomplete without the description of the trip. 

I packed up the house and put everything into a self-storage unit that costs about $100 a month, so it actually works out to be about the same cost as renting a UHaul and taking everything to Reno, which is what I did last time.  All I was left with I could fit into the back of the Prius:  3 suitcases, a filing cabinet, and a box or two.  It's amazing how much stuff I really need... which isn't much.  I had a lot of furniture, much of which I never even used!

After getting to Reno in the Prius (thanks for driving 90% of it, Dad), I further consolidated and ended up taking two large suitcases full of clothes (mostly).  That, and a backpack with my laptop, my kindle, and a few other electronics was all that I brought. 

The trip itself was remarkably easy.  I left at 7pm from Reno, getting into LAX at about 8.  My flight for Sydney was on a Qantas 747-400.  I was a bit disappointed to not get an A380 but I'm sure I will at some point.  Rik says that the 747 is more comfortable anyway.

I had a window seat near the back, which was perfect for me.  Even on a long flight I prefer a window seat.  I can sleep better and I wanted to be able to see out when I landed in Sydney.

For some reason, a really long flight (it was about 14 hours) bothers me a lot less than a 4 - 5 hour flight.  I usually find myself sad that the flight was ending.  I read my kindle almost the whole time - there was a cool entertainment system but the only thing I watched on it was the replay of the Australian F1 Grand Prix. 

After landing in Sydney I had to drag my bags around a bit, but it wasn't too bad.  No problems going through customs, and then I got on a commuter to Canberra.  They didn't do anything like boarding groups or numbers like on Southwest, they basically just said "All aboard"!

Unfortunately the weather was cloudy so I didn't get to see anything on that leg of the flight.  Oh, I was taking pictures all along the way but I lost my camera in the Sydney Airport, which is why I don't have any up yet!

How I got here

I'm here!

I have a lot to say and I'll probably forget to mention a lot of things in this first post, but I'll try to add things in as I think of them. 

For those who aren't fully versed on the path that led up to this whole adventure, I'll start from the beginning.  My family has a family friend, named Rik Heslehurst, who is a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), and who also works for my father on a regular basis.  He is taking a year off from teaching his classes this year, and he was familiar with my history of teaching at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA), so in Februrary he contacted me with the possibility of coming out for a year to take on his classes.


I accepted the offer on about the 20th of April, and it's now June 4th and I went to work at ADFA today.  Needless to say, it's been a whirlwind of a month or two.

I got a leave of absence from Raytheon, which was unexpected but welcome.  I still don't know how things are going to work out here, it's possible this will turn into more of a long term job, but it's too early to tell.  If things don't work out, I could, theoretically, go back to Raytheon.

Intro

Several people have suggested that I make a blog about my year in Canberra, so here it is!