Kiama and the Lower Gong

This past week was fairly uneventful with a few days of class and then a few rainy days which kept us from the beach. I gave my presentation on Wednesday and it went off without any huge guffaws. I did have one embarrassing moment this week though. . .I had a tutorial at 10:30 am on Wednesday morning. This tutorial has about 20 other students in it and the Tutor for the course is a fairly intimadating woman from Eastern Europe. I arrived to the class at exactly 10:30 and opened the door to go in. As I walked in though, the entire class turned to look at me and gave me (what I thought were) kind of judgmental leers. It almost felt like they had just finished talking about how tardiness was unacceptable and all tardy people should be ostracized (although, I must point out that I was NOT late). Anyway, I got a little flustered and wasn't thinking clearly and I ended up just turning around and leaving. . .Now this isn't the end of the world because attendance isn't compulsory and I had already turned in my assignment for the day electronically. But it is still quite embarrassing because everyone in that room knew that I was supposed to be in that class and they all witnessed me come in and then just turn around and leave again. I'm not sure how I will show my face in that class next week. . .

That night (Wednesday) some friends and I played trivia at our local pub. It was a team effort, but lots of the questions required an intimate knowledge of Australia. . .seeing as we only had one Aussie with us, we did not fair too well. It was still a very enjoyable night though.

Thursday nights we have an event each week at International House called "Global Visions". We usually have speakers or discussions about current global issues. This week some different members of I-House talked about their home countries and the current issues. We heard about Hong Kong and Ireland and I learned lots of things that I did not know. For example, did you know that until 11 years ago Hong Kong was controlled by the British? China reacquired Hong Kong in 1997 (I think) and now it is slowly being blended back into China, but they will maintain quite a bit of sovereignty for another 40 years.

Today (Saturday) it was time for another adventure. Seven friends and I jumped on a 10:23 am train to Kiama, a small town about an hour south of Wollongong. Kiama has multiple beaches that are absolutely gorgeous. We saw a lot of surfers out there, so we will probably head back another weekend with our surfboards. In Kiama, they have a big produce market the last Saturday of every month. Once we arrived we checked out the market, which was quaint, but full of good free samples. Kiama is also well-known for its "blow-hole". The blow-hole is a hole in a large rock formation along the ocean that erupts with water when large waves hit the rock. It almost looked like a geyser. We spent some time taking pictures of the blow-hole and then did a little rock scrambling on some of the cliffs.

After walking around the town for a little longer we hopped on the train again and headed south another 15 minutes to Gerringong. Gerringong is a tiny, tiny town, but we wanted to check it out because we heard it had a very nice winery. Once we arrived in Gerringong, we asked for directions and found that the winery was at the top of a 400 meter long hill. So, we began hiking. We made it up to the top and did some free wine tasting. . .they make all of their wines right on site. We all felt very classy and cultured as we sipped on our wines and pretended to know what we were doing. It was around 3 pm by the time we were done and we decided we wanted to catch the 3:08 train back to Wollongong because the next train did not come in until 5:08. We began hustling back down the hill and right as we entered the town again, the train pulled up. At this point we were at least 100 m away from the platform and so we began sprinting-- backpacks, purses, flip-flops and all. Right as we arrived at the platform the train began to pull away. . .we were all defeated and upset, but luckily the conductor saw us and stopped the train for us. I forgot to mention that only 5 of us had sprinted to the train-- the other 3 were lolly-gagging aways behind us. So, the 5 of us just hopped on the train and it left without them! The 3 boys we left behind were convinced that we would all miss the train, so they just didn't even try. It's 5:04 right now, so they will be getting on the train in just a few minutes. . .Hopefully they enjoyed their afternoon in Gerringong.

One more thing. . .Gerringong is sometimes referred to as the "Lower Gong" making Wollongong the "Upper Gong". . .only in Australia.