Visiting ACT...

I can’t believe I’ve only been away 18 days. It feels much longer. Brisbane and UQ feels very much like home and my flatties like long term friends. I always find it strange how when you’re travelling you almost forget about home, and when you’re home you almost forget about your travels. Well I do. Humans tend to adjust quickly I guess.

Anyway, last weekend I went to Canberra – “the Nation’s capital”. An accurate slogan, unlike Hamilton’s attempts –

Hamilton: Where it’s happening.

Hamilton: City of the future.

Until they finally got it right with this one – Hamilton: More than you’d expect (aka. better than you fear).

Yes I am a JAFA. But anyway, Canberra and not Hamilton is where I’ve been, and Canberra is really is just the Nation’s capital - parliament and a uni (which is like a city in itself). However, those two things sum up my interests pretty well so it was a good time, especially as Max was there – which, of course, was the main reason for going.

So we did the tourist thing which I love:

The photo of us dressed up is in the “Hands On” section at the Museum of Democracy. I love this. Civics Education is so important and so neglected. Someone told me (this is non-confirmed but interesting) that at Epsom Girls Grammar they did a civics education module where they presented party policies without the party names and got the girls to vote. “Party A” aka “Labour” won. Remember, Epsom currently elects Rodney (= ACT = very far from Labour). So many of the people here have told me they don’t know Left from Right (politically) or that they don’t know why they voted the way they did. In first year labs when I was collecting data someone asked me who John Key was (this is a University student, after he’d just been elected!!). I think we are clearly failing on having a (even vaguely) politically educated population, and obviously I think this is crucial.

Anyway, moving on, sorry about the rant, some other highlights of Canberra were this vegetarian restaurant that serves fake duck, fish, chicken, pork – bizarre I know. Unfortunately I failed on the tourist front and didn’t get any photos, but it was amazing what one can do with soy beans! Also, this unbelievable chocolate restaurant and delicious markets – although we had to walk two hours to get there. The walk was nice too though as everything there is political (Max - not just everything generally) so along the lake they have an exhibition of “Australian of the Year”, and more importantly we were with good people :)

Aside from Canberra, this week has been awesome. I read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is the second book I have read by him and in both I have sobbed uncontrollably. Not just cried, but bawled. His latest book is called “Eating Animals” and I’m afraid to read it as I’m sure he will be able to convince me to be vegetarian (unlike Caitlyn and Max who I don’t listen to).

I also had dinner with an amazing lecturer who works in Social Psychology and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies. She did a really interesting evaluation of changing racist views through a cross-cultural psychology course. I am really interested in the idea of having a compulsory Māori culture, history and language paper at uni. I honestly think learning Māori history in depth is life-changing. People have a total aversion to it because all through school and uni it’s taught in small segments that are arbitrary, and I think that it’s only doing it in depth that really changes you – that was my experience anyway. I’m ashamed to admit that I avoided Year 13 history because it was purely focused on New Zealand history, and it was only when I had to do Christianity in Aotearoa (which I complained about) that I got passionate about New Zealand/ Māori history. But there would obviously be a lot of backlash over anything like that being made compulsory, which might add to, rather than alleviate the problem. Anyone have any thoughts on this? - Bebe? (Mini/Maxi political blog coming soon).

Ok, sorry this blog is way too much about what I think and not what I’ve been doing. Um, I run and swim and eat gross food and study all day (a little more productively this week) and have coffee and do applications and spend too much time on facebook and skype and curse the heat and miss you guys.

xxx