Day 2: Sunday, Feb 10, Sydney

Sunset over the Opera House.

The night before we had looked up a church we wanted to visit. Somehow my brother found out about a “Christian Reformed Church” denomination, so we tried to make our way there. We had to change buses, and on the last bus my dad asked the driver if he could tell us when to get off and the driver assured us he could. We were quite surprised when he then asked an elderly lady who got on where our cross-street was. My dad saw a street number and realized we passed the church, so we got off and had to hike back. We got to church late but really enjoyed it. Small church, maybe 180 people or so. It met in an old building with ceiling fans for ventilation. Afterwards they had snacks outside and we mingled with the crowd. John promptly made friends with another kid who liked Need for Speed (a computer game). I first talked to a guy who was studying computational linguistics (think translational algorithms) from the Netherlands who was dating a girl from Honduras. I also talked to two guys named Rick and Nick who had grown up together in the neighborhood, then Nick went to England for a job, and he was back visiting for a month. The conversation faltered a little until I asked about cricket, and then their eyes lit up. Fortunately Nick knew a little about baseball, so from time to time he would translate cricket-speak into baseball jargon for me. Rick is a cricket fanatic, but when I asked him how he watched games that took five days (yes, tournament cricket games take five days) he confessed that you don’t really watch them, you listen to them on the radio and maybe swing by after work. Since the games aren’t intense, spectators are very social. One popular pastime is taking all the beer cups drunk by your row and stacking them together to see which row has the tallest stack. He told me they could stretch from one building of the church compound to the next, which was about 30 ft. Even over five days, that’s still a lot of beer.

We were invited over to someone’s house after lunch and agreed. We ended up going home with a man named Ari and his grown daughter named Jodi. Fascinating people. We arrived at a house that could barely be seen through an overgrown yard. There was a porch that ran around the house that was completely filled with stuff. Random garage-sale stuff. Apparently Ari runs a thrift shop that has raised over $500K over the last twenty years or so for the Bible League, a non-profit that sends Bibles to Africa. He also stood for parliament as a Christian Democrat, one of the many parties in Australian politics. He has kids in five countries around the world. He is quite a world traveler himself. We got a crash course in parliamentary elections, which is quite an operation. We also met a guy named Edwin (probably Eduardo in Spanish) who is from Peru and lives with Ari and Jodi. I don’t know exactly how the invitation was put to us, but when we got to their house they served chocolate cake, Toblerone, some snack crackers, and tea. We thought that might be all we were getting, but they then served us lunch. When someone asked, Ari said that was traditional Dutch style. We got ice cream after lunch. Ari was quite a character, we all had a great time, and we stayed until dinnertime.

When we left we went to the north side of the primary bridge spanning Sydney Harbor. It is a big arch truss bridge and you can pay over $100 to climb up to the top of the arch. I’m sure the view is great, but we passed. It did provide great views of the whole harbor and the opera house, however. We spent the rest of the evening noodling around the quays and hanging around the opera house. The Sydney Opera House really is an impressive structure and was visible as we flew in. However, I would say that half of its impressiveness comes from its location all alone out on a man-made peninsula and slightly raised above the surroundings. Up close the opera house looks like a Spanish conquistador helmet and is made of lots of off-white tiles. I actually found it quite underwhelming up close.

Picture from the Opera House boardwalk.


After sundown we headed back by bus. As we pulled up to one stop I saw a guy who I immediately pegged as an oddball. He was wearing something that looked like a brown bathrobe. The front was “belted” by what looked like a piece of green ribbon. He had a Hindi-looking smear on his forehead and a scruffy beard. He got on our bus as the last passenger, walked a little past the driver, and then did a martial-arts routine that looked like a Matrix-type wind-up, a kick down the (thankfully) empty aisle, and then a clasped-hand bow. He then walked back up to the front and asked the driver to be let off. I don’t know if the driver saw what had just transpired but he agreed. After the guy got off he stood facing the bus with his hand over his heart like saluting a flag and solemnly stared at everyone in the bus as we drove off.

I’ve decided to start a new feature: Aussie expressions. Lest anyone tell you otherwise, Australian deserves its own dictionary. By the time we’re finished, you’ll know what someone is saying when they tell you that “my uni mate from Oz needs a bublar.” (Microsoft Word keeps trying to correct my spelling. While I am loathe to accept Microsoft as the authority on anything, I will take this as evidence for my position on Australian lingo.)

Aussie lingo of the day: Oz=Australia. Australia became Aus which became Oz. [Addendum: now you understand the title.]