Going Back, For Real

Last Thursday night I bought plane tickets to Australia for this August!! I’ve been talking about going pretty much every summer the past few years, but things would just never work out. It got to the point that some of my friends like Walter said they wouldn’t believe that I was going until I actually bought the tickets. Anyway, the way that this worked out is pretty cool.
For a year and a half or almost two years I’d been hoping to go on a three-week vacation with Alex, and for awhile before I met him I had hoped to make a trip work with my cousin Jonathan. Those plans just never got off the ground though. When I visited Alex in Ann Arbor in April, I asked him how interested he really was in going to Australia someday. He said he was interested, but not interested enough to spend a couple thousand dollars of his own money to do it, at least currently. This summer was already totally booked up for him anyway, with three months at NCAR in Boulder and one month at UMBS in northern Michigan. I was disappointed to have that door shut (for now), but on the other hand it’s good not to keep hoping and waiting for something that’s probably not going to happen.
Also, the weekend before I went to Michigan is when I had my dreams about my expired passport. So I filled out the application, got my photos taken, and mailed in the renewal application the day before I left for Ann Arbor. I mentioned in my blog post about my passport dreams that I wondered if God had something planned for me a few weeks down the road, a reason for which I’d need my passport. I was mostly joking with that, but in the back of my mind was honestly wondering if anything might come about.
The Thursday after I got back from visiting Alex, I went to Hollemans in the evening for the usual PSCG hangout time. When I got there Ash told me that he and Tracy were planning to go to Australia in August, and asked if I wanted to join them. I basically stopped in my tracks. Dreams about my expired passport, then a week later being told by Alex that he doesn’t really want to spend the money on traveling, and then being presented with the opportunity for this trip, all within a two-week span. I pretty much became convinced that it was not simply a coincidence, but that God was working on closing one door for me while opening another.
Here’s the other reason that I was so surprised when Ash asked me if I wanted to go with him & Tracy in August. This trip has been talked about for quite awhile, and back in the winter they asked if I wanted to go with them. At that point they were thinking of tagging along with a group from Campus Crusade for Christ to do some ministry work at universities in Melbourne; that trip was slated for June or July, and so by sometime in January or February I had to give them an answer. At that point I was still really hoping to go with Alex, and wanted to do more of a sightseeing trip as well, so I told them no. I thought that was pretty much the end of it, and hadn’t really heard anything about it again until Ash mentioned it that night. That was the first I really knew that they’d totally changed their plans and pushed them back into August, and were still hopeful that I would come.
I told Sue about the trip the following week and she was alright with it, especially since I’m planning to arrange to give two or three seminars about my research, hopefully at Monash University, the University of Melbourne, and at the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre in Melbourne. It’d be nice to get my name out there a bit and get a feel for whether I’d be interested in applying for a post-doc at any of those places when I’m finishing up at PSU in about 1.5 years. By giving some research seminars, it’ll at least help cover for me missing 3 weeks of work. I should make those contacts soon to let them know that I’m coming, and to see if they can fit me into their schedules… Anyway, with those upcoming seminars, that’s really lit a fire under me to make some herculean progress on my research project in the next couple months, so that I can have a nice piece of work to talk about. That would be a main reason why I’ve been putting in some really long days in the office lately (12 hours yesterday, after having been gone from the office for only 10 hours the night before, ugh). It’s good to be making progress though.
So what are we going to be doing, you ask? The primary impetus for the trip is to investigate the feasibility of helping to start or coming alongside a Christian graduate student ministry at the University of Melbourne. Ash has been in contact with a Campus Crusade staff member at the University of Melbourne, and they’re interested in trying to get something started. UniMelb is in the process of changing their enrollment structure, and they’re planning to have an even larger focus on research by having grad students be 50-60% of their enrollment. The University of Melbourne is one of the top 15-20 most prestigious universities in the world too, and certainly the most prestigious university in Australia. One possibility we’d be looking into would be to encourage some of our members to try to get post-docs down there, and help out with the ministry while they’re at Melbourne; it certainly wouldn’t harm one’s resumé to spend a couple years there. 🙂 So we’re planning to talk to a lot of professors and grad students down there, and just try to get a feel for how to do ministry to/with grad students in Australia, since its culture is different from the U.S.
For me, in addition to the ministry opportunities, there’s also the huge draw of being able to see so many of my old friends that I made down there during my semester at Monash University in 2004. I’m really looking forward to that! My friend Paul has already said he’d organize a group of people and get us tickets to the Geelong Cats-Collingwood Magpies footy match at the MCG on the night of Sat 7 Aug. That’ll be sooo sweeeeet! I need to send an email out to everyone soon too, and start trying to figure out who I’m going to stay with on what nights (I’m assuming that I’ll be able to stay with any number of my friends, while Campus Crusade folks will be able to host Ash & Tracy). And then when Ash flies back to the States (he can only stay for two weeks because of family obligations), Tracy & I will be doing some independent traveling for a few days — Tracy to Auckland, and me to Perth. I decided to go to Perth because my friend Bob from here (he currently works at AccuWeather as a forecaster) has accepted a job as a forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth, and in theory will be moving down there in late June (when his work visa is accepted will determine that). I figured there might never be another time when I’d be down there and know someone in Perth who could show me around a bit. Regardless of how much time he can get off, I plan to rent a car and do some exploring, as I’ve never been to Western Australia before. I tossed around the idea of trying to fit in visits to two new places in the few days I had, but in the end decided that since I was spending the time and money to fly to Perth, that I may as well take the time to see as much as I can over there. There are a lot of cool national parks and things to see over on that side of the country (Kalbarri NP was highly recommended to me while I was studying abroad, a 7-hr drive north of Perth), but Perth is just so far from anywhere that it’s kind of hard and expensive to get to (it’s closer to Singapore than Sydney, and not exactly close to Singapore). So that’ll be my “new place” on this trip. As great as Melbourne is, and as many friends as I have there, I at least wanted to go see one new destination at a minimum.
So the three of us booked our flights through Qantas a week ago. On Mon 2 Aug we’ll all take Ash’s car down to DC and fly out of IAD (Washington Dulles). We’ll have one 6-hr stopover at LAX (Los Angeles), and from there it’s a 15.5-hr flight to MEL (Melbourne), which lands on the morning of Wed 4 Aug. Then on Mon 16 Aug we’ll all depart Melbourne, Ash back to the States, Tracy to AKL (Auckland), and me to PER (Perth). I’ll be in Perth from that Monday afternoon until very early morning on Sat 21 Aug — my flight leaves at 1am local time, and arrives back at IAD at 5:30pm local time also on the 21 Aug, but after 29 hours of travel (layovers in MEL and LAX). Tracy & I will be on the same flight from LAX to IAD, and after we land we’re planning to rent a car one-way to go back to State College. So, factoring in the driving, that’ll be roughly 34-35 hours of traveling on the 21st of August. Talk about a long day!!
So I have my new passport, and I’ve officially purchased my IAD -> MEL -> PER -> IAD itinerary for $1600! I’m going back to Australia, for real! It’s going to be fun planning (if my research push doesn’t kill me), and then even more fun going!