Smithfield Rotary Club Blog

–By Karin

Warning: This is the part of the GSE trip where we’ve accomplished new levels of silliness.

Katie brought a big book of Mad Libs along on our trip, and there have been various times when we’ve amused ourselves with it. (Note to future GSE Teams: I highly recommend bringing along something like Mad Libs for those moments in transit during the GSE trip.)

For those who are unfamiliar with Mad Libs, these are stories or dialogues where some of the words have been taken out. The person writing the Mad Lib will ask others for suggested words, giving only the part of speech and not any other information. If a member of the current team suddenly/randomly asks you for a noun or an adjective, a Mad Lib might be in progress.

On Tuesday, we drove out to World Heritage site Mungo National Park and the ride was starting to seem long. I thought to myself that it would be a great opportunity to do a Mad Lib, but I didn’t have the book with me. I did, however, have my trip itinerary with me, so I made up a Mad Lib out of that. The story we created is below…words in bold were supplied by the participants. (Again, they had no idea what the topic of the text was.)

“Rotary District 9520 covers part of four bumpy states of Australia. There are at present 56 Rotary nostrils, with a total membership of approximately 1600 Rotarians. The district is dependent to a gut-wrenching extent on the pushy economy with some frivolous industry in country towns, but most of the red kangaroos, bulls, and hot dogs are centered in Adelaide. Large irrigated areas long the River Murray produce quality lightbulbs, meatpies, grapes, and extensive dairying. Wines produced are of perilous quality and of various styles.”

(Hopefully I have not offended anyone with any of the information above. Nothing in the previous paragraph should be considered definitive information on District 9520.)

Henry Hornsby was a major contributor to the Mad Libs.

Before and during dinner, we completed another Mad Lib:

“Discover the Murray

The Murray is a river whose pouch encompasses sassy beauty, sluggish heritage and history, and amazing tourism and effervescent cardiologists. It has a world-class wine stripper. The Murray creates a natural Bacardi between New South Wales and Victoria.

On the Murray, paddle steamers were baked to carry wool, wallpaper, and other cats from town to town. Millions of nosehairs rely on the Murray as a source of hockey pucks for bulbous and industrial use, and it plays an intravenous part in Australia’s offspinner.

A shocking range of maidens can be found choking in the Murray River basin, including emus, kangaroos, desert flies, black swans, and phalanges. To moonwalk the diversity of the Murray is truly prickly. It will bake your soul. Enjoy your Murray spaghetti.“

Yesterday afternoon we went to Mungo National Park, a chain of dried lakes, about an hour and a half from Mulderia, over dirt roads (and rather bumpy in the van!)  http://www.visitnsw.com/Mungo_National_Park_P629.aspx

I (Susan) rode behind the van in a truck with my host “mom”, Brenda, so avoided the bumpy ride until on the way back home.

The views at Mungo were vast and almost as far as the eye could see.

We spent the night at the park, staying in rooms with bunk beds, with 5-6 people per room.  It was a bit like camping, only with a full kitchen and warm beds (and showers, if anyone wanted to brave the cold morning!)

We saw more kangaroos and emus while in the park, as well as the drive in and out, only they were obviously wild ones this time.  We haven’t quite gotten enough of the kangaroos yet, especially the idea of just seeing them alongside the road as we drive past.

A few days ago, we visited Gorge Wildlife Park and had another opportunity for some face-to-face time with kangaroos and other Australian animals. One big difference between Gorge and Cleland Park was that they had tons of albino kangaroos and wallabies. The other big difference was that we saw lots and lots of joeys at Gorge Wildlife Park (and hadn’t seen any at Cleland). It was really quite touching to see the moms and the joeys interact. Check out the legs sticking out of the pouch on the kangaroo above!

Being at Cleland Wildlife Park felt a little bit like being at a big kangaroo frat party, whereas with all the baby animals, Gorge Wildlife Park felt like a cool marsupial mom’s group.

I especially loved it when the joeys had shy moments like the one pictured above.

We are currently staying in the Murray Riverland area, about five hours away from our last location. On our first night in Mildura, we went to a lovely outdoor dinner at the home of Glen and Brenda Hornsby. One really special thing that they did for us was to offer our first experience tasting kangaroo. (I of course abstained!) The kangaroo was in the form of burgers, which usually have a lot of the same toppings as in the US but they also add beets as a topping. Here are Katie and Gary having a taste:

One team member mentioned being able to still taste the kangaroo the following morning, so apparently it’s the sort of thing that still stays with you.

Just to go full circle with things, on the drive back to my host family’s home, I had my first chance to see kangaroos out and about. Though I’ve taken something like 100 photos of marsupials so far, I hadn’t seen any kangaroos in a non-conservation park setting. It’s so fun to watch how they move, but was much too dark for photos.

–By Karin

We had an interesting surprise on October 3. During a reception with Bill Cooksley, the mayor of Adelaide Hills, we had the opportunity to see a family of four from Sri Lanka become Australians. They were in their last step of the citizenship process, which involves reading the oath of citizenship and then having the official (in this case the mayor) sign off on and hand over the certificate of citizenship. Right afterwards, we were at a wonderful outdoor dinner and most people mentioned that they’d never actually observed someone go through this process.

For me, issues of citizenship are always interesting. Part of this is the nature of my work–everyone I work with is from another country originally and our students are quite a variety of immigration situations. But also, I’ve spent time dealing with immigration authorities in Charlotte, North Carolina since I’m married to a “snowback” (that’s a joking term my husband Adam and I use in reference to his being Canadian). I know that citizenship is a long process and I loved being able to observe the last stage, which I imagine is the fun part of it. When I was glancing at the Australian citizenship certificates, I also thought about the time that Adam and I found his grandmother’s American citizenship certificate when were going through his grandmother’s papers on a recent visit. This really was one of the unexpected highlights of the trip so far.

Incidentally, when we first met the mayor, he mentioned that he’d been looking up information about North Carolina with the help of “Mr. Google.” So for the past few days, we’ve been amusing ourselves by always saying “Mr. Google” when we refer to google. By the way, it’s quite touching that people have often taken the time to learn about North Carolina (and in some cases, about us) beforehand and it’s good that Mr. Google is there to help in that process.

There are some gorgeous birds here in Australia, but so far the one that has made the biggest impression on me is the magpie. This is because the magpie is usually what wakes me up! Magpies have a very distinctive “warble” sound. The first time I heard it, I was very tired and a bit out sorts and I thought it might be a cell phone ringing. In fact, I think the magpie warble would be a great cell phone ringtone.

If you’ve ever fantasized about showing up at an airport and having a large group of people with a banner welcome you, do a Group Study Exchange trip! I was really impressed and honored by our welcome at the Adelaide airport on September 28, especially since everyone was waiting for us for quite a while.

Pictured are Sue Mellen, Bob Nottage, District Governor Peter Schipp, Peter Sandercock, and GSE Chair David Mellen.

On our first night, I had the chance to try some Rotary wine. Our first host club, Brownhill Creek, has a project where they bottle and sell local wine. I believe that other clubs do this, too. If you look closely, you can see the Rotary logo on the label:

Now that we’ve attended a few club meetings and started exchanging banners, we’ve been taking fewer photos with NC Rotary banners in them. However, here’s one more (especially for Kaye Brown and Don Buckner):

Gary wanted me to post a picture of our famous Rotary trailer, handy for transporting luggage from one sponsoring club to another. l don’t know how much luggage the Australia team will have, but we definitely have enough to make it necessary–and it will only get worse!

So far Karin has done quite a bit of the blogging (Thanks, Karin!), so I thought I’d add a short post to let everyone know that the rest of the team really can type as well!    I see that Karin has already shown everyone the wonderful day we had with the koala bears and we fed the kangaroos yesterday as well.  I think that one day alone has already made the 30+ hour trip worth it! 

Today was a vocational day for everyone, so we all went our separate ways visiting with various companies and professionals throughout Adelaide.  Though it may sound hard to believe for some, I had a fantastic time visiting with three different accounting firms today.  The very last visit was with a single owner practice that had some very progressive thinking in how they did things, and ended our three hour visit with a bottle of wine from a local vineyard.  How’s that for ending a day’s work?!?  I then came home to a wonderful meal with my host family of steaks and homemade apple pie and ice cream… sort of like being at home, but with the Southern Cross in the sky above, which I saw for the first time tonight.

I have awaken each morning to the sounds of birds chirping, but the sounds are so different here that it seems as if I were in a tropical place.  My hosts have been more than gracious in their accommodations, and have run me all over town and the beautiful city of Adelaide, which has simply beautiful architecture with ornate ironworks and brickwork unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  Sorry I have no pictures, as the entire time was in the car, plus I have yet to figure out how to download my camera to their computer!  But the city is immaculate and I can see why people love to live here.

On Sunday, we went to Cleland Wildlife Park, where we met numerous kangaroos and had the chance to meet Steven, a koala. On the drive back, two different team members mentioned seeing koalas in the trees, too.

Somehow a Rotary banner ended up in the picture, too.

Here we are before boarding our first Qantas flight from JFK to LAX. We have a joke about trying to put the NC Rotary banners in as many pictures as possible. Gary apologizes for not holding a Smithfield Rotary Club banner–those ones are being shipped over along with our brochures and other heavy items.

I am sure the entire club joins me in thinking of the GSE Team as they departed Thursday September 25 for a month in Australia.

We hope you had a great flight and are meeting all kinds of interesting people and seeing great things. Keep us posted when you can.

Dawnna Lewis

Smithfield Rotary Club

–By Karin

Since we’re not in Australia yet (but soon!), I feel like I can really only blog about North Carolina just now. It happens that the day after we leave, a movie filmed in North Carolina, based on a book by North Carolina author Nicholas Sparks, will be opening in theaters. Nights in Rodanthe looks like it could end up being pretty sappy, but people are raving about the beautiful scenery of the Outer Banks.

When we were preparing for our presentation, I spent a lot of time looking into books and movies with NC connections. In the end, all of that research is summed up by one Power slide, but I had a lot of fun doing the research so I don’t mind. One thing I discovered was that on the Internet Movie Database, you can search for films made in a particular location. I did searches on places like Durham, NC and was sometimes surprised by what I found (there are tons of movies and TV shows filmed in Charlotte, NC for instance).

My favorite local movie was an independent movie called Bandwagon, which came out in the 1990s. What I love about it is how much it reminded me of all of my crazy friends in bands. I don’t know if anyone in Australia would have seen it or heard of it, but Australia has some great independent movies, too, and people there might appreciate it.

I could go probably come up with a 40-slide presentation just on North Carolina authors. One of my all-time favorite books, Tales of the City, was written by Armistead Maupin. Though he lives in and is associated with San Francisco, he grew up in Raleigh and went to UNC-Chapel Hill. When I saw him do a reading at UNC, he mentioned how he’d been instrumental in getting a monument to writer Thomas Wolfe put up. Another favorite writer, David Sedaris, also grew up in Raleigh. What’s fun about seeing him do readings here is that sometimes his family members (like “the Rooster”) will be in attendance. Many of our great writers still live in the area. I met Charles Frazier the year that Cold Mountaincame out because his daughter was attending one of the schools I worked at. Daniel Wallacedoes great readings, and, like Clyde Edgerton, sometimes he’ll play instruments as part of his readings. On the day that I had my first GSE-related interview, I attended a reading by Lee Smith at one of my college’s campuses.

Although sports get a lot of attention, for me, author events are at least as exciting as the big games. I look forward to checking out more Australian authors during and after this trip.

At the time that I heard about the opportunity to apply to be a GSE team member, one of the things that led me to actually apply was my family connection to Australia. My grandfather, Guy F. Abell, was stationed in Australia during World War II.

I only learned that he’d spent some time in Adelaide a few weeks after team training started. In July, my parents came to visit and brought me his army scrapbook. Here is a picture of Adelaide in 1942:

I’m sure I’d seen his pictures of Adelaide before but didn’t remember them specifically. I did, however, remember seeing pictures of kangaroos. I thought we had a picture of Grandpa With A Kangaroo, but we instead have the next best thing:

A picture of my grandfather and then a picture of one of his army buddies with a kangaroo. These are from Brisbane.

I imagine that one day, my descendants will look through my Australia photos and see a photo of Katie, or Carrie, or Susan with a kangaroo and wonder who that person was and what she was like.

I don’t think I’ll be giving anything away by mentioning that we highlight Southern food in our group presentation.  As a vegetarian, some of the thrills of traditional Southern cuisine are lost on me, though I do make an excellent batch of cheese grits and have even made a vegan version of barbecue on occasion. (Barbecue is a noun in NC, in case you didn’t know.)

District 7710 has a lot to offer to “foodie” types. We have specialty store A Southern Season, a natural foods co-op called Weaver Street Market, some great farmer’s markets and a diverse array of restaurants. It seems to me that the food scene just keeps getting better, something reflected in the recent proliferation of blogs about local cuisine, particularly in Durham.

Even with all of this in mind, it was still a thrill to see that Bon Appetit magazine has named Durham-Chapel Hill America’s Foodiest Small Town. If I’d written the article, I doubt I would have called the combined area of these two cities a “small town” but that’s just a minor criticism. The article has several recipes, including one for Rosemary Apple Cider Ice Pops from our local gourmet popsicle joint, LocoPops. I haven’t tried that particular popsicle yet, but I did try chocolate apricot one on my last visit.

Dogs can enjoy LocoPops, too. Proceeds from the popsicles for dogs go the a local animal shelter.

I’ve looked at both the print and online versions of the article, and was particularly delighted to see an additional full page of photos on the web site’s blog. Many of the places pictured are right on my daily dogwalking route. If anyone from district 9520 wants to get a feel for what and where people eat in the area in and around Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro, they should check out the article and the pictures.

–By Karin

Shortly after our first GSE training meeting, I found myself spending a lot of time online looking at maps. I was trying to get a good sense of which cities and towns were in district 9520 and how far we’d be from other places like Melbourne or Sydney. (In Australia, it seems that the answer is always “very far,” even if two places look pretty close on a map of the country.)

Somewhere in all of that searching, I found a map of all of the public restrooms in the entire country. The fact that this fascinated me shows that I am definitely related to my mother, a person who can really carry on a conversation about a public bathroom.

For some reason, however, I didn’t manage to bookmark this site. Now that we’re about two weeks from departure and I actually know some of the names of the places we’ll visit, I wanted to look at the bathroom map again. So this morning, I set about looking for it again. Usually, these types of searches only take a few minutes thanks to google, but this morning I just could not find it! I was beginning to think that I’d imagined the whole thing.

As with many things, it all comes down to search terms. Searching for “public bathroom” Australia or “rest room” Australia yielded no results. However, “public toilet” Australia works. Here’s the site!

http://www.toiletmap.gov.au/

Yes, that’s a governmental web site. I already love Australia for this.

The public toilet map even has its own wikipedia page. And, if you really need it, there’s a Toilet Map helpline at 1800 990 646.

This topic came up at our training meeting yesterday, and it was pointed out that the first-ever Rotary project in Chicago was the creation of a public restroom (or toilet), so I guess this is highly appropriate for a Rotary blog, right?

Whenever possible, one should make an attempt to prepare family members for a GSE trip. After all, although your family can’t go on the trip, it’s good for them to have an understanding of the place you will visit. This will help them picture you in your new setting and will help them relate to the stories you relay.

In my (Karin’s) case, my family is my husband Adam and my dog Lucy. Adam has had various Australian friends over the years, so I didn’t need to do much to get him prepared. With Lucy, I figured that the best way to prepare her was through the purchase of dog toys.  (She didn’t really need more toys, by any means, but hey, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, right?)