May 16, 2009: Arrival:
June 10, 2009After an extremely long flight which took over 16 hours total from LA to Melbourne, Au, my DukeEngage has begun. I’m going to start off with my initial reactions. I found that the first thing I was doing after arriving at the Melbourne airport was comparing the Australian world to my own. Here are some random things I have noticed:
Differences:
- 7/11 stores are on every corner
- A 14 hour time difference!
- Everything that is normally on the left side is on the right and vice-versa (most noticeably traffic) -Many words are spelled slightly differently (ex. “Tire” is spelled “tyre”)
- Hamburgers and baked beans are common breakfast items
- Public transportation is everywhere
- “American” pizza includes salami and ham, and most pizza places don’t even have pepperonis
Similarities:
- Language
- Large middle class
- Similar feel to an American city
——
Noticing these observations along with many others, my father and I toured around Melbourne. We visited a Yarra Valley winery, watched Star Trek for the second time on the third largest IMAX in the world and came face to face with kangaroos, emus, and Koalas in the Healsville sanctuary. But, the majority of the time in Melbourne we spent working out the logistics of my stay. We found a place for me to stay, got a general idea for the Richmond area (the suburb in which I would be living), and made some, but few, discoveries about the Lighthouse Foundation. This all came as an enormous relief—I was becoming more and more worried as the time in which I would be alone quickly approached, while uncertainty about where I would be living and what I would be doing remained a constant.
The comfort of knowledge did not come all at once though. Coming in I knew very little of the Lighthouse Foundation, and my first encounter with it was all but positive. We came to the building unannounced and it happened to be closed; this is what we saw:
Fortunately after some further inspection two days later, and contact with my partner in the organization, Cameron, things began to look a lot more positive.
