Sunday, October 14, 2012

Ku Ring Gai Chase National Park and a weekend in Canberra

Two of the field trips I went on this week were to a national park and to Australia’s capital, Canberra. I went to the Ku Ring Gai Chase park for my Aboriginal Art class to see some of the Aboriginal art there. Honestly, most of the art we saw was not as impressive as the Aboriginal art I saw in the Outback, but the park was really beautiful and not even half as hot as the Outback.

I spent Friday through Sunday in Canberra for my Australian Society class. Friday, we saw the Big Merino (a giant sheep structure), visited the Australian National University (ANU) and met a few administrators for tea, then visited the ANU bar, and then went to a pub called Mooseheads for dinner. I ate way too much food because appetizer after appetizer kept being served to us and NYU was paying, so I was not complaining. Saturday, we visited a lookout that had amazing views of all of Canberra (a very small, cute town constantly accused of being boring as the nation’s capital and the origin of Australian law). Then, we visited the National War Memorial Museum (it was huge!), went to an annual flower fair called Floriade, and visited the Australian National Gallery. Although the flowers were really beautiful, I loved visiting the National Gallery because I love art so much. I was surprised (though probably foolishly) that the museum had a few Warhols, Monets, and even a Dali lobster phone (perhaps one of my favorite pieces). For dinner, we got pizza. Sunday, we visited Parliament and were given a tour around several national embassies (the United State’s embassy is the biggest!). After visiting Parliament, we visited a farm just outside of Canberra, where we got to play with 4-day-old lambs and watch a sheep get sheared. While on the farm, we were served an elaborate lunch of juice/wine/beer/soda, bread, beefsteak, salad, beets, potatoes, pineapple, tea, coffee, and cake (a nice change from my latest ramen obsession). Before leaving the farm and returning to Sydney, we were taught how to throw a boomerang and I didn’t kill any animals, so I felt it was a success.

On a side note, my newest website obsession is Art.sy, which is an algorithm-based, personalized art recommendation site (basically Pandora for art). I highly recommend signing up if you like art J My Monday is going to be an interesting day of class and a Sotheby’s art auction. I have never been to an art auction, never mind such a high-end one, so I will post about that soon. In the meantime, read my latest published article: http://nyunews.com/index.php/2012/10/11/sydney-2/ 

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