Shortly after the day began, I found myself standing in front of a painting by Imants Tillers entitled "White Aborigines." This was a disturbing painting of chaotic blue, white, and pink colors covering 100 small canvas board panels. Black streaks created figures within the chaos, though these too were chaotic. The painting was frantic. It was hard to focus on one image at a time. The painting was violent. No happy faces here. Some German phrase crossed the bottom of the painting--I don't know what it said. It was a dark painting. And it began my day.
Yes, I'd begun my day at the Museum of Contemporary Art. After nearly 3 hours there, Nick and I headed out to the Rocks to find snacks. A wonderful coconut and jam pastry satisfied me. And then it was time to meet our friends. Tess, Anna, Kara, Reza, and Olivia. We wanted to find a place for a relatively cheap dinner. After a long trek across central Sydney, with discoveries of closed restaurants, we finally found our way to the Shark Hotel, the same place where a group from my homestay had gone "clubbing" back the first weekend here. The room was complete different in the daytime. It had a buffet for about $10, and it was glorious.
You see, at the Ross Frazer homestay, we have a group of 7 guys. Ross does not believe in salad. In fact, he doesn't really believe in vegetables in general. And he doesn't think guys in general are interested in such things. Most of what we eat on a regular basis is meat. It's good, but it's beginning to get old. It's also doing weird things to all of our stomachs. So, when I say that I didn't eat a single piece of meat at this buffet, you should understand something: it was an event. I loaded my plate with salad fixings, some Chinese noodles, humus, potatoes, and carrots. The combination is strange, I know. But it tasted incredible. I got happily full without a single shred of meat.
The conversation over dinner was good, crossing all sorts of topics--from relationships to 9/11. And then it was time to head to the bus stop to get to NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art), where Nick, Anna, Tess, and I had tickets to see the finalists of Short + Sweet, a 10 minute play festival--a group of Wesley students were participating, thus how we had heard about it. So, we're in a hurry to make sure we get to the theatre on time. And we're following Reza, who is using his iPhone to guide us to the right bus stop. And we're running late.
Thus, we moved quickly through the city, traveling several blocks. We finally get to the stop, only to discover that Reza's phone had messed up. We'd gone in the wrong direction. With only minutes before our bus is going to be arriving, we took off sprinting through Sydney. Block after block, we ran. Uphill, downhill, through the dense humidity of the Australian air. As we weaved our way through crowds, Reza frantically tried to find the right bus stop. We finally saw it ahead. And we also saw our bus turning into the street, heading towards the bus stop. We sprinted as fast as possible, trying to get to the stop before the bus left. God bless the old man who got on the bus and had not pre-payed and was having trouble getting the correct change out. We got on the bus. And Reza told the driver, "Drop these guys at NIDA, please."
And the driver said, "NIDA? You need to catch a bus on the other side of the road. Wrong direction."
Crap. Thus, we got off the bus, crossed the road, and waited... and waited... and waited.... And no bus of use to us came. Finally, we grabbed a cab. Nick struck up a conversation with the Indian cabdriver, and we got to NIDA just in time to pick up our tickets and head into the theatre.
The shows covered several different styles and genres--from dramatic dance to pseudo-existentialism to commedia delle'arte (the Wesley guys!). They varied in quality, greatly, the highlights for me being: a play about people trapped in a prison with no explanation (which had a crappy ending unfortunately--turned out they were lobsters. Lame.), a play about talking down someone from suicide (really powerful), a play about an autistic man meeting a woman on top of a building and falling in love (quite humorous and touching), and the Wesley guys showed great range and storytelling with their commedia piece.
There were awards given after the festival--the Wesley guys got $1000! And then it was time to head back home. We caught a bus and then a train all together. Then, Nick and I said goodnight to Anna and Tess, and caught another bus home, and it was 1 in the morning by the time we got there.
Throughout all of our adventures, there were many conversations, as we broke down barriers and began getting to know each other better. By the end of the day, we were all exhausted. It had been a long one, but a fun one. And I had a blast.
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