wear sunscreen.

I would hope that at least some of you are familiar with the well-known speech, “Wear Sunscreen.” Originally, Mary Schimch wrote it as a newspaper column, but the more popular version is that set to music by Baz Luhrmann. It’s been used as a graduation speech frequently, and it’s also often used in creative writing classes. I’ve always liked this speech-each time I listen to it, a new verse seems to strike a chord, and I always emerge from the seven minute speech wanting to go out and seize the day anew. If you are unfamiliar with the speech, I highly recommend that you look it up-ignore the kitschy back-up singers and focus on Baz’s voice-I know it sounds cheesy, but truly listen to what he’s saying and I think you, too, will be shocked at how many of these advisory sentiments are prevalent to your life, no matter what your age. The reason I’m writing about this is because I’ve listened to the speech a few times while I’ve been abroad, and I’m consistently struck by how humorous and newly meaningful some of these lines are. I apologize that I seem to be doing a lot of lyrical analysis in recent posts-hopefully I can promise you that, with this post, I will be done sifting through my iTunes for blog ideas.

Baz’s first piece of advice is also the title of the piece: Wear Sunscreen. He initiates his memorandum by arguing “the long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists.” He also concedes that “the rest of [his] advice has no basis more reliable than [his] own meandering experience.” Most of you know that the sun in Australia is intense. Not just intense heat-wise, but intense because there is a noticeable hole in the ozone layer surrounding this fine island, country, and continent. This hole means that the UV radiation is much, much stronger here-cancer advisories abound and sunscreen is a must, no matter what your skin tone or what the weather. For those of us already concerned by the aging process (see blog re: wrinkle cream), this piece of advice is a necessary part of being a temporary Australian. Even if you’re not in an area suffering from ozone depletion in the southern hemisphere, I think Baz is right in issuing this warning.

Baz (or Mary, whomever we’re giving credit to) is especially adamant in saying “you are not as fat as you imagine.” Really, Baz? Are you sure about that? Because I seem to be eating more than my fair share of peanut butter toast and Cadbury eggs (Thanks, Mama!)...I seem to drink more wine than I ought, and I always find a whole string of reasons to legitimize going out to eat on Lygon Street bi-weekly. “Market Friday,” when Maddie and I dive into garlic stuffed green olives and Turkish bread with capsicum dip at the Queen Victoria Market is becoming a dangerous habit, too. Through all of these munching manias, I will try to chant Baz’s soothing mantra in my head...I am not as fat as I imagine...I am not as fat as I imagine...I need to go on a few more 6 mile runs before coming home...

“Floss.” Please still be my friend after I share this with you. Baz simply states at 1:38 in the speech to floss. This is a legitimate piece of advice, and I’m sure the American Dental Association is much obliged to this public mandate via song. This would be much easier advice to follow if my underprepared self had packed floss back in Eau Claire, and if floss didn’t cost nine dollars in Australia. With a price like that, Australia is basically asking me NOT to floss. There was no way in h-e-double hockey sticks that I was going to be shelling out a $10 bill for a simple wheel of floss. Sorry floss, but frugality wins on this one. Thankfully, I have hygienic friends who admonished my dental practices and lent me an occasional string of floss before Mother Mary saved the day yet again by bringing good old cheap American floss to me in April.

I could go through each line, I’m sure, and relate it somehow, someway, to this crazy Australian life. “Get more calcium”-yep, because all I eat is carbs. “Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle”-yep, because I’m 15 hours ahead of everyone that I love, which makes talking and staying in touch more difficult, albeit more meaningful. “Do one thing every day that scares you”-yep, because, really, isn’t that the point of studying abroad, conquering fear in the little things as well as the big things? Maybe this was a fruitless blog entry-it was in my head, though, so here it is for your eyes. Feast away, and remember to wear sunscreen.

couple kids running loose in the wild.

I’ve never really been what you might call a nature enthusiast. Sure, I enjoy running and walking outside, and I’m not the type to turn down a beach vacation, a boat ride on Burt Lake, or skiing at Beaver Creek. But I’ve never really been good at nature, if you will. My family didn’t go camping when I was younger, and therefore I was never conditioned nor taught to pitch a tent or pee outside. Because I didn’t know any better, I displaced this lack of comfort and knowledge into “nature hating.” Although I’ve made mild improvements in my nature repertoire over the past few years, sleeping in a tent at Country Fest and jumping in a murky Brazilian swimming hole with unidentified green slime, to name a few of my growing inclinations, I realize now how wrong I’ve been spending the last decade of my life “hating” and misunderstanding something as unselfish and invaluable as nature and the precious time we’ve been given to explore it. Leave it to me to have my nature epiphany in the middle of the Australian Outback, one of the harshest and most unique natural environments in the world.

At approximately 6:00 AM on May 7^th, Ellen, Maddie, Alex, Kelly, and I found ourselves aboard The Rock Tour bus, with 16 new friends and a small Kiwi guide named Sam, heading down the highway out of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. A few hours into the drive, we stopped to hike 6 kilometers in King’s Canyon, the Aboriginal counterpart to our very own Grand Canyon. We romped up and down, through and between the rock structures and interfaces, learning the secrets of ancient “bush tucker” and creation stories. Following this hike, we drove a few more hours and pulled over on the side of the road to use the “bush toilet” (which denotes finding a particularly leafy tree to hide behind and hope with all of your might that your Rock Tour cohorts are not within a 50 foot radius of your chosen location) and gather firewood for the night. Upon arrival at our campsite, we set about cooking our dinner on the fire and organizing our sleeping bags and swags. I was nervous enough when I had assumed I’d be sleeping in a tent for the weekend, with only a thin layer of nylon to protect me from the dangers of dingoes and red-backed spiders. You can imagine my horror upon learning that Sam expected me to sleep enclosed in a canvas sack, bare and vulnerable to the land, the sky, the creatures of the perilous Outback. It is actually a small miracle that this discovery did not send me into apoplectic shock: the nature skeptic to sleep on the ground...in nature...in the OUTBACK...without a tent? After a slight panic attack, though, my tired body (and Maddie’s calming comments) goaded my mind to sleep beneath a perfect canvas of expansive stars.

Sam called to us lyrically at 5:45AM Saturday morning to “rise and shine, wakey wakey, time to get up...” and we sleepily stumbled out of our swags, frozen and weary eyed, to eat breakfast and drive to Kata Tjuta for the day. Kata Tjuta means “Many Heads” in the Aboriginal language, and is an important site for their ancestral history. A 7-kilometer walk wove us through the remarkable domes of the site. Kata Tjuta is part of the same World Heritage site as Uluru, and I had known nothing of its presence nor meaning before this trip, so I was glad to have the opportunity to both see it and learn of its significance. Finally it was time to get up close and personal with the pinnacle motivation for our trip: Uluru. Known in the Western world as Ayers Rock , Uluru stands at a height of near 3,000 Feet and is about 8-Kilometers around, and runs 6-kilometers deep into the ground; with numbers such as these, it is easy to understand its ranking as the world’s largest rock. The wonderful thing about Uluru is that it’s both impressively stunning from a distance and shockingly unique up close. From a distance, it is an unbelievable sight purely because it stands alone, rising from the red dust as a solitary rectangular figure on an otherwise empty horizon. Up close, while walking the 8-kilometer Base Walk on Sunday morning following our sunrise viewing of the Rock, we were able to view each of the Rock’s sacred sites, its caves, cut-outs, and colored indentations, weathered and formed over thousands of years, making it a much different sight than we expected it to be.

I have not said nearly enough about our tour group’s dynamic, our “Team America” moniker, Sam’s tough love, the cute Brits Ian and Paula who are on a tour of the world...I haven’t mentioned our proud sing-along to American Pie (happy to say that three of us know each and every word, with a video to prove it), riding camels, or the fact that we gleefully watched two disrespectful idiots get handed an $11,000 fine for climbing Uluru 1) against Aboriginal wishes and 2) when it was closed for weather restrictions. I haven’t told you everything, dear blog devotees, because I’m exhausted and stressed, facing four extremely long and difficult papers and anticipating the newly planned visit of the Stortz ladies in just a few weeks. I am confident that, at some point upon my return stateside, I will share these stories and learning experiences in depth with you. For now, though, from those of you who have known me throughout my blasphemous “nature-hating” years, I would appreciate a sigh of relief and a congratulatory pat on the back that I am finally joining the ranks as a fellow nature-lover, with a successful weekend camping in the Outback as my first badge of credibility.