Of course when you spend a year or more organizing, planning, imagining and preparing for an adventure you construct all sorts of images and expectations of what it is and will be.  It has a life of it's own.  It exists in a space all to itself which you observe, hold, manipulate and imagine the possibilities.  Now that I exist within that place of course it has a reality which is quite different than that story I wrote previously.

 I am of two minds here.  It is hard to imagine where I am, that I am literaly on the other side of the earth from where I was a month ago.  Graham and I were in a store the other day and were looking at a globe - quite beautiful, gold and brilliant colors.  We spun it and looked at where we are and where we had been - it is such an abstract notion, holding a ball in our hands.  In the day to day life we are leading here we are in the present, the moment, the world as we define it today.  This world exists inside us and around us.  We buy groceries, play games, drink wine (quite wonderful Australian wines) walk outside and sweat in the hot sun.  We could be any where (except for Western PA which doesn't have much hot sun right now) and we are.  Then I am riding the tram into the CBD and the Melbourne skyline appears quickly on the trip - it is in the distance, it is outside me and I can look at it and we are so far away from PA. Holding this place outside of myself I have a sense of being so far away.  Quite amazing.

La Trobe Uni (it is "the Uni" here) is a beautiful campus.  Not sure what I expected but it has been a pleasant surprise.  The central part of the campus is set u[ for only foot trafic and there are walkways on the ground and one level up so you can walk around the central campus all on the upper level or ground level.  Surrounding the campus are lagoons and various water features.  It is very green.  Of course there is the standard government, institutional buildings but also alot of sculpture and quite unique buildings.  There are a wide variety of inviting, hidden green areas with places to gather and to find solitude. 



Health Sciences # 1,  My office is on the 3rd floor here.

The Institute for Mollecular Science.  An unbelievable building.

 



 

 

A gathering area on the upper deck around the Union