Day 13

Classes have started here at James Cook!  I'm not sure if they start this early all over Australia, but it sure feels weird to go to classes in July.  So far it's all been good: my Tropical Marine Ecology class is mostly online and only meets three times (including yesterday), and it has three field trips!  My class today was Ecology and Australian Indigenous Cultures, which seems to be both very easy and also veeeery artsy-fartsy-philosophical.  We had to spend five minutes discussing what 'ecology' meant and then discuss what the various types of ecology are--cultural ecology, conservation ecology, 'deep' ecology (that's the philosophical one), social ecology (which is somehow different than cultural), and so on and so forth.  Puhlease.

In other (more exciting) news, as of today I have tried both of Australia's famous foods: Vegemite and Tim Tams.  Vegemite was created in 1922 after a beer brewing company decided that they should do something useful with the used (read: dead) yeast that congealed on the bottom of the beer barrels.  They scraped the dead yeast gel off the bottom, mix it with onion and celery extracts, add a bit of salt, and behold--Vegemite was born.  The formula is basically identical today, although they make a version for babies called My First Vegemite, which has less sodium and is 'just a touch milder,' according to the Kraft website.  Kraft is now the only producer of Vegemite (it's a name brand), although a similar product called Marmite is eaten in England.

Taken right off the Kraft site.  It's real.

Vegemite is not delicious.  I sampled the stuff in the traditional Australian way: spread veeery thin over margarined toast.  (If 'buttered' can be a word, then so can 'margarined.'  Nobody uses butter here, just margarine.)  Most Americans (including my friends here) hate the stuff, but I didn't think it was bad.  It's very salty, but not unpleasant.  I definitely prefer jam to Vegemite.  It's full of B vitamins like folic acid, niacin, riboflavin, and thiamine, so it's good for you, I guess.  But not so good that I want to eat it daily.

This picture is from Wikipedia.  I would never eat two slices of this.

Next up: Tim Tams.  They're a cookie--whoops, a 'biscuit' here, my bad--and frankly?  They're not that good.  Despite their catchy name, I am left completely unimpressed by the Tim Tam.  The Tim Tam is two layers of malted chocolate biscuit (cookie!) with a layer of chocolate filling in the middle, and the whole thing is covered in more chocolate.

The original Tim Tam.

Looks pretty delicious, right?  Kinda?

It looks good, but honestly it's pretty mediocre for a cookie--BISCUIT.  I can't even say that word without thinking of gravy.

The Tim Tam does have one redeeming feature: The Tim Tam Slam.  This is where you take a Tim Tam, bite off both ends, and use it as a straw to suck up a liquid, such as milk or coffee or (apparently) tea.  I will be taking some to my meals tomorrow, mainly to a) try the Tim Tam Slam for myself, but also to b) watch other people do silly things and c) get rid of this cookies.  Interestingly, both Tim Tams and Vegemite are malted products, so I can't eat very much of them due to my malt allergy.

But wait!  Tim Tams and Vegemite aren't the only weird things I've eaten lately!  There's so much more!  Like kangaroo burgers!

Kangaroo burgers!  This is Frances and her mouth is full of kangaroo.  The burgers weren't very good, probably because
we didn't season them.  (The unseasoned steaks were gross too.)  It tasted very gamey.  But we've got more meat to test!

And Cherry Ripes!

Looks kinda fruity and not in the good way, right?

WRONG.  This thing is DELICIOUS.  It's cherry and coconut, covered in dark chocolate!  I can only compare it to
those chocolate-covered-cherries, only in a bar, and with lots of coconut.  Seriously, it's amazing.

And less amazing was the Turkish Delight bar, which I will admit I only tried because Turkish Delight was in that first Narnia movie and I remembered thinking, "What the heck is that?"  The answer is: some kind of weird licorice gel.

This wrapper tells me NOTHING about the contents.

Imagine you made black licorice jello, only you made it with about a quarter of the water you were supposed to use so it's
super jellified, and then you covered it in chocolate.  That is the Turkish Delight bar.  This was the first and final bite.

And last but not least--and this one really only appeals to those over 30--the Marathon bar is still around over here!  It's called a Curly Wurly bar, and it's only sold in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe.  It was introduced in America in the 70's but dropped in 1981.  Weirdly, the candy bar we know as Snickers in the USA was called a 'Marathon' in the UK until 1990, and the name has returned recently as a new Snickers-version of energy bars.

Pretty good, pretty good.

Also of interest: candy is called 'confectionary' here.  This is important information, you know.

I don't have class on Wednesdays, and as I am still looking for a job and a volunteer research position, I might spend tomorrow on the hunt.  Not fun, but necessary.  I also met two divers (fellow students at the Lodge) from Hawaii today, and a guy from Germany!  Still haven't made any Australian friends, but I'm working on it, I assure you.  And the verdict is still out on the Australian boys, because frankly, I don't know enough of them yet to make a broad judgement.  I'd say roughly half of the students at James Cook are over 40, and most everyone I know is international, so it's a bit difficult to meet them.  But I won't give up!

Cheers,
Ashton