Mini-Tornado

Well I kindof got my wish from last week- Townsville did end up getting a cyclone of sorts. Not a huge one, but one with winds strong enough to take out many of the trees in the park across the street from my house. They called it a "mini-tornado" but some people were unlucky enough to have their roofs blown away and there was flooding and trees down in a lot of places. It happened around 4am in the morning. I was woken up by the sound of the wind because my window was open and it was actually quite scary! I almost went and got my Australian housemate because I was thinking to myself, if this is a cyclone, I really have no idea what to do!! Luckily it only lasted about 20 minutes. I was hoping classes might be cancelled the next morning, (it would be only fair since I'm missing out on snow days back home) and sure enough, my 9:00am lecture was evacuated half an hour into the class because the room had started to flood. The day after was surprisingly sunny and most of the days since have been at least partially sunny so I'm hoping the mini-tornado was the rainy season's last call.
 On that Friday, however, I learned that even if it had stopped raining, I probably had a few weeks until the effects of the rainy season stopped being an inconvenience. The bus my friend and I were supposed to take on Friday ended up being 8 hours late because of flooding south of Townsville. We were frustrated because we had counted on having Friday night to hangout in Cairns, a coastal city north of Townsville, before heading to the Daintree Rainforest on Saturday morning, but we made the most of it by spending the afternoon at Townsville's Indigenous Cultural Center. There we learned about the history of Australia and how truly awful the European settlers were to the Aborigine people. Even today racism is still a huge problem and many people see the Aborigine as less than human or as lazy, unintelligent, amoral and generally incapable managing themselves. But in reality the poverty, unemployment, poor health and crime that plagues their communities is the direct result of centuries of racism and discrimination.  It was only in 1967 that they got citizenship and the right to vote. Australia is still working at equality and justice but it is being achieved at a surprisingly slow rate for such an otherwise developed nation. Even in my short time here I've heard several racist comments- one otherwise perfectly nice Australian friend told me that she would never go swimming in the public pool my study abroad friends and I  sometimes go to because "it's like a bathtub for indigenous people". Another time I was drinking Goon (cheap boxed wine) and was told by a white Australian that I would "fit in well with the Aborigines".  I try not to be too judgmental of Australia as a country, however, because even America is still struggling with racism as the case of Trayvon Martin clearly illustrates.
On a happier note, we also learned about their culture and looked at some really amazing artwork in a gallery they had set up. I almost bought a painting I liked it so much, but it was $300 so I decided to wait until I have saved some money from my job here before spending that much on a piece of art. I really like their style of painting though and think it will be a good souvenir of my time here, so I definitely plan on returning to buy it! Okay, well having just returned from volleyball (my team won!) I'm pretty tired, and since I have to get up around 6:30am tomorrow for work, I think I will save writing about the Daintree Rainforest until tomorrow!

Tree branches down in the park!

Road floods on the way to Cairns.