Canberra

I just got back from a trip to Canberra, Australia's capital city. I was there for the official orientation to EAPSI - the program that got me to Australia and is supporting my research. We were wined and dined by the Australian Academy of Science - I had some seriously fabulous food and (more than) my fair share of beer and wine. We visited the National Gallery, which has a great collection of Indigenous art. We also got to tour the Parliament House, and were able to sit in on 'question time', where politicians are able to query other representatives. This was awesome for two reasons:
1. The Dalai Lama was also sitting in on questions time. I have NEVER been so excited to be in the same room as someone in my life - including the time we saw Torii Hunter at McDonalds.
2. Most of the time was spent by politicians avoiding questions in hilarious ways, and being heckled by their colleagues. To imagine the scene, just think of a guy in a suit saying "Jobs blah blah blah they want to take away you pension blah blah we will create jobs blah blah blah..." while 100 other people are pointing and muttering and laughing rudely and standing up and sitting down, and one dude in the middle is yelling "order ORDER" in an Australian accent. Awesome.
The only sad part about the trip is that it was a lot of fun to hang out with the 20 other students, and now we're all split up into our host cities.

Canberra is a totally planned city, built from scratch. It is laid out symmetrically, all the streets are very wide, its super clean, and bars close at 10:30. Reminds me of my summer in Utah.

This picture is actually taken from the top of the capital building, which is covered in sod. The buildings in the large park area are the old parliament building and the war memorial. 

Top of the capital building.