More Photos

All American boys in an all American scape. And just to sound like one of the locals, that Washington Monument is huge! I saw it and thought, yeah about the size of Hobart's centataph. Oh No. Then I realised how far away I was from it and it quadrupled (and more) in size, before my eyes.

First trip with Sonja, Seth, Casey and Chad (not pictured) to Boston. Casey, holding the guidebook, leads us on the Freedom trail. At some point it starts bucketing down and we see Paul Revere's statue in the pouring rain and then find shelter in a cosy, peeling, Italian cafe and drink liquer hot chocolate and beer and play scrabble.

Do Chad and Seth share each other's views? It certainly looks that way. In the Boston Subway.

Continuing the unground theme, here is a chair in the cellar. Spooky. The cellar is quite large and includes a sub-cellar which is dark and mouldy and even spookier. A good place to be naughty. Btw, Americans love the way we say "naughty".

Victor and Seth (lying down, middle distance) enjoy a calmer Cape Cod beach.

Beaver! (at the Natural History Museum, Harvard. This one is not alive, it is has been skinned in stuffed, to a point were Plato would ask you if this lump of fur and stuffing still has the identity of a "beaver". Gooood question)

Halloween night. Shannon as Audrey Hepburn (she went totally into character and smoked), Allyssa as Hermoine, Sonja as a 70's woman and Seth as a Gay. He later shaved his beard into a hilarious chops and fumanchu, but it would have been funnier with the above costume.

Just like the Christmas lights competitions in Australian neighbourhoods, Americans like to get into the Autumnal spirit and decorate their homes for Halloween. Here a house has a graveyard of pillow zombies and a crashed witch.

Funny to me. Apparently "Pratt" is a college in American somewhere. I don't think Sonja was being a pratt at this point though, even though she may have spent to long in the shower or farted or something. But you get to a point where you don't care what people do and you like them anyway. I like Sonja. And I did just as many annoying things. That's something I found I struggled with living in a community - my own judgmentalism.


There's a No Alcohol rule observed at L'abri since people sometimes come to L'abri with alcohol problems. But you can be a bit naughty and drink on the train back to L'abri from Boston, and keep the bottle in its paper bag. Here Karl and Seth indulge in some of that sophomorish naughtiness, but I can't judge them, since I had a few sips too.

In fact, I did quite a few naughty things in that sheltered environment (it seems that the cloisteredness of it promotes minor acts of rebellion. It it would be the best enviroment in which to rebel, if you had to). I didn't get a tatoo and jump in the No Swimming reservior like Shannon did. Don't blame the bad influence of those loose Americans, I think due to my long period of study (17 years, no breaks) I've had a delayed adolescance; but I think I've got all the cigarette smoking, illicit guinness drinking, wild canoodling, self-indulgent nihlism and flamboyant, racy, costuming out of the system.

One of our trips to Boston. Chad and Seth ordered Squid Ink pasta in the North End (the Italian district. There are shady looking guys on each corner.) That pasta was "good", as the Americans say.

I took this when I first arrived, and no one was around (except for the workers). This is the interior of the girls dorm. Yes, it's old school noice. That's me in the mirror.


The L'abri Manor. Us girls slept in the East Wing, the guys in the West. There was this kind of double standard; technically no girls in guys dorm and vice versa, but this was frequently broken by girls in the guys room. The guys kept a safe distance, except for Vincent, who is only 18 and the sort of guy girls want to dress up and have sleepovers with. He's not gay (ha! not at all), but we felt comfortable with his intrusion. Below is a blurry picture of him. He's Franco-Swiss and lives at Swiss L'abri, as he is The Frances Schaffer's great-grandson.


A L'abri meal. Brandon (California), Sonja (California), Shannon (Michigan), Paul, Keri (New York). In the background Seth, Chad and Victor all wear plaid. I think that meal was Cranberry Chicken. Delicious.

Casey, Chad and Seth on a train ride to Boston. I don't know what Casey was saying at that point, but he could have been improvising brilliant Dadaist poetry in his Southern drawl.

Autumn and her son, Azariah. All those bottles would be in fluid ounces.

Autumn (Arizona), Brandon, the back of Allyssa (Pennsylvania), Azariah, Paul (a strange young man from Georgia), Seth (washing dishes), all in the Student Kitchen. Everyone is doting over Azariah, who is now probably missing the attention very much.