Days 13-15

Monday was the first day of classes! I only had one class, my english class, from noon-1pm. It wasn't really anything special. I did realize that when telling a fellow international student that you are taking an english class, it has to be specified that you are taking a literature class as opposed to a language class. I got some funny looks saying I was taking an english class. Anyways, there are supposed to be 100 people in the class, but only 40 showed up. The professor is American, and pretty funny. The building wasn't terribly hard to find, although it was in the Physics Building, and I did get there half an hour early. I keep overestimating the time it takes to get to classes here. The campus is pretty big, but somehow it really doesn't take all that long to get there. After classes, we were planning on going down to the Royal Botanical Gardens by the opera house, but it was raining. We went shopping instead. Theres this huge mall that is mostly underground in the middle of the CBD. We were walking around and it just kept going and going, and then ended in a train station. We didn't know about the train station at first, and we were really confused as to why there were so many people power walking through the mall. Then we saw signs for the train station and realized it was about 5pm, everyone was on their way home from work. We made it home in time for dinner. Gathered up a group of people after dinner and watched 4 episodes of How I Met Your Mother, which one of my friends bought whilst shopping.

Tuesday, I had my three history classes. Australia's Social History at noon (which I have a friend from the wine trip in with me), US Imperialism at 2pm (which I made a friend trying to find the room, because it was crazy hard to find, and theres another girl from the wine trip in the class as well!), and Australia's Underworld at 3pm (its supposed to go until 5, but since it was the first lecture, she let us go at 4pm). I like all of my classes and professors. That night, a group of us planned on going to the local movie theater to see Inception, which was harder to do than you'd think. The movies were selling out way in advance, so about 6 of us took initiative and collected money from people who wanted tickets and we ran down there (quite literally, actually) to the theater and bought all 15 tickets. We were there an hour and a half before the movie. In hindsight, we could've just gone back to the house, its only about three blocks away, but we didn't. We went downstairs to the 24hr KMart and bought candy and water bottles for the movie.This then started a debate over candy and different names (American vs. Britsh/Aussie)- Milky Way bars here don't have caramel, so they're basically a three muskateers bar. Mars bars are the equivalent to an American Milky Way (nougat and caramel). Twix bars have a different font on their packaging that looks weird. They don't have Hershey's here, only Cadbury (which admittedly is amazing). And they have lots of other odd candy and chocolate varieties. Then we stood outside the theater, because the movie in our theater wasn't ending until 9:10pm, and ours started at 9:20. Eventually, everyone else showed up to the theaters and we all went in and managed to get seats together (in a 3 row block). The movie was absolutely amazing and mind blowing! I want to go see it again just so I can pick up on all the tings I missed when watching it last night, kinda like Shutter Island.

Today, I had english and social history again. Nothing too exciting once again. Its been raining all day long. Not fun. I've gone through 3 pairs of shoes today (flip flops, boat shoes and ballet flats) and they're all still soaked. Today has been incredibly uneventful. Went to a pizza party with 3 other girls in Newtown. The pizza was pretty bad, but they gave out free trips to random places. One of the girls I was with won a weekend trip to Fisher Island, which is pretty cool. Then we walked all the way home in the rain. They're showing some Australian comedy movie in the house in a bit, I'll probably go check that out.

Today, I'll leave you with an interesting display in the electronics/dvd/music store in the mall:

Yes, that is 90210 and Sabrina the Teenage Witch under a New Releases sign...

Days 10-12

Friday was pretty relaxing. A group of us went to a BBQ on campus held by one of the organizations. There were sausages, but no hot dog buns, just pieces of bread. Then we went to Victoria Park (the park across the street from IH) with some people from the house and we fed the ducks. Feeding the ducks then led to feeding the pigeons and seagulls as well. The ducks got bored with our bread, so we ended up throwing an entire loaf of bread to the pigeons at the same time, it was crazy! We also ate fairy bread, which is apparently a huge hit at birthday parties of 5 year olds. Its white bread with butter and sprinkles on top, very interesting and strangely addicting. After we ran out of bread (and tried feeding the pigeons a bagel) we headed back to the house to chill a bit before our evening plans. We got dressed up and went downtown to Opera Bar (by the Opera House, go figure!), but we only stayed for 5 minutes because it was really expensive ($17 cocktails!). Then we walked over to th Rocks (the historic part of downtown) and got pancakes. They were almost dessert pancakes. I got one that was 2 pancakes with banana, walnuts, chocolate syrup, whipped cream and chocolate ice cream on top. So good! My feet were killing me by the end of the night, because I forgot that the heels I wore weren't very well broken in. I got about 6 blisters on my feet.

Saturday, a few of us went over to Glebe (an area close to campus) for a market. It was pretty cool, they had all sorts of stuff there from books to clothes to jewelery and food too. It was pretty similar to the Ft. Pierce farmers market actually, but with a little less food. Then I relaxed all afternoon. In the evening, we all got all dressed up to go out to a club in Darling Harbour, Home Bar, for my birthday. I wore my gold sequin dress, everyone else wore black (or dark colors) so that I stood out (which was not my idea). We had some drinks in the house before we left, and then took the bus down there. We left the house around 11pm or so and stayed at Home Bar until 3:30am. I went to sleep at 4:30am. It was a really fun night though. Everyone was buying me drinks and we were all dancing. it was all fun until my feet started killing me from my heels (and the blisters from friday night).

Today was my birthday!! I slept in until 11am. Talked to mom and dad on the phone. The got some lunch. After lunch, Claire and I decided to do some baking. We went to the grocery store (Coles) and managed to find everything we needed (which was harder than expected) and came back to the house to bake. We didn't have much that we needed. We bought brownie mix and yellow cake mix. We didn't have a mixing bowl, we scrounged up measuring cups, spoons, knives, and cooling racks. It was interesting. Then we ate dinner. Now I'm just waiting for movie night which is going to start shortly. It's been a pretty good and relaxing birthday. Classes start tomorrow, so I didn't want to do anything too crazy tonight!

Heres a picture from before we left the house Saturday night:

Addition: After I posted this, my door got knocked on by a large group of people from IH. It was door-knock night apparently. This means that a small group started on the 8th floor (top floor) knocking on ppls doors, giving them candy, playing music and taking pictures of them. Slowly, more people joined the group. By the time they got to my room on the 6th floor there was probably about 20 people. We knocked on every door, blasting music and eating candy the whole time. It was a lot of fun. There was probably 35 people or so by the time we got to the lobby. Then we went into the main room and Claire and I brought our "surprise" (the baked goodies we made)  out to share with everyone. Then they sang me happy birthday (again) and we all ate the goodies. They actually came out very well and everyone liked them and appreciated us baking and sharing. Then we watched Shutter Island, and it was the perfect weather for watching it as well- stormy. Then we discussed the movie, among other things, and now i'm about to go to sleep. It is no longer my birthday here in Sydney. It feels like my birthday went forever though :)

A Quick Study on Aussie Culture

I've got some time to kill before dinner, so I'll let you know some things I've learned about Australian culture, as well as international cultures.

• First things first, they drive on the wrong side of the road. I thought Americans were the only ones to drive on the right side, apparently its only the British commonwealth countries that drive on the left. 
• The toilets here really don't swirl one was or the other, the water just rushes out from all sides and then stops. 
• I asked one of the Aussies that lives in the house, and there is an Outback Steakhouse chain here as well!
• Burger King = Hungry Jacks. Some sort of copyright over here made it so BK couldn't be BK here. The whole menu is basically the same though, just a little smaller.
• Their beaches are weird. The longest one, Bondi, is only 800m long. The cliffs make long beaches (like FL) quite difficult, I guess.
• The people who are taught english by the british say 'zed' as opposed to 'z', it's not just the Canadians.
• "to book it" (ie I just booked it to get here on time) is a very odd phrase, but apparently some Brits use an  equally odd phrase for it: "to cheese it".
• Everything is really expensive. Like 2 to 4 times as much as in the states. (like $20 covergirl mascara...)
• Most shops close at 6 here, except on thursday when they stay open until 9pm. Coffee shops close at 4pm (except in the CBD).
• They listen to House music, which is very odd to Americans, but completely normal to all of the Europeans
• They use change frequently. I do not. They have bills from $5 and up, but theres a $2 coin, a $1 coin, $0.50 coin, $0.20 coin and $0.10 coin. The bills also look like monopoly money. They're quite practical though because each different amount is a different size and color. Your cant crease it or tear it and its waterproof. 
• Napkins = serviettes; and they don't use them much
•  Arvo = afternoon. Good on ya = good for you. Brekky = breakfast. Washing powder = laundry detergent (they don't have the liquid kind). 
• There's a party every night of the week.

And heres a picture of some of the people who are teaching me these things:

Days 7-9

Tuesday was full of more orientation sessions, including opening a bank account and getting the classes that they enrolled me in, based on the classes I put on my application. They enrolled me in almost all of the classes I put on the application as back up classes, none of the history classes I actually wanted. It wasn't a very interesting day at all really.

Wednesday, I had an orientation session for my internship, a sort or pre-interview interview. The two women who organize the study abroad internship program told me that they were putting me through to be interviewed for my first choice, its a project with the National Breast Cancer Foundation to help plan their annual event. I should have an interview for that sometime next week. When I got back to IH after the orientation, I falked through the foyer and a group of my friends were in there about to go to Chinatown and lunch. I joined them and we went to a yum cha restaurant (the kind where they walk around with all of the dishes and you pick what you want) which was really good. I also was using chopsticks, and I am quite terrible at using them. After lunch we walked to Darling Harbour and then through downtown and caught the bus back to IH. It was pretty fun, but pretty exhausting. In the evening, we went to a bar that held crab racing. They placed the hermit crabs in the middle of a circular table and the first ones to reach the outside won. There was also a hose involved, so we got pretty wet. It was so much fun though! After the crab racing, we went to a chocolate bar and got chocolate con churros, which was amazing!

Thursday, a group of us from the house took the bus to Coogee Beach and did a walk all the way to Bondi Beach (about 7km) over the cliffs. The beaches here are kinda weird for me because of the cliffs, the beaches seem so small. The longest beach we saw was Bondi and that wasn't even 1km. We passed 5 beaches on our walk. The downside was that it started raining on us partway through the walk. And even when it wasn't raining, it was overcast, cold and windy. The views were great though! When we got to Bondi, we got lunch at Hungry Jacks (which is Burger King here) and then took a bus to the train station, and then a train back to campus. When we got back, I went to the International Office to fix my schedule. I decided to only switch one class. I'm now register to take Australia's Social History, Australia's Underworld (a class on the infamous characters in Australia's history), Literature of Travel and Discovery (which I will drop if and when I get the internship) and the Culture and Politics of US Imperialism (which should be really interesting for me to be in the class, I might get spotlighted a bit in class).The I took a nap. That night, there was a party at Manning Bar (one of the bars on campus!) for all of the international students from 7-1am. We left the house around 9pm and went there and danced all night til they stopped the music at 1am. It was so much fun, although sometimes the music got a little odd. Thats only because they listen to a lot of House music here, like in Europe. When we went to the DJ and asked him for American hip hop, he started playing things from about 10 years ago, like "Country Grammar". Earlier in the night, the DJ played the Full House theme song which was incredibly odd. When they kicked us out at 1am, we went back to the house and just hung out til about 2am. Then sleep.

Heres a picture of me and Bondi Beach:

Days 3-6

Sorry it's been a few days, I meant to update this earlier, but I didn't have internet on campus until today.

Anyways, on Friday I went out to lunch with Dr. Benedict, her nephew, son, and 2 grandkids to a Singaporean/ Malaysian restaurant. That was interesting. I had no idea what any of the dishes were, so I found one that was chicken and rice and ordered that, it ended up being satay chicken if you were wondering. It was pretty good actually. Then back to Dr. Benedict's house to chill out a bit before dinner at her son's house. The food was delicious, he's an awesome cook and photographer. He's got all these amazing pictures of various things around his house. Then back to Dr. Benedict's house to pack up my suitcases. The plan at this time was to bring my suitcases to the International House in the morning before my trip and leave them there for the night, because I wasn't actually supposed to check in until Sunday. So I was going to pack an overnight bag to leave at the house, and then bring the rest to IH, so I wouldn't have to worry about it on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning rolls around, we left the house at about 7:15am and drove into the city. When we got to IH, the senior resident said that I could actually check in, even though I was a day early. So we brought my stuff up to my room (which ended up being the wrong room, no wonder the key didn't open the door!). I just left it in the room and went to meeting spot for my trip. The trip consisted of going to the Australian Reptile Zoo (which had more than just reptiles in it) and then to Hunter Valley for 3 wine tastings (I think they have 187 different wineries in Hunter Valley) and then to a pub and then back to Sydney, all in ~10 hours. There were 14 of us on the trip, we took a 15 passenger van to get there. It was a fairly international group, 5 Americans (3 from CA, 1 from NC, and me), 3 Dutch, 3 Norwegians, 2 Brits, and 1 Swiss. We all had a lot of fun. The zoo was great, we got to pet the animals. Koalas are lazy, they sleep in the tree and turn around to eat some eucalyptus leaves whenever they're hungry, and they're pretty soft with really thick fur. Kangaroos are soft as well, which I didn't expect, but their fur was like that of a rabbit. I also saw dingos (and some dingo pups!), wombats (there were 2 and they were cuddling, it was adorable!), wallabies (mini-kangaroos), pandemelons (mini-wallabies), emus, flying foxes (like a fruit bat), some platys (I still don't know the plural...and the display they were kept in was called a Platypusary) and some odd birds. The we stopped at a subway and picked up the subs we ordered. Then on to Hunter Valley! We went to 3 different wineries, McGuigans, Lendemans, and the Golden Grape. I think we ended up trying about 20 different wine (and wine based) drinks. Various white wines, red wines, dessert wines, and wine based liqueurs. My favorite winery was definitely McGuigans. I also learned that I prefer white wine over red wine, and that port is pretty good as well. The third winery, the Golden Grape, had more of the liqueurs that we tasted. The last one he had us taste was called Dragon's Breath. He told us that we ad to all take it as a shot together. He poured a shot into each one of our glasses and then counted to three and we all drank it. It was terrible! It's chili schnapps. My mouth and throat was on fire! Someone should have taken a video of everyones' reactions right after we all drank it. Everyone was coughing and sputtering. A few people bought a small bottle of it, mainly as a gag gift, I don't think any of them planned on drinking it themselves. Then we went to a pub in Wollombi, and tried their version of jungle juice (a type of port, I think) and hung out for about an hour watching the sun set. There were some drunken locals there as well that were amusing, and they were quite amused by our foreignness. Then we had the long drive (about 2.5hrs) back to Sydney. I walked back to IH and got my room situated (I found the right room). Then the senior resident who checked me in that morning came up and knocked on my door and apologized for leading me to the wrong room, and then he showed me around the building and where everything was. The I crashed and went to sleep.

Sunday, I woke up at about 7:30am and went down to breakfast and met 2 girls there, they were really nice. One of them gave me directions on how to get to the shopping center (aka a mall, but they call them shopping centers here), which is only a few blocks from IH. I went over there, they have a Target, a 24hr KMart, 2 grocery stores, and a bunch of other, normal mall-type stores (clothing stores, candy shops, cell phone stores, food court, etc). I got there at about 9am and the Target wasn't open yet, so I went to KMart. They also have these funny ramp escalators here. Its like the love child of an escalator and a moving sidewalk, and I lose my balance every time I step on one. I did my shopping and then carried it back to my room. Finished putting my clothes, etc away and then read a bit. When I went down to lunch, I got my food and was sitting down at a table where 3 other girls were already eating. I was sitting down when I realized that one of the girls was Claire, the other Tulane student staying at IH. After lunch, they were going shopping at the same place I was in the morning, so I just stayed in IH and read a book up on the rooftop (which has really great views of the city!) and then they came back and we took a bus down to circular quay and went to the opera house (the three of them hadn't been yet). It was sunset by the time we got there, which was really pretty. There were a lot more people there than when I went on Thursday morning last week. The sun sets really early right now as well, because its winter. Its completely dark by 6pm now. We made it back to IH in time for dinner, and met up with another friend, Cameron. The five of us ate dinner and then walked around the building. A few people in the group hadn't seen some of the nifty rooms in the building. We went up to the computer lab and then played a game of pool (My team won, but only because of Cameron, no thanks to me!).

Today started the orientation activities (O-Week). We had various sessions all morning, with morning tea and lunch thrown in there too. I finally got the sim card that I ordered for my phone this afternoon at lunch (there were a ton of tables in the room, one of them was my new cell phone provider, along with the athletic center, the student union, the international office, and a ton of other things). Then I went to the library and got my UniKey so that I can access the university internet stuff. Once I got my Unikey, I was able to set up wireless on my laptop, which wasn't hard at all. I just got back from dinner. There's a party going on downstairs a little later that I think I'm going to attend. Should be fun! Round 2 of O-Week tomorrow!

I'll leave you with a picture of me and a 9yr old koala named Oscar.

Flight + Days 1-2

The flight was long, but pretty uneventful. They gave us 3 meals throughout the flight, they weren't terrible for the most part. The plane was huge- 2 floors and 10 seats in each row. I slept through all of the movies they showed, Date Night, How to Train Your Dragon and some other movie I'd never heard of, but I did get to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory! Customs wasn't as bad as I expected, and it moved very quickly. Baggage claim took forever, but all of my luggage made it to Sydney! My flight landed at 6:30am-ish, so I had the whole day ahead of me still.

The shuttle driver was very nice and brought me right to Dr. Benedict's house. Dr. Benedict is a relative of one of my best friends from home. When I left the airport, the weather wasn't looking so great- overcast, cold and rainy- but it got better as we drove and it was sunny by the time I got to the house in one of the suburbs. I ate some breakfast, showered and then ran some errands with Dr. Benedict and her nephew. Her grandkids came over in the afternoon, and they were hilarious. A 5 year old boy and a 7 year old girl, cute kids. Then dinner and an early bed time.

Today, I woke up at 6:45am to get dressed and ready so that I could take the bus into the city with Gayan (Dr. Benedict's son who works in the city). Once we got off the bus in the city, Gayan pointed me in the direction of the Harbour and continued on to work. I wandered my way through the streets towards the Harbour, feeling pretty out of place surrounded by the business people in their dark suits and briefcases. I was glad I went early though, because it meant that I had less crowds to deal with outside the Opera House. I took so many pictures of the Opera House and the Bridge, it's slightly ridiculous! The I walked through The Royal Botanical Gardens which were really pretty, and saw the Government House which is inside the gardens. Then I walked around Circular Quay to The Rocks area. The Rocks is a really old, really cool part of town. The up to the Bridge, I didn't walk the whole way across (its a long bridge!), but I did walk part of it. Then up and down George St (one of the main roads through the CBD). Then over to Darling Harbour, which was pretty neat. Then I got tired and trekked my way back near George St. to catch the bus to go back to suburbia. When I got back to the house around 3:30pm, I crashed and took a 4hr nap.
Overall, it was a pretty spectacular day!