Days 42-49

Whoops! I forgot to blog sunday night...

Nothing really has happened in the past week. Working on another paper, planning and booking things for spring break (which they call mid semester break. Australias have very high expectations of something called Spring Break based on Hollywood's portrayal of drunken debauchery on the beach as spring break).

I've still been going to the same church, everyone is really nice and friendly there. They all remember my name from the first time I went, and I'm meeting more people each time I go.

I'm trying to go swimming more often than the once a week I've been going the past few weeks. I found a friend here at the House who swims every few days, so he's going to make me get up and go with him now. We're about the same pace and do about the same yardage (a sad 1200m on Saturday). Hopefully it'll work and I'll get back in shape!

Thursday evening, a small group of us went to this posh lounge downtown called Ivy. Apparently they recently spent millions of dollars renovating the building and now it's really nice. We ended up being able to get up to the Pool Bar (http://www.merivale.com/#/ivy/poolclub), which is usually reserved for VIPs and is usually really packed, but since it was a pretty quiet Thursday night, and pretty cold outside, we were able to get up there. I will say though that the water was freezing!! I stuck my hand in it. We just chilled out and talked to the people we came with. The majority of the other people at the bar were 35 year old businessmen. It was a good time just hanging out with friend. We also weren't buying drinks, cause they were pretty expensive. We called it an early night and were home by 12:45am.

Friday afternoon, a group of about 30 people from the House got together and went to a lazer tag place. The event was organized and paid for by IH. It was so much fun! We broke up into 3 teams (red, blue and yellow) and played 3 games. My team (red team) won every single game!

I just now got off of a skype call with my mom's third grade class. The connection was a bit shaky, but it worked. I brought over an australian friend from the House to talk to them with me. Her class is learning about Australia in social studies.

I should probably get back to working on my paper, but heres a picture before I go:

Me next to the pool at Ivy on Thursday night. (Sorry its a little fuzzy..)

Days 34-41

My weekdays have gotten decidedly less fun then they were a few weeks ago. Ah well, I guess that's what happens when classes really kick into gear.

I had my first paper her in Sydney due on Wednesday in my Australian Social History class. It wasn't too terrible. 1500 words, I ended up writing 2100 words and then having to cut out a lot, which was harder than writing the paper itself. I managed to get it down to 1600 words though, and I cleared that with the professor.

Thursday night, a bunch of us got together for another spring break planning meeting. Figured out some more of the specifics and had to cut a few stops out of our trip. We are now flying from Sydney to Cairns, staying there a few days, then taking a greyhound bus back to sydney. On the trip back, we'll stop at Whitsundays for a few days, then Frasier Island for a few days, and then to Byron Bay for the last few days, then back to Sydney 11 days later. Seriously, go to google images and search for those places (Cairns, Whitsundays, Frasier Island, and Byron Bay) they are all stunning! I'm so excited!! After the meeting, there was a BBQ on the rooftop with a bunch of people, that was a good time as well.

Friday afternoon, we all got together (all 11 of us girls going on the trip. No boys are coming along) in the computer lab of IH and booked our flights to Cairns. We pretty much took over the computer lab, there were only 2 other people in there, we took up all of the other computers. Then, after lunch, 4 of us took a bus downtown and went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was such a pretty day! After dinner, we had some drinks at the house, a bunch of other people went out afterwards, but a few of us stayed back and just went to sleep.

Saturday afternoon, IH took about 60 of us out to the log cabin that the house owns in a state park about 2 hours away from Sydney. When we got there, we walked around a bit, and then had another BBQ (they really like BBQs here, but they only ever have sausages, and they don't use hot dog buns, they use sliced bread) and then waited a bit for it to get dark outside so we could stargaze. Some astronomical society was there with their giant telescopes set up for us. They showed us where venus, mars, saturn (I could see it's rings!) and a really up close view of the moon (theres a crater about 180km long that looks just like a footprint on the moon! it was crazy looking) as well as some stars (a carbon star that was red, some other important stars that i dont remember the names of, and the jewelbox galaxy i think it was called- it had all different colored stars, very pretty). We also had a bunch of marshmallows, and their marshmallows here taste quite different, and they have pink raspberry flavored ones, which taste even weirder.

Sunday was pretty uneventful, I didn't do much all day. The I went to church after dinner.

Today I went to my internship again. I did some more event planning. Nothing too exciting. I did realize that I could never pursue a career which requires cubicle work though, it's pretty boring stuff.

A few of us at the rooftop BBQ Thursday night

Days 27-33

Now that the semester is under way, I'm doing much fewer interesting things and much more not interesting things (like reading for classes).

Wednesday night a few of us got together and went to Kuletos for happy hour. Its pretty safe to say that we all enjoy going there quite a bit. We've been at least once a week since we've been here. Our goal is to try all of their cocktails by the time we leave. We've already tried about half the list as a whole, not that we've each had an entire glass of those cocktails, but we all get different ones and try everyone else's. When we got back to IH, Dora was making homemade crepes because it was Claire's Name Day. Name day is this great tradition in Hungary (maybe other countriesa s well, but Dora told us about it and she's from Hungary). Each name is assigned a day of the year. When your name day comes up, you celebrate and people buy you presents. Its almost like your birthday! (PS- My name day is Nov 25th *wink*wink*)

Thursday, I finally met my "Buddy". (I joined the Buddy Club for international students. They pair you up with an aussie student who either just got back from study abroad in your home country or is going soon.) My "buddy" is really nice. I met up with her and one of her friends after class and went for coffee with them (well, I had hot chocolate, but I digress). We hung out and chatted for about an hour. She is a history/law major (you can study undergrad law here), and just got back from a year at UPenn. She's really sweet and nice. Later that evening, I went to bible study at the church I've been going to that is just down the road from campus. It was great, we had dinner and talked about hospitality (based on the sermon from last sunday). Afterwards, I started working on ym first paper of the semester and Skyped with mom for about an hour or so.

Friday was great, because I finally started my internship at the National Breast Cancer Foundation. There was another intern on her first day as well. They bought us lunch, it was great! We got a tour of the office and were given more details on our respective projects. I'm planning their Annual Research Update annual event. It's going to be a lot of work, and a bit of pressure for it to work, but I won't be here for the actual event, because it got moved back to February instead of the usual November. I looked at all the documents that were used in planning the event in years past. Then I got to go home at 3pm. I took that extra time to print out a few resumes and take them over to the mall near IH and apply for jobs. Hopefully I find one! After dinner, we watched How I Met Your Mother again :)

Saturday, I started stressing out about my paper. So I stayed back while a bunch of people went to the Aquarium (I knew that I'd be stressing out the whole time and wouldn't enjoy it anyways). I ended up going over to the Med School Library with a friend. He did med school stuff, I started typing my paper. I got a good bit of work done, so I felt a lot better about the paper. For dinner, a big group of people from IH went to a Korean BBQ restaurant downtown. It was one of the former Senior Residents (the same thing as an RA) last night in town before he headed back to India. So we went out to dinner and it was delicious! Although I'm still terrible at using chopsticks, I plan on being slightly proficient by the time I leave. Not that theres much use for chopsticks back home, but it doesn't matter. Two of the other girls and I skipped the majority of the walk home, leaving the boys behind. It was a lot of fun, but quite tiring (especially skipping up a hill).

Today, I went to the morning service at church. It was pretty good, but not quite what I was expecting. I think I'll stick with the evening service, more people my age. After that, I came home and took a nap before lunch. After lunch, I worked on my paper more. I'm currently 550 words over the limit and I haven't written my introduction or conclusion yet...uh oh. I need to cut it down a lot! I'm not sure how I plan on doing that just yet. I'll figure it out, It's not due until wednesday anyways. At dinner, I tried Vegemite on toast. Very interesting. It tasted kinda like concentrated soy sauce. It was really salty and kinda bitter. I don't think I'll eat it again, but now I can say that I have tried Vegemite in Australia! Later tonight, a group of us are meeting together to try and plan for spring break at the end of september. So exciting!

The girls at Kuletos for Claire's Name Day!

Days 20-26

So much has been going on, yet I don't feel like I've done all that much in the past week. I still haven't recovered from being sick just yet. Another week of classes has gone by, nothing too exciting. I started my tutorials, which is a group of about 20 students who meet with the professor once a week outside of lecture for discussions. I'm not the only American in my US Imperialism tutorial, there is one other girl from Texas there. The other students in my tutorial don't seem very anti-American, which is good. Some of them had even studied abroad in the US or were planning vacations there in the coming months. The professor is even a visiting professor at Yale sometimes. I also dropped out of the Australia's Underworld and added Australia: Colonies to Nation. The professor for Underworld managed to make such an interesting topic incredibly boring, also a 4000 word paper was essentially 90% of the grade for the class. I decided that I didn't need such a boring and time consuming class while studying abroad. I also realized that neither of my Australian classes were about how Australia was formed. So I switched into a basic, entry level Australian history class.

Most of my free time this week has either been spent doing readings for class or watching How I met Your Mother with friends. Aside from those two activities though, I have done some other things.

Thursday night was North American dinner night at IH. The menu included spare ribs, chicken wings (not hot wings though), fajitas, poutine (some canadian dish consisting of fries, gravy and cheese. interesting) and pumpkin pie. Weird menu right? It ended up being quite mediocre, but most people had never had pumpkin pie here. Apparently its much more American than I thought. Megan, Claire, Adria and I got asked to represent America and do a little presentation on the good ole US of A. So we got together, and put a bunch of pictures of typical American places and activities and then talked a bit about them. We had pictures of college football games, prom, 4th of July fireworks, disney, harry potter land, FL beaches, and some random cities. Apparently people liked our presentation.

Friday night we had our first formal dinner at IH. This involved a speech from a former IH director (and wine and champagne) and then a formal dinner (with better food than usual and more wine on the tables). After the dinner was over, we all went back to our rooms to get ready for the first IH party: Welcome to the Jungle. When I say we all went back to our rooms, I mean that we actually all went to Libby's room to get ready. There were about 8 of us in the room all doing makeup, etc. Helping each other put fake eyelashes on, or turn each others eyes into peacock feathers, and some nail painting as well. Then Adria did my hair up in her room, because it was getting ridiculously crowded in Libby's room. The party was a lot of fun (they got bartenders and an open bar). I ended up going as a forest nymph. We had a lot of fun dancing, I ended up getting really tired and going to sleep around 2:30am.

Heres a picture of Claire, Adria and I from the party

Saturday was a pretty relaxing, lazy day. Everyone slept in pretty late after the party. That evening, a group of us went downtown to get sushi. I didn't think I liked sushi at all, but I went along anyways, because someone said that they had cooked food as well. I got there and decided that I wanted to try some sushi, since it has been years since I actually tried it. Megan and I ended up ordering a bunch of stuff and sharing. I tried eel and cream cheese rolls (one of my favorites actually), salmon rolls, crab rolls, tuna rolls, and grilled scallop rolls. It was actually really good! Afterwards we ended up getting dessert at McDonalds. This McDonalds was odd though, because it had a cafe (with pastries and cakes and cheesecakes) and had chandeliers inside. Craziness. I got a lamington, which is a popular dessert here. Its basically a sponge cake, covered in chocolate and rolled in coconut, very yummy!

Sunday, we took the ferry to Watsons Bay in the afternoon. It was so pretty! We hung out there for about 3 hours or so and ate fish and chips (and calamari rings) on the beach watching the sun set over the harbour. Very pretty! On the bus ride home, I realized that I could just stay on the bus, passing IH, and go straight to church. I made it just in time for the service. It was really nice, because almost everyone I had met last week remembered my name and were excited to see me. After the service I went along for coffee down the street and met some more people. Then I came back to IH to get some reading done.

Adria and I on top of a cliff at Watsons Bay overlooking the Pacific Ocean

Days 16-19

Thursday was pretty uneventful. I had one class, US Imperialism. Then I came back to the House and did some readings after lunch. After dinner a group of us went to happy hour at a bar in Newtown, Kuleto's, where they have 2-for-1 cocktails that are quite yummy. Then we came back to the House and played a billiard game called Snooker that was really long and kinda complicated. Then some ping pong. Then we watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

Friday, I woke up feeling quite sick with a nasty head cold. Luckily, I didn't have any classes, so I went to the Chemist (its what they call a pharmacy here) and got some cold meds and came back to my room to ready for class all day. Well, I would read an article, then take a quick nap, then read another article, then take another nap. That night, one of my friends hosted a party at the House. I didn't drink any, since I'm sick, I figured alcohol wouldn't help me get better. Everyone else there drank a good bit, they were all pretty funny for the most part. It was very interesting being the only sober one there, but it wasn't terrible. When everyone was leaving to go out to a club around midnight, I just went back to my room and went to sleep.

Saturday, I skyped the family for a bit in the morning after I woke up. A few of us went to the mall to get some ice cream and a planner (which they call a diary here). Watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother again (its a really funny show if you haven't seen it!). The House had a BBQ for dinner, so I went to that, it was interesting. All kebabs, no burgers or hot dogs at this BBQ, and their BBQ sauce here is really tomato based and kinda thin. After dinner we had the interfloor trivia night, which was unlike any trivia night I had ever been to. The last round was ridiculous, you had to run around the house to find the answers to the questions, then use those answers to decode other parts. My team eventually gave up because it wasn't worth it. After that was over, a few of us watched a few more episodes of How I Met Your Mother (are you noticing a pattern yet?).

Sunday, a few of us went to the Taronga Zoo. We had a bit of an adventure trying to get there. We planned on taking a bus to Circular Quay, then the ferry to the zoo. What actually happened was that we got on the wrong bus, which took us across the Harbour Bridge (which we didn't realize until we were already on the bridge) to North Sydney. We got off at the first stop and found a store to go in and ask the cashier how to get to the zoo. Turns out there was a bus that ran straight to the zoo from where we were. We got to the zoo and it was amazing! The weather was beautiful, clear and sunny. We got to see all of the Australia animals, we ran out of time to see the African animals, but thats ok because those are at every zoo. It's a gorgeous zoo, I'll post pictures of facebook in a little bit. After the zoo, I got back and got changed into church clothes. After dinner I went to an Anglican church in Newtown, about a mile or so from the House. I went over there with a friend of mine from the House. The service was interesting, very different from what I'm used to though. I think I'll try their morning service next week.. After the service we stopped for ice cream on the way home. Then we came back to the House and I did some reading before bed.

Heres a picture form the zoo:

The Asian tourist who took the picture for us was quite amused that we were standing in the bushes...

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 :)