School Life and Canberra

Hello there! Since school started, I haven’t been doing too many exciting things. I just finished my second week of classes (I don’t have Friday classes), and there are quite a few differences between UC (University of Canberra) and UT that I’ve noticed. I haven’t decided which way I like better, but I think UT will win. This blog post is happening because I have a paper I should be writing, but writing a blog seemed better. :-) 

One difference is that even though I have 4 classes, I have 3 exams the ENTIRE semester. Including finals and everything. I have two classes where my grade is based off two papers, each paper worth 50% of my grade. The classes with exams still don’t have very many assignments, so if you mess up on one thing, you’re pretty much screwed. I’m used to having things to cushion my grade, so if I mess up on one thing, I can make up for it. But, that is not how it will be here. Definitely much different than UT. 

Each class has two different meetings a week, one being a lecture and the other being what is called a tutorial. Tutorials are smaller groups of your lecture class, so for those of you at UT, think discussion groups. But, you don’t have your lectures or tutorials every week, so you have to figure out what classes are actually running in a given week. I only have one class that has a lecture and tutorial every week of the semester. One of my classes only has the tutorial every other week and another class only has 6 tutorials the entire 14 weeks of classes. No complaints there, it’s just different! Also, teachers record lectures, so lots of students don’t bother to go to lectures and just listen to them later online. For me, it’s easier to just go at an assigned time for lecture instead of relying on myself to actually make time to listen to them later. But, I know some people who schedule to work during lectures because they know it doesn’t matter if they come or not. While some classes are like this at UT, I cannot imagine scheduling to work every week during a class, because I know I have to at least go sometimes! 

I’ve also noticed that during class, the US is mentioned quite a bit! We did something in one of my tutorials the other day involving Super Bowl ads, and there were some people in my class who didn’t understand how big of a deal the Super Bowl is. But, we also talk about Australia sometimes, and I still don’t know that much, so I can easily get lost sometimes. I had to work with a partner in an activity dealing with the local ruby team, the University of Canberra Brumbies, and I was useless during that activity because I knew nothing! Haha Oh well, it’s a learning experience! Anyways, enough about school life!

View from Mt. Ainslie

Yesterday, I went with 2 of my roommates and 1 other friend to explore some of Canberra. We went to Mt. Ainslie, which is a place that overlooks Canberra. I had been up there at night, and it was so pretty to see all the lights, but this was my first day time trip. It was so gorgeous and so cool to see all of Canberra right there in my view. We then went to the Australian War Memorial, and since I LOVE studying about wars, this was awesome. We went when the museum was about to close, so we only got to walk around about 20 minutes, but I will go back and easily spend an entire day in there and be completely content. I also think it will be great to learn about some Australian history.  Since I've been here, I've noticed how little I know about anywhere except the US. And let's be real...I am terrible at US history too! Canberra is the capital of Australia, and thus government business goes on here, so we stopped by the Parliament House next. We walked inside, but were only there about 5 minutes, but I’ll go back there as well at some point. The day definitely gave me a good look at things to do in Canberra, and I can go back and visit places later and stay longer! To end our adventures, we had dinner at a Turkish Kebab place. The kebab was HUGE and only $9.50, which is cheap here! I could have easily made 3 meals of it if I had really wanted, but I ate a lot and made two of it. So. freaking. good. I finished the night off by going out to The Lighthouse (or The Lighty, as everyone says), which is a bar near campus. I bought one drink and learned that even during their Power Hour, drinks are still $6 for something as simple as rum and coke. Therefore, that was my one and only drink, and I enjoyed the night hanging out and dancing with some exchange friends. All this basically to say that yesterday was a great day and one of the funnest nights I’ve had since being here! 

Australian War Memorial

Parliament House

Well, I feel like I just rambled on about nothing much, but it’s been a while since I updated, and I’ve had some requests to write a new blog. The first 2 weeks went by pretty slow, but this past week has gone by fast! Overall, life Down Under is going well, and I am loving it here!

Australian Adventures

Since updating, I have had several Australian adventures! So far, everything is still going great, and I am having so much fun (or as Australians would say, heaps of fun!). There are still so many differences I’m adjusting to and still so many I’m just noticing. Anyways, on to my adventures.

Brindabella Mountains

Friday a couple of my housemates and their friends took me to the Brindabella mountains, which are about an hour outside of Canberra. If you know me at all, you know that I LOVE mountains, so you should know that this trip was just awesome. These mountains are more like big hill since I'm used to the Smokies, but it was still great! We were in the mountains for the sunset, and I cannot even describe how pretty it was. I also got to see some Australian wildlife! I am used to deer running out in front of my car, but I have to say that when a kangaroo hopped across the road in front of our car, I may have gotten a bit too excited. It was definitely one of those moments that made me think “Oh my gosh, I am actually in Australia.” I also saw a few wallabies and A LOT of sheep. There were sheep everywhere on the mountainside. All around, just an amazing day! It was so much fun to hang out with everyone I went with, and I am so thankful my housemates included me in on things! 

View from the Sydney Tower

Bright and early on Saturday morning, I left for Sydney with the rest of the exchange students. We were in Sydney on Saturday and then drove a couple hours outside of Sydney to spend the night in a hostel in Katoomba, a small town by the Blue Mountains.  Even though I flew into Sydney and stayed a night, it was great to go back, and it was so much more fun having other people with me! It was also great to not be fighting jet-lag. :-) We went up the Sydney Tower, which is as tall as the Eiffel Tower, so there were obviously amazing views of Sydney! We then had time to roam on our own, and a few of my exchange friends and I walked around to see the Sydney Bridge, the Opera House, and the Botanic Gardens. We then got back on the bus and drove to a place called Paddy’s Market, which is a super cheap shopping place! They had all kinds of things for souvenirs, so that was cool. After the market, we went to the Sydney aquarium, which was very awesome. One of my exchange friends gave me science lessons as we walked around and told me random interesting facts about the critters I was looking at, so that was extra cool for me! Oh, and I found Nemo there! Yaaay for finding Nemo! We then had dinner at a restaurant on Darling Harbor. After dinner, we loaded up the bus and drove to our destination for the night. 

Three Sisters

We started Sunday morning off with a hike in the Blue Mountains. Once again, I love mountains and hiking, so this was great! We got to see a rock formation called Three Sisters, then we went on our hike and ended at the bottom of the mountains, with another view of Three Sisters. Instead of hiking back up, we took the steepest incline railway in the world back up to the top. Not going to lie, I freaked out a bit because we were basically going straight up a railway. If you’ve ever been to Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, this one was much steeper! After leaving Katoomba, we drove about an hour and stopped at Featherdale Wildlife Park, which had basically every Aussie animal there is. There were kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, dingos, Tasmanian devil, emus, loads of birds, wombats, and many other things. This place was great, and instead of having all their animals enclosed, many of the animals were able to roam freely around large areas. This also means that I was able to pet and touch many animals, which was of course awesome! After that, we headed back to Canberra and arrived back at campus around 6:30PM. It was a packed weekend, but so much fun!

Petting a koala. No big deal. 

So there’s a good summary of my latest adventures. Now, I have to give you some details about other things. We will start with food. They put weird things on weird things. Let me explain. When there are events with free pizza, they don’t just do the normal pepperoni and cheese like we do in the States. I’m not even sure what kind of pizza I’ve eaten here, but some of it is good and some of it, not so much. I had my first meat pie this weekend, and it was ok. There are a lot of different kinds of meat pies, so I think I would have liked others more than the one I got. When I got back from our weekend trip, my housemates invited me to $10 burger night (not $5 burger night, things are expensive here!). I was thinking a burger with lettuce and tomato and maybe some other tolerable things, but no. The intolerable substance came in the form of beet roots. Maybe this happens in the US, but never with any burger I’ve eaten before. It was disgusting. All the Aussies found it humorous, as I sat over there and dissected my burger to clear it of all things beet. After I got the beets off, it was good! So, there’s a little about Australian food I’ve encountered, thus far.

Things over here are expensive. When I come back to the States, I am going to think everything is super cheap. As I mentioned, we have $5 burger night, they have $10 burger night. In Knoxville, you can easily buy a cheap bottle of Burnette’s vodka for $10, maybe $15. Here, the cheapest bottle I found was $30. I refused to buy it, so bought wine instead, which is pretty cheap here. A combo meal from McDonald’s (or Macca’s as they say here) is equivalent to about 10 US dollars. So, maybe those prices will give you an idea of the cost of living here. Also, you pay for internet usage in the ressies (where University students live) by how much you use, which could get pricy. I’ve learned not to Skype in my apartment as that eats away your internet usage, so I now just go and use the campus wi-fi for Skyping!

One thing I do not think I will ever get used to is the driving on the left side of the road thing. I always think we’re going to crash when turning, and I always try to go to the passenger side of the car and end up on the driver’s side. It is soooo weird. I would love to attempt to drive here, but I also know I would crash, so that will just have to be something I don’t do!

The malls are also extremely different here. The mall has everything you could ever need. There’s grocery stores, Target, K-Mart, clothing places, phone places, etc. Literally, everything you could ever need. They have shopping carts since there are grocery stores in them, and to carry groceries back, university students push their cart back to campus! It’s about a mile or so, but there are carts everywhere around the apartments I live in from students bringing carts back. They will even send someone to pick them up sometimes! Crazy, right??

Today was also the first day of classes. I can say that right now, while this is a STUDY abroad experience, I am still forgetting the first word of that experience and am still in a mindset of just abroad. In the US, I would have looked at all my syllabi, written down things in a planner, at least ordered my books by now, and been prepared for lectures. Here...I just now looked at the books I even need, have only briefly looked at one syllabus, written nothing down, and waited until this morning to figure out what time my class was that I had today. Hopefully, this week the study thing will hit me and I’ll get on track. :-) I’m not too worried yet, as I’m sure that will happen.

Anyways, sorry for the extremely long update, but I’ve had lots of adventures and newness to adjust to! Look for pictures on Facebook, as I have A LOT of uploading to do! 

Australia Living

I’m going into my 6th day of being in Australia, and so far, so good. I stayed in Sydney the first night I was here. I did a lot of just walking around and sleeping while there. Jet-lag was a killer for my first 4 days in the country. A 15 hour time difference is not easy to adjust to! I will be going back to Sydney this weekend with lots of other exchange students, and we’re also going to the Blue Mountains, so that should be a fun trip!

I have already noticed so many differences between the US and here. My living arrangements are quite different from US university living arrangements. I’m living in a 5 bedroom/6 person apartment, and I share a room with another girl. This is where it gets different: the other 4 people in my apartment are guys. Not something that is normal in the US. So far, I absolutely love it! They are all so nice, and I enjoy just chatting with them and learning about Australian culture (they are all from Australia). I’m also meeting other Australians through my roommates, so it is nice to be making Australian friends along with other exchange student friends.

Another difference: Alcohol. It is by no means a dry campus like I am used to. Today, the study abroad coordinators actually took out all the exchange students for free drinks at a local bar! There is even a place on campus that sells beer where you can go eat and have a drink! I’m allowed to have alcohol in my apartment. There always seems to be a party going on somewhere in the apartments I’m in. I knew Australian culture involved alcohol, but I’m not going to lie...I’m shocked at just how much partying goes on here. It is rather insane. I’ve gone to a couple of parties, but I haven’t drank at any of them, and I still haven’t gone out. However, I know when I do go out, it is going to be a blast!

I also have to mention the birds and other wildlife here. My first morning in Canberra, I was woken up by what sounded like a dying child. No worries though, it was just some bird, and I hear that noise all the time now. That same noise has woken me up by 9AM every morning. The birds also look completely different than any I’m used to seeing, but they are beautiful! And, instead of squirrels running around campus everywhere, I see rabbits and kangaroos (no complaints there!). Today, I saw about 12 kangaroos hanging out in a field right behind the ressies (living places)! I took lots of pictures of them, and will probably take more every time I see them, so get ready for loads of pictures with kangaroos! 

Of course, they drive on the wrong side of the road, which is still so confusing. I always look the wrong way when starting to cross the road, so I have to be extra careful. It’s weird to be looking where I think the driver is sitting in a car, only to see someone looking down at a phone. They use kilometers instead of miles and celsius instead of fahrenheit, so I need to learn some conversions! It’s winter here, so coming from a Tennessee summer to winter has been quite the adjustment. The winter in Canberra is very much like what I’m used to in Tennessee, it was just the whole coming from the miserably hot summer to cold that was so terrible. 

I don’t want to bore you with all the details, because I could go on for a while! I am loving experiencing something new and learning about a different culture. It has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I think I needed that. I still miss my friends at home (of course), and it is weird to think that RA training started yesterday/today and that I’m not there. It’s weird to think that for most of my day, Tennessee is still in ‘yesterday’ because of the time difference. It’s weird to think some of my friends are starting real jobs, and I’m just hanging out in Australia. So, there are definitely a lot of differences to get used to, but I am so excited for everything! 

Classes start Monday and I’m actually excited for them (call me a nerd if you want)! I like having a schedule, so it will be nice to get on a regular schedule. Right now, it is O-week (Orientation Week), and it is just a huge party week from what I’ve heard. We’ve had some sessions and meetings to go to, but nothing too terribly boring. 

So, there’s a kind of long update for you! Hopefully, the blogging thing will get easier, as it’s taken me forever to actually write this and post it. I keep writing and deleting everything because like I said, I don’t like people to read what I write. :-) Hope this wasn’t too boring!