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!