A few photos...

Here are a few photos so far for those of you that don't have access to facebook to see all of my photos from my adventure.



Feeding a walaby at Cleland Wildlife Park






“Hours Upon Hours Of Classes” 6/26-29

                Sunday was our free day before classes and the day to day regimen set in. I got to sleep in a little bit before I met with two friends to go walk around campus to find our classes and explore the city more. We walked down Rundle Mall, an outside pedestrian mall with a variety of different shops, and then ventured to Victoria Square and down towards China Town. We had fun enjoying the nice sunny day, taking our time to really enjoy the city. (The weather here has actually been really nice, a lot warmer than I expected. It’s been probably 60-65 degrees every afternoon. Everyone here says it’s freezing, but not to me since I came from about the same temperature in Eugene.)

                After our exploration we met up with most of the rest of the group to go to a Mexican restaurant on our street for dinner and some margaritas. (I am going to enjoy when I’m back in the states and everything will seem so cheap!)

                So far I’ve had class Monday through Wednesday. I am taking Australian Politics as well as Indigenous Cultures and Histories. I’m pretty sure I picked two of the hardest classes here, and most Australian students think it’s crazy that we are taking two winter school classes. I have Australian Politics with Taylar from my group; good thing she is in this class with me or I think I would be overwhelmed out of my mind. I’m kind of wishing I actually knew more about American politics because that may be helping me, but so far I am pretty lost. It makes it difficult when they are taking about politicians or bills that we know absolutely nothing about. The class is actually pretty interesting despite not understanding a lot of it. This class is 3 hours long, plus a 1 hour tutorial for 3 days a week. We have 4 professors for this class and two of them have held major roles in the political scene here. Most of the students grew up watching these people on TV… so supposedly they are a very big deal. It’s good to be learning from the best.

                Indigenous Cultures and Histories actually seems to be a pretty interesting class as well, but I’m struggling to get adjusted to it. It helps that there are like 8 from our group in this class though. This class is 2 hours long, plus a 1 hour tutorial for 3 days a week. I really like the professor so far and I think it will be a very interesting class because she is actually an Indigenous Australian. I follow the lectures, but then we have tutorials where we have discussions about readings and the lectures that are difficult to follow. I have to focus very hard on what people are saying in order to understand them and try to think of something intelligent to say that goes with the discussion. It’s sure a good thing that I don’t speak another language or I would be completely lost.

                On Tuesday, it was Katie’s birthday so a few of us went out to a bar close to our apartment to celebrate. They had a live band playing that was actually really good, so we kept moving to tables that were closer to the stage whenever people left. We were entertained by some lady that was super drunk and dancing to the band. A couple of the girls got up and danced to a song they liked and then this old creeper guy came up and wanted to dance with all of us. It was all in good fun, but kind of weird.

                I don’t have any classes tomorrow (Thursday) so I’m excited to have a day off just to take everything in and schedule out all the work I have to do while I’m here.

"Kangaroos, Koalas, and Dingos... Oh My" 6/24-25

      The activities have started to help get us acquainted to Adelaide. Two days ago on Friday, we had an orientation for most of the day where we started off learning things about Australia and Adelaide specifically. We learned the most common saying is “G’Day, how ya goin?” And you are supposed to respond with the same phrase as opposed to answering the question like most of us would do in the US. Then we got to go on a tour of campus and the library. The campus is beautiful with some awesome architecture (there are a few places on campus that have construction which is a little inconvenient, but overall I think it is very neat.) After the tour we had some lunch and listened to another session about some of the culture that was very interesting.

                Yesterday (Saturday) was our day filled with adventures. We had to meet up at campus to catch a bus to take us to the stadium where we were learning to play footy. We had to be up there at 8:10am, which is not bad since I’ve been waking up about 6 every morning. (Besides waking up early, I don’t seem to be having too much jet lag, which I was surprised.)

                We got on the bus for about a 40 minute ride out past the beach and to the footy stadium (I think I will try to avoid long bus rides as much as possible or go buy Dramamine, because after that ride, I felt car sick all day.) Once we got to the stadium we met with a guy who coaches the Adelaide Post women’s footy team. He showed us around their huge stadium with a field about the size of 3 soccer fields and taught us all how to handball, kick, and dribble the footy (which is like a football that is fatter.) It was actually a lot of fun. I was pretty good at handballing and kicking the footy, but I couldn’t get the dribbling down… the ball kind of bounces in all different directions (just think about trying to dribble a football on grass while you are running, pushing the ball to the ground and trying to make it come straight back up to you.)

                After footy, we caught two charter vans, that were luckily a little better than the bus, but I still felt sick. We drove up into the hills about 45 minutes to Cleland Wildlife Park. On the way, driving on the highway we saw signs for kangaroo and koala crossing! I really tried to get a picture of these, but we were going too fast to get a good picture. The park was amazing! We got to see dingos, pet koalas and feed wallabies and kangaroos. My favorite thing was probably feeding the wallabies. They were so cute and tons of them would come up to us to eat the food right out of our hands. This was probably the best thing we’ve done so far; I was so excited to see all the animals.

                When we got home, a few of us made dinner together and watched a movie on one of our 3 channels. I was excited to see that they have Australia’s Amazing Race on Monday nights. So I’m looking forward to watching that (Scotty you will be here in spirit for the Race!)

                Well that’s all for my update today! More to come after a few days of school.

               (I tried to upload a few pictures to this, but it wasn't working. I'll try again in a few days to see if it works. If you have facebook you can view all my photos on there.) 

"Lost In Translation" 6/20-23

*I apologize in advance for this being so long. I haven’t really had a chance to get in touch with people since I got here so this is pretty detailed.*

                Oh the adventure begins. I started off the morning by getting to the Eugene airport early so I would have plenty of time to get settled for my flight to begin my long journey. Once I was all checked in, my dad asked me if I had a sweatshirt so that I wouldn’t freeze on the plane. I looked down at my bag to find that I didn’t have it and must have left it at home. My dad said he had time to go get my sweatshirt before the flight, so he left and I sat there waiting.

                I was already feeling nervous and getting that sick feeling in my stomach before leaving for a trip and now I had to stress more by waiting and hoping for him to get back in time as the line for security grew longer and longer. My dad arrived with my sweatshirt 15 minutes before my plane was supposed to board and I just made it through security while the last half of the people were boarding the flight! (I was very happy to have my sweatshirt though, because my flights were freezing! Thanks Dad!)

                This was only the first adventure on my task of getting to Adelaide. The day consisted of a 4 hour layover in Seattle and a 6 hour layover in Los Angeles.

                When I got off my flight from Seattle, I knew that I had to go to an international terminal to get to the Qantas flight. I asked one person behind a check in counter that didn’t give very good directions and ended up having to ask 3 different people where to go before I got to the right place. (I really think they need some better direction signs in their airport!)

                I got some lunch in the international terminal before heading to my gate where the real excitement began with a 6 hour layover. When I arrived at the gate I was surrounded by a crowd of people waiting to get on their flight to Frankfort. It was pretty interesting at first because people watching is great in airports and it was fun to hear everyone’s accents. Suddenly I felt lost in translation with many people around me and nobody speaking the same language as me. This idea was reinforced when more people arrive for the next flight to France, incorporating new languages in the mix.

                I felt like time was going so slow and was kind of in an weird position where I was trying to scope out all the people that looked like they could be college students to see if I could find anyone going to Australia with our bright blue luggage tags provided by the AustraLearn program.

                Eventually 3 girls came that were part of my group, so I went and sat with them to try to pass the last 2 hours of waiting. Within the next 30 minutes almost everyone from our program had arrived and congregated, excited and ready to get on the flight…but then Qantas came over the loud speaker saying our flight to Melbourne had been canceled because of an ask cloud over Australia from the volcano in Chile.

                So pretty much from then on it was a game of hurry up and wait. We all rushed to the lobby to find out that we had to wait in a long line to get a hotel for the night and be rescheduled for another flight in 24 hours. Then we were all directed into this roped off area where we all waited for forever before we got on a shuttle to take us to the Hilton in Anaheim which was about 45 minutes away (who knows why they didn’t put us up somewhere closer!)

                While we all waited in what felt like a group herded into a pen, we met a younger couple and their grandma who were traveling back home to Adelaide from New York. They were very entertained with this giant, probably 4 foot stuffed fish and fun stories and advice to us about things to do in Adelaide. They kind of became part of our group by the end where everyone would say hi to grandma when we saw them everywhere and we are planning on meeting them here for a 4^th of July celebration and maybe checkout their church.

                Once we finally arrived at the Hilton in Anaheim, we all got to bed about 1 am. We all felt lucky that Qantas put us up in such a nice hotel and gave us vouchers for breakfast there the next morning because we heard a United flight to Australia got canceled and they didn’t receive any compensation.

                So we had a whole day to kill in Anaheim since checkout was at noon. There are plenty of things to do there, but they pretty much all cost loads of money that nobody wanted to spend before we went to Australia. We ended up walking down to the Garden Walk looking around and grabbing lunch and a drink.

                Then it was back to waiting. Hanging out in the hotel lobby forever until the mad dash to the shuttles at 5pm.

                We got to the airport and walked to our gate which was at the very end past all the regular gates and down into a warehouse like room where we waited to be shuttled out to get on our plane at what they said to be as a remote location.

                It was very strange as we took a bus for probably 10 minutes across the tarmac to pretty much the edge of the airport where our plane was.

                We were on the plane but had heard rumors that another United flight to Melbourne got canceled today, so things weren’t looking so bright for us. The flight attendants came over the loud speaker and said something about the ash cloud that we couldn’t hear because it wasn’t loud enough. So we sat and waited longer until they came on again saying that we would be leaving in a half hour after they got peoples bags off the plane that were supposed to be flying but weren’t.

                Many people cheered when we finally took off because we knew we were actually headed to Australia after so much anticipation.

                The flight to Melbourne was 15 ½ hours and probably the most uncomfortable flight I’ve been on but it really didn’t seem that long. I was on the window seat which was good for sleeping but I couldn’t get up as much to stretch out my pulled hamstring, so I did a lot of foot pumps and stretching in my seat. I took a sleeping pill to help me sleep better, but the way the arm rests were made, and a larger man next to me, I was just cramped and uncomfortable. I think I ended up maybe sleeping about 3 hours but waking up every 20 minutes or so. I watched 3 movies, had 2 not so good meals, and listened to music. It was 15 ½ hours of darkness… it was dark when we left LAX at 10pm and dark when we got to Melbourne at 6 am their time… so much for seeing any beautiful landscape from my window seat of the plane.

                Finally in Melbourne we got through customs and then an absurdly ridiculous re-checkin of baggage before we got some food and chilled for another 6 hours or so. Until they came over the loud speaker at our boarding time saying they apologize and there would be a delay, but we were happy because we figured they would say a delay of 2 hours or so, but it was only 15 minutes!

                Last flight, on board and only about an hour in the air. We were all very excited to get off and meet our leader Jess from the University of Adelaide. To our surprise she was waiting right at the gate for us. (In Australia they don’t have a strict of security regulations, I guess.) We were all very happy that everyone got their bags and nothing was lost in the transition of everything.

                On the shuttle to our apartments about 20 minutes away, Jess pointed out a few different things about the city as we were all a little nervous about driving on the opposite side of the road and the craziness of it all. We were all feeling relieved that we didn’t have to drive. We saw the campus as we drove and all the buildings look so beautiful! I can’t wait to actually go and walk around.

                Our apartments are actually a lot nicer than I expected. I have a room with two twin beds and my roommate has a room with a larger bed; then we have a big living room with a kitchen joined to it and a nice bathroom that has our washer and dryer in it. And best of all, especially after so much traveling, it has a shower with really good water pressure!

                We all got cleaned up a little before meeting up with 6 other Americans who got here before us and we all went out for drinks and a bite to eat. Boy, my friend Kasey who studied in Australia for a year was right that everything is super expensive in Australia. I got the special for the night which was the cheapest thing on the menu-Schnitzel for $10 which is like a big flattened chicken finger. And then I settled for a pear cider for $5 which was cheap compared to everything because a friend and I wanted to get mixed drinks but the cheapest thing on the menu was $18.

                Then it was off to a little convenience store to buy things for breakfast and then back to the apartments to unpack a little and stay up till at least 8 pm this time to help get on the right time zone since we are 16 ½ hours ahead of the West coast in America.

                Ready to check some emails and then off to bed to get ready for orientation tomorrow.  

Most interesting Australian things learned so far from our friends we met in the airport:

                These are the meals of the day:

                Breakfast

                Morning Tea (Morning Snack)

                Lunch

                Afternoon Tea (Afternoon Snack)

                Tea (Dinner)

                Supper (Evening Snack/Dessert)

I will post again soon with more interesting adventures and I promise they will be more interesting than this one!

               

Preparing for Departure

I decided to start a blog while I am studying abroad in Australia because I have really enjoyed reading about all of my friends exciting experiences while they have been traveling out of the states. I hope you all enjoy my pictures and stories that I share while I am away and that this is a way to keep in touch with people while I’m gone.

Everything is finally coming together and it is less than a week until I depart for Australia for my adventure of a lifetime. Most things for my trip are all prepared and ready besides the fact that my suitcase isn’t packed yet. Packing always presents a challenge, as I can never decide what I should take, but there are piles of stuff on my floor, so I think I have everything covered that I need.

After recently talking to a few of my world traveling friends in the last week, I am extremely excited for the path that lies ahead of me. It will be a completely new, eye opening adventure that I am ready to take on.

It will be a long few days of travel, but once I get there I’ll be ready to jump into activities with a running start! I can’t wait for the discovery down under.

I am planning on posting hopefully about twice a week, so you can look back soon for updates after I get to Australia on the 22^nd of June.