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.)
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