First Update from Australia!

I have been in Australia for over two weeks now! I couldn't start blogging before now because of several issues. First, the internet over here is very difficult to access and you pretty much have to change every security setting on your computer to log into it. Second, my battery fried as soon as I plugged in the charger. So, I had to order a new battery and aussie charger from Dell, and now I finally have internet access!

So far, Australia has been just as fun and hectic as I imagined it would be. I live in a brand new apartment building with two suitemates, Katie and Marcus. Katie is from Washington, DC and Marcus is from Hong Kong. They are both amazing and so much fun to live with! My first week I met several Americans and so we have been hanging out a lot. Our second night here was a girl from res's birthday, so we met all the people who live on res (they call them "ressos") and went out to club in King's Cross, which is a kind of sketchy part of Sydney. It was fun, but we stayed out so late that we missed the last train, so we had to walk to the Central Station, which took about 40 minutes. The next night we went to a local club, which was great since we took cabs and didn't have to walk in the cold. The next week was called "O Week" (Orientation week) and so the res office had an activity planned every day. The first night was trivia, which was awesome but a lot of the questions were about Australia, so Team America only came in 4th. The next day we did res Olympics, which included a few relay games, donut and biscuit eating and chugging (just water and orange cordial....!) contests. My favorite night was the Gangster Party, when everyone dressed up in their best thug outfits. (I was Ke$ha!)

The next big event that we went to was the Aroma Festival! It's an event dedicated to coffee, tea, chai, hot chocolate, etc. Most of the coffee just cost $2 a cup, so I drank a bit of everything. There was even camel riding for $5! If you are ever in Sydney in the Rocks district when the Aroma Festival is going on, it is a must-do event. There are four different sections that are broken up according to regions. European, Asian, Turkish, and South American. My favorite was the Turkish, which had amazing dance performances all day long.

Oh yeah, classes have started too! I've only had a week of them so far, so there's not much to report about that so far. Here we have a lecture and a tutorial for most classes. Most lectures are two hours long and all tutorials are one hour long. Usually a lecture is in a theatre type room with hundreds of students, and a tutorial is more like a typical class at Maryville with around 20-30 students.

There is so much to blog about, but I just don't have time to type it all tonight! I'm posting a few pictures to illustrate what I've done here so far, hope you enjoy!