Almost There

Just finished my very last final, which means that soon I'll be walking home from the JCU campus for the last time.

It's strange to be packing up and leaving forever after four months. Very strange. Of course, mostly what I'm thinking about is the flight and how happy I'm going to be to be home.

I've heard that things like blogs and facebook and email keep people from having the real study abroad experience, but I don't think I'd have made any more friends or spent any less time being homesick without the internet. Maybe I'm defective in general.

Anyway, my day trip/spontaneous adventure plans for the past two weeks fell through, since I had a paper to write and tests to study for, and there weren't any good day tours available to places I hadn't been already.

After my exam on Saturday, my friend from the Whitsundays and I and her roommates all went downtown and got ice cream and sat on the beach for a while. The water's much colder, but it's no longer jelly fish season, so swimming's safer!

Other than that, life has been pretty uninteresting. I'm glad exams are over, though.

Tomorrow I leave for a 4-day trip to Mission Beach! I get back Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to pack, hopefully do a quick blog about Mission Beach, and prepare for the trip home.

Monday evening I fly to Brisbane (for the most uncomfortable birthday night ever!) and then Tuesday morning I fly to LAX. Less than a week. Pretty mind-blowing.

Aussie Slang That I Keep Forgetting To Mention:
-They pronounce fillet (as in, chicken fillet) "fil-LET" instead of "fil-LAY".
-"Swot-up" means study (as in, things to swot-up on for the exam would be areas to focus on when you're studying... like cramming, I guess.)
I can't remember the others... so clearly they're aptly named.

1 month left

No pictures today... I'm just so happy to be caught up with all my adventures that I thought I'd update with babbling.

I just calculated that out of the 19 weekends I've been/will be in Australia, I've only stayed at home doing nothing of interest for 5 of them... and one of those was right after getting back from vacation when I had a paper due, and another one was right after classes started. So I'm feeling pretty productive. It's true that I didn't get to Tasmania or anywhere too far from Townsville, but Australia is a HUGE country that is very time-consuming to travel in. It isn't like going to a European country where you can sprint around the entire continent on weekend trips.

I had my algae practical exam today... the less said about it, the better. Afterwards the professor gave us all pizza and beer, though. Some other American students and I agreed that we were living the Australian dream, right there.

Also I found a tree frog in the bathroom the other day! My housemate was pretty excited about it- he said he hadn't seen one in a while. (Actually, there were a ton of them in the bathrooms in the Boulia camper park... We had to check the toilets before using them to avoid awkward situations). I got to pick this one up, though! They're so sticky and cute!

I only have one month left in Australia... I'm not anticipating the reverse culture shock that everyone assures me students have. I've had a good time here, but I'm plenty ready to be home. I miss all my friends that kinda get me.

But, with only a month left, I've started plotting my final weeks.

I think I mentioned this before, but I'm going to spend the weekend alone on Magnentic Island, exploring. I'm making sandwiches in preparation tonight.

Next week is the last week of classes, and I'm so ready for it. I'm over classes. I've got a lab report due on the last day, but I've already kinda sorta started it, and I kinda like lab reports, so hopefully I won't lose too much sleep over it.

After that is a week-long break. I'm spending mine on the biggest, longest, and most expensive trip of my time here- I'm going out to Uluru (in the middle-ish). It's a two-day bus trip out there. Katie (my cousin) went out there when she was in AU and said it was amazing and a must-do.

After that is two weeks of exams. I only have four exams, though, so I'm looking into interesting day trips for the days when I don't have exams. After exams I'm going out to Mission Beach, which is the closest that the rainforest and the reef get to each other. Immediately afterwards I'm packing up and heading to the airport to go home.

And yes, when I'm studying/working on reports/doing dishes my mind goes straight to that plane ride home. It's getting harder and harder not to dwell on it. Obviously this won't be a problem when I'm traveling and having fun... but I suspect this next week is going to be very, very grim for me.

Belated Boulia

For Midsemester Break, one of my classes went to Boulia until Thursday. (I was going to spend the weekend doing exciting things around Townsville, but I had a paper due in the only class I'm worried about passing. It was not a fun return weekend.) Boulia, however, was AMAZING and is thus-far my favorite of the trips I've been on.

Album

Boulia is on the edge of the Simpson Desert, about 15 hours drive from Townsville. It's also home to the rare and wondrous Waddi Tree, which is only found in two other places, both on the edge of the desert. The class I'm in goes on a fieldtrip there once a year to take measurements on the trees, which in theory will eventually become a published paper.

So our class piled into a van and we drove into bush country. We stopped by the AU version of the continental divide,


We stopped in some very small, flat towns for pitstops:
(This town is bigger than Boulia, by the way).
With interesting tourist attractions:

(The area we were in used to be a giant inland sea... so it produces a lot of dinosaur skeletons.)
We passed some beautiful mesas,



But mostly it's just flat and dry. (Well, actually, this year was wetter than normal, so there was still water and green things.)


It rained in various places around us while we were there, and you could see the storms in the distance. Also rainbows.



It's a two-day trip to Boulia, so we stayed in a camper park in Winton on the way there, which was full of Gray Nomads, an AU phenomenon of retirees who buy campers and tour around the country around this time of year. (One of our profs very generously made excuses for why we couldn't go to their "bush poetry" recital and ushered us safely away).
The first day was after I'd spent all night working on a paper, so I was pretty out of it... but once I'd gotten some sleep, everything was much better.

The only thing between Winton and Boulia is "Middleton"
This is Middleton, in its entirety:

A group picture outside the famous Hilton at Middleton ("No A/C, No Cable, No Pool, No Charge")


We were in a camper park in Boulia, too, but it was less populated. For food, someone In Charge of This Sort of Thing had taken our field trip fees and given us several giant tupperware containers of food and supplies, so we got to cook for ourselves. I was put in charge of one of the cooking groups (apparently because I look the most alert during morning classes), and we made Spaghetti + Meat Sauce according to some rather-vague instructions. The motto for cooking on the trip turned into "Chuck it in," because that was our default answer for when we found something odd in the bottom of the bins. (This was probably even more so the case for the group who made Tuesday's dinner, coconut curry, because their recipe read "add all the sauces in the bin". I am not making this up. Curry came out ok, though.)

We spent our three days in Boulia driving to different Waddi Tree sights, counting seedlings, measuring diameter, all that science-y stuff. I enjoyed it immensely... ergo my major. The people measuring Waddi diameters were less enthused. Waddi trees are prickly, nasty, half-cactus, half-devil trees, apparently. (Being a little OCD and a little bossy, I naturally end up the recorder who doesn't get her hands dirty whenever I do group projects. This may be why I am not popular.)

Also there are usually flies everywhere in Boulia... not this year, but we were provided with these very chic nets:


On Wednesday afternoon, most of the class left to join up with another fieldtrip, and suddenly there were 7 of us and I was the only American. So we grilled some steaks and sausages and onions using stainless-steel pan lids... after marinating the steaks in random sauces that we threw together. It was both delicious and fun.
Afterwards we went to the Boulia pub. We also saw the illustrious Red Stump, which is what came up when Mom googled Boulia for me. I got someone to take a picture. (And this was even before I'd been to the pub!) It's up on his facebook with the caption "Cecilia's Mum would be proud":


Next morning us Hard-Core Waddi hunters hit up the tourist spots of Boulia, which consists of a gift-shop with info on "The Min-Min Lights", which are apparently ghostly lights that people occasionally see at night. We also stopped at this old Waddi tree that theoretically had some kind of significance to the Aboriginal population. The sign was a bit vague.
You'll notice that Marissa's scarf is in this picture. The Scarf visists Boulia!


The return trip was good. I sat up front with the prof 'cause I'm that kind of sad nerd. (It was a lot of fun, though. The prof's a cool guy) We listened to my extensive Beatles collection because I was the only who brought CDs. They owe me.

We stopped at Middleton again, and I bought a rock with opal in it and a piece of petrified wood for $2. Spent the night in Winton again, this time with a pub run. Then back home... we divied up the unused food, so I ended up with a bottle of hoisin sauce, some vegetable boullion cubes, all-purpose seasoning, a jar of honey, and a jar of instant coffee, which proved Very Useful Indeed when it came time to write that report.

Some misc. things:
The stars are beautiful out there. I've never been able to see the Milky Way before this. Also saw the Southren Cross, but not the North Star. That's a North Hemisphere thing.

We saw some kangaroo herds and some emu herds, and, once, a couple of feral camels. You heard me. FERAL CAMELS. Australia has the weirdest introduced species... Apparently there was some talk of introducing rhinos there to make up for the extinct megafauna. How awesome and ill-advised but still awesome is that?!

No kangaroon, emu, or camel pictures, but the album contains some cows and a few of the lizards we came across in the middle of the road. Note especially Sammy the Suicidal Snake. To get out there with the equipment, we had a truck, a van, and a 12-person van. The truck and the first van ran over Sammy, but fortunately didn't kill him. So our driver stopped the van and the class piled out for pictures. Sammy sat there, playing dead. We tried to get him out of the road, so we poked him with a stick... he didn't move. Someone picked up his tail... he slithered under the van wheel. They tried to poke him onto the side of the road, away from us, and he kept going straight under the wheel.
My theory is that poor Sammy had lost his will to live and had decided to end it all, but that road isn't well traveled and he'd been waiting days for someone to hit him.

So, enjoy the pictures of various views on the way out, some pretty plants, rainbows, lizards, cows, spiders (they have black widows here! Apparently because AU can't stand that we have a poisonous spider of our own.), parakeets, the van after we drove it through muddy roads, and us doing Things In the Name Of Science.

Photobucket and Belated Paluma Part 2

Well, I broke down at got a photobucket account for my AU pictures, so now I can just link straight to the albums and save myself a little posting time.

Whitsundays
Paluma
The rest (most of these you've seen. Look in the other folders)

I only have about a month left here. I can't say that I'm sad about this. I'm ready to go home and be around people that I know again. But I am trying to cram as much traveling as humanly possible into my remaining five weeks.
(That being said, I spent Saturday morning at Billabong Wildlife Sanctuary, so there will soon be pictures of me petting a koala up on the photobucket, as well).

So, my Rainforest Ecology class returned to Paluma rainforest for a weekend of fun, educational activities!
We stayed at this convention-center/summer camp/something deal. They hired a caterer, so we got FANTASTIC Aussie food all weekend.

I can't say that I remember the particulars, but the important bit was the Very Australian Breakfast of thick bacon rashers, fried tomatos, poached eggs, and toast w/ rosella jam.
The next morning we also had a Very Australian Breakfast of porridge. The Aussie students poured milk and honey on theirs, the Americans put in brown sugar.
I've never had porrigde w/ milk, and although I'm not a big milk fan, I could definitely get behind this. If I wasn't too lazy to make oatmeal first thing every morning, I'd have invested in some during my time here.
There was also Morning Tea and Afternoon Tea, which consisted of either fruit, cake, or (my particular favorite) fresh scones w/ cream and homemade jam. I'm such a sucker for jam and cream, it's really not funny.

Food aside, it was a good time. I didn't take too many pictures (most of the ones in the album are from the first trip, and you've seen them), because the forest hasn't changed dramatically since we were there a few weeks before.

Day one we stopped at the Tall Open Forest, which is the forest type that competes with rainforest. Lots of gum trees:


They have leeches out there. I'm a big fan of leeches following a 10-page paper I wrote on them last semester. The paper itself almost killed me, but the all-night leech-paper binge before it kinda drove home the point that Leeches Are Cool.
Apparently in the rainforest they'll jump off branches onto your face and crawl behind your eyeball, and there's nothing you can do about it until they crawl back out. Please believe me when I say that if that EVER happens to me, I demand that you knock me out by any means necessary until it crawls out. I am very serious about this request. It is a standing order to everyone who reads this blog.

Good leech. Nice leech.
(This is one of the ones with three teeth that form relatively large cuts. But they don't attack eyes, so I'm ok with them.)


We did some tree identifying, prepping for our individual research projects, that kind of thing. Saturday night, the profs had Rainforest Trivia Night, where we all gathered around in groups and played for candy. I ended up in the group of graduate students, and we all got way too into the tree identifying... more important, though, was our head prof, who got more and more drunk on red wine as the night went on.
The evening culminated in him singing a Paluma version of Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed. We were supposed to sing it together, but at the end of the chorus the prof would sort-of sing "Do-wah do-wah" (which isn't in the original song as far as we could tell), so we would all pause and wait for him. Every once in a while after lecture I hear someone in the class say "Dowah dowah" and giggle.

Sunday we did our projects. My group scrapped moss off a couple of different moss-environments, so we finished up rather quickly. Of course, we spent the next 3 weeks frantically identifying the mosses and trying to figure out how we could turn that into a report, so I guess the joke was on us, after all...
Me collecting samples:


Back at the center, there was a male Victoria Rifle bird hanging around. Their feathers sound like satin when they move, and the sunlight shows off these beautiful blue lights in them... they're really pretty birds.


Sunday we stopped of at Little Crystal Creek (as compared to Big Crystal Creek), and those of us who brought swimsuits went diving and those of us who hadn't brought swimsuits were scared on behalf of those who had, because the water does not look half as deep as it actually is.



Then we stopped off at The Frosty Mango, a famous tourist attraction/ice cream place. It sells fruit sorbets... fresh mango, coconut, passionfruit, pineapple, dragonfruit... a bunch of exotic fruit I'd never heard of... I splurged a bit and got a three-scoop cone... mango, passionfruit, and pineapple.
Ever since I've been trying to get my friends from the Whitsundays trip to go out to Crystal Creek so I can actually swim, and then to the Mango so I can spend all my disposable income on the fruits I haven't heard of.

Paluma Rainforest

Nothing very exciting happened this week. I spent the weekend miserably working on a paper for Plant Survival. I'm still not done with it. I'm still fairly miserable about it. So nothing to report.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, and I'm leaving for Arlie Beach. I'm spending the four-day break on a sailboat going around the Whitsunday islands, snorkeling, and hopefully diving. I'm much more excited about this than my paper.

As promised, the pictures from the rainforest (and small community) up on Mt Paluma from last week.


Basket Ferns:


Some canopy shots (not too many: I know they're not that exciting.

This one contains a strangling fig, strangling a tree:


Tree with buttresses:

A creek:

An abandoned mine from back before the forest was declared a "World Heritage" place:


A cool tree:


A vine that no longer has a tree and therefore is an interesting shape:


This is a Refrigerator Tree. It feels colder than other trees. I know the picture really captures that.


The major occupational hazard in the rainforest (aside from leeches and ticks):


Cool plants:




Pine trees (not native to the area, or usually this shape- they were in a yard at one of the houses nearby. Paluma's a bit of a summer-home place.)


There are birds in this picture somewhere. Trust me.


And the view from the mountain:


I took quite a few more, but you get the idea.

Prelude to picspam

I wish I had a secretary taking notes for me, so that when I get back there'll be a giant memo on my desk:
While you were away:
_x_ Part of Marietta caught fire again
___ The entire Republican Party collapsed upon itself
___ Your parents rent out your room
_x_ The Health Care Reform Bill passed
_x_ Your friends have decided to dress you up as a Kill Bill character
___ Several of your friends left for Spring Break and did not return

I also had a very exciting weekend, America!

My Rainforest Ecology class had an introductory field trip on Saturday- we went out to Paluma, which is a mountain about 60 miles from Uni which contains rainforest. We mostly just looked at trees and tried to identify them to family. I'm not very good at it- which is disconcerting. I'm brilliant at identifying trees to species at home. Of course, none of the families I know so well even exist down here. Even the 'beech' trees aren't in the same family as North American beeches.

:-( It's hard not being in Kansas anymore.

Anyway, Paluma has a little town up at the top, a bit of a summer-home place... Not unlike beach towns, except less built-up. We're going to be staying up there for a weekend in a few weeks while we do our individual research projects (I'm working on mosses with another girl from America- on this more when I know what we're actually doing). It looks like the weekend will be a lot of fun.

Then on Sunday my housemate offered to take me to the local aquarium- he and his daughter have a family pass, and since it includes two adults he figured I could save $20... he goes there about every other weekend and is rather jaded about the whole thing as a result, and therefore doesn't think it's worth the cost of admission.

And it's true- it's not as nice as the Baltimore Aquarium. There were no whale skeletons. But they did have some really cool reef fish... as one would expect. I hope at least some of the pictures I took turn out, but we'll see.
(The best part was the sea snake. I really hope at least one of those pictures turned out. *never got over her Chamber of Secrets-fueled love of snakes*)

Afterwards we stopped at a hardware store and I bought a folding chair, so my room is finally furnished to my satisfaction and there will be pictures of it eventually.

We also had a cyclone scare- Cyclone Ului was supposed to hit us Saturday, and there were warnings and everything else... it swerved and we didn't even get a decent wind. However, we *did* have a huge flood on Monday! The park across from my house was completely underwater, and my housemate called me out and we splashed around in it barefoot, which was great fun and struck me as a rather Aussie thing to do. Sadly, the rain stopped today, so the park wasn't flooded when I woke up, so I haven't seen it in daylight yet.

And that was my weekend. I still haven't got my pictures off my camera, but my next two entries (unless something exciting happens) are going to be just pictures of Paluma and fish.

Candy Bar Update:
Turkish Delight: Turkish Delight is a bit infamous in the US, because apparently (I haven't read them) it's the absolute favorite food of one of the kids in the Narnia books, but nobody in the US has any idea what it is. I've heard that it's disgusting, that it's ok, that it's brilliant...

First off, Turkish Delight is *very* big here in AU. All the Easter stuff is out, and they have Turkish Delight-filled chocolate eggs (chocolate eggs filled with things are apparently the big treat most kids get at Easter), Turkish Delight boxes of chocolates, and Turkish Delight shots- which will get you wasted faster than anything else on the planet, according to the anime club.

So I felt that I should buy and consume a Turkish Delight bar. It's this fruity red gummy substance, covered in milk chocolate. Alisa (my wonderful roommate at home) and I crashed a Hawaii club meeting one year and made this dessert with them... I can't remember what it was called, but it involved cornstarch and coconut milk... anyway, if I (or Alisa) remember its name, it's the same sort of thing as Turkish Delight.

(Turkish Delight shots are next).

Boost: This is a log-shaped candy bar with a chewy chocolate center with cookie bits in it, surrounded by a circle of caramel, and coated with milk chocolate. Pretty good.

Nestle Aero: This is the same thing as a Cadbury Bubbly, but Nestle stuff was on sale at the grocery story so I thought I'd mention it. And since we're more likely to find Nestle products than Cadbury ones at home, I hope that Aeros find a place on the US market. These things are really addictively good.

I also purchased a fresh passion fruit today, so I'll let you know how I deal with that.

Classes and Accents

Busy week. I've had all my classes now, and they look pretty good. The timetables here are crazy... I blame JCU.
I'm not very impressed with JCU's organizational prowess, as you've probably noticed. There was no reason whatsoever that they couldn't have given us international students our logon information before we arrived (as they did for the domestic students), so that I would have known what classes I was registered for, when they met, what books they required, etc, but they didn't. As a result, I didn't receive an email from one of my classes about registering for discussion classes, and also I didn't bring The Secret Garden or The Golden Compass with me, so now I may have to buy them all over again.

Anyway, JCU's timetables are very difficult to follow- classes typically meet two hours a week, and these two hours can be at different times and in different rooms. One of my classes meets at 1:00 on Wednesday and 3:00 on Thursday, in different rooms in different buildings.

There are three types of class sessions here- lectures, tutorials (which are like discussion groups, I think), and practicals (which are science labs).

It's not a big deal if you don't stay for the whole practical, either. I have two practicals scheduled at the same time (granted, one of them only meets three times the whole semester), and neither professor seemed to think it was a big deal. They also tell you that if you have a lecture in the middle of a practical to just leave, go to the lecture, and come back. Compare this to MoHo, where skipping a lab without a doctor's excuse is an automatic fail for the course.

Also, we're required to wear labcoats in the labs at all times, so I now own a labcoat, and it's sexy in the way that only science can be.

So, my classes are as follows:
Plant Survival and Climate Change: (Meets Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:00, plus a very optional prac on Tues from 10-1.) It's mostly about plant adaptation and less about global warming than my advisor at MHC and I hoped.... but it's still interesting and something that's probably pretty useful, and I'm excited about it. Instead of labs we have a week-long field trip during spring break, where we go out to the desert and look at acacia trees.
The professor who's given our lectures thus-far (and there are I think three all together) is a middle-aged guy with a long braid. He came to lecture on Wednesday wearing a bright green shirt that said "You can't drink all day unless you start in the morning," cargo shorts, bright red and black striped socks, and leather clogs. I just thought you should know.

Rainforest Ecosystems: (Meets Wednesday at 1:00 and Thursday at 3:00, plus a practical that meets twice all semester) I'm really excited about this one. It's more plant ecology stuff. We take two field trips to the rainforest, one of them all weekend, and it looks amazing.

Marine Plants and Algae: (Meets Wednesday at 11:00 and Friday at 10:00, plus a practical on Friday afternoon that meets every week). This is the only 200-level (intermediate) class that I'm taking, which would worry me at MHC but here things seem a little easier. Anyway, this is mostly about algae and identifying them... so kinda like Invertebrate Zoology all over again, but without Stan. How did I make this mistake twice?
Actually, it looks like it'll be fairly doable (I did survive Inverts, despite my constant whining), and algae is cool.

Children's Literature: (Meets Thurs from 12:00-2:00, plus an hour of tutorials) Well, you see, it's impossible for non-majors to get into Children's Lit at MHC and I'm an English minor who wants to read kids' books all the time. But the course looks interesting and fun. They're reading a lot of Australian children's books that I haven't heard of before. Next week we're doing The Coral Island as part of the historical children's lit unit. It's about three young men who get stranded on a coral island and have swashbuckling adventures, as all healthy British boys of the 1800's dreamed of.

I talk a lot more about my English and history classes than my science ones, I've noticed. I guess I just figure humanities are more entertaining to the general population.

(I told my Children's Lit prof that I was an international student, to explain why I hadn't gotten her email, and she got very nervous and now smiles really widely at me when she sees me. My other subjects tend to draw international students, but I don't think this one does very often. Also I think she thinks that English is my second language.)

Also went to the anime club on Wednesday. It was fun, and the people seemed nice, so I'll probably keep going. Met an American student who's in my Marine Algae class, and we hung out, despite my conviction that I wouldn't get along with any of the other American students.

One of the guys at the club got really excited when he heard me speak and asked where I was from. It's weird having someone say "ooh, an accent!"when you talk to them, especially when they say it in what you consider a thick Australian accent. I still haven't quite gotten to the point where everyone else sounds normal and I sound weird.

Although, sometimes when I start to talk I realize that I'm going to pronounce things differently than the person I'm talking to would. It trips me up. I also still haven't gotten used to referring to MHC as a university rather than a college (a college here is a dorm. A school is a high school.)

Oh, and one of the other guys at anime night told me my accent sounded very Vancouver. So I can pass for Canadian if I ever have to.

Chocolate, Animals, Classes

Candy bar update:
Since my last post, I've had
1) A Mars bar- it's a lot like a milky way, except with a little more caramel overtone to the nougat.
2) A white "Bubbly"- So, a Bubbly is a candy bar with a truffle center (I had white chocolate, but they also come in plain chocolate and mint) that's been "aerated"... so it's got a lot of little airpockets. It's kind of hard to describe... I've decided that I like them.

I also bought a lamington (which is a cake filled w/ whipped cream and dipped in chocolate and coconut) at the local bakery... and tried to pay with a nickel, because I'd somehow convinced myself that it was worth $5 instead of 5 cents. I am an idiot. The lamington was ok, but they're better homemade (I know, 'cause I've made them.) I may or may not avoid the bakery after the coin debaucle...

This weekend we got a bed set up for me, so that's well and good. I also went to the mall, where it is *not* more expensive than any other store. This blew my mind. No recognizable chain stores, there, either- there was a McD's and a Subway in the food court, and that's it.

Animal update:
I almost stepped on a snake the other day... I was cutting across the grass in a not-very-traveled area and stepped over it before noticing it was there. It didn't seem too bothered by me, which is good, because it may have been incredibly poisonous (I found two possible things it could be- one perfectly harmless and one really dangerous.) Anyway, it didn't bite me, and I didn't call anyone because I figured it was minding its own business in the grass.

There are lizards in the house. Not many of them, and you don't see them very often, but they walk up the walls and it's pretty cool.

Apparently the magpies attack people here during breeding season, which is next month. The major defense is to wear a bucket on your head with eyes painted on the back. I think this is hysterical.

Pool party on Saturday, where I was taken in by a group of freshman girls who felt sorry for me standing on my own in the corner. They were cool. We swam... I got a little bit sunburned, but nothing too painful. (This seemed more interesting when I started writing this paragraph).

I had my first class today - Plant Survival and Climate Change. We're going on a field trip to the desert for a week in April! Sounds like fun, and I think one of my other classes is taking a trip to the rainforest, so there's two of my Things To See already taken care of for me, which is nice 'cause I'm lazy.

More Orientation. Also Clotted Cream.

Last night was an orientation show (w/ free sausages, which is what got me there). I ended up sitting next to an older woman named "Bev" who's going back for a degree in something (the music was kinda loud, I couldn't really hear what she said). Anyway, she has a car and offered to give me lifts if I ever need them, so here's one friend that it would be to my advantage to keep in touch with. (INTJs do not do 'friendship' without a valid reason. Or maybe that's just me?)

There was a speech and performance by an Aboriginal elder (I got one picture, which will eventually be up). Australia's very respectful of Aborigines... kind of a "So, we screwed you over and took your land, and now that we've sobered up, we're really, really sorry about that. No, really, we are. We're going to make sure that everyone knows you were here first and have you at opening ceremonies for schools and all that. It doesn't make up for it, but..." As compared to America, which says "So, we screwed you over and took your land... if we let you open casinos, will you shut up about it?"

Then there was a comedian-type guy pretending to be an American professor... his accent was pretty atrocious. I've never heard anyone from Australia attempt an American accent before. It's really... bizarre. I don't know how to put it. He also made a couple of Arnold jokes, so I knew then and there that he wasn't from Sacramento, in any case. (Alisa assures me that nobody in Sacramento makes Arnold jokes because it's too depressing to them.) Anyway, it turned into a long show about drinking in college and making good choices and seek help if you need it and all that. It was actually pretty entertaining, but it was SWELTERING out (the guy had to keep toweling himself off), I was getting eaten alive by mosquitos, it was about 2 hours long, and it was nothing I hadn't heard before because I've done this whole orientation thing before and I know my way around college. It's getting a little frustrating, to be honest. Sure, the computer sites are set up a little different and have different names, but it's still the same thing as Mount Holyoke.
Did learn ONE new thing: Apparently peeing on people's lawns is a serious problem here, because the guy saw fit to mention that it's a bad idea.

Bev gave me a ride home, which was nice 'cause it was dark out and I wasn't super-sure how to get back home. My landlord/roommate was going to bed when I got there, but he says he might be able to set up a bunkbed for me this weekend, so Saturday is furniture-assembly time! He's very helpful. I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to talk to him a bit more this week, 'cause right now I feel a little like a very sketchy houseguest.

Today I stopped at the student coffee shop and got tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam. This was exciting for me, even if it isn't particularly for you. I've been seeing a lot of stuff around that I'd previously only seen in the British baking cookbook that Micah got me for Christmas (which, among other things, insists that Americans call blueberrys "huckleberries"). There seems to be a lot ofwhipped cream flying around. I kinda just want to live here forever. Or until my heart explodes.

The Anime Club had a table out today, and they seem very enthusiastic (I've decided that the VP is basically their Hannah, but don't tell him that). They said they're watching Black Lagoon this semester, so that should appease you guys. Let's face it, the fastest, most comfortable way for me to make friends with people is to hunt down some reasonably well-adjusted anime nerds, and I don't have a lot of time here to spend making friends any other way.

Also, they gave me a bottle-holder-thing from their sponsor, GameTraders Stockland... which is probably a branch of GameTraders Robina, which, as devotees may recall, is where Yahtzee
gets his blackmarket games. So I've already accumulated some gaming cred for when I get back to the States.

That's all for now, sorry, no pictures. I've got some, but it's a pain in the neck to add them to an entry and I just don't feel like it at the moment.

O-week and Bird watching

I've moved into my new place and unpacked! It's not too bad at all- lots of closet space. Also, while walking to school at noon (poor life choice in Australian summer), I found out that it's about a minute's walk from a bakery (and a butcher and a pharmacy and a lot of other helpful things to be one minute away from). So YAY. (Living my dream, here.)

Lots more students around, since this is the official Orientation week. There was only one event that I absolutely had to go to- the meeting with my department (that's Science & Engineering, by the way). The brochure said 9:30 to 4, so I assumed they meant "stop in any time and we'll set you up," but no. They meant, "Be there at 9:30 sharp 'cause we need all 7.5 hours with you. Also we'll be walking around and you'll never find us if you're late." So I missed that, but one of the guys at the International Student Center told me that it wasn't a big deal.

...I'm just killing time until the big concert at 6:00 now. Checked out the shops on campus- there's a cafeteria, a bar, a few coffee shops, a convenience store, and a bookshop. (Fun fact, Alisa- an English class is reading The Golden Compass, only here it's called The Northern Lights.)

Right now I'm taking advantage of the still-free internet. Turns out the school does keep track of how much you download and charges if you go over your limit... I don't know how to deal with that. I know I sound like an addict. I am. I'm ok with that. They say it's free for international students between 8 pm and 8 am, though, so I may be staying here a little late once in a while. (I'm pretty sure that maps to 5am to 5pm your time. So, while you have class/work. Great.)

AUSSIE SLANG OF THE DAY: Capsicum = bell pepper

So, here are some more pictures:
WEIRD BIRDS!
(Anyone know how to put a jump in a blog post so people don't have to wait for all my pictures to load?)


These are Kookaburras:

And I almost walked right over these guys: (the middle one is a baby!)

Cockatoos by the side of the road:

And ducks: