cold cold cold.

I AM SO COLD. :( It’s about 45 degrees here. …I still don’t understand celsius. I also still can’t remember to look the right way when I’m crossing the street, so that’s kinda scary sometimes. I have to look both ways like 4 times before crossing and sometimes that doesn’t even work. But anyway, it’s really cold and rainy so it’s making me be lazy and unsocial because I don’t want to leave my dorm to go over to the other residence halls and see what anyone’s doing. Oh well. I saw a double rainbow today though. Actually, it was like 3 rainbows. There are LOTS of rainbows here. And they’re really long and bright. It’s really cool, I wish I had my camera on me today.

Today started the 2nd week of classes. I got to sand blast glass today. It kind of turned out not that great because it was the first time I’d done it, but there will be many more chances for improvement! My metals class is weird. We’re only doing one project for the whole semester. It has to be a food container for a specific food. I think I’m going to make a sushi container, because it seems like I could make that last for a whole semester if I get detailed enough.

Other than that nothing much new. We went to a free AFL (Australian Football League) game on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. It started out boring, but then it got really close and exciting. The final score was 108 to 104. The team we were rooting for won too. Yay!

I miss the food from home. The really easy, frozen vegetarian stuff I can just put in the microwave and eat fast. Here I actually have to plan real meals and go grocery shopping like 3 times a week and eat the stuff I buy before it goes bad. And everything is about twice as expensive than at home so I can’t even get really good stuff most of the time. I also miss my clogs and a real heater and WalMart and going to the gym and having a printer. And of course family & friends. It’s okay though, I’m still having an amazing time. :)

I guess that’s it for now.

Looong post.

I thought I was going to Brisbane, but I actually went to Caloundra instead. It’s on the Sunshine Coast and A LOT warmer than it is here in Melbourne, although today isn’t too cold.

The hotel we stayed in, The Shearwater, was SO nice. It was on the beach, which was beautiful. The group flight got delayed 29 hours, so there was a group of 13 of us for half of the orientation. I’m happy it happened that way because I got to know the other 12 people really well and we’re going to keep in touch and hopefully meet up with each other in various places on the continent, and hopefully back in the states too eventually. We had a whole morning free while waiting for the rest of the group (45 more people), so we decided to go surfing. It was a bit cold in the water, but so much fun. There were 10 of us who went, we got rash guards, boards & 2 instructors for $25 each. So it was really cheap.

We eventually had a bunch of orientation sessions about boring things that I practically slept through, but other than that the whole weekend was fun. We went to the Australian Zoo (Steve Irwin’s Zoo). It was really cool. I got to pet kangaroos, wallabies, koalas. Saw wombats, Tasmanian devils (which are crazy because they just run around in circles all day long), crocs, tons of weird birds & snakes, a komodo dragon, some other animals. We saw Steve Irwin’s daughter, Bindi. She sang and had grown men dancing behind her. It was really strange, but whatever.

I’m back at school. I’m now a pro at sitting in airports alone and not getting bored.

Classes started today. I thought it would be really hard to make myself go, but I actually ended up getting to class an hour early. All of my classes are on Caulfield campus, which is anywhere from 20-45 minutes by bus from Clayton campus, where I live. The bus ride only took 15 minutes and it turned out the drop off is right in front of the building my classes are in. It was alright though; I got a cup of coffee and explored the student union. I had my glass class today. I’m not actually blowing glass, but it seems cool anyway. And I’m trying to get into the advanced glass blowing class as an independent study or something. I really hope it works out. Tomorrow I have Metals & Jewelry, Wednesday I’ll either have glassblowing or business of illustration, which I’ll probably switch to something else anyway, and then Thursday I have Contemporary Australia. I can already tell I’m not going to want to come home. The studios & facilities are so much nicer here than at Arcadia & probably most of the universities at home. And I’m in Australia.

I signed up to go on a trip to Tasmania through Arcadia, which is awesome because it’s really cheap and I’ll get to see my new friends who are all up north. I just hope I don’t have exams right near there. We have a month long exam period and all of my art classes don’t really do exams, so that leave Contemporary Australia. I could probably go even if I had an exam right before or after because the trip is Friday night to Sunday night, but it might be very stressful and I was thinking I could go a day or two early to explore the town myself.

I also get a free trip through Arcadia. We get to take a bus ride on the Great Ocean Road, which is supposed to be beautiful and something that everyone who goes to Australia needs to do.

I’m hungry, I hope we’re cooking soon! I'll put up more pictures.

brisbane

i played australian rules football today. Footy they call it. Actually, i didnt even get to play because we ran out of time and couldn't play an actual game, but we got to kick the footy ball around and learn some techniques. it's such a strange game. it's a mix of soccer, american football, basketball, rugby & probably lots of other stuff. it was pretty cool.

tomorrow i'm going to brisbane for arcadia's orientation so i probably wont have internet until sunday when i get back. classes start monday so it's going to be a crazy time when i get back.

differences

i've been hanging out with a lot of brits lately and it's funny because they say things like charAAAHHHds (charades) and tomAAAAHHHtoe (tomatoe) and they call the pocket in pool the pot and the paddle in ping pong the bat. and underwear pants, so if you say something like i like your pants they think you're speaking of their undies. burger king here is hungry jacks and the aussies call mcdonalds macce's pronounced macka's. people dont say college, they say uni, and we've been teaching all of the non-americans how to play beer pong. we played a game like charades today and we all put names of famous people in a bowl to pick out... there were a lot of people no one knew unless you were from the same country as the person who wrote it down. what's really weird is that i've caught myself thinking in a different accent than my own a couple of times.

i'm going to post a couple of more pictures, so make sure to scroll down and look at them!

kangaroo

the food has been pretty good since i've gotten here. there's a bunch of eateries in the student center and then there's a dining hall right by all of the residence halls. for a while we ate out most of the meals, but now that we're all settling in we've been cooking and stuff. last night my friend Linda and i made gnocchi for dinner, with mushrooms and zucchini. YUM. i've fallen in love with mushrooms since the plane ride. they used to remind me of ears but now they remind me of yumminess.

My first night into Melbourne we went to a Thai place in Chinatown (why not Chinese food?). It was good. My friend Sarah ordered stir fry. Her meat of choice... kangaroo. ....... WHAT??? They eat KANGAROOS here?!?!?!?! What part of the kangaroo? No clue. Do they raise kangaroos like they raise cattle at home? No clue. All I know is that I was shocked to find out they eat the cute, hoppy creatures. I do have to admit that for .5 seconds I considered abandoning being a vegetarian just so I could say I ate kangaroo meat. I think they described it as tasting like chicken but more gamey. It looked like very dark steak, not like the cute animal I expected to see when I got here.

pictures

if you scroll down there are some pics, and this one from the red scooter

http://pulsephotography.zenfolio.com/p2753196/?photo=305014366

Monash Dash & the Red Scooter

Orientation week has been so fun. It's going to be very hard to get into classes when they start. Although they'll hopefully be awesome too. It's finally the weekend... got to sleep in today, which was much needed. We've had to get up every morning for meetings or activities. Yesterday (was that only yesterday???) we had "Monash Dash." We were put on teams and had to find specific places on campus from clues and get our papers stickered. The first prize was a $250 gift certificate to a restraunt here for the group... and mine won!

Last night the Uni put on a dinner at a place called the Red Scooter. It was fun, we got to dress up and have a nice dinner with everyone. Then we all went out afterwards in Melbourne. I really love the city, and public transportation isn't too bad.

I'm going to try to see if there's a way I can post pictures on here.