Cambodia makes Thailand look like the Ritz. I didn't expect such poverty and so much begging. The country has definitely had a painful past. I was very glad to have researched my hotel in Phnom Penh before I got there. It was very nice compared to every other building in the city and they even had someone pick me up from the airport. I stayed the night and left early the next morning on a bus to Siem Reap. It was a 6 hour drive and in that time I learned how to drive in Cambodia. Turns out you drive in [View Full Entry]

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As the title suggests...you haven't seen bad traffic until you've come to Bangkok! Seriously this traffic is completely insane! I guess that’s why people take scooters around everywhere. I opted for walking, for fear of the craziness. Yesterday I took a cooking class. It ended up being a private lesson, but I had a lot of fun with the girls who own the restaurant. I cooked all kinds of things- curry, soups, hummus, sauces, pad Thai, spring rolls…and the best part…got to eat it all! Thai cooking seemed really simple to me that is if you have all the numerous ingred [View Full Entry]

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First of all let me say...I LOVE THAILAND!! It's by far the best place I've ever been in my whole life! (by the way sorry in advance if there are misspelling, I'm typing fast and on a thai keyboard) So Thailand has been an adventure to say the least. It started out with a flight to Perth, then a flight to Malasia, 10 hours in the airport, and then another flight into Phuket. The good part is that I meet a brother and sister on the Phuket flight that were sooooo nice and took me right to my hostel! So first [View Full Entry]

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Well I can’t believe my time here in Melbourne is already almost over! The time really flew by. I’ve divided my time here into 3 chunks. The first part (summer) was great! We spent most of the time exploring, trying out new restaurants, and going to the beach. The second part was the middle of the semester and things seemed to drag on forever. It was a bit of a slump when winter started. Then I had a bunch of visitors at the beginning of the third part, which put me in a great mood and I’ve been having a great [View Full Entry]

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Poor Gretchen finally got here 5 hours after her originally scheduled arrival after being rerouted to Sydney due to some weather problem that we’re not really sure of. Anyway, she looked surprisingly amazing and awake when she got here, which shocked me! Sunday morning we all got up extra early to go to Hobart, Tasmania. We got there around 8am and not having thought about the fact that it was Sunday morning and everything would be closed, we were all shocked to see the whole town completely abandoned. It was like a ghost town actually, we couldn’t even find a single [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend I experienced a traditional Melbourne event...Australian Football, otherwise known as Footy. It's a big thing in Victoria, with multiple teams in the region, although there are also teams from other states. The game was at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and was between Hawthorn and Carlton. I think they said there were about 67,000 people there! It was funny because in the States people dress head to toe in their team's colors, but here most people wore scarves and beanies in the team's color. Hawthorn was gold and maroon, which kinda reminded me of Harry Potter. Carlton was [View Full Entry]

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I finally made it through half of the semester and had a week long break! Jordan happened to have the same break as me and was able to come down from Samoa to visit for the week. He got here on Saturday morning, and we ended up spending the day eating and shopping (the 2 things he misses most not being in a big city). It was really fun to watch him get super excited about things like ice cube trays, lunch meat, and people wearing make-up and form-fitting clothing. We actually ended up in the grocery store and Walmart for [View Full Entry]

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This weekend Sergio came down from visiting his brother during the week in Sydney. Friday night we went to the Eureka Sky Deck, the tallest building in the Southern hemisphere. It was really beautiful to see the city at night from so high. I was super nervous, but Sergio made me go out on the Edge, a glass enclosed observation deck that looks straight down 88 stories. I was definitely scared looking down at first, but I’m really glad I did it! Saturday morning we got up really early and went to meet Sergio’s dads friend for breakfast near Chapel street. [View Full Entry]

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So I joined the Melbourne University Chorus last Wednesday. It’s a lot like Emory with about 250 people in it. We’re going to be singing Mozart’s Requiem for our concert. We started rehearsal last night, which sounded awesome. Our director is really young and energetic, so it’s a fun time. Plus I was able to finally meet some Australians, which is actually really hard to do on a personal level. I sat by a girl from Canberra and another girl from France, so we had a great conversation about how we all got to Uni (that’s what they call the University [View Full Entry]

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So I have no idea how 47,000 students fit on campus, when there are only 30,000 students at UGA and it’s a small city, whereas Melbourne’s campus is about the size of Georgia Tech. It’s really packed during the day and sometimes you’re just being drug along in a sea of people. I have 600 people in my Marketing class, which seems insane, but it’s actually my favorite class. The professor is really energetic and excited about the subject. I also went to my cognitive development class today. I think it will be interesting to learn about what the brain is [View Full Entry]

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