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Published: January 27th 2008
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Me001
This is me, by the way, spinning a plate. I thought it would be appropriate. Welcome all to my amazingly awesome travel blog. I'm going to divide this first entry into two sections. Section One is for people who randomly found this blog, or people I've invited that don't actually know who I am (it happens more than you'd think). Section Two is for people who already know me and want to skip the introductions and howdy-do's and get down to the meat and potatoes of Josh's craaaazy plans.
Section One! (Skip this if you already know who I am, or read it anyway. I don't even care!)
Hello! My name is Josh Sutherland and I'm 21 years old. I currently reside in Summerville, South Carolina which isn't quite in Charleston but it's close enough for this blog's purposes. I've lived here my entire life. For the last three and a half years I've gone to the University of South Carolina Honors College in Columbia for a degree in Marketing. I'm supposed to graduate with all my buddies in May and maybe have one last kickass summer before moving out of the house and starting a career somewhere, but luckily for me and for you, I chose a different route.
Instead of sticking it out and attending some not-really-important-but-necessary-for-a-degree classes (ie, electives), walking in May and doing who knows what with my degree, I've decided that I would really rather travel and see something new before trying to start a new life in another city somewhere. I figure, what better opportunity to travel than now? It's my last year of eligibility as a student for discount flight purposes, and I don't have some job that expects me to show up more than once every 5 months. So after some deliberation, I settled on study abroad in Australia! My friends are heartbroken that I'm leaving them, but I just tell them that they can visit me down under whenever they feel like it. 😉
I've been planning this shindig since March, when my friends Christi and Mindy were abroad at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. I thought hey, since I'm so super-original, I'll just do what you two are doing. Sooo being a junior at USC, I had to make sure this thing would be possible. I ended up talking to advisers and such about it, and ended up taking two summer classes, and 19 credit hours in my last semester to ensure that I had all my required classes completed. Now all I have left is three business electives and two journalism electives! Perfect for Australia. Fast forward to January. I'll go on into Section Two now to give the folks that know me already something to read.
Section Two!
Hi guys. You already know I'm going to Australia for my last semester of college. I'll get back in July and graduate in August. Here's some crap you may not know about the preparations though. Some stuff that gave me a headache in the last two months. So back in November I applied for on-campus housing. Living at a dorm called International House had been part of my plans since March, so of course, I get waitlisted. No chance at living on-campus now. Awesome. Next there's the visa thing...
To get into Australia, you have to have a visa of some sort. In my case, that would be a student visa. To be able to apply for your student visa, you need this little thingy called an eCOE. To get your eCOE, you pay a $650 AUD (That's Australian dollars! 1 AUD = .88 USD as of this entry) down payment and accept University of Newcastle's acceptance. So you accept the acceptance, pay some money, get an eCOE, apply for visa, pay for visa, then BAM!, you're eligible to enter the country. So I accept the acceptance, I pay some money, but do I get an eCOE? Hell no I don't. So I e-mail University of Newcastle, and I get an automated e-mail back saying "Sorry we're on holidays, wait til January 6th." Awesome. So I wait and wait and wait, at this time I've still got nowhere to live, no plane tickets, no classes, and no visa. The only thing I DO have is USC's acknowledgment that I'm not going to attend classes there, and my passport. January 6th rolls around, still no eCOE. I FINALLY get it on January 14th or so and breathe a huge sigh of relief. The next day I buy my plane tickets, totaling about $1850 USD (thank you STA Travel), and apply for my visa, which is another huge charge of $400 AUD. Sweet. So for those keeping track at home, that's a bunch of money spent to still have nowhere to sleep or classes to attend. Still haven't paid tuition or any housing, etc. Oh well!
Ok that turned into kind of a rant, but it was really upsetting me for a good while there. At this point I've kind of accepted that I won't have a place to stay waiting for me to arrive. I'm sort of banking on getting into Newcastle and running around the city looking for a furnished apartment with some sane people, preferably fellow students.
Ok enough about that stuff. I haven't left yet. Departure is not until February 7th. I still have an excellent week ahead of me. On Monday, I'll be heading down to Orlandooooo, Florida with my beautiful, wonderful, amazing, loving girlfriend Erin and going to Disney World with her! So I'll have another update for you guys and gals at the end of the week when I return. Thanks for reading! Bookmark it if you're feeling frisky. Or otherwise.
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Chris Poirel
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sad panda
I'm going to miss Josh. =( On the other hand. I think it will be completely badass if you dirtbag around Australia for a few days... weeks... the whole time... looking for a place to stay. Take a picture of a Koala for me. gl, hf, be safe