BBQ'ing, Brunch, & Bushwalking

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This week has FLOWN by! I can't believe I start school in TWO DAYS!

Wednesday night I went job hunting, which was a little harder than I thought, but for now I am filling out two applications and will be searching some more this week. After the job searching, I went and met this guy Thomas, from Denmark, that I had been talking to on facebook through a Macuqarie group. Me and him went to the soccer fields and watched my neighbors play soccer for awhile. ((I have been talking to about 10 people for the past couple months on this facebook group who are all here, and I've met about 1/2 of them so far, all of who are pretty cool)). Then Wednesday I hung out and partied with the neighbors and we went to a bar called The Ranch, which is really close to campus and it just opened up. They have 3 dollar beers and other good deals, so it feels a little more like Iowa City (price wise). Anyways, I had a BLAST... my neighbors and I were dancing machines and danced til bar close.

Thursday was orientation, which was insanely boring because it was basically the same things they told us at my program orientation about being safe, traveling, and culture shock. Then we had a two hour lunch break, and I hung out with this girl Tiffany, who was also from the facebook group. It was a gorgeous day outside, maybe about 70 and perfectly sunny, not a cloud in the sky, so we sat outside and had lunch, and started talking to a couple other Americans. One of the guys had already been around campus alot and showed up where to get our student IDs (omg, I took a terrible picture) and where the computer labs were. Then I went back to orientation, learned how to do my schedule, then peaced out because I was about to fall asleep. One of my classes that I was pre-enrolled in overlapped with another lecture, so I spent about an hour yesterday running around campus trying to switch it, which I did, but it won't be official til Monday when school starts. Anyways, I am taking Political Theory, Intro to Globalization, African Politics and Globalization, and Australian Foreign Policy... all of which I am extremely excited for. And what's even more exciting is that I don't have class on Wednesdays or Fridays! Australians, and people at Maquarie to, are verrryyy serious about school and studying. Since my neighbor Chris and I have the same days off, I mentioned we could do fun stuff and he just looked at me funny and he's like, I don't think we'll have time... so apparently school is really hard and a lot of work here, so I'm a little scared. Haha.

Anyways, so after orientation, my friend Kevin from my program came to visit ((oh, which reminds me, I took the bus into Sydney on Tuesday to go hang out with him and some other friends!! That was fun!)) Anyways, Kevin is living at Coogee beach and he is literally a block from the beach.. it was SOOOO pretty. Coogee reminds me a little of Santa Barbara/Cinqie Terre. Definitely a beach town feel. Anyways, so Kevin came to visit and I already had plans with the neighbors, so we went next door and had a HUGE BBQ full of steaks, kabobs, burgers, veggies, ice cream, everything! So we sat outside on our front porches and played card games all night - so much fun!!

So yesterday, Friday, the neighbors fixed Kevin and I brunch. They made awesome omlettes... and me and Chris made up a little game for everyone to play: We took two pieces of toast and put peanut butter on both, then on one piece we put vegemite and on one piece we put nutella, and everyone had to pick a piece then eat it. I unfortunately got a piece of the one with vegemite and almost threw up in my mouth - it was DISGUSTING! yuck. It's basically yeast leftover from when they make beer and such - it tastes terrible. So then later in the day there was a party on the green in the East Village, which is a 2 minute walk from my place, and they had burgers and cake and candy and whatnot, but we got there late, so we just got the leftovers, haha. Then we played some more cards with the neighbors then hung out at the Administration building, where they have pool, video games, a nice flatscreen tv, and ping pong.

Today I just went bushwalking with Max, my neighbor from Ecuador. Bushwalking is basically hiking, and I have yet to learn why Australians call it that. Anyways, just about 5 minutes away is a national park! We only walked around for about an hour but it was SO pretty, I wish I had brought my camera!! Max is actually almost done with his degree in Geophysics, so during the walk he was able to point out a lot of cool things to me. Today the weather is beautiful again, maybe close to 70 and no clouds in the sky. The sky is perfectly blue, and no matter how bad the weather is at night, it always clears off and is GORGEOUS, a great view of the big dipper! Tonight everyone is doing a pubcrawl in the city, but I decided to stay in and get things organized for school.

I'm sure I left out a bunch of details, but this week flew by and was jam-packed with Aussie fun I just lost track of time. Haha. All I can say is that this is the best winter day I have ever experience and will definitely not miss snow or below zero temps this December!! 😊

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Photos

My New Friends
(from left to right) Chris from Hong Kong, Matt from Canada, Nick from Canada, Ryan from Canada, and Max from Ecuador.

Night Out!
The Ranch is one of the few bars nearby that most students go to. This is me with Nick (on the left) and Chris.

BBQ
Our BBQ night, my friend Kevin to the right of me, he's from my program but goes to school in the city.

Nap Time
Me, Chris, and Nick were watching Chris' youtube videos for hours... then fell asleep together... Max caught it on camera :)

Bust A Move
Me & Matt dancing at The Ranch

Comments

[mom]

love from the USA
If I may.....in your first paragraph you start your sentence Me and him went......grammatically speaking, it's just wrong!!!! The more proper way would be me and he..... Also, your mother would like a blog with no drinking included okay need to go get the worms out!!!!!! love you the space ship is waiting I need to go now byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee