Whoa! Australia is amazing- I love it here!
1st week, 10 feb-14 feb: arrived in Sydney on Wednesday morning for Study Australia orientation and it was hot! We took a bus to our hotel, the Meriton World Towever, and got settled in our room on the 73rd floor (we had a view of half the city, including Sydney Harbour). Our room was a actually an apartment complete with a kitchen, dining room table and living room area with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. In our apartment it was the four of us girls that are at James Cook (Alysia, Karlie, Jessica and myself) and two girls going to University of Sydney. That first night we went to dinner in Darling Harbour and I tried kangaroo. Apparently, kangaroo is the most sustainable meat to eat in Australia because of how plentiful kangaroos are, they are native to the land, it’s obviously local, and they have very humane killing practices. In fact some of the vegetarians in Australia have taken on “kangatarianism.” It was actually really good tasting, but because it has only 2% body fat they cook it rare. The next day we went on a walking tour through Sydney to see Hyde Park, the central business district, the shopping district and best of all the Botanic Gardens and Sydney Harbour. In the afternoon we went to a wildlife park where we got to pet koalas, kangaroos and wallabies. Then Friday, we woke up early and headed out to the Blue Mountains for a day of absailing- nothing like stepping over the edge of a cliff to find that you are mildly afraid of heights! But really it was an amazing way to explore the mountains. Then at the end of the day our guides had a nice cold beer waiting for us- the Australians are so chill! That night Jessica, Karlie and I decided to explore and so we basically ended up walking the whole city again before deciding to eat in Chinatown. We tried jellyfish. My advice is never try jellyfish. It was awful! so salt and slimy. We topped off the night by seeing Avatar-3D at the largest IMAX in the world (16 stories!). Saturday we were planning on doing the Bondi to Coogee beach walk but it poured all day! So instead we went to the Sydney Aquarium and Paddy’s Market (a huge indoor flee market). For our last night in Sydney, Study Australia had arranged a private Harbour cruise for our whole orientation. It was the perfect last night in Sydney, complete with fireworks (conveniently the Chinese New Years celebration was going on) over Sydney Harbour as we pulled back in.
2nd week, 15 feb-20 feb: O-week at JCU! Toga party, swimming in the river, sponsors night, UniClub, OP shop (wear the worst thing you can find at the thrift shop), the fun never ended I live in George Roberts one of the colleges (that’s what they call dorms) on campus. I’m in D-block with 3 other suite mates. At GR we have our own dining hall which is amazing, a sand volleyball court which is mostly always flooded, a basketball hoop and we are right across from the pool. That’s right my uni (that’s what they call universities) has an outdoor pool right across from my college- love it. My favorite roomie is Ellen, she is from Mackay which is 4ish hours south of Townsville. Don’t be jealous but I had the opportunity to be a freshman again; whenever it’s your first semester here, whether it’s your only one or not, you are called a “fresher.” If you stay, then your second year you get upgraded to “fossil.” SO all the first week all of us freshers had to wear gold headbands with our names written on them and if a fossil from GR caught us without it they could write our name in permanent marker on our foreheads.
Saturday we left Uni life for a little while and went with the Coastal Dry Tropics Landcare, Inc. to plant trees and help revegetate and island in the Ross River, I believe the location was called Mundingburra. Anyways I was so excited to be able to use a shovel and mattock again just like my SCA days :) The woman who was in charge, Lila, was awesome. She picked us up and gave us a ride and taught us as much as she could about the area- I hope to be like her when I am an adult.
3rd week- 21 feb-27 feb: started off the week right by spending my Sunday at Magnetic Island right off the coast of Townsville. It was so nice to spend the day before classes started sleeping on the beach. Classes started Monday, but it was a pretty easy week with only lectures and no tutorials or practicals. I ended up being in Coral Reef Geomorphology, Foundations of Natural Resource Management, Geographic Information Systems and Biochemistry, which is a good combo because it lets me get to know a lot about Australia, meet a lot of Australians and graduate on time. Saturday was a swimming carnival between all of the colleges and so I spent the afternoon cheering on GR. My favorite events were the race to get as many people across the pool in 1 min as possible with 3 people from your college swimming in each lane at a time, the clothes relay where you had to pass a pair of shorts, tshirt and hat to the next person before they could dive in and take the stuff to the next and finally the belly flop competition. The scary event of the week was when I almost passed out at the UniClub on Thursday night- luckily my friend Jessica was there to catch me! She then force fed me water to rehydrate me- lesson of the week: always go out with a good friend.
4th week- 28 feb- 6 mar: Sunday afternoon we had a D & E block party for George Roberts; we went swimming in Ross River with the freshies (freshwater crocs) and a barbeque (the Aussies do love to bbq, however the phrase “throw some shrimp on the barbi” is inaccurate because they call them prawns). Then onto the second week of classes and practicals started.
On Saturday, I went with Sharkies (our student travel agency) to Billabong Sanctuary- a place where they have all the native animals and let you pet them and teach you about them. So I got to pet a baby koala, then even hold another koala, wombat and croc! I could have held this huge snake but it kept winding it's head around peoples' shoulders and I knew that I couldn't handle that. Anyways, wombats are crazy animals, they are burrowing marsupials and they have this bone in their butt that they can kill things with by smacking it up against the top of their burrow. Tonka the baby wombat was so funny he kept running around and chewing people's shoelaces and shorts and everything. Apparently the wombats have more personality then the koalas.
Then that night we had fresher keg for GR. It was really fun, we took buses out to this field in the middle of nowhere where they just had a huge tent for us to sit under and a shed with a mechanical bull. I did not fall off the bull thank you very much (but I'm pretty sure he was going really easy on me).
Sunday was a nice lazy day- Townsville has a market every Sunday called Cotter's Market so I just went with my friend Jessica and checked that out. There were all kinds of local vendors with art, jewelry, food, wine, woodworks, kangaroo paw back-scratchers... then we had Greek for lunch and spent the afternoon relaxing on 'the Strand.' We went to Calvary church that night with the Red Frogs group and that was super fun too!
