First Week of Actually STUDYING Abroad!

This past week was my first full week of being an actual STUDENT in Australia... almost forgot I'm here to study too! ;) My classes have actually all been really great so far. Mostly all classes here meet only twice a week- once for lecture and once for tutorial (a tutorial is equivalent to a recitation at OSU; just a breakdown of the larger lecture into smaller discussion groups). Last Monday I had my Australian Popular Culture lecture, which was about 90% Americans or other international students. Even though I won't be meeting many Aussies in that class, I'm still really glad I'm in it. The course readings and information are really interesting. Also, we get to watch tons of movies in the class, and considering I have no television in my townhouse, I'm super psyched about any opportunity to watch some movies. Today, during my second lecture, we watched the first half of Australia with Hugh Jackman (oh my god) and Nicole Kidman-- such a good movie so far. Last Tuesday was my first Love, Sex, and Relationships lecture which actually seems like its going to be extremely interesting. It approaches the topics from all different cultural perspectives and discusses attitudes toward "taboo" subjects and how they've changed back and forth over the last century.. definitely very interesting. You know its a good class when you enjoy reading the textbook! Wednesday was my first Australian History class. The professor spoke so fast and between her accent and accelerated speech I honestly had no idea what she was saying, so that should certainly be interesting. Luckily, we've got a book and powerpoint slides/notes to guide us, because I have a feeling lecture is going to be somewhat impossible to comprehend. Every Wednesday on campus they have a free bbq for all students with live music next to the lake. Its really nice-- always beautiful weather of course, and I love how the bbq brings everyone together and they just chill and eat some sausages with "tomato sauce" (not ketchup) and listen to the live music in between classes for an hour or so. Since it was the first week of classes, I didn't have any tutorials, so there was lots of free time for me to get back into my exercise routine, hang out with friends, etc. 

Thursday night we went over to Emily's and had a little pong tournament prior to going out to Don's tavern. Emily's Australian roommate Lizzy invited over her boyfriend and a few of her other friends. It was a lot of fun getting to know some of the Aussies better. My Ohio State friends will be pleased to know that I was the pong champion of the night, so fear not, I held my own and gave OSU the pong reputation it deserves. =D 

Friday was just a relaxing day. I don't have any Friday classes so I just took it easy for most of the day, hung out by the pool on campus for a bit, and then went out for Chinese food in Market Square for dinner. Saturday a group of us went to the beach- Surfer's Paradise. It was absolutely beautiful out, so again a very relaxing day in paradise! Saturday night, Emily, Steph and I got a call from Plan B Party Tours asking us to come out with them for another Pub Crawl, so we decided to go back out to Surfer's for the night to all the bars/clubs.  There were a lot more Australians on the crawl this week so it was a really good time. Sunday was again a nice, relaxing day. I did some house keeping-- laundry, getting my school work together, etc, and then Sunday night they had fireworks on campus which was a nice little way to end the weekend and get ready for week 2 of classes!

This week it began to feel much more natural to be living in Australia. It definitely takes some time to adjust to their style of living here and make some good friends and all that, but its all beginning to fall into place. I still of course miss all of my friends and family from Ohio and New Jersey tons, and send everyone my love. 

Thats all for now!! 

Love,

Arlyn