Ok…I
know it’s been a bit since my last post, but with orientation week (better
known as O-week) and the first week of school, I got a little busy. However,
here is a recap of what’s been going on since the last time I posted. The last
post I made was about my trip to Cairns; which was beautiful…having safely made
it back to Sippy Downs, I then proceeded to relax a bit before school started.
My other roommates arrived shortly after my return; one is Mikey who is also
from Australia and the other is Michael from Miami. Adventures between my
return from Cairns and O-week consisted of trips to the beach and movie nights.
What to
say about O-week…well first off….so much free stuff!! Lol compared to welcome
week back home, there is so much more food and so many more activities. I had
ice cream, chicken, lamb, and muffins at an Aboriginal tent; smoothie shots at
a cooking tent where I also got some recipes;
a coconut and sombrero from another random tent; red frog candy from the
red frog group; I got to make my own candle as well as pick the shape that it
was cut into; tried free healthy energy drink. O-week was so much fun, and they
had free dinners and lunches most nights so that the students could get together
and hangout and make friends; I met some very nice people from France at one of
the dinners. 
The
weekend in between O-week and school should be spent getting everything
situated and together for class right?? Well…..not when you are in Australia…instead
it should be spent watching and supporting a fellow housemate in their triathlon
endeavors on Bribie Island. Waking up at 4:00am may not have been the exact way
that I wanted to get up on that Sunday morning, however, getting to see Bribie
Island and support Brittany in her race was definitely time well spent. I had never
been to a triathlon before, but the atmosphere very much mimicked my days on
the cross country team. Brittany did amazing that day, and I was so happy to be
able to support her. I also got to meet her parents that weekend who had driven
up from New South Wales in order to watch her race. After a long, hot day at
the race, we all needed a really long nap…especially since school started the
next day…The weekend did begin with a trip to a bakery though. Me and Sara went down to a little Dutch bakery and and get some pastries...they were SO good!!!! It was like a doughnut and coffee and an eclair had a baby, the perfect pastry baby....
After O-week
and a triathlon, the real fun begins right?? Well, for a nerd it would be lol.
Anyways, I was very interested to see how their class style and teaching styles
relate back to mine at home. The first shock when I walked in to my aquaculture
lecture was that there were only 16 kids in the class…I am so used to lectures
being around 100 or more. My Introduction to Indigenous Australia class was
interesting. The first thing the instructor did was recognize the people whose
land we were having class on. My plant
diversity class kicked my butt the first day. It is not until you have to go
back and look up every other word an instructor uses in lecture that you
realize how little you know about a topic. The lab for that class was very fast
paced and made even more difficult be the fact that I was trying to describe
the plants I was looking at; having no clue even a general family name or
category to place the plants in left me beyond baffled. Guess this just means
that I need to brush up on not only the botany for beginners material and some
flora of Australia websites. In my Working Effectively with Aboriginal people
class we were able to watch interviews that had taken place between one of the
honors students and an Aboriginal man. The points of view and revelations he
shared with us about the treatment of Aboriginal people, as well as the
relations that are still suffering between them and the Australians was very
enlightening.
With
the first week of school over it is time to enjoy a nice relaxing weekend….hiking
and camping on the Inskip Peninsula
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