Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Starting Spring Semester... In July?

I've now completed my third day of classes at the University of Western Australia in Perth, Western Australia.

Our week long orientation consisted of lots of sleeping (getting adjusted to the 12 hour time change and recovering from over 30 hours of traveling), getting to know the ND students and other international students, a ton of pretty boring academic stuff, trying to find money and stores, and doing some fun things in Perth and the surrounding area. The UWA Campus is beautiful, it has a clock tower, reflecting pool, a few green ovals that we've played frisbee on, beautiful buildings and a nice location about 10 minutes by bus to the main part of the city. The campus is on the Swan River, from which there is scenic view of the Perth skyline. My dorm, or residential college as they call it here, is right across the highway from the campus, so I don't have to walk too far to get to class. I live in a single, which is pretty nice. I have more space than I need though, since I didn't bring much stuff.

During orientation, we went on a bus tour of Frematle, which is a nice little port city about 10 miles away. We waded in the water a bit at the beach, even though its winter. I can't wait until Spring when we can go to the beach a lot. Then we saw a lot of Fremantle, it was raining but that is definitely someplace I'd like to spend some time on a nice day.

On another day, we went on this trip called Nearer to Nature. We were able to hold cute little joeys and see other native Australian animals. I held a huge snake and a few other reptiles, which was pretty interesting. We learned about some Aboriginal tools, made knives out of stones, charcoal, and kangaroo poo and then went on a walk through the bush.


During our residential college orientation, they gave us cheese and wine: it was a little odd drinking alcohol with our rector. On Wednesday night, we went out because apparently Wednesday the big night for going out. First, we went to a pub where we ran into the head duty tutor (adult RA), which still kind of weirds me out. Then we went to another pub that was a bit more fun: probably a place people will be going a lot.

So, overall things have been pretty good and I am excited to experience more of Australia!

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