April 20

It’s Sunday morning and I’m delaying the start of my essay writing and test studying. I have my first test on Tuesday and I’m very scared. I’ve heard from endless people that if you’re a straight A student in America, you will get C’s in Australia. The tests and grading system is that much harder. So I’ll let you know how that goes.

This past week has been mostly rainy. The summer is officially gone and my warm clothing has officially come out. You will all be interested to hear that I went to a lyrical class at the Sydney Dance Company studios on Monday. It kicked my ass and reinforced the fact that I’m so incredibly out of shape. I felt the repercussions of it all the way through Thursday. But I bought a 5 class card so I’m going to try to go every week. It felt good to be back in the studio.

On Thursday, I volunteered to speak at an exchange fair to people from Sydney thinking of studying overseas. I decked myself out in Texas gear, whipped out a jersey, and sported my Longhorn bag. I spent the next 4 hours answering questions about the abroad experience and Texas in general. By the end of the day, I was incredibly homesick. I never realized how much I loved Austin.

Last night was Passover and while I was invited by some random Aussie guy to go to his Seder, I felt a little uncomfortable since I had only met him once. So instead, 15 of my friends had a giant feast in honor of Passover. I even left the balcony door open for Elijah figuring he could just as easily fly in. Then I secretly hid an afikomen and laughed while all the guys ran around trying to find it.

And now I’m sitting here having just called everyone to say hello and I’m dreading having to start studying. So I guess that means today really isn’t different than any other day…

April 14

It’s weird that I have been here for 2 months now. Sometimes it feels like it’s been forever. But I have 3 more months to go and lots to do! This weekend I went to an AFL game (Australian Rules football). But don’t let that fool you because it’s NOTHING like football. It’s more like a violent soccer if you ask me. But it was really cool to watch. The game was at Olympic Park which was where the Sydney Olympics were held. The place was huge! It was also nice because I went with 2 Aussie boys so they could explain everything to me!

The biggest news of the week is that I’m moving to a new place! It’s not that I don’t like it here because I do- the people are really nice. But it’s really out of the way from where my friends are and I end up spending so much time traveling and money on cabs at night. Plus I hate the owners of this place. They impose rules that make me feel like I’m 12 again. (No eating in your room, no guests past 11). So I’m happy to be going in less than 2 weeks! The place I’m moving into is more of like a home stay because it’s an actual house. I’ll be living with a 29 year old woman and a 33 year old gay guy. I get my own room finally and big bed, wahoo!! So I think this is going to give me a whole new experience and I can’t wait.

I’m also looking forward to my trip to Brisbane! I just booked it for the end of May. I’m going to visit one of my best friends from high school who is studying there. Hopefully we’re going to make a day trip to the Gold Coast where there is some good scuba diving!!

I have to say, I’m very jealous of Europe because I walked around the entire city of Sydney today trying to get wireless internet and there’s no such thing. The closest thing I got was in a Starbucks- you could connect but for $6 for half an hour! Absurd. So I’m jealous of all my friends in Europe who can go to any café for internet.

Other than that, nothing too exciting is going on. Hopefully that’ll change soon though. Stay posted :)

April 3

New Zealand is amazing. There isn’t one part of the country that isn’t stunning. Jenna and I went on a 6 day tour of the south island. Our favorite place was Queenstown. It’s known as the adrenaline capital of the world and most of the kids went skydiving and bungee jumping. I choose to go hang gliding which was soooo cool! You basically just run off a mountain and take flight with a massive kite attached to your back. The guide even let me steer. I felt like I was on top of the world. Jenna and I also took a gondola up a mountain and then took a luge ride back down. All I could think of was the movie Cool Runnings. That night in Queenstown, our trip leaders took us to a bar called Minus 5. It’s a bar made 100% of ice. They give you big jackets and boots and gloves. The walls, tables, chairs, cups, everything was made of ice. I had never seen anything like that so it was definitely a cool experience. Speaking of ice, another one of my favorite moments was hiking on a glacier. I always heard in school about that thing called the ice age but it was pretty neat to actually be walking on one.

I would also like to redeem my reputation by saying that I won a hula-hoop competition at a club one night and got a free sweatshirt!!! Those bar and bat mitzvahs really do pay off.

The only downside of the trip was that most of it was spent on a bus. They packed so much into the days that we were constantly on the road. I was up to see the sunrise almost every day. On one of the drives, they took us to see where Lord of the Rings was filmed.

After our tour, Jenna and I went to Wellington to stay with 2 friends from UT who are studying there. We had such a good time together and it was so good seeing them. But it made me really homesick for the first time. :( Speaking of home, what are the chances that I walk onto the tour bus on the first day of the trip and 3 faces from Wilmette are staring back at me. It was such a weird feeling to know someone in the middle of New Zealand let alone kids I went to elementary through high school with! These 3 guys are studying at another university in Australia and booked the exact same trip as me. And I also ran into another Wilmette girl in Queenstown. SMALL WORLD!

Oh yeah, cool story I almost forgot… Jenna and I arrive into NZ and are going through customs when we see this group of old, ugly guys with long hair, a body guard, and hot girlfriends. We immediately knew something was up. So Jenna asks one of them “are you guys like a band or something?” And the guy turns around and shows us his shirt. We look at it blankly not knowing what the hell it meant. Seeing the empty stare, he goes, “we’re Alice Cooper… you know, the one’s playing with Ozzy Ozbourne and Kiss tonight.” It was straight out of a movie. Yet Jenna and I being the young ignorant generation we are, still didn’t recognize them. So Jenna continues with one of the stupidest questions she can think of and says. “oh cool, so do you like what you do?” And his response was, “it’s ok; it’s a job”. So then a minute later we all walk out of baggage claim behind them and all the fans are yelling and taking pictures and asking for autographs. I felt like a celebrity. And also slightly idiotic for still not knowing who they were. We had to go home and google them. Anyway, that was our 5 mins of fame.

Other than that, I can’t think of any other good stories. It was a great trip and now it’s back to the books. Hope to hear from you all soon!

March 18

Cheddar cheese isn’t orange and it tastes bad too. My grilled cheese tasted like Styrofoam yesterday.
There’s no such thing as ketchup here- it’s tomato sauce.
I’m seriously missing miracle whip.
But I’m in fruit heaven. There’s a fruit stand on every other block and it is incredibly delicious. (Melissa- this is your dream country. It’s like Whole Foods free tasters times 10)
I find weird things with this country every day. For instance, there is a particular bird that sounds like a choking baby. It’s quite frightening because sometimes I forget and start looking for the choking/wailing baby and then I realize it’s those annoying birds again. Also, the sand at the beaches in this country makes noise when you walk on it. I’ve never seen anything like it but the sand squeaks underneath your feet. It is super cool; I get a kick out of it every time.

What a crazy weekend to update you about! As of last Wednesday night, I am officially a part of the rock climbing club at my school. I went climbing at the indoor wall and was totally sore the next day. But I really liked it so I signed up for a day trip to the mountains in order to do REAL mountain climbing!! So, Sat morning I work up at 6am and was on the mountain by 11. I couldn’t believe they were just going to throw me on the mountain and make me fend for myself. I had no idea what I was doing and they didn’t exactly teach me. It was more of a “figure it out as you go along” kind of thing. Well the end of the story is that I made it!! I climbed my first rock all the way to the top with only minor bleeding on my elbow, haha. During the course of the day I made 5 climbs, 3 of which I made to the top. It was so incredibly hard; I don’t know how I did it. But I’m paying for it now with the amount of scrapes and bruises all over my arms and legs. That night, I went to an Aussie house party. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but there are these 2 Aussie boys who studied abroad at UT my freshman year. A week after I’d been here, I ran into them at the film festival. Since then, they’ve really been taking care of us and showing us around. They are part of the Jewish Aussie bubble and I knew this right away. But as I was walking to the party, I knew I was getting close when someone on the street goes “Sheket b'vakasha, hey!” And sure enough, the next house was where the party was. I thought that was really humorous.

Sunday I spent recuperating… otherwise known as relaxing on the beach. It has been so unbelievably beautiful lately. We’ve had about 8 days straight of cloudless skies. I’m in love. I could really get used to this. Monday, (no school on Mondays, whoahah) I went on a surfing day trip. It was 9 of us crammed into an old van. There were a few Swedes, an English guy, Canadian couple, a Brazilian guy, and then me. I love being surrounded by all these different people. Thankfully, everyone was trying surfing for the first time so I didn’t make that big of a fool of myself. The surf instructor was a beautiful blond Aussie boy so most people paid close attention to his lessons (most people as in just me). We were given 2 classes in the beginning of the day and everyone was able to stand up before we went to lunch! I had my fair share of wipeouts but I also caught a few waves!! I was so proud of myself. Granted, we learned on like one foot waves, but still! At the beaches I go to, the waves are usually around 6 feet so I don’t think I’m ready for that yet, but at least I can consider myself a real surfer chick now. I also was left with a wicked ugly wetsuit tan. And I have officially been stung by a jellyfish. There were these baby jellyfish that look like a blob of clear jelly and I got stung a few times. Thankfully, they aren’t the painful kind- they just feel like someone is pinching you for a second. After all the wipeouts, jellyfish, and climbing scrapes, my skin felt totally raw and the salt water wasn’t helping. I felt like I got beat up this weekend with all my cuts and bruises. But it was worth it!!!
I didn’t get to celebrate the crazy St Patty’s day shenanigans because I was so exhausted by this point. But I am going on my field trip later today to an Aboriginal school -should be very interesting. That’s all for now… I should probably start paying attention to class. Hehehe

March 12

I’m sitting on campus in between classes and thought I’d catch up on my ‘blogging’. It’s been a busy week. I have been to all my classes now and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with all the reading I have to do. I only have one class that requires a textbook; the others just have huge reading packets. I think marketing is going to be a fairly easy class for me. And I enjoy going to it because I made friends with a very nice piece of Aussie eye candy. My Indigenous Sport class has its first field trip next week and we’re going to an inner city school with Aboriginal kids. I’ve found it more difficult than I thought to understand the instructors here because they have such strong accents. I can’t imagine being in another country that isn’t a version of English. My other classes seem kinda difficult. The teacher in the Social Construction of Difference class admitted to being an insomniac on the first day of class so his lectures are all over the place… great. But let’s be honest, I’m not here to study (just kidding, Dad).

This past weekend Jenna and I went to the Blue Mountains with a group of 12 others from all over the world. We represented the US, France, Holland, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and Italy. I thought that was pretty cool. We took a train there Sat morning, stayed in a hostel that night and came back Sunday night. That was my first experience in a hostel. It wasn’t that bad but I can understand why it was only $25 bucks. We spent the days hiking the mountain. We trekked through the rainforest, saw some waterfalls, and took pictures of the amazzzzing views. It was quite beautiful. Maddy, you would have loved it. I thought about you on the hike :) So at the end of the first day of hiking, we were trying to get back in order to catch the last bus. And we realized the bus left in 20 mins and we were on a trail that took 30 mins to get back. So all 12 of us start sprinting up the mountain. My legs have never burned so much in my life. I felt like we were in an army boot camp running through the jungle and up this mountain. We get there to find out that we were all wrong and had 45 minutes to spare before the bus came. It was pretty funny. But I was disappointed about one thing and that is: the mountains weren’t blue.

As for my roommate situation, the African woman is gone and I had the room to myself for a few days which was nice. And Liz, one of the girls who live upstairs, moved into my room to cut her costs. She and I have been going out together some so it’s nice to have a travel buddy. She’s from Georgia and has a strong southern accent. She’s studied in Brisbane during college and now is back here to work. We get along pretty well so that’s good at least.

Tonight, I’m planning on going to the rock climbing center and joining the club. I hear they go on really cool trips to mountain climb. I’ve graduated from the doorway stage and now I’m tackling mountains.

Time for class.

March 5

I’m convinced I should have been born here. Australians don’t say their R’s and I didn’t either until about age 8. Of course that was after years of traumatizing speech therapy. So after spending the next 4 months here I might need another round of speech school.

A lot has happened in the last few days. I started school and I’m pretty excited about my classes. I’ve had 3 of the 4 so far. My marketing class seems average. It’s a big lecture of about 300 but the teacher seems cool. He gave us riddles on the first day which was kinda dorky but whatever. A lot of the stuff he touched on was familiar to me so I hope that it won’t be too hard of a class. Grading here is extremely difficult. An 85+ is called high distinction. About 3% of people will ever get that. Then 75-84% is distinction which is also considered an A the states because of how hard it is to receive even that. 70-74% is a credit which they tell us is what every student strives for. Below that there’s pass and fail. While most abroad students only need to get a passing grade to get credit at their university, my grades transfer. So that means I actually have to work while I’m here. How unfortunate. But the good news is that the campus is absolutely beautiful and puts me in a good mood every time I walk there. The older part of the campus has buildings that look like castles. It’s exquisite. Mom, you would love the old architecture. They’re doing a lot of construction though on part of the campus which really takes away from its beauty and makes it like a huge construction site, but whatever, I still like it. It’s pretty spread out only because there are a lot of parks and open fields. I usually find one and sit there in between classes. Back to my other classes… My Indigenous Sport, Education and Culture class is really cool. It’s about 25 people and it’s almost all exchange students. The people are cool and I can tell we’re going to all be friends by the end of the semester. Especially because we get to go on fieldtrips!! I haven’t done that since the 5th grade but I can’t wait. My Sociology of Sport class is going to be really hard but very interesting. The teacher seems strict but really knows what she’s talking about. And it’s very hard to get used to this, but teacher’s here don’t go by Dr. or Professor. You are supposed to call them by their first name! I don’t even call my friend’s parents by their first names so it’s very odd for me. Speaking of odd, I also haven’t gotten used to asking where the toilets are. They don’t refer to them as restrooms or even bathrooms but I still feel so impolite when I ask for the toilets. So anyway, I have my final class tomorrow and I’ll keep you posted on how it is.

Like many days, I spent most of the day today at the beach. I’m loving this weather… although March 1st marked the official end of summer. That was a depressing day for me. But it is still warm during the day which is good. I learned how to body board today! I made an Aussie friend and he took me out and showed me how. I even rode the waves like a real surfer chick! Haha, it was great. But then I got a call from surf camp and they told me that they overbooked the trip and that I got booted off. I’m so upset because we were all looking forward to it so much, but we’ll have to go another weekend. Instead, Jenna and I are going to the Blue Mountains. Some foreign exchange students from Jenna’s school invited us so we hopped on board with them. Then 2 weekends after that we go to New Zealand!!! Have I mentioned how psyched I am about that!?!?

I have had a few anti-American experiences lately. Until now, I thought the Aussies were all so nice and laidback but I’ve been proved wrong. To go into details about each story would be very tedious right now but let’s just say they were not nice experiences.

On a livelier note, I had a very interesting night last night. We were at a pub and the DJ comes over the loudspeaker and announces a limbo contest and of course Jenna and I run up to enter. There were tons of people going through and the whole bar stopped to watch. After about 20 minutes, it was narrowed down to 3. (Both Jenna and I making up 2 of them). I have never limboed (is that a word?) so low in my life and the body pains today confirmed that for me. (that, and I’m out of shape). But I am sad to say that I got second place. I feel like I let everyone down and I am very sad about it. Mostly, because the person who won was this little, German, gumby of guy… that’s right, GUY!!! I couldn’t believe it! I like to pretend that he was at an advantage because he doesn’t have boobs but I guess I just have to give him credit for being a freak of nature.

Ok it’s time for bed, got a big day of wave jumping.. I mean class tomorrow. Talk to you all soon!

March 2

It’s 130pm and my roommate is still sleeping. She likes to sleep through half the day and yet still go to bed before midnight. I find it a little bizarre but maybe that will change when school starts. She’s only my roommate for a week and then someone else will be moving in. But she’s 30 years old, from Africa, and I have to ask her to repeat almost everything she says. She also, really enjoys being naked which I’m guessing is an African thing. She’s incredibly nice though and we get along fine.

Yesterday I spent part of the day at the beach watching an Iron Man Competition. The beach was packed with bleachers and people were everywhere. It lasted about 4 hours and they had different water competitions. It was fun. But the more interesting part of the day came later. It was Mardi Gras last night. But not the beads and masks we’re used to. Here, Mardi Gras is a gay festival. The parade went all around the city and millions of people lined the street. It was pandemonium. People were getting trampled and most everyone was drunk. It was really scary at times when the crowd started pushing. I went with one of the girls who I live with, her name is Liz. And we watched what we could for about 45 minutes and then gave up. It was so overwhelming and chaotic. It was definitely worth seeing and I took a whole bunch of pictures, but it was absolutely crazy. Everyone was in costumes, had their face painted, and more. The amount of men in tight sequined Speedos was uncountable. It was hilarious. There’s a link to the right of my blog that will take you to the pictures.

As for now, I’m about to go to lunch with an Aussie boy who studied abroad at Texas 2 years ago. We ran into each other at the firm festival last week so now we’re going to catch up. I’m constantly reminded of how small of a world it is.
Bye everyone.