One week later...

It's been a week since I've left America, and I'm certainly living the good life. I can already tell I'm going to have an absolute blast and nothing less. I'm in love already! ....no, not with a who, with a where. I am one hundred percent in love with this country. The uni campus is perfection, it's like a jungle. The campus land is actually rented from the Aboriginals, so it's like sacred land or something? Pretty neat. In order to get to the uni from where we live, you must take the train. It's about a fifteen minute walk to the station, then a ten minute train ride.

train station at the uni

Today was the first day of Orientation Week, or "O" Week. We had an info sesh and after they had these zoo people come and bring a few reptiles for us to see and hold. There was a giant snake and a few lizards, and I got to hold a bearded dragon! After that, we had a BBQ at the campus bar with all of the other International students and there was a live band and everything. I met people from Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and the like. It's amazing meeting people from other parts of the world.

my bearded friend & I

As far as the animals go here, they're weird....to say the least. Especially the birds! The magpies sound like cats meowing and there's some sort of bird that sounds like a monkey...and it really seems to enjoy sitting by my window and waking me up early.

So you might be wondering about my living accommodation, here's a few pictures.

my bed!

I really like it! At first the bathroom bugged me that it was so tiny, but it's really not that bad! Our apartment is really close to Darby Street (like a two minute walk), which is like the main street of downtown Newcastle; tons of shops, places to eat, clubs/pubs, etc. It's been really fun going out this past week, since I'm legal here. I'd never really been to a bar before, so now I've officially had the bar experience.... and I like it!

Classes start next week. I'll be taking Australian Pop Culture, Intro to Social/ Cultural Anthropology, Design Studio Photography, and Visual Communication Drawing; I'm especially excited for those last two. The classes here are pretty different, there's usually two classes for each class: a very populated lecture and then a smaller tutorial/workshop/studio period.

I'm so excited for classes to begin...updates to come as soon as they start.

Cheers, mate!