wednesday we had market day and i signed up for scuba club and what i think is like serious IM tennis... whoo! tennis is just once a week usually, but you can also go to a practice and fun day once a week if you like. i have to get graded sometime this upcoming week so i can get put on a team... i started having flashbacks of edina tennis tryouts, so i need to just hurry up and get that over with! SO excited to go diving... i just have to remind myself that brisbane diving might be a little different than private island fiji diving. in other words, i might not see sting rays, sharks, 4 ft long fish, and turtles on every single dive :)
classes this week were exhausting. i'm not even sure how i'm going to cope once i add 3 labs and 3 tutorials next week on top of 10 lectures! my media class seems sweet. we got an email from the prof the other day asking us to please make sure we're on time so we can watch twilight. done, done, done! my science classes on the other hand seem unbelievably hard. most of the other students are coming straight out of a semester of all science or are coming out of high school science, so i have a lot of remembering to do. on top of all my class, labs and tutorials, i also need to have extra tutorials to make up for everything i've forgotten. it will be a long semester. i think my social life may come to a screeching halt come monday. to make things worse, ALL of my friends here have fridays off so they can go travel and party all weekend. dang.
two of my professors seem really cool--very accessible and friendly. the other two specifically told us not to email them or bother them unless we had an absolute emergency. the prof who's teaching 1100 kids this semester told us to email him whenever we need to and that he'd always stay for as long as we needed him after class if we wanted to ask him questions. he encouraged us all to get in touch with him as often as we needed to. plus he gives out candy if we participate in lecture. too bad i still hate chem. all of my science classes are taught by multiple professors--one of them we'll have 6 profs throughout the semester, plus our tutorial leader, plus our lab instructor. makes it kind of confusing to know who you're supposed to ask questions. one of our profs told us to refer to the book if we have questions. he's really helpful.
usually in the states, the material you cover in class and the material you cover in the books go hand in hand. not here. what the profs teach is completely different than what's in the book. you are in charge of teaching yourself the entire book and then they give you some extra random information in lecture that they might later decide to test you on. when can i take coral reefs and the anatomy of marine mammals???
i've met a lot of cool kids this week, including some of the people in my hall. i met a guy from the netherlands and a girl from zimbabwe! living here is sort of like traveling vicariously through others. you get to experience parts of the entire world without leaving your hallway.
last night (friday) there was a huge party at cromwell (another college). the theme was "into the wild," which everyone got super into. it reached halloween epic proportions! dianne and i decided to go as trees, so we spent part of yesterday afternoon on a little nature walk, armed with a pair of scissors. we cut some flowers and leaves and then stuck them to ourselves :) everyone here goes out super early... the party started at SEVEN! we ended up not going until later and by the time we arrived, a huge line had formed to get in. we had to wait around maybe 35+ minutes before we got in. there were cops circling the nearby neighborhoods making sure kids weren't drinking on the streets. they were also super well prepared in case a kid drank too much... right inside the entrance there was an ambulance and a bunch of emt workers sitting there, just in case. intense. there were also cops roaming the party all night... it was crazy, but so much fun.
this morning dianne and i somehow managed to wake up early and took the ferry into the city. from there we took a 40 minute bus ride to a koala sanctuary! they have over 130 koalas, plus kangaroos, wallabies, crocs, birds, dingos, snakes, bats and probably some other animals i'm forgetting. we got to hold a koala and take our pic with it and feed kangaroos.
definitely the best 24 hour period yet!
this week is going to be pretty hectic with everything starting, but i've still got things to look forward to. tomorrow a couple girls and myself are going to the tennis open house to play some games and check out the clubhouse. tuesday we have a union college formal dinner (yikes, still need to find something to wear) and wednesday there's a volunteer expo (because i'm going to have so much spare time!)
i've added more pics to my album, so feel free to check them out!
it's time to take a chance on some place i've never, ever seen 'cause i've got nothing to lose. too much to see it all. there's miles in front of me. street signs, never mind. i'm gunna do just what i please 'cause i've got nothing to prove. i'm gunna be somewhere far away. --little big town
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034902&id=30001879&l=934765d5ae
No comments:
Post a Comment