"love the life you live. live the life you love."

Not too much new here, just another week living and loving life in Australia. The weather has remained beautiful so I've spent plenty of time on the beach when I'm not in class. I am really enjoying my classes so far, 2 are aboriginal studies courses so it has been a great way to learn Australian culture and history as well as discuss topics of social injustice and discrimination that are related to my sociology major. Things are getting a bit busier with school here as I have a few papers due right before mid-semester break that I need to finish since we're leaving early but the work is manageable and I don't feel that I'm in over my head too far in any of my classes yet so I can't complain. It's a little difficult trying to figure out the different expectations here as far as parenthetical citations and slight spelling variations when writing papers but hopefully my professors won't be too strict on that sort of thing with me since I'm an international student, we'll see...

We went to the racetrack this past weekend with a large group of people it was a fun experience. I only bet once on a horse with Charlotte in it's name and won so I'd call it a success. I also tried playing squash for the first time and really liked it. Simone and I didn't quite know all the rules but we figured it out the best we could and still had a good time. We're leaving for break on Wednesday and I couldn't be more excited! Our biggest concern at this point is the weather, which is looking like it might rain part of the time we're in Fraser Island but it looks fine in the Whitsundays and Magnetic Island the rest of the week so we will just hope for the best. I'll save more details for when I return but hopefully I should come back with skydiving, surfing, sailing, scuba diving, and snorkeling checked off the list :) Can't wait!

Sloan!

So although this has nothing to do with Australia, I just wanted to give a shout out to my friend Sloan who most of you know I've worked with since July in Chapel Hill. He is involved in a group called Reality Ministries and each year they have a talent show fundraiser. Here is a link to the video of Sloan's performance this year:

http://sloansadventures.blogspot.com/2010/03/talent-show-2010.html

He worked very hard to learn to play the keyboard in the past couple months and also sing a Beatles song with his friend, Noah. I'm so proud of him and hope everyone enjoys the video of his performance as much as I did!

As far as Australia goes things are still wonderful. Didn't make it to the races last weekend but we did go to the Surf Competition and discovered even more markets around Sydney, which were great as always. I saw Alice in Wonderland on the biggest imax in the world in Darling Harbour, about 7 stories high! We've had great weather all week and it should continue into the weekend. We plan on finalizing our Spring Break plans within the next couple days and also venturing into the Blue Mountains for a day trip this weekend. Looking forward to it!

Pictures!

Finally uploaded some pictures, check out the link on the right side of the page. A lot are from the Coogee to Bondi walk, Bundeena and Royal National Park, Ian (a friend from UNC studying at Uni Sydney this semester) and the roommates, and various views from around Sydney Harbour. Great weekend planned, Randwick Racecourse tomorrow if weather permits and watching a surf competition (with Kelly Slater!) at Bondi Beach Sunday. Life is great, what's not to love here? Looks like Spring Break is going to be the Eastern Coast of Australia - Fraser Island, the Whitsundays, and Magnetic Island. I couldn't be more excited about it, more details to come as I figure it out.

Three weeks in and I'm already thinking about coming back for grad school. I absolutely love it here in Sydney! I had prepared myself for a bit of homesickness during the first transitional period getting settled but I honestly have not felt it the entire time I've been here. Not to say I don't miss the people from back home but Australia is such a good fit for me and I've been having so much fun I haven't had time to dwell on it. I have also been so blessed to have made such a good friend so early on. I wasn't expecting to really have friends for a while but I met Simone, one of my housemates from Canada on day one and it's amazing how quickly you become so close with people when you literally have no one else. She is also an exchange student studying exercise science so we had a lot of things in common from the start. We live with 4 other American girls so the "international house" doesn't have quite the diversity I was hoping for but everyone is nice and we get along fine so I really can't complain. We're living in a 5 bedroom house in a suburb of Sydney called Randwick, across the street from UNSW and a 20 minute walk from Coogee Beach so it really couldn't be a more convenient location. I love the area, there are many bus stops near by, only a 30 minute ride into the Central Business District of Sydney and plenty of shopping close by as well. I'm not used to taking public transportation so regularly so it surprised me how quickly I was able to catch on to the bus routes, I can figure out how to get pretty much anywhere I need to go pretty easily. I've been into the city a good number of times, there's so much to see and do down there. I love walking around the Botanic Gardens (one of the few free things to do around here) right on the harbour, and there are many great places to get views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. It was so unbelievable seeing such iconic images of Sydney in person after just looking at pictures for so long. The area around the harbour is called Circular Quay, or nicknamed the Rocks, and there are lots of shops, pubs, and restaurants around the area. On the weekends there are outdoor markets down there as well and I absolutely love that kind of thing. Sydney has great markets and Simone and I have been exploring different ones every weekend. So far we've been to the Rocks Markets a few times which has lots of artisans selling jewelry, artwork, and souvenirs. There is also a glass blower and someone named Darren Germain who does something called "space art." It's a really creative spray paint art form that he makes seem so effortless. He doesn't allow pictures and I couldn't do it justice if I tried to describe it but there's probably videos on youtube somewhere so you can get the idea. We've also ventured early to the Sydney fish markets, Paddy's Market, and Glebe so far with many more market-filled weekends to come I'm sure. The weather has also been really nice most days so I've had plenty of time at the beaches as well. I love the cliffs along the water and the natural "baths" created by rock enclosures near the cliffs where the waves splash over and create a pool area where the water is warmed by the sun. It's difficult to describe so I'll have to upload pictures soon but they're amazing. We traveled to Bundeena Beach for a day which is part of Royal National Park, the second oldest national park in the world after Yellowstone. It was much more secluded than the other beaches we've been to, although we traveled with a group of about 100 exchange students so we were pretty much the only ones there. We went for a short hike, or "bushwalk," as they call it here and saw some aboriginal rock carvings that were tens of thousands of years old. We've also done the famous Coogee to Bondi walk, which is about a 5k scenic walk along the coast which also lent itself to some great photo opportunities. It's so beautiful here. I love that even though it's a big city there are still plenty of parks, you see them everywhere unlike some of the major cities in the US that feel like a concrete jungle. Sydney is also very multicultural. Within a block of my house I could choose just about any ethnic food you can imagine, not just the typical Chinese, Mexican, etc. you see back home. I have really tried to branch out with my food choices when I eat out, we went to a really good Lebanese restaurant for my roommate's birthday one night and I also tried Kangaroo pizza at an Australian restaurant (which was actually pretty good, kind of gamey like venison though.) Other than lots of beaches, markets, and just exploring the city we've spent a fair amount of time meeting the other exchange students and some Australians who have been nice enough to show us around. Classes started last week so I'm hoping I will be able to meet more Australians that way as well. Four courses is a full load here so I'm taking 2 aboriginal studies courses, social planning, and marine science (which includes a field trip to the aquarium that I'm pretty excited about). I actually really like my classes so far and love the Australian history that I'm getting in addition to the sociological studies involved in my Aboriginal classes. It's crazy that I've already been here 3 full weeks and already I feel like I won't have enough time (or money, it's SO expensive here) to do everything I want to do while I'm here. We're working on Spring Break plans now and we've more or less narrowed it down to Fiji or the Whitsundays for a sailing/scuba diving trip kind of near the Great Barrier Reef although we change our minds almost every day. I'm hoping to travel to both Thailand and New Zealand after the semester so hopefully I'll be able to find a part time job since minimum wage is very high here. I plan on venturing up to the Blue Mountains about an hour outside of Sydney in the near future and look forward to finally seeing some Koalas and Kangaroos in the wild. Anyways, I should get back to my work and this is certainly more than enough of an update for now but in summary, I absolutely love Australia and recommend it to anyone who has the means to get here. Wish everyone could be here to share it with me, love to you all!