Crazy Profs and Loads of Coffee

FIRST WEEK OF CLASSES TACKLED.
I'm going to give you all a day by day run down, with probably way too much detail about things you don't actually care about. But whatever. In 30 years I'm gonna read this and be like "oh yeah, I remember that prof with the mutton chops...good thing I obnoxiously wrote about it in horrendous detail!"
also, I really have nothing else to do yet. There aren't any assignments yet so I'm just trying to kill time between lectures. Yay school.

Monday
well, first of all, I stayed up way to late Sunday night. I'm not quite sure why it's a thing to go out on Sunday nights here, but I needed coffee at 3pm to make it through my evening classes. It's safe to say I will not be taking part in any more of those outings, because who wants to start off their week feeling all sleepy like that?
It's really weird for me to start off the week so late in the day. I don't have class until 2, and I am such a morning person that I actually hate this. I'd so much rather have my classes start at 8 in the morning and get them out of the way. But Mondays I have class from 2-7pm, and it's not very enjoyable.
My first class was Conservation, a third year bio course on...well, conservation. Which is actually my major, so I think that's why they let me in the class. It's the equivalent of a fourth year class at Cal, since they only have 3 years of uni here.
The prof for this class is the one with the facial hair reminiscent of 19th century presidents. He started off class by telling us he was inspired to become a conservationist by the old British tv show "The Goodies" and Midnight Oil. I am not kidding-the band Midnight Oil. He idolized Peter Garrett, the lead singer and, surprising to me, environmentalist (the lyrics to Beds Are Burning make total sense now). So this prof seems pretty entertaining, and I was impressed with his tweed jacket/wingtips combo.
Very professorial.
After an awkward hour break in which I finished Mindy Kaling's book-I'm into books written by comedians right now, apparently-I went to my Marine and Coastal Environmental Protection class, which I have been the most excited for. After meeting this prof I'm fully convinced that all professors in environmental fields used to be hard core hippies (I say used to, but I'm pretty sure most of them still would call themselves hipppies). This guy told us he had tinnitus from too many rock festivals back in the day. He also had Billabong and Quicksilver stickers stuck all over his laptop and said he spends his weekends on the coast, surfing and diving. I'm just so AMPED for that class. He was telling us about the guest lectures and the topics for the semester, and when he said "NGOs and how they benefit coastal areas" I just about peed my pants in excitement. And that's how I know I'm in the right place doing the right thing.

Tuesday
Class from 9-3, straight. HOW DID I DO THIS DAILY IN HIGH SCHOOL?!?! I have lost all my stamina and ability to be engaged in classes for a full 6 hours. It's just not a thing.
For the first three hours I have a lab for my conservation class. Labs here are very different from labs at Cal. They're actually RUN BY THE PROFESSORS.
WHAT?!?!?!
Yeah, the prof leads the labs. We're in a massive, long lab room, split up into sections separated by half walls. There are tutors-similar to GSI's but more plentiful and helpful-for each section, and for each pair of students there is a massive Apple computer screen. On each of the little half walls, there are Apple TVs which show what's happening in the front of the room, so you can actually see the professor and what he's doing. They also broadcast what hes saying over the speaker system in the room. So, if you're not in the very front of the room it's like watching a TV show or something.
It should be an interesting lab, though. We'll be doing conservation planning projects for a part of Tasmania, and today we did an exercise that involved protecting the highest number of species for the lowest cost. I'm hoping to get some valuable, practical experience out of this.
Directly after this I went to my International Conservation Policy lecture. Nothing specially significant or funny to say about the first day, other than there will be a lot of guest lecturers. Which is great, because the guy who ran today's class was borrrriiiiiing.
Normally I'll have a tutorial for that class my last hour of today, and it clashes with a lecture for another class. But not today! I went to my lecture for Australia's Marine Environment, which seems like it will be a lot of basic information I already know, but there's a super amazing 5 day research field trip to the Great Barrier Reef, so I will definitely be staying in that class. Besides, who doesn't want an easy class in their schedule?
Side note: tutorials are called tuts (read: toots). I think it's hilarious. And this is where my mom would tell me I sound like Uncle Mark and probably mention the biogas story we all know and love...or something.

Wednesday
Wednesdays are great because I only have one class! It's a 8 am...but I'm done by 9 and I have the whole day to do things (read: study).
The lecture is for the marine environment class, and today it was totally pointless. Like I could have skipped it and been perfectly fine. I think every science class ever HAS to start out with "what is science" and "this is the scientific method." But HELLO, we are third year science students. WE KNOW THIS STUFF. I KNOW WHAT A HYPOTHESIS IS. I am waiting for the day when a science prof says, "You all know about the basic principles of experimentation, so let's move on," because I am soooo over taking notes on it for each science class I take. Oy.
Today UQ was holding their "Market Day," which is like Caltopia on steroids. Every club and organization tables around the quad and harasses students to join. I came across a few cool clubs, but it was $5 to join, so I figured I'll like their facebook page and actually pay the membership if anything really cool comes up.
I did find ultimate frisbee though! I had emailed them a few weeks ago, and they told me about their different leagues and what not. Wednesday night there's a social league, but the guys at the table thought I'd be above that because I've played for a few years. I'm setting some high expectations for myself here...
In addition to Wednesday nights, they put a team or two into the mixed league in greater Brisbane, which plays in the city on Monday nights. Hopefully I can play both nights! I've missed frisbee so much!
Martha and I both only had one morning class, so we went to the "beach." In the middle of the city there's a man-made beach, with what is basically a salt water pool. It was nice to feel like we totally left our normal stomping grounds for a while.

And then I went to practice! It felt so great to be playing again. I was running around during the game grinning like an idiot. They really need girls on their team so a few people immediately thought I was the best thing ever because I was both a girl and I could throw pretty well-NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
Afterwards I met my friends at the UQ rugby game. Rugby is weird, but we had a great time. No one really cheers for their team though! I'm so used to massive students sections screaming "roll on you Bears" and many other, more explicit things, but nothing like that happens out here. It was like a crowd for golf but we were watching people pound on each other. It was weird.

Thursday
Thursday morning I have another lecture for my conservation class. Today when we walked in the prof was blasting a Radiohead song. So that's cool.
That afternoon I had a lecture for my marine environment class where we learned how to write a scientific paper, which again, we ALL KNOW HOW TO DO. Another lecture I could have skipped. This class should pick up next week. I hope.
The end of my week is surprisingly chill. I have hardly any class compared to Monday or Tuesday. This is probably bad because I feel like I'm done with the week by Wednesday morning, but once I have assignments and things it'll be nice to have so much free time.
Thursday night my roommates and I made an Aussie version of slutty brownies. Normally, slutty brownies are a layer of cookie dough, a layer of oreos, and a layers of brownie. Instead of oreos, we used Tim Tams, the best thing to have ever been placed on this earth (second to Ryan Gosling). If you haven't tried these cookies you need to CHANGE THAT. I'll bring some home, because from what I've heard they only sell them here and in Israel. So go Israel.

SO GOOD.

Friday
One 8 am lecture for conservation. None of my other roommates have Friday class. Actually very few people at all seem to have Friday class. I'm glad it's early so I can get it out of the way, but just in case I don't make it every lecture it recorded and put online.
The only thing significant is that the prof managed to work Johnny Cash into the lecture. In between a slide on deserts and a slide on Mediterranean biomes there was a slide with a picture of him in a Johnny Cash shirt and an audio clip of a song. Just for fun.

And that's my week! Class wooooooooooooooooooooo
its the freakin weekend

Bridget, me, and Martha taking on Brisbane

O-Week and Kangaroos

Well, we survived orientation.
I want to say "barely" right there. Like oh my gosh, I baaaaaarely made it through the sea of information without Moses, I am still so confused about how to get around campus, oh em gee...
But honestly, orientation was so laid back compared to Cal's. At Berkeley it was 48 hours of nonstop team building and new knowledge. Here, we went to a session on how to enroll in classes, a safety hour about all of the animals in Australia that will kill you (everything), and a program specific to study abroad kids where they gave us free cookies. So basically, it was a breeze.
We've spent the rest of the week getting acquainted with campus and other international students, as well as finishing getting all the stuff we need to live and be functional people. There is so much stuff I bought in Berkeley when I first got to school that is necessary to daily life that I just forgot about here. Things I forgot I use often. Like ziploc baggies and coffee filters and pens and paper and all that stuff that is just normally in your house, I totally forgot I would need. After multiple trips to the store and some trial runs with the cheapo coffee pot in our house, I finally feel settled in and ready for school to start.
Aaaaanyway.
This week I've been going to a lot of events put on by a group called Quest. Quest is pretty much a bunch of Australian uni kids doing things for international kids. They held a BBQ Tuesday afternoon. And when they say BBQ, they mean hot dogs on bread. Yeah, BREAD. Not even buns. That's what an "Aussie BBQ" is. Needless to say, I went expecting burgers and fries, and I got a sad potentially not even Hebrew National hot dog in a sad piece of bread with sad ketchup.
Tuesday night they threw a party at a club in the city. Which means 500 sweaty international kids crammed onto a super tiny dance floor. And it was pretty fun! I met an Australian boy who took some time off after high school and moved to Canada where he became an ice road trucker. I am not kidding. He spent like 20 minutes telling me about a time when he brakes froze up. I pretended to be interested until he left to get a drink, and he hadn't offered me one...so I bailed and went and danced with my friends. It was great.

roomies

Wednesday we had a few other orientation things, and then that night Martha, Bridget, and I went over to South Bank on the ferry for a "Night Noodle Market." South Bank is my fave part of the city so far. It's so cute! It reminds me of Prospect Street in La Jolla, but with more cocktail and dessert bars. The noodle market was nice-a lot of cheap Asian food, cool music, and a ton of people. We rode "The Wheel of Brisbane" that night too! It gives you awesome views of the whole city and the river.

Noodle Market

Me chillin on the ferris wheel

Yesterday, we went out to the suburbs to meet a friend of a friend of Bridget's who grew up in Brisbane. She gave us a massive list of places to go and things to do. Our bucket list went from 6 things to 46 in a second. There's a glow worm cave she told us about and if I don't make it out there I'll be severely disappointed.
And then today....

YES. IT HAPPENED.
We did the stereotypical Aussie tourist thing and went to an animal sanctuary to hold koalas and feed kangaroos. Yeah, I paid to hold a koala for 5 seconds AND IT WAS AMAZING. Like why did I not do that last time I was here? They're not cuddly though. She kind of clawed at my hair. But it was okay because I got this fantastic picture:

AW YEAH

Since my generation is obsessed with ourselves and documenting everything, I took a ton of selfies with the 'roos.

my new Aussie boyfriend

They're so soft and they have giant teeth. I was kind of worried one of them would spontaneously decide to punch me because that can like kill a person, but they were so tame and relaxed and probably actually miserable from being touched by children all day. But it was fun, and definitely something you have to do while you're here.

Woooo! Classes start Monday and I actually can't wait. I'm excited for all my courses and to have a routine and what not.

Here we go!

Gold Coast

Spent my weekend on the Gold Coast, looking at views like this and pretending it's not winter here.

Yeah, my weather app blatantly lied when it said it'd be 75 and sunny all week because we sort of froze out on the coast. It was super windy and we complained about it like the California kids we are. We had a good time anyway, and we'll definitely be going back.

Martha, Bridget, and I left Brisbane Thursday morning and took the train to Surfer's Paradise. The public transit system here is supes great. We can get all over Queensland like nobody's business. Going back to NextBus and guessing when the 51B might show up is going to be rough.

Our hostel in Surfer's was pretty nice. We had a two bedroom suite type room to ourselves, and when we checked in the owner gave us a ticket for free entry to a bar that night. So Surfer's was living up to it's reputation right away (yeah, hate to break it to ya Dad, but Surfer's Paradise is not a luxurious beach front town. It's a tourist-trap party haven, famous as the place where kids go on their spring break trips).

Bridget, me, and Martha

We wandered into town on the beach and scoped out the city a little bit before deciding to cook dinner in our lil kitchen.

SUCCESS

Afterwards, we were supposed to meet downstairs to get a bus with the hostel to the bar. But we were still so jetlagged and tired that we were all ready to go to sleep at 8 pm. So we napped, got ourselves amped up for a night out, and made it to the bar. Whheeerrrreee we mostly avoided creepy older men and bailed early. 

The next day we hopped on a bus south to Coolangatta, a stretch of the Gold Coast that's a bit older, quiter, and less tourist-y. We checked into our hostel and met our two other roomies, a girl from Scotland and a girl from Barcelona. After that we made our way to the beach...

...such a gorgeous coastline! If I'm being completely honest with myself, it's similar to San Diego's, but everyone has an Australian accent so whatever. I'm in ANOTHER WORLD OKAY

After a while we decided we actually needed to do something, so we found a little cove, rented wetsuits, frantically ran around trying to find goggles, and jumped in to the water near "Danger Point."

my first time actually wearing a wetsuit...and obviously rocking it.

But there were no fish. 

We literally saw nothing.

Sand.

We saw sand.

And WE FROZE. Ohhh my gosh the water is cold. Thank goodness for wetsuits, because otherwise I would have died.

That night we actually did fall asleep at 9 pm. Yesterday was spent hiking Burleigh Heads National Park. It was actually one of the prettiest views I've seen. SUCH blue water.

Surfer's Paradise in the background

From the very top you could see hundreds of surfers. When we finally made it back down to the bottom of the hill/mountain/foresty place we sat and watched them for about an hour before going to get lunch. There were literally TONS of surfers in the water, and they were all impressively good. I fell in love with a guy in an orange wetsuit. He got creamed by a massive wave at some point and I think I actually shrieked.

The swells were seriously massive though. Some of them were definitely 10 ft, and these guys were surfing them like total pros. Made me wish I had attempted to get up on a board more than once or twice.

Bridget creepin on those Aussie surfers

Last night, like the crazy kids we are, we went to the movies to avoid the bar at our hostel. Bridget went surfing this morning, Martha ran, and I went and sat on the rocks by the water with a flat white (what they call a latte. I think.). It was a gorgeous early morning, and there were a bunch of surfers out again.

Aaaaaand that's pretty much it!

Loving Australia already, but there are definitely things I miss. We went to the grocery store today, and I couldn't find shredded cheese. OR TORTILLAS. WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT TORTILLAS.

I found some awesome cookies though. So that's a plus.

Also dryers. Those just don't really exist here. Which is A MASSIVE BUMMER because it's winter so everything is cold...homes here are built to keep cool air in because it gets so blazingly hot in the summer months, but in the winter it means it stays freezing inside. When we moved in, there was a notice on the fridge from our housing peeps telling us all that, and basically saying we have to suck it up. So yeah, I miss dryers. Random.

Dang, I'm feeling a little pressure about this post. I think it's finally the one I'll link to facebook, so props to all y'all for reading all of this. I think I'm funny, so I hope you do too...

(but seriously let me know if I sound lame)

So Fresh So Clean

Hello! I'm finally coming to you actually from BRISBANE!

I am 100% exhausted. Our travel day turned insane, and it took us a total of 30-some hours to get from LAX to our new house.

Martha, Bridget, and I met up at LAX and boarded our flight to New Zealand. We hadn't booked our tickets together so we were scattered all over the plane. I was next to this adorable and very obviously newly wedded couple, who chatted with me for a good portion of the flight and didn't mind when I actually snorted water out of my nose from laughing at Tina Fey's book (knew it was gonna happen). So we're going to Auckland, la dee da, when all of a sudden...

our destination changed. The little plane moving across the map on the screen in front of me was now going to Fiji, not NZ. Finally the captain tells us the fog is too thick in Auckland, and we'll have to stop in Fiji to refuel before going to meet our original connecting flights. Or, well, not meet them. Because this detour added about three hours to that flight. Which meant we were all sitting in the same place, gettin gross and breathing all the same air, for almost 16 hours.

This flight was also just super weird (in the hilarious almost awesome way). When you went into the dinky little restroom, there was like, Sirius XM's Top 20 on 20 channel playing. Like I had myself a dance party to "Fancy" in the bathroom on this plane. Super random.

Strange things also happened with my little video screen. First of all, it was set up as a little kids screen, and it didn't change for half the flight. Which was okay, because I mean, who doesn't like watching all of the Shrek movies one after the other? But when it finally decided to switch to the regular "for adults" features, it really went all out. Right as Shrek and Fiona were falling in love with their lil green babies, the screen went black, and some awful attempt-at-being-sexy lets-get-it-on music comes on, and a guy sings in an awful tenor 1 that very few people can sing "Let's daaaaaaance naked under palm treeeeees..."

Dead serious. It scared the crap right out of me.

Anyway, when we finally got to Auckland, we had obviously missed our connecting flight to Brisbane. They put us on a flight that didn't leave for another 6 hours and gave us a voucher for "$10 dollars off Duty Free when you spend $99!" So kind of them, really. It took us and all of the other displaced passengers about a year (read: two hours) to get our bags, go through customs, check in to our new flight on another airline, and go back through security.

We then made a phone call that cost SEVEN DOLLARS A MINUTE  to let the university know we were coming in much later than expected and settled in to wait for our plane.

And finally, at like 6pm Brisbane time, WE MADE IT. WE SURVIVED. All any of us wanted to do was shower after way too many hours spent too close to too many people and be so fresh so clean clean (insert Andre 3000 rap here).

Our house is pretty great. Some of the things are kinda janky, and it's dusty, but we can fix that. I lucked out and have a good-sized room to myself with my own bathroom.

So now after a (sort of) good nights sleep, we're setting out to explore the campus and surrounding area today. Tomorrow Martha, Bridget, and I are going out to the Gold Coast for a couple of days! First adventure!

Wish me luck!

ONE DAY MORE

ANOTHER DAAAAAAAAAAY, ANOTHER DESTINYYYYYYY
Seriously though, I leave tomorrow.
For Australia.
For four months.
HAHAHAHA what.

I have spent the last week or so pretending to pack while really just watching random Australian tv shows on Netflix and reading Tina Fey's book-which is hilarious, I plan to finish it on the plane and am somewhat concerned that whoever is next to me will hate me for laughing out loud every 10 seconds. In addition to that, I've been doing random things with my friends in Escondido in an attempt to soak up as much of summer as possible. It's winter in Australia (WEIRD HUH), and my friend who is currently studying abroad in Chile is freezing her butt off in the southern hemisphere. But my trusty weather app says it will be 75 and sunny in Brisbane all next week, so I think I can get used to the Australian winter.

Hopefully my next update will come to all of you (read: Mom) from Brisbane! Can't wait/am definitely freaking out.