CroWeek Craziness Continued

Did I mention how awesome alliteration is? Didn't have a chance to finish up my last post yesterday due to said craziness but I'm currently sitting in an absurdly simple introductory lecture so I figured it'd be a good time to continue on!

Monday I had my first class in Australia! At noon... Having been out the night before I made the (at the time) great decision to sleep through bfast. Theeen after I actually got up did I realise that my class was going to knock out lunch time at the college. Not a terribly big deal I just had to buy lunch on campus but I've found myself turning into a bit of a scrooge with my money. Everytime I look at something I can't help but think "that's not worth that!" For example I won't be eating at McDonald's or Maccers as the Aussies call it anytime soon, they don't even have a dollar menu! At the same time its made me more aware of how cheap a lot things really are for us in the states and then the mind can't help but wander into thoughts of the reasons that we're able to get such cheap food, clothing, etc.

But back to class or rather back to academic class, my first and only class Monday was Second Language Acquisition, a pretty self explanatory title I think. I knew I was going to like the professor when a student started saying something "Surely..." and the prof cut her off saying "Don't call me Shirley!" Oh you silly Australians and your theft of American culture.

The Monday night Croweek activity was an Irish pub crawl. At dinner they seated people at different tables that each had Irish last names on them (and some with more creative "Irish" last names). The tables had watered down goon (dyed green of course) and loads of green confetti all over the tables (which still appears all over the college in new places every day). The food was decent, nothing particularly Irish unless you count potatoes, the only other really interesting bit was a limerick contest and let me tell you, college students are nothing if not extremely inventive at creating lovely sexual rhymes.

After dinner, more goon drinking ensued. Fuster and I were introduced to the Australian goon equivalent of a keg stand, called a "liedown" which basically consisted of you lying down and have goon poured into your mouth. Let it be known that I rocked that (thanks for the good drinking blood mom). We had been informed time and time again that Australians were not into drinking games but in my brief experience it seems like many of them have actually been very interested in learning our drinking games. I was more than happy to introduce them to a simple game called "Up the River, Down the River".

The actual pub crawl was sadly rather anticlimatic. The first pub was not particularly exciting and the second and third pubs were actually CLOSED! Never found out what was up with that, we'd arranged our pub crawl with the pubs ahead of time so who knows. It worked out in the favor of the Victoria or Vic where wandered to instead (keep in mind you have to picture a mob of about 100-150+ drunken college students streaming through the streets). It had a pretty sweet dance floor and Dj as well as pool tables so we had no lack of entertainment there.

Oh jeez lecture just ended. I'll have to finish this post up back in the room...

Alrighty back at it. So tuesday I had Advanced Bioinformatics (basically using computers to do genetic sequencing, VERY cool stuff) which I had originally thought would be out of my league because I haven't had any bio-ish classes since high school but I've had two lectures now and think it should be doable. Followed that up with Australia Marine Biology. Now let me start off by saying that Dickinson basically tells us to take this course not so much for the actual course but more for the two field trips you go on, one up to the Great Barrier Reef and another to Moreton Island. Key part: THEY PAY FOR IT! So most of us Dson students are in it as well as large number of other international students with a decent number of Aussies too. Met a girl from Germany who with any luck I shall be seeing more of in my time here :)

Next came Artificial Intelligence. I was pretty pumped for this course but had a heck of a time finding the bloody lecture room. It was located in this complex of 4 or 5 buildings but no map would tell me which one it was in... So I wandered around and finally stumbled across some arrows written in chalk on one of the buildings that managed to get me there. I sat in the lecture for about 30 minutes and then walked out. Two main reasons: I couldn't stand the lecturer's voice and I remembered being explicitly told by a couple friends who had been here last year saying "Phil, don't take AI, the prof is terrible and you will learn nothing." Sweet deal for me really, I had been signed up for five classes and had been worried I wouldn't be able to pick one to drop (I can only take four courses). So thank you miss, you made my life much easier!

Tuesday night's event was called Black and White night, which was a bit more complicated than the rest of our activities. Basically it was like all the stages of marriage crammed into one night. Interested parties had to arrange some sort of public proposal and whichever proposal the exec board deemed the best would be married that evening. That night we had formal dinner, which I'm just going to call Harry Potter dinner. We all wear our wizard gowns and have a "nice" dinner with a little music and speaker. Cool but not overly exciting. At dinner one guy had his friends pick of the chair of his fiancee-to-be and carry her up to the grand piano where sang in the most terrible of voices. It was hilaaaarious (and they ended up getting married that night). One of my faves though came after the dinner. My friend, Spread had walked into this girl's biology lecture, apologised to the lecturer of course, and proposed right in the middle of this 100+ person lecture hall. Some girl in the crowd actually booed! The video of the thing was really funny.

Wednesday brought my Contemporary Australia course and more marine biology. It was karaoke night but people were pretty drained after the prior night's festivities so most of us didn't go out. We'd been rocking out since Sunday and had just had a wedding the night before so who could blame us! Today has been pretty relaxed, only had two classes and now I'm done for the week! Tonight is a big party at the Chalk again, they're apparently going to make over 40 tonnes of snow and it's also our All college exchange so people from each of the 10 UQ colleges will be there as well as whoever else might come. Fingers crossed we actually get in!

Whew that seemed like a lot, hopefully its not too boring of a read. I'll try to make my future posts a little more exciting for my two followers haha. Cheers!

CroWeek Craziness

Been busy since my last post though I suppose that seems to be my trend lately so I really shouldn't be surprised! Classes started Monday and I've been out every night since Sunday so its been exceptionally crazy. The weekend was fairly relaxed, the Cromwell students finished moving back and so most of my time has been spent meeting people. Watched Master Chef again Saturday night and have decided that its actually a pretty cool show. The season ended Sunday night though so no worries about getting hooked on it.

Sunday night during dinner the Cromwell student president gave a little welcome back speech and then she called all of us "freshers" (which was just us Americans and a few other Australians new to the college) up to receive our "fresher" names. Thus Maia became Jeeves, Megan became Shazza, Taylor became Fuster, and I became Cluck. I haven't heard the origin of the girls names but apparently the exec board decided it would be funny to have a play off the phrase "cluster fuck", so Taylor and I became the lucky two. Like I said before, ridiculous! This was the start to what they call CroWeek, which is basically a Sunday to Sunday week of ridiculous nights out with transportation arranged by the college.

Sunday night was called Chalk night where we all went out to dance at a place called the Chalk Hotel, which had some beautiful drink specials :) Alcohol is still absurdly expensive but the Chalk had some of the cheapest drink I've seen yet aside from "goon" aka box wine. Everything else has had ridiculous taxes put on them over the years by the Aussie govt in their efforts to reduce underage binge drinking. True to teen spirit, the Aussie teens and college students have just moved from one drink of choice to another leaving them with "goon" as the only remaining cheap alcohol.

Toilet Spinning

While watching Master Chef (watched regularly by approximately 2 million Australians) we started discussing some of the differences between Australia and the US. One of the first things I'd noticed here was that the water doesn't spin in their toilets! Apparently in an effort to conserve water the Australians devised the "dual-flush" toilet with a smaller flush for going #1 and a larger flush for #2. Great, I'm all for conserving water; especially in a country that seems like its constantly in drought. My problem, all of the Aussie students thought it was a myth that toilet water spun! So for all of us Americans who were pumped to actually see the old tale in effect, we're simply s*** out of luck.

In other news, Thursday morning, Taylor knocked on my door and lo and behold my door now read "Katrina Philps". Similar, but definitely not me. We were summoned to the Dean of Students office and learned that apparently he wasn't keen on having guys on a gals floor. He listed a few other BS reasons (we know that they've had guys in the exact same rooms in the past) but we didn't really have a choice in the matter so we hauled our stuff across college to our new room. Maybe somebody above really didn't want us to live in our original rooms cuz man did we luck out. Taylor and I are now living in the same room but we have our OWN bathroom and shower! So we decided that in an effort to be accommodating we'd just smile and nod and make the best of our new surroundings. Don't want to feed the terrible American stereotype right? :)

Took part in a really cool study yesterday morning. Earlier in the week had been looking around for some simple employment to help me get by here when I stumbled upon a paid Deep Trunk (lower back) muscle study at the UQ and thought what the heck, why not! So yesterday morning I walked across the street to the Physiology building and learned what I was in for. Started out with a simple ultrasound of my back to make sure my muscles were in good shape (they were) and then they stuck me with 4 needles to implant 4 wires in different spots in the muscle. Then I was hooked up to a machine to record my muscle activity and then had a bunch of little 3d modeling thingers taped on me. If you've ever seen those cool suits that they use for 3d modeling in movies and video games then imagine that minus the suit.

So now that I looked like a christmas tree I got up on a treadmill with a bunch of cameras around me and a computer screen showing a little 3d me on the screen. Did some reeaaaally slow walking increasing in speed up to a light jog for about 30 minutes. Then did some more intense movements with resistance to really make my back muscles work. Oh and I forgot to mention throughout all this I had a neverending supply of gummy candies or lollies as they call them. I was getting paid but dang I would've done it just for all that candy I ended up eating! That about summed up everything, the wires and all the tape were pulled off and I was good to go. In retrospect I should've asked for some pictures cuz I must've looked pretty ridiculous. Now everybody has been asking why the heck I put myself through that for a small bit of money but the way I look at it, it wasn't about the money. Physical therapists and scientists have thought that these muscles might be the main source for many untreatable lower back pains and so far the results from the study have been positive that strengthening these muscles might be a way of alleviating that pain. So if I could be a part of the research that helps somebody and their pain then I'll count my time and very minimal discomfort well worth it.

Anyhoo, I was surprisingly pretty exhausted after that and laid low for the rest of the day with just a little bit of shopping for necessities. It looks like the majority of people are moving back into the college today and everyone has been eager to meet us "seppos" (google it yourself but don't worry its all in good fun). There was a rumor that Taylor and I might have to move again but we promptly went to the Dean and shut down that idea. The principal had gotten it in his head that we wouldn't meet people if we lived together but thankfully the dean agreed that we were doing just fine socialising with the Aussies and didn't need to move us AGAIN for us to get a good Aussie experience.

In other news, our group has been very bummed to find out that Cromwell's biggest party of the semester and coincidentally the biggest college party in the ENTIRE southern hemisphere is scheduled for the same weekend that our program will be going to Sydney. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. As of now its looking like we're going to make the responsible decision to go to Sydney but its oh so difficult for us. I'm sure the two people reading this will commiserate. So it goes though, can't have it all as much as we'd like. I just recently booked my flight to visit a couple friends from Dickinson in New Zealand for the following weekend. There's definitely going to be no shortage of adventures here!

About 200 Hundred Indigenous Languages..

Answering that question at orientation this morning got me a free thing of white chocolate Tim Tam's! Tim Tam's are chocolate biscuit (cookie) perfection, so perfect in fact that the Aussies designed a way of eating them called the Tim Tam Orgasm. Basically you eat off two opposite corners and drink coffee through the chocolatey middle part like a straw. I've yet to try this myself but I am definitely going to give it a go in the morning! Its been neat trying the different foods here and Tim Tam's have definitely been one of the best discoveries so far. My friend Taylor and I spent a good half an hour just wandering around the grocery store earlier tonight laughing at some of the outrageous things we saw and some of the Australian equivalents to US foods. Many things are the same but for whatever reason they just gave them new brand names such as Lynx = Axe, Hungry Jack = Burger King.

Spent most of last weekend hanging out with the Dson group. As college students, we've latched onto the cheapest form of alcohol, box wine. The exchange rate is slightly in our favor but most everything and especially alcohol is pretty expensive compared to the states. So finding $8 four liter boxes of red wine was a definite win for us. Monday, we toured the XXXX brewery, which is Queensland's beer. Apparently there is a strong pride for the particular beer brewed in each state (Victoria from Victoria, Tooheys from New South Wales...) and so most Queenslanders will vouch for XXXX as the best beer around. The tour itself was pretty cool, getting to hear a bit of the history of beer itself as well as the intertwining histories of XXXX beer and Australia/Queensland itself. Personally, I don't think its anything particularly special (ssshhh don't tell anyone!) but I do think its cool that they use only Australian products to brew it. I will say that its definitely better than the Fosters that they export off to us in the states... Best part of the tour was definitely getting to pour our own frothy brew from the tap, Australian style. Unlike England and other such places they don't like the head so they fill glasses in two steps. Fill and flick off the head, then fill to the brim! More beer that way they say and I'm inclined to agree with their logic! My friend Taylor and I took tally and realised that in the 6 days we'd been in Australia, we'd tried 13 different beers (my fave so far has definitely been a James Squire Porter) Don't worry mom, we party hardy but we're keeping it safe down under :)

Speaking of being safe, as part of our study abroad orientation today we had a session on every sort of safety while we're here from going out to swimming to the various creatures we should be careful of. Poisonous snakes galore, stinging jellyfish, sharks, etc. but as usual my big fear is still easily spiders. The lady giving the talk put up a picture of a huntsman spider, which are about the size of your hand, and explained to us that it was harmless. Then she showed us pictures of the little spiders which are absurdly poisonous. Herein lies my problem with spiders: the big ones are scary as heck and the little ones will kill you. Why the heck would you not be freaked out by them!?

Aside from all that, all is going pretty well. It looks like Taylor and I will be moving into another building because our college goofed up and put us on a girls floor. We tried explaining to them that this really wasn't a problem at all buuutt apparently they want to abide by their rules. Silly rules I say... Its been nice though, other students are finally trickling back into the college and by Sunday all 200 or so of them should be back and then things should liven up quite a bit. There's a really cool college culture here that I'm pumped up to join in on. Part of the tradition at Cromwell is that each student goes by a nickname that they're given as a "fresher" and they range from mild to downright ridiculous. For instance, one student (from Canada!) apparently looked seedy in his app photo and so he became Multigrain. Genius right?

I've also been really excited to be able to play piano again and was suckered into agreeing to play at one of our formal dinners. I hadn't played for two months before coming here and I have absolutely no idea what the heck I'm going to play so it ought to be interesting. Hopefully they like the Entertainer or some other fun little pop tune that I can pull out of my ass... Anyhoo its off to bed for me. I've promised myself that I'll actually check out the gym tomorrow before lunch so we'll see how that goes. Going to some play called "I love you bro" with the Dson group in the evening as well and that should certainly be interesting. Cheers!

G'day Y'all

Hello to anyone who may have the (mis)fortune to be reading this little travel blog of mine. I've never really done this before but in the interest of keeping track of my adventures here and sharing it with any family and friends who might be interested I realised I should make an effort to work on this. Soooo here goes!

Its been a crazy summer so far jumping from the end of the semester at Dson to spending 8 weeks in Alabama with a research program at Auburn University to ~40 hours back home in the Land O Lakes to flying off to Aussie land. Craziness but its been a great ride so far. Anyhoo, I left Duluth on July 11th after a short weekend with the fam and flew Chicago where I ran into the head of Dickinson Dining Services. It was funny because he was on his way back to Dson from some conference in Cali while I was on my out to Cali because I wouldn't be heading to Dson this fall. Small world much? I was delayed a couple hours out of chicago so I had to hustle biiiig time when I got to LAX but got to my terminal maybe ten minutes before they started boarding. Everyone else from the Dickinson group was already there (of course) and there are 12 of us in the program. By this time i was utterly exhausted (it was about 1am Central time) and starving because I hadn't had a chance to grab food in LAX like I had planned so I managed to conk out pretty quickly after watching Clash of the Titans and having a much needed dinner. At the time I thought it was pretty good for airplane food but I learned later that it must have been my hunger because it didn't sound like anyone else was particularly impressed. I'm realizing that this is dragging on, I haven't even landed in bloody australia yet so I'll pick up the pace here!

We actually had to refuel in Noumea, New Caledonia, which was absolutely beautiful. Picture Lord of the Rings mountains and other scenery. We finally landed in Brisbane about 9am local time for a total travel time of about 29 hours. Our awesome program coordinator, Ann, met up with us and we got on a bus into the city. Brisbane seems like a pretty sweet city and our bus driver was a good tour guide as well. Best part of the drive though was maybe thirty seconds after he was telling us how there are only two levels of police in Australia and what their vehicles look like we heard a quick police siren. We'd been in Brisbane maybe 10 mins and we'd already been pulled over! What was interesting was that rather than sitting and waiting for the officer to come up, apparently here you're expected to get out and go to them. Strange.

We're living in what are called "colleges" which are basically the University of Queensland's on campus residence halls. I and three others in the group are staying at Cromwell College, which is of course the best one. There are only a few other students here right now as we've arrived a couple weeks before the semester actually starts. Everyone has been really nice, the friendly Australian stereotype has definitely been correct in our experience. the rest of the day was basically spent getting settled in and such. Wednesday morning we all met up and a bit of orientation and we went on a bus tour of the city. Public transport is great here, the bus system runs everywhere and they have the CityCat which are catamarans that run up and down the Brisbane river, which the city is built around. Since then we've done some exploring around the city, gone out to a couple bars etc. I was a little bummed to find out that they're really big on American music so I haven't really heard much cool Australian music but I still have hopes.

Yesterday was an awesome day. We went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where we got to see and PET kangaroos, emus, and even hold a koala! For those of you aren't aware, koalas are the chillest animals and are only active for about 5 hours a day, 3 of those spent eating. I'll have to see if I can get a pic of me with one up here at some point. We then spent the rest of the day on a "scavenger hunt" through the city, which was effectively us doing ridiculous things at different places. Examples include singing the US national anthem at a bus stop, staging a public break up on a street corner, and stopping for drinks at a few pubs along the way.

I think that about catches me up with a quick and dirty synopsis of my past 5 days here. I miss everyone in the states dearly but am very much enjoying myself here. Cheers from abroad!

Edit: here's that pic of me and the koala I promised