Last Day of Break/First Days of Classes

For my last day of vacation this year I went on an adventure to Bondi Beach. It was a beautiful day and since there wasn't much going on Tyler, the other Clarkson student studying at UTS, and I decided to figure out the public transportation system and go see the famous Bondi Beach. I have to say it was a lot smaller than I expected. In the states beaches run for miles and miles but here each beach is less than a mile long before the cove ends and then there's a other beach further down. 

Finally made it to the ocean!

Bondi! 

We did the Bondi to Coogee Beach walk which is a path along the coast that goes for 6 kilometers and crosses at least 4 beaches. Bondi is the biggest but my favorite was Tamarama.  Its much smaller but the waves are better and it wasn't as crowded.  

A view from the walk

Since its winter here I decided jeans and tshirt were appropriate to wear to the beach.  I fit in perfectly with everyone else but I was having a heat stroke and wishing that I had brought my bathing suit to jump in.  The waters were filled with surfers in their full on wet suits but the water wasn't much colder than Lake Champlain in the early summer.  Next time I'm there I'll definitely be in the water. After the beach we went to sushi a restaurant where you sit down and a conveyor belt of sushi goes around the restaurant for you to pick your sushi off of.  I finally tried sushi with raw fish instead of my usual California rolls and I didn't die of food poisoning. Success! 

At least I wore sandals!

Monday was my official first day of the semester.  My term started off with Mechanics of Solids which I think I'm going to hate.  The first class was filled with review of Statics, one of my least favorite classes. And then when we got out it was dark outside which brought back flashbacks of Chemical Engineering Principles 1, another one of my least favorite classes.  So the semester didn't start off very well.

Day 2 of classes started with me getting up and ready for my 9am tutorial (that's what they call recitation here) only to realize when I got to the room that tutorials don't begin until next week. My next class wasn't until 4pm so I had some time to waste.  One of my ear piercings has been bothering me so I decided I would go to the grocery store or pharmacy to get some rubbing alcohol to clean it.  FOUR stores later and I finally found a tiny little bottle. I also discovered that dryer sheets aren't a thing here which really bothers me because I hate static.  I also figured out that although the common paper in the US is 8.5"x11" the paper is sized by A1, A2, A3, A4 and so on in the rest of the world.  Why does the US have to be so different? I'm already struggling enough with the whole celsius and kilometers thing.  After a long day of discoveries I went to my first business class ever, Managing People and Organisations, and loved it! 

These past couple of days I've also started to focus more on being a Sydneysider and less of a tourist.  All of my flatmates are here now and 3 of them are Australians so they can teach me everything I need to know about being an Australian.  So far I've watched Master Chef Australia (I've never seen the American version so I don't know if its better or not), discovered Australian magazines such as Cleo and Cosmo AU, and tried TimTams (Australia's favorite cookie and basically the most delicious cookie I've ever had).

I think they sell them in the US too, so you should go find them and try them!

I only have one or two classes a day here so currently my schedule is filled with free time.  Tomorrow is clubs day so I'm sure that free time will be gone as soon as I join too many clubs, but for now I've been filling my time with exercise.  I went to a free yoga class last night (which was a lot more intense than the "old lady" yoga I had been attending with my mom earlier in the summer) and got a free trial to the UTS gym for a couple of days.  The gym here is phenomenal! Clarkson has 5 treadmills, this place has 25.  And each treadmill has its own personal TV screen.  Today my motivation while running was watching the Mens Commonwealth Games mountain bike race.  I'm pretty sure they biked 30 kilometers in the time I ran 6.  Tomorrow I'm trying out a pilates class and Friday I'll be attempting a spin class for the first time!

This Friday is my buildings official welcome party and I'm supposed to dress up as the USA. Too bad I didn't bring the flag. 

P.S. if you like the pictures I post of Oz then you should definitely check out this buzfeed article. NSFW.

         http://www.buzzfeed.com/jemimaskelley/australia-on-instagram-vs-in-reality

Kaitlin Goes to Orientation

First of all this blog post is going to be a long one, my apologies.  Secondly, orientation was amazing.  I met so many people and made myself some new friends! I now kind of understand this campus and might be able to make it to my classes without getting lost.  For those of you who don't know much about UTS it is right in the heart of Sydney, a block from central station.  There are about 30,000 students, 5,000 of which are undergraduate engineering majors such as myself.  The uni is also only 26 years old so everything is very modern.  Basically think the exact opposite of Clarkson in every way possible.

UTS actually stands for Ugliest Tower in Sydney

The new engineering building at UTS where I get to have classes!

Orientation has been a whirlwind of fun the past couple of days! Part of my orientation has been just for international students like so we can learn how to live like a local in Sydney.  The other part of my orientation has been for all new students, including freshman.  So essentially, I'm reliving frosh orientation again.  Seeing as I skipped most of mine at Clarkson it hasn't been too repetitive. It also comes with lots of free stuff and everyone presenting in an Australian accent so there isn't much not to like. Here's a small day to day rundown:

Day 1: How to Survive at Uni
This started out with a wonderful presentation by a professor from UCLA about how the consumption of alcohol at about 2.5 drinks a day can actually boost your grades.  It was stated that an original study took place in Cali and they were looking to expand their research internationally so they came to us to offer students the chance to drink every single day and track their grades.  Of course all the Europeans and Americans jumped at the offer.  The UCLA professor then ripped off his suit, mustache, wig, and stopped with the American accent to reveal that he was not a professor and no such study existed.  He was there to give us the basic "Now that you're on your own at college drink responsibly, don't do drugs, ask for help, blah blah blah speech"  He was hilarious throughout the entire thing and it was way better than any such talk ever given at Clarkson.

Day 2: How to be Professional
The professional atmosphere in Australia is much more relaxed than in America.  Professionals joke around in the workplace and there isn't as much a sense of hierarchy in the office. Aussies work to live instead of living to work.  (Also random culture fact: in China engineers aren't well regarded, instead it is business and marketing professions that are highly regarded) Ninety percent of jobs in Australia aren't advertised publicly so networking here is a big deal.  Also, resumes here are expected to be more than one page so that you can really show your perspective employer what your skills are.  People who have had lots of experience in different fields would probably have a resume about 5 pages long and that would be acceptable. So after I've spent all this time making my resume as short as possible I'm going to have to lengthen it while I'm here if I hope to find a part time job. Awesome...

Day 3: Speed Friending and Alcohol
One of the points of orientation is for you to meet as many new people as possible. So speed friending is where you put a bunch of people in a room and everyone has about a minute to talk to each person so you can make lots of new friends.  This is how I've met some of my new friends. So far I'm closest with 3 international students who are actually working on their masters while they here.  Arjun is from India, Humberto is from Mexico, and Julia is from Germany. I've met people from basically everywhere (Burma, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Brazil, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Spain, Ireland, Russia, the States, etc.).  Thank god the world cup just happened or the only small talk we would have is the weather. Oh yeah, I've met a couple people from Sydney too.  Interesting fact about Sydney is that 40% of the population is not native to Australia.  So as an international student, I'm not really that special.  A couple of people have called me out on being American by my accent though.

Day 3 also included an international students cocktail party which marked the beginning of my life of legally drinking! Everyone got 3 glasses of alcohol and it was great to see the different levels of drunkeness.  The students who never drank at home were drunk after one and the Europeans were trying to find ways to get more after they finished their 3 in a half hour.


Day 4 and 5: Is it the weekend yet?
Today and yesterday weren't really fun but everyone is getting excited for the weekend.  There are all sorts of parties happening for students this weekend and everyone is really excited to experience the night life of Sydney.  I don't know what my evenings have in store for me yet, but I'm hoping to do some more sightseeing around the area this weekend and maybe figure out how the train system works. I really want to see the ocean as soon as I can, I don't even care if its cold.

Oh yeah, you also may have noticed I changed my name on facebook to Kaitlin.  The whole Keighty thing is way too complicated to explain to so many people who speak English as their second language.  And with all the different accents people have Kaitlin actually sounds cool!

Getting Here and Settling In

After three flights and a total of 34 hours traveling I arrived in Sydney on Saturday at 6:30 in the morning.  My last flight was 14 hours long and filled with screaming children whose families were headed back to Oz (this is the shortened version of Australia, not Aus) after spending the winter holiday in the states. My original plan was to sleep through the entire flight so that when I woke up I would be well rested and ready to go.  Instead I watched 3 movies, 2 TV shows and only slept for 3 hours.

After getting through customs (which I thought would take a lot longer than the 15 minutes it actually took) I got a shuttle to my new apartment building.  The shuttle ride was about an hour long and I learned that people drive like crazy on the streets of Sydney.  In fact on my first day out in Sydney I saw a motorcyclist get hit by a bus (he was okay thankfully).  My hope is that everywhere I need to go I can walk to, catch a bus, or ride the train because I really don't want to try driving here.

My new apartment building is called Urbanest and is a block away from most of UTS.  I'm living on the second floor with a view of the courtyard from my window.  I  have five flatmates, but I've only met one so far.  They're either extremely busy or really antisocial.

My Apartment Building

Artwork in the Courtyard

I spent my first two days here shopping for things I needed and exploring the city by foot. The closes grocery store to me is in a mall, which won't be good for my bank account.  The other problem is there are a lot of high end stores here. I walked by Coach, Longchamp, Michael Kors, Hermes, two Louis Vuitton stores, and Prada all within 15 minutes of my building. On the bright side KMart and Target are just as cheap here as they are in the states.  My first grocery store trip was a mess because I've never had to cook for myself before and had no idea what to get.  And it took me forever to find peanut butter. Food won't be too much of a problem for the first couple of weeks because orientation includes lots of free food and my jet lag keeps causing me to sleep through dinner time.

On my second day here I decided to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens.  On my way there I got extremely lost and ended up at the Opera House.  I got some great pictures and when I finally made it to the Gardens I got even more pictures like the one below.

The Gardens are beautiful and they are also the perfect place to go running.  There are paved trails weaving though out and stunning views of the harbour.  In hopes of running more I've already started looking at some races to run.  One run is across the bridge shown above and another one is the famous City to Surf where you run from Sydney to Bondi beach with 85,000 other people.  Both are above 5k and I haven't run more than that in a while so it should be interesting.

I think thats all for now.  Orientation started yesterday but more on that in my next post. So far the school is incredible. I can't wait to see what the rest of orientation has to offer and I'm even kind of excited for classes to start next week! Also, I signed up for Surf Camp!

New Blog!!

Well, I've officially decided to be like every other college student “studying” abroad and will be keeping a blog of my adventures. My journey began about an hour ago when I said goodbye to my parents in the Burlington airport but the fun doesn't really begin until I depart from LAX at 10:30 pm. Because 13 hour plane rides are supposed to be fun, right? I’ll be posting on this once or twice a week so everyone knows what I’m up to and that I’m actually alive. And if you've ever traveled to this side of the world please leave comments with things I should see and do!

Also, please excuse the cheesy blog name, but I really like alliteration.