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.
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| Finally made it to the ocean! |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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).
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| 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
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