The Australian Wallabies

A bunch of Sydney students went to a national rugby game last night. It was the Australian Wallabies vs. the South African Springboks. We were all trying to sport the Australian colors - green and gold. I bought my sweatshirt that day from a cool underground marketplace called Paddy's Market. Anyway, Australia won by a landslide and it was so fun to watch the players get pummelled to the ground! Despite the fact that I played rugby for one semester at school, I still had almost no idea what was going on.

While waiting for a train back home, an Australian man told us the story of how American football was created. According to him, the US played rugby until too many players from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton started getting hurt. To fix the problem they came up with a game in which the players wore padding and helmets, and could throw the ball forward to avoid so much direct contact.. and poof. American football was born. Leave it to us wimpy Americans to revise rugby into a "safer" game. But take this fun fact with a grain of salt because the man was definitely not completely sober.

Karaoke

My friends and I went out to karaoke tonight at a local bar. It was a blast! And I learned a couple of things:

1. The people of Australia absolutely LOVE Americans. Who would have thought that a nation could love the US more than the US loves itself?

2. Australian boys can dance.. like ACTUALLY dance. I can't dance for my life but I was being led all over the dance floor in a very impressive way. Watch out American boys, these Aussies have definitely got something on you!

3. Goon, the extremely cheap "wine" bags that we've been drinking all week, is not actually wine at all. There are no grapes in it! Instead, goon consists of milk, eggs, nuts, fish products, and sugar. Mmmm.

Goon Bag

In other news, I straightened out my class schedule finally! I was having major issues with finding classes that would count for credit back home. When I emailed my country specific Bryant advisor I recieved an error message telling me that the email no longer existed. Evidently she left Bryant and no one told me! Ridiculous. Then when I tried to email my regular Bryant advisor, I recieved a message saying that she would not be in the office until August 30th. It was all very frustrating. But I have found classes that work out anyway. They are..

Cross Cultural Management
Myths, Legends, and Heroes - an english class
Renaissance and Reformation - sounds awful, I know.
Sport and Learning in Australian Culture - I hear that this class consists of taking field trips to sporting events and writing papers about it

Classes start Monday so you'll hear more from me then!

Welcome to Aussie

Hey everyone! I'm happy to say that I've landed safely in Australia.

This is the first time I've had enough time and internet connection to write, but I promise I will write more frequently in the future! That being said, sorry that this post is so long, but a lot has happened since I landed.

The flights were long and painful but I was on the isle seat for the long flight from LA to Melbourne, thank goodness! About half way through the flight the entire plane was sleeping and I woke up to an overhead light shining down in my face. I was thouroughly annoyed at the passenger in my row who had turned it on and thought "well that's pretty inconsiderate". It took me 45 minutes to realize that it was actually me who had accidentily hit my light switch while I was asleep. How embarassing!

There were some good parts of the plane trip as well: I saw Audrina from the Hills at LAX, and then Lil Jon was standing right behind me in customs! At first I was concerned about an old homeless man standing behind me, but then I realized that it was just good ol' lil Jon! Haha. The sighting was confirmed later when we passed a concert hall featuring him Saturday night.

Once we landed in Melbourne, my whole Arcadia program traveled to a bed and breakfast in Sorrento - right outside of Melbourne. Its a beach town so we got some fantastic pictures of the beachy cliffs. It was soo beautiful, but freezing cold! On our bus ride there, we got stuck in a sand ditch while turing a tight rest stop corner and couldnt turn around. To get out of our tight spot we had to drive along a narrow walking path right next to a river and physically remove obstructing street signs in order to get back to a road. It was pretty terrifying.

A couple of us went to a bar the second night in Sorrento. It was pretty empty except for one group of older men who we became friends with. They were all "pissed" (as Australians call someone who is piss ass drunk) and falling all over the place. At one point, two of the men fell to the ground together, accidentally splashing their full glasses of beer on each others' faces. One of the men showed us that he only had his two last toes on his right foot - his other toes were amputated when he dropped a steel rod on them. I was thouroughly disgusted.



Bob in center



Toeless man

The next day we saw wild kangaroos in a reservation. They were hard to get a good picture of, but I snapped one of a mama kangaroo and her little joey!

Next we walked the streets of Melbourne, which is such a cool city! It is known for its artsy inhabitants. Lots of alleyways are filled with graffiti which reminded me of my cousins Max, Alex, and Zack. I'm sure all of them could contribute to the streets of Melbourne!

I've been at the University of Sydney now for three days and the campus is absolutely beautiful. The buildings resemble Hogwarts, but it became uncanny when a huge group of people were walking around campus dressed as the Harry Potter cast. Every character you could think of was represented!

In other news, I have become absolutely obsessed with Tim Tams - a chocolate covered Australian cookie/biscuit. I've eaten a box and a half in the three days I've been in Sydney. I have also tried vegemite which is absolutely disgusting. I won a tube in a trivia contest (yes, it comes in a tube). I also participated in a vegimite eating contest in which a team had to eat slices of bread spread with vegemite the fastest. We did not win.

More stories to come!