First day!

January 15th and 16th

I survived my first day in Sydney! After traveling for 24 hours (with only one 2 hour delay) all I wanted to do was take a shower and sleep…  At the airport we all met up with Andy, our LC Professor, and Nat, who is our Australian leader from Global Education Design (GED) the company that has organized our trip. When we arrived at our Sydney accommodations we had an orientation to the academic program, which I found to be very overwhelming. With all the planning and packing that went into this trip I forgot that I have to go to school. While in Sydney I will be staying in a dorm like situation at a place called the Arundel House, which is located next to the University of Sydney (which is where we will have lectures during our stay here). At Arundel I have my own room and I share a porch with three other girls on my trip. The porch has a great view of the Sydney skyline, as well as a view of the squatters who live next door… There is also a beautiful view of the city on the roof where we often eat dinner.

After our orientation a group of us walked to the mall, which is just a few blocks away. The malls here are different than they are in the States because they have absolutely everything, i.e. we went to the supermarket in the mall. Most of the time GED will give us a stipend and we have to buy and cook our own meals, its about $100 per week. That night all 16 of us went out to Thai food near Arundel on Glebe Point Road, which is a street that is a bit like the Ave. After I was so unbelievably exhausted and went to bed!

This morning I woke up at 6:00 with lots of energy, which if you know me as you all do, is very strange. I suppose its going to take some time to adjust to the 5 hour time difference. Today we went on a bus tour of the city. We started at Circular Quay (pronounced key), which is where the Sydney opera house and the Harbor Bridge are. We then made our way through the many Sydney neighborhoods and ended at Bondi beach, a huge and very popular public beach, the water felt great!

Here are some things that I have learned/observed about Australia:

• In the late afternoon and evening small bats come out and fill up the sky.
• In the morning the birds that I wake up to sound like nothing that I have ever heard before.
• Bundanoon is a small city south of Sydney that is the first city in the world to completely ban plastic water bottles.
• It is not customary to tip in Australia. It can sometimes be seen as rude to give someone your loose change. There is no tipping because every Aussi makes a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour and 25 dollars an hour on the weekends!
• Another result of the high minimum wage is that there are very few homeless people in Sydney. (however I am not sure about other cities)
• Most domestic flights in Australia are between 30 and 90 dollars.
• Internet is very rare to have here and always very expensive. (I will learn more about why and let you know)
• Dish rags/napkins (what the Goldov’s keep in that drawer by the sink) are called tea towels.
• And garbage is called rubbish!


Make sure to also check out our group blog at http://lcaustraliaprogram2011.blogspot.com/