The commencement of Uni

I started school last Monday but it's very important apparently that I call it Uni not school. School ends at year 12 apparently. The material covered here is more or less the same as back home except that I'm designing to Australian codes and standards to which I'm not accustomed. The main difference is grading. In Nebraska I would typically have 2 or 3 exams each worth about 20% of my grade, a final exam worth around 30 - 40% and homework worth 10%. Here, I have one or two assignments worth 40% and then a final exam worth 60% of my grade! As a result, the work load seems a lot lighter here because I don't have homework that I'm required to do. However, I'm spending a lot more time actually in the classroom here. We'll see how I like it when the semester is over. For now, I get extremely bored in class and occasionally want to poke my eye out. :)


I did not have any class last Wednesday or Friday so I explored the area on my own. Wednesday afternoon I headed to a local beach to soak up the sun. It's not a surfing beach, but it was so beautiful just for laying out. A group of us went back on Saturday and I already have a lot of color in my skin. Man, I love holes in the ozone layer!! I spent pretty much all day Friday grocery shopping. I went to the city to the Queen Victoria Market and was completely overwhelmed! It is a huge market that sells anything you could ever want from produce, meat, shoes, clothing, to boomerangs and Australia shaped clocks. It is all ridiculously cheap so I loaded up on fresh fruits and veggies and 2kg of ground beef. I then went to Highpoint (the mall) to look for a pair of black flats (shoes) and to finish my grocery shopping. Everything is SO expensive here. Shoes at Target, Walmart and Payless were all at least $35 but the same crappy quality as back home! I swear I went into every single shoe store and finally found a pair at the very last one. They were only $40, good quality leather, and cute! By the time I got groceries as well it was past 5pm.

It's a good thing that I have heaps of time here because you cannot do anything quickly when public transportation is all you have. I love the fact that they have it, don't get me wrong, but it is not fast by any means. Grocery shopping also takes me twice as long because of not only different brands but different foods completely. Apparently chili is not big here which is really disappointing! They only had one kind in the store and it was $4/can! They also only had one kind of tortilla chip and it was the original Dorito's which no one buys back in the states. I was really confused when shopping for cheese because it's all white... even their cheddar. It tastes the same but is albino! I guess if this is the majority of my culture shock, I'd say I'm doing okay.

Last week wasn't anything super exciting so I won't say much else. I need to take more pictures so you can get a better picture of exactly where I'm living. I'll work on that. Meanwhile, ya'll enjoy your freeeeeeeezing temperatures and I'll keep laying on the beach. :)