The First Week

I cannot believe I have already spent one week here in Tasmania! So much has happened and this is just the beginning. I will start at the beginning because I have been very bad at keeping everyone informed of how I am and what I have been up to. Sorry!

Last Thursday, I left good ol' Indiana and flew to Dallas (which was GIANT), then to LAX, then to Auckland, New Zealand, then to Melbourne, and fianlly landed in Tasmania. I must admit I was very nervous on the car ride up to Indy and was hoping that everything would go according to plan because I was going to be by myself. However, a nice little surprise happened. Stew Smith from my Block A Education class was sitting in the Indy airport too! We had different flights to Dallas and LAX, but after that we were on the same plane. Once we got to Auckland (which we did not know we were going there) we had a four hour layover and I realized that I would not have enought time in Melbourne to get my bags, go through security, and customs so i had to re-book my flight. It all worked out and we made it Tassie late Saturday night and a guy named Max from UTAS picked us up, took us to the grocery store, and then on to campus.

On campus, we met the wonderful Wendy who is in charge of Accommodations. She is a very peepy, hilarious older lady. She gave us a tour and introduced us to everyone as the newbies. The entire week there have been hardly any students, except the International students (pretty much all Asians) because the Tasmanians are on break. That night was a chilly night. It is their winter here and the average temperature is around 50 and gets colder at night. Most days have been overcast and there have been a couple of rain showers.

UTAS is located in Launceston, which is a fairly small town. We walk into town, which has a couple grocery stores (Woolworths and Chickenfeed), Subway, Hungry Jack's (Burger King), KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino's, a few local cafes, Blockbuster, and a few other places and shops. There is the main city about twenty minutes away and we take the bus there. It has tons more to offer and we have found some great places to eat at and some wonderful cafes to drink hot chocolate and eat something sweet.

The people have been very friendly and love talking to us. I love learning their different words and they so do they. It is hilarious hearing them do their "American" accent. One guy did a southern accent, which was exactly right. He talked about having a big old truck and shooting guns.

Also, right outside the city is the Cataract Gorge Reserve and we went there on Friday. It was beautiful and good workout! I will post pictures because it is hard to describe.

So far I am really enjoying myself and the locals have informed us of all the places around Australia that we have to check it which we need to start planning. I forgot to mention that there are seven of us from Butler here and everyone is doing Student Teaching but me. I have classes, which start on Monday. I knew everyone but three girls, but now we all know each other. But for classes I am taking Australia's Ancient Aboriginal Past, Reading Stories, Children's Literature, and Intro to Drawing 2. I am kind of nervous about the Aboriginal Past, but we made some friends the other night that offered to help me. Also, here they have lectures and tutorials that you have to go to. So on Mondays I have my Aboriginal lecture for two hours and then on Wednesday I have a tutorial where we are in smaller groups and do more hands-on things.

The building I live in is called Kerslake Hall and I have a single room. There is a big kitchen that my hall shares along with a computer lab and lounge area. All of the rooms are single which I thought was weird. My room is nice and has a sink/vanity in it which I like. Everyone else from Butler is in Leprena so I spend most of my time over there. It is just a three minute walk. My building is closer to the where the classes are, the Student Union, and cafeteria. It is a small campus and it reminds us of like IUS. The main UTAS campus is in Hobart which is in Southern Tassie.

I am starting to get used to the time difference, but slowly. We are 10 hours ahead of Indiana. It also gets pitch black around 5/5:30 so around that time we all get sleepy, but we have forced oursleves to stay up until at leat 10. Our days have been consisting of going out for lunch, exploring, then coming back and fixing dinner at Stew's place. It is nice having a group of us, but we are ready for everyone to move back so we can make some more Aussie friends. We have met Sherwin and Sam and they are first year students. Sherwin is from Sydney and Sam is from Cannes and he lives in a rainforest! They have been fun to hang out with.

I will try my best to keep this updated and I will post pictures soon!