Upadte...I'm alive

I decided since I don’t have internet in my apartment I’ll just type my blogs in word and then copy and paste when I’m in the library/on campus. You might be wondering why I don’t have internet, it’s the one way I’ve found to save money. To get internet it would be around $40 a month and then I think it was like $130 for the original USB to connect. There’s free wireless on campus so I’m just going to see how that works. Anwyas this may be fairly long…

On the way back to my apartment tonight I thought of some random things I could tell everyone about. First of all I’ve been asked many times to check out the toilet situation, and you really can’t tell if they go backwards or not, they just flush. There is however an interesting fact about the toilets here, instead of the normal flusher there are two buttons at the top. What for you may wonder? Well the one with a half filled in circle is for when you go #1 and the other is well…you get the picture. I guess it’s some kind of water conservation thing? The two things I’ve realized I have to adjust to is spending money, thanks to my cheap father who taught me how to pinch a penny I’m resisting the urge to blow it all in a day. Don’t get me wrong, I love that I have that quality because I watch how some people throw away their money and are amazed by it, however it’s hard to adjust to living on your own and seeing money just flow from your pockets. Everything here seems to be a bit more expensive at home, especially transportation which is basically public buses, and going to the city on the weekends tends to add up. Speaking of transportation, that’s the other adjustment you have to make. You may think that driving on the wrong side of the road only affects those driving. Wrong. Try crossing the street at a busy intersection when you’re used to wide left turns and small right ones. It’s crazy, I guess it’s so common for tourists to get hit by cars in Sydney that they started painting “LOOK à” on the sidewalks. It’s actually quite convenient.

Well I guess you all want to know what I’ve been up to. Last week was a lot of settling in/orientation stuff. I had my interview for my internship which went well and now I just have to wait around while they send out my application. My top three picks varied in the work and genre but all of them sound interesting. The first one is with the Australian Institute of Export and it’s helping to create and promote their new website as well as research and some other events for the company. The office is in Sydney so I think it’d be cool to work down there. The second one is on campus at the Alumni center which I found kind of funny since I work there at home. I guess they don’t have very big Alumni programs over here so it’s something they want to get going. The position is basically responsible for creating an Alumni Loyalty card/program and working with the staff. Then the third one is actually with a non-profit group just outside of Sydney. Their main work is political campaigning and stuff but they’re looking for someone to help with finance and fundraising. Overall I really don’t care which one I get, I just hope one works out. If I don’t do that I’ll be taking 4 classes. I had the class that I plan on dropping if I get the internship last night and it sucks. It’s like a mix of statistics and economics, I liked those classes on their own but over here everything is more self taught and I felt lost in the first lecture, so I really don’t feel like having to apply myself that much.

Last week I also went on a tour of Sydney which was awesome, it was the second day I was here so I was still a little jetlagged/out of it and we saw so much it was a lot to take in, but it was a lot of fun. I hope to go back to some of the places, just have to make the plans and find some people to tag along. Friday we went to the beach which was also a lot of fun, except for the part where I missed my left eyelid when applying sunscreen and now have a really awesome tan/burn mark (note the sarcasm). Not Bondi, however I did go there on the Sydney tour and honestly it was not that impressive. It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but it was also a cloudy/chilly day so maybe there was just not a lot of people there and you need the people to get the real feel of it. Anyways we went to Manly beach which really reminded me of South Beach in Miami, there were a bunch of cute shops on the walk to the beach and it was a really cute beach town. To get there you have to take a bus down to Sydney and then a ferry across the harbor. The ferry ride was really cool, it gives you awesome views of the city and Harbor Bridge and Opera house. Speaking of great views we also had a night cruise on the Harbor for all of the international/study abroad students so I got a lot of cool pictures on that. The cruise was actually 80’s themed so there were many an interesting outfits.

Sunday was probably one of the funnest days so far. We went down to The domain which is a really huge park in Sydney and they had this huge film festival called TropFest there. It’s a short film festival and I guess it’s the biggest in the world. There were tons of people there, many interesting outfits, it made for a great day of people watching.

I’ll have to get my pictures up soon so that you can relate to some of what I’m talking about. It’s probably easiest for me to just upload them to facebook but I’ll see if I can get some on shutterfly or something like that for those that don’t have a facebook. I’m not sure if I can post pictures on here or not. I’ll have to figure that out.

The weather has been pretty good, rain a few days but it’s never all day. One day I was in the library and could hear thunder outside and then saw people come in soaking wet. I waiting it out and by the time I left, probably like an hour or so later, it was clear blue skies and sunny. My only problem with the weather is that I dress for my apartment (which is obviously not air conditioned) and the outdoors and then freeze my butt off whenever I go into the air conditioned buildings. I’m hoping to go to the beach again soon, maybe Friday, and we want to go down to a market in Sydney this weekend and maybe china town, or the zoo. There’s so much to do and I feel like everyone is rushing to get things done, you just have to realize we’re here for like 4 months. I’m hoping to plan a few weekend trips as well as spring break so I’ll have to keep you all updated on my travels.

I guess this is long enough for now, I know I’m forgetting things, but it’s getting pretty late so my mind is wandering. Feel free to comment this or e-mail me. I check my La Crosse e-mail probably most frequently so if you want it’s: step.boedecker@students.uwlax.edu

Love you all and miss you,
Don’t freeze in all the snow, I’ll soak up some rays for you :)

Crazy Week

Hello everyone,
This entry isn't going to be too long, i'm in the Library right now and they just made the announcement that they are closing in a half an hour. I just wanted to get something started to let everyone know that i'm a live and well.

Well to start, the flight was amazingly not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I met two girls from Chicago who are studying at the univerisity of Sydney and ended up sitting right next to them on the plane. They thought ahead and brought sleeping pills and were kind enough to share with me. Overall I think I slept for a good 8-10 hours of the ride, fell asleep right after our delicious dinner at 3:30am Milwaukee time, and woke up to a scrumptious breakfast which would have been around 12 our time I believe. The transport to Uni was somewhat rediculous, I think our driver was on drugs, but I made it none-the-less. My apartment is not the greatest and there were no sheets. I unpacked almost immediately because I had the desire to make my room my own, I also went over to the mall, which is a convenient 3/4 block walk from my apartment and is equiped with 2 grocery stores, an enourmous food court, big W, target, and tons of clothing stores, so that's awesome. I've met some really awesome people so far, tonso f kids from wisconsin which is kind of weird, and then lots from across the states. Not too many aussies yet but I guess that's because this is kind of a commuter school/most of them live at home, so hopefully this week i'll meet more. Last week was basically the orientation and everything so now we're getting into classes.

I'll elaborate more on what i've been doing once I have more time, hopefully tomorrow or soon. Just wanted to get this up and running.

Love you all, hold up Wisconsin while i'm gone :)

Steph