This trip also marked my first hostel experience. I didn't know what to expect, but it ended up being nice except for the wires that I had jabbing me in the back both nights. The rooms had 6 people to them, but we ended up only having 4 in mine which was great because two of the ones that we did have were super loud and came back really late. The town that we stayed in is called Katoomba, and it was just a tiny little mountain town. There was hardly anything around, and most shops and cafes closed by 4 or 5pm, so when we went to find a little dessert, we had quite a bit of trouble. They barely fed us, so after dinner on Friday I went wandering with Katie, Kelly (who lives a door down from me) and Avery (another Canadian, who turns out is in my fluids class), and we ended up going to a little Greek restaurant. Avery ordered hummus and I tried it for the first time.. it was actually pretty good! Both nights we went and listened to some live music which was awesome. I noticed that in general, people seem a lot more genuinely happy to be around each other here. There were some older couples that were dancing the night away and were just enjoying themselves.
On Saturday, we went abseiling in the morning! Basically, abseiling is a fancy name for repelling. It was a lot of fun, and while we didn't go down huge cliffs, the ones we did were about 30 meters, which is still pretty decent. It surprisingly wasn't scary at all, minus the first part where we had to get over the edge... Once I got going and could do some bouncing off the wall and such, it was a blast! We got lucky with a beautiful day and it was at a gorgeous location. Later that afternoon we went to do a little bit of sightseeing and hiking around the Three Sisters, which is the most popular lookout point for the Blue Mountains. There is some sort of legend with three sisters being turned into rock or something, but I don't remember exactly how it goes. Apparently it's often quite foggy so you can't see out at all, but it was a clear day so we got to see some great views.
On Sunday, we did some more hiking in the morning and walked down this trail towards the bottom of the mountains. We got to see some beautiful waterfalls and other lookouts on the way down. With a group that big, I think it's hard to get too intense with hiking so we didn't do as much as I would have liked, but it was a good morning. To get back up, instead of hiking, we took a train. This train is the steepest in the world and runs at a 52 degree angle... talk about steep! I wish we would have been able to go down it because I think it would have been like an amusement park ride :) . Then in the afternoon, we drove somewhere else to go grass karting. Grass karting is kind of like go karting, except there are no motors and you pretty much just go down hills. It doesn't look or sound it, but it is incredibly dangerous and very easy to get out of control. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't do any of the extreme ones because after seeing so many people have bad wipe outs, I decided I would rather not risk having a broken bone for my stay in Australia. Nicole and I went to the bottom of the hill to watch people come down and wipe out and it was very entertaining. So all in all, going to the Blue Mountains was a really fun trip and we got to do and see a lot! I'm quite excited for New Zealand next month!
Then yesterday was my first day of classes. I found out that I'll basically only have class on Mondays and Thursdays except for a few weeks when I have a lab on Wednesdays, so I don't know what I'm going to do with myself! I'm used to having all sorts of stuff packed in with no time to hang out or anything, and now I'm going to have all the time in the world. It'll be great because it means I won't have to get stressed out ever. Classes are very similar to U of I classes so far. I've had two big lectures and a discussion, and the only major difference was accents and professors being a little more laid back than at home. Here they introduce themselve by their first names and you're allowed to call them by it which is pretty cool. I also noticed that the amount of female engineers here is less than at home and is somewhere below 10%. The one girl that was in my discussion is taking the subject for the second time, so I'm guessing the reputation of female engineers here isn't particularly high. Something strange is that classes here only have lecture once a week, but all classes have a discussion as well. So my aboriginal studies class has lecture for an hour each Monday, and then a two hour discussion later in the week.
Since bus tickets add up fast here, I decided I'm going to walk home from class everyday.. It's a 40-50 minute walk, so it lasts a while, but it's so nice out that I guess it doesn't really matter anyways. Yesterday I was dumb enough to buy my textbooks and carry them all the way back in my left arm, so it's semi-sore from that today. I know, I am so strong. Outside of class, I've just been hanging out around Campus East. I'm going to head to the beach tomorrow, so that should be nice. I've been hanging out a lot with Katie, Pricey, and our wannabe roommate Tom, who we think should take our mystery roommate's place (yes, he STILL hasn't shown up..). Overall, I've been lucky with the weather and having nice people to live with, because otherwise I think I would be pretty homesick right about now. Anyways, I miss everyone at home, and love hearing from you!! I'll probably post again next Monday, after going to the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney this weekend... it's supposed to be quite entertaining!
Random Notes:
1. They add -y or -ie to the end of everything, even much more than I do. For example, breakfast is almost ALWAYS referred to as brekky (but there are multiple spellings)
2. A lot of people have dogs for pets, but I have yet to see any furry dogs
3. They call gym shoes of any sort runners
4. There are lots of bbq's, but I have yet to see any buns. They just use slices of white bread whether it is a burger or a sausage
5. Hiking is called bushwalking
6. If you ask for lemonade, you'll get a drink that tastes like sprite
7. Beverages that come from fruit are called juice, but any other juice-like drink is called cordial (I don't know if that's spelled right)
8. People in cars don't stop for pedestrians like they do at home... you need to be very careful
9. All toilets have two buttons.. one uses half the amount of water as the other one
10. Only 10% (maybe less) of bathrooms have soap in them... kind of disgusting
No comments:
Post a Comment