University of Queensland

Since I'm taking classes with UQ faculty, I've been spending a lot of my first week here for orientation. UQ has a beautiful campus that reminds me of Stanford in certain places, and although like the rest of Brisbane, its buildings are much more modern.

This is the main building with a huge courtyard in the middle. The buildings remind me of the quad in many ways, and student often picnic on the grass here. I would like to do that when it gets sunnier, but we were warned that ants in the grass bite! Picture from wikipedia.

There's also a huge lake on campus as well, which has a lot of ducks and other birds I've never seen, as well as fish and TURTLES!! The other day, I was walking with some people from my program when we saw a turtle laying its eggs! It was pretty awesome. I wish Lake Lag at Stanford had the same lake-ness. (Lake Lagunita at Stanford hasn't been a real lake since the 70s or something, except for a few days in the spring when enough rain has filled it up. The only animals who inhabit that area are endangered salamanders that one of my Humbio professors often does research on. It's still a really nice and foresty area though, but it's not a lake.) Here's a picture of UQ's lake:

Birds here are not scared of people at all, however. I was right in assuming that the birds I've seen here that look different from those in the states are just the local pigeons. The only difference is that they don't care if you are eating your food when they see it. Today, I was sitting eating my lunch and reading a book when a bird flew into my head, literally. Afterwards, I put my bowl down for a second and another bird swooped by and grabbed part of my lunch! Then after that, just as I was contemplating never eating outside again, a bird plopped onto my table and grabbed for the scrappings from my almost empty bowl!

The other day, the people in my program split into groups of six to go on a scavenger hunt throughout campus. We had an hour and a half to hit everything, and while the campus is nowhere near as large at Stanford's, I got pretty sore from running around in the sun. We passed some UC students on their abroad program at UQ (similar to ours) who told us that the prize for the scavenger hunt was t-shirts. That night, however, we found out that the prize for the first and second place team was first class tickets on an overnight train we'll be taking in about a month!! My team got second place, probably due to our creative photos, so I'm SUPER excited to be traveling first class and also thankful to my group member who kept forcing everyone to run. I wasn't so thankful DURING the scavenger hunt, but now I am.

UQ is a beautiful campus next to the river, and I'm excited to see what it's like when the sun comes out. I love napping on the grass (sans evil ants) so I hope I can do that when the weather clears up.

Brisbane, the river city

For the first few days that I have been here, I haven’t taken much initiative to go into the city since I’ve been busy taking classes and getting used to the time difference. Yesterday and today, however, I decided to go into the city for most of the day. Brisbane’s the capital of the state of Queensland, the north-east state and where I’ll be spending most of my time. While I’m leaving for the north on Monday, we’ll be coming back to Brisbane for about two days in October and then for two weeks at the end of my program at the end of November.

Brisbane’s quite a cool city. When I first got here, I thought it was boring because there wasn’t much to do according to the travel book, and especially compared to what I know about Sydney. But the city itself is a really nice city. It is clean and not too crowded and is overall a pretty modern city that’s surrounded by a river. The city center has great architecture, with a bunch of modern buildings and lots of bridges crossing the river. There’s a really cool cultural center in South Bank (south of the river) that has a bunch of state museums, including a Gallery of Modern Art (currently featuring a gallery by Vallentino), an Art Museum, and a Natural History Museum. I really enjoyed going to the cultural center; the architecture is really modern and there are a lot of lookout points where you can just see Brisbane’s skyline along with the river. There’s also the exhibition center and the concert hall. From what I’ve seen, a lot of shows happen in the city center, and many are free! I definitely plan to catch one either this weekend or when we come back.

We also stopped by a night market that sold a lot of artsy products. It was super expensive, but I realized that I especially enjoy going to markets to look around. I stopped for a salt bath for my hands which was AMAZING because it made my hands as smooth as my sister’s (who has tremendously smooth and soft hands). This is a big deal because my hands are never smooth or soft because I’ve had eczema on my hands for as long as I can remember. It was quite a momentous moment when I felt my hands become softer than they’d ever been, so momentous that I was about to buy the $30 jar of bath salts that was about the size of a baby food jar. Maybe one day. I did take a flyer.

There’s also a man-made beach in the middle of the center of the city that’s only a block away from the river. You can swim in it. It’s awesome, and I definitely plan to hang out here on a sunny day, although I’m sure it gets crowded then. There’s also apparently a mini Eiffel Tower. I’m not sure how mini it is, but I want to check it out. I’m assuming it’s taller than me, at least.

The night before, my program took a ghost tour around Brisbane city, which focused on older buildings. There was the treasury casino which used to be the treasury building and was (fittingly) turned into a casino. There’s also the old printing building where apparently a guy got squashed in a printing machine and all that was left was his hand and his skull. Of COURSE his skull. We also saw the executive building as well as the park. I’d never been on a ghost tour before, but it was entertaining.

The most awesome thing about Brisbane is its public transport system. There’s the standard bus and train system, but there’s also a river catamaran and ferry system. The CityCat (short for catamaran, not the animal) is basically a bus on water and is actually cheaper than taking a bus to the same locations. Buses come really often and there are a million buses throughout the city from what I’ve seen. Also, each transport system operates under the same company so you can use the same card for each form of transport instead of having to buy tickets every time you transfer from bus to CityCat. But, like everything else, public transport is pretty expensive. To get to school, it’s $2.30 by bus and it’s not far away at all.

I PROMISE to post pictures next time. I keep forgetting to bring my camera places or to the library where I get internet.

So I'm also here for academic reasons...

For the past few days, I've been having straight 9-4 classes at the University of Queensland. It's reminiscent of high school in that we get "morning tea" with catered sweets, fruits, and of course tea, as well as a lunch break. We've been having lectures from each of the classes I'm going to be taking. Here's a breakdown:

• Coastal Forest Ecosystems: There are two parts to this class - Mangroves and Terrestrial. Half of my group will be starting with mangroves next week. Mangroves are basically really, really wet rainforests. I'll know more about then when I come back, but it's supposed to be really really muddy and really really awesome. We'll be at a place called Daintree for a week, which is in the northeast coast by Cairns, a major city in AU (which means it has more than 50,000 people). For the terrestrial part of the class, we will be camping for a week around the northeast coast in various places. I'm REALLY excited about this course because it seems like we'll basically be hiking for a week and doing "field work." Not sure what that means yet, but I'm excited! Our hikes include a 12K hike up a mountain to a waterfall where we'll swim and a lot of stargazing and sunrise/sunset watching. Awesome!!!!
• Coral Reef Ecosystems: This is exactly as it sounds. We'll be at Heron Islands, an island that's less than a mile in circumference. It sounds like we'll be snorkeling all day after lectures in the morning and taking lots of underwater pictures. We had a really long lecture yesterday about dangerous animals to avoid, which was really... interesting and scary. The professor showed us all the really dangerous animals and what to do if we got bitten, stabbed, or something like that. Some of the slides said, "If you survive..." but she assured us that the worst that happens are jelly fish stings.
• Coastal Resource Management: This is basically about how to take care of the coast. Yeah. We had a long lecture about it today, but basically, we'll be going to Moreton Bay Research Station at Stradbroke Island. That's the gyst of it. I'm not exactly sure what this class will entail.
• Australia studies: self explanatory. Australia history is quite interesting, actually and seems to be quite different from the rest of the world. We started way at the beginning with the first human contact with Australia, which was like, 30K years ago or something.
• Targeted Research Project: So everybody has to do a research project here that fits into one of the above classes. Mine will be with the Coastal Forest Ecosystems - Terrestrial, as I'm doing a project on wallabies and the roles they play in a group that helps the group survive overall. I'm REALLY excited about this, and the professor I'll be working with is very excited and really cute. I hope I get to play with wallabies.

So on Monday, I leave for about 4 weeks with very unreliable Internet, so I'll probably write entries on my computer and post them when I get internet.

Some general observations:

Apparently, having outlets in a place that sells food is not good, so all the internet cafes have no outlets! Which means I gotta go soon because my battery is about to die.

Second, everything here is SUPER expensive!!! It's insane.

The bathroom at the university has stalls where when locked, it says "engaged" instead of "occupied." I think that's funny.

This weekend, I'll be going to the city's cultural center where there's a lot of cool architecture and museums. I'll also take a visit to the koala preserve where there are a bunch of koalas and other australian animals. I think there's also a plan to go tandem bicycling around the Brisbane river.

Pictures next time!

I've arrived!

Internet here is pretty scanty so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to update throughout the trip. I'm currently at the University of Queensland (where I am technically enrolled as a student, even though I don't take classes with the students or really take any classes on campus at all). Funnily enough, UQ looks a lot like Stanford in that there's a huge quad with arcs. It seems like a really nice place to go to school - there's tons of grass and a huge lake with lots of funny-looking birds. I'm sure they look completely normal to people here, probably like the local brand of pigeons and seagulls, but to us, we're all just like, "what are these things?!"

I got in yesterday morning. About 7 people from the program were on the same flight as me from SFO. We're staying at a small motel a short bus ride away from the university, where we'll be staying for the week. This week will be full of introductory lectures in the morning at the university, but we have a lot of free time in the evenings. Today, we had class at 9am and finished around 2pm. I'm not sure what we'll be doing on our free time, but there's a koala preserve I want to check out and there are apparently a lot of cool things to do in Brisbane.

I am pretty jetlagged. The flight was nice, but while I slept for probably 10 hours, it didn't feel like much. Yesterday, I fell asleep at 9pm, after forcing myself to stay up an extra few hours and napping for 2 hours in the afternoon. I haven't really done much except explore the area around our hotel. There's a shopping center with everything I need, but everything here is really expensive! and closes really early... Also, people drive on the wrong side of the road here, so I'm still getting used to that. When we got picked up at the airport, one of the guys in my group got into the drivers' seat thinking it was the front passenger seat. Pretty funny!

Apparently, I am in the sunshine state (according to the Queensland license plates), but it's been pretty gloomy since I got here. It's winter here, but according to the locals, rain like this is pretty rare. I'm excited for the sun to come out.

Apparently, my mom likes internet as much as I do

Mom: "Oh my god! WHAT? No internet for TWO WEEKS? Oh my GOD!"

I think it's hitting my mom that I'm leaving.

Frazzled!

It’s in my nature to procrastinate on everything, but this is a bit overwhelming, especially since I am not procrastinating on anything academic. I have about a day and a half before I have to leave and about a million things to do until then. I still have to buy everything I need, hang out with the friends I haven’t seen in forever, spend time with family, meet with my advisor, take care of loans, finish my summer work, and PACK!!

AHHH!!!!

Blog? Why, Hello!

In 4 days, I’ll be leaving for Australia for a little more than 3 months. I’m going down under! to Oz! Crikey!

To be completely honest, it’s weird for me to keep a public blog because I am a very private person, but I thought this would be the best way to share what I will be doing in Australia. Despite all the informational forms I’ve been getting from the abroad program about where I’m going to be going and what I’m going to be seeing there, I’m still not at all sure about what to expect. Bits and pieces of details stick out to me, but I am at a loss about a lot of smaller things, such as how I’m going to survive without internet for two whole weeks while I’m at an island somewhere in Queensland. Hmm. Sort of defeats the purpose of having a blog, right?

But Australia is ever creeping closer. I just finished 10 weeks of work in a lab, went to Hawaii for a week with my family, and now I have 4 days to complete colossal to-do lists that seem slightly impossible to finish. But I will prevail!

So, until next time, here are a few lists of things I need to do and things I will miss on my quarter in Australia. I really enjoy making lists to organize my thoughts, so you, my faithful reader, will probably be getting a lot of lists throughout my blogs. I’ll try to make it interesting, but I swear you’re gonna LOVE it!

Things I need to do before Australia:

• Buy a ton of stuff (this is a huge list in and of itself)
• Figure out tuition payments
• Finish summer volunteering stuff for SCOPE and HELP
• Pack! (ughhh… not looking forward to packing)
• See friends
• Visit Stanford
• Hang out with my sister

Things I will be missing on my quarter abroad:

• A lot of TV shows (does Hulu work in Australia?? I don’t think so…)
• Stanford football! Go card!
• Ingrid Michaelson in November
• Sara Bareilles in September (free concert with a lot of other good artists)
• Train in Berkeley
• Probably other bands as well but I’m afraid to check
• West Side Story tour in SF
• Dalai Lama and various other people visiting Stanford
• Fall-specific only-offered-every-other-year classes
• Kodi

Lastly, about the name of this blog – it was something I came up with as an afterthought at 1am a few weeks ago. I really wanted to pick a creative blog name before I went to sleep, but I couldn’t come up with anything. As a space-filler, I just put “TAgoesplaces” (roughly modeled after my sister’s “travelswithsongmy”). Then I thought about puns I could make with my name and Australia (Twozzie?) and finally landed on twallaby. I just found that day that my TRP (targeted research project) assignment would be on wallabies, and thought that “twallaby” sounded cool. The next day I realized that twallaby sort of rang a bell, and remembered that in Kindergarten, my class learned a song called Willoughby Wallaby Wee. It goes: “Willoughby Wallaby Wee, an elephant sat on me! Willoughby Wallaby Wodi, an elephant sat on Kodi!” and etc. (according to a Google search, this song actually exists!). We even made a coloring book about it which featured stick figures in crayon with a cartoon elephant pasted on top of them, often with quite a lot of crayola bloodshed present.

Anyway, after a quick poll among my close friends and sister, twallaby was chosen. I can’t say I totally love it, but it’ll grow on me, or sit on me, or something of that nature.