So it begins.........

On Monday I had my orientation for the program. They gave us a crash course in Aussie culture, what to expect, and things to avoid. They said that the Australian culture is just superficially similar to the California culture, and that there are some major differences. Aussie's work to live, while Americans tend to live to work. Australians are some of the most highly traveled people in the world. The mantra of Australia is "she'll be all right, no worries mate" The language they speak here is not English too, it is called "swine". Here are some highlights from the slang we learned to say, as well as the slang to avoid:

Americans are called "yank tanks" or "sepes" the "tanks" and "sepes" ｃｏｍｉｎｇ　ｆｒｏｍ　septic tanks.

"lizard drinking"=busy

"veg out" = to relax in front of the tv

"chuck a sickie"=take a day off when you are healthy

"mad as a cut snake"=very angry

Words to avoid:

"root" as in "I am rooting for the home team. root is swine means to screw

"fanny" as in bum or fanny pack, which in Aussie means a females private parts

There are two profs doing are program and they are amazing. In the intro lecture one of the profs had a giant dinosaur head and pretended to eat an ancient type of tree. There are 33 people in our program, 7 guys and 26 girls, so the odds are in my favor. I was amazed at how outgoing everyone is. We had a BBQ with the profs and the grad students after orientation and then we all went exploring downtown to get phone. There were about 20 of us and we all entered the tiny virgin mobile store at once. We all got the same phone plan so we can all call each other for free. If you want to call me I receive international calls for free!!!! Dial 011-61-7-0466306863. The campus is amazing and is surrounded by the Brisbane river. You can take the city cat across the river. Here are some pics so far:

The city cat

The city cat

Some of us downtown in front of the casino

The city with the Brisbane river in front of it

My house

View of the city

kookaburra!!!!!!

An eel in the lake on campus. It was about 3-4 ft long

The UQ campus has come lakes on it with wild turtles, eels, huge flocks of parrots, giant lizards, and tons of other birds. We leave for "straddie" this weekend and we will be there for a week for our first field trip!!! Check out this link if you want to see it: http://www.stradbrokeholidays.com.au/

Last night some of us went this pub near campus called the pig whistle. It was Australian trivia night so we didn't really know any of the answers. We had our first day of real lectures today and they were really cool. Here are some random nerdy facts I learned:

Australian Aborigines have inhabited the continent for 45,000 years, while humans have only been at the Americas for about 13,500 years.

In 1994, a new tree species called the wolemi pine was found that was thought to be extinct millions of years ago. It has existed for over 90,000,000 years in an isolated gorge less than 200 km from Sydney!! Only 100 of them still exist.

Well that's all for now............talk to you guys soon!