First Day of Classes! (February 28)

Today was the day I finally started classes. My schedule here is very different from back at home. Here you only have either one 2hr lecture or two 1hr lectures and a tutorial to go with that so you don’t have much class time. I am only taking four classes this semester so my schedule is pretty light in terms of going to classes. I am taking Organizational Behavior, Cross-Cultural Communications, Practical Ethics, and Introduction into Human Resources. For my schedule I have no classes on Mondays, 1 lecture on Tuesday starting at 5pm, 2 lectures and 2 tutorials on Wednesday starting at 10am, 2 lectures and 2 tutorials starting at 8am on Thursdays, and no classes on Fridays. I pretty much have a 5-day weekend, which I’m pretty stoked about because that means more traveling! : ) This week we also only have to attend lectures, not the tutorials, so I only have class 5 times.

That being said, to kill some time Lewis and I made a trip to Costco. We got super lucky with the trains and getting some express trains (limited stops, so it’s a lot faster) and we were able to get there in about 45 minutes. After eating a very inexpensive Costco lunch of combo pizza and a mixed berry smoothie because it was so hot out we headed into Costco. (Side note about the pizza, instead of pepperoni they have Hawaiian, which I’m definitely going to have to get next time) We stalked up on toilet paper and paper towels. I also got notebooks for my classes, peanut butter, canned albacore tuna (which I’m super excited about because its really hard to find albacore in the stores here they have all these different flavors and kinds that are not familiar to me at all), almonds (also a great buy because nuts are so pricey here so I got a big pack and will freeze half while I eat the others), and my favorite frozen salmon that my mom buys all time. I will definitely being making another trip back to Costco but with a cool bag so I can get more frozen foods.

After a bit of a longer trip back home I headed over to campus to figure out where my classes were. I found out my first class is in one of the furthest buildings from where we live. It ended up not being too far, but its definitely a trek to class (about a 15-20 minute walk on a good day). I met up with Natasha half way there because we have this class together. We ended up being early so we waited for a bit, then we were let into our lecture. Our teachers name is Martina Mollering. She has a very interesting accent and loves to get the class involved. This is very rare for lectures from what I heard, normally you only talk/participate in your tutorials. We went over the structure of the course, the assignments, some main definitions, and had a discussion and then we were dismissed. The hour went by a lot more quickly then I expected it to. After class I headed to the library to try and find the books I needed for my classes and check them out from there instead of having to buy them. I was only to find one, but seeing that two of my courses have an online book that was pretty good. I also downloaded some handouts and such from the ilecture. The ilecture is the teacher’s online portal where they post everything for their class. They post every single lecture (so technically you don’t ever have to attend lecture you could just watch all of them but I will be going to the lectures), assignments, articles, grades, etc. It’s the main place to go if you have any questions, missed anything, want to start a discussion, etc. I want to attend my lectures not only because I learn better this way but also because I really want to meet more Australians and experience the lecture in the class room not in my room or the library. It will be convenient if I fall ill or for some reason can’t make it but I am going to try and attend every lecture.

The traditional 'First day of School' Photo

Oh ya the library is gorgeous. They just redid the library and it is amazing. I will probably be spending a lot of time in there so I’m so glad I love it so much. (A big plus about it too is that it is air conditioned!! Woohoo)

I headed home after being at the library for a few hours. I got a little home sick on the way home and had a little moment of crying while walking home. After getting home and taking a shower though I felt a lot better. I don’t know why I started crying or what made me home sick it was just so random but it happens I guess. I didn’t feel like cooking because it was a little late, so I just made a classic toasted pb&j and then Minna, Suzy, Lewis, and I watched the movie ‘Big’