G’day all!

This past week has been spent meeting an immense amount of people and exploring my new city.  What a place!  Most of the Australians I have talked to are quite bored with the little city, made up of about 350,000 people or so.  But to all of us international students, it seems quite exciting!  The city centre is called the Civic.  It is a huge building, spanning 3 or so blocks, that houses hundreds of shops and cafes.  It’s a great place to go when you need anything!

On Tuesday, the exchange students over here took a bus tour around Canberra to see everything not within walking distance.  We drove up to Mt. Ainslie and got a beautiful panoramic view of the entire city.  I need to stop forgetting my camera!  From there, we could see how planned the city really is.  All of the politically important places line right up, including the Australian War Memorial, ANZAC Parade, Lake Burley Griffin, the Museum of Australian Democracy (Old Parliament House), and new Parliament House.  The south side of Canberra is where all the politicians do their business, while the north side is mainly city and residential.  We drove past some of the embassies as well.  I didn’t catch a glimpse of the supposed fortress of America, but I’d like to go see it another time.

Australians seem to be very big on their markets.  There are so many spread out through the suburbs of Canberra that it will take some time figuring out which one has the best prices!  Certainly, everything is much more expensive over here, so I will NEED to figure that out rather soon.

We enrolled in classes earlier this week as well and became official students at the ANU.  The campus is made up of about 10,000 students, so it’s not too big, but not too small.  They have everything they need on campus too: a salon, optometrist, pharmacy, restaurants, bookstore, gym, pub…  The list goes on and on.  It’s a beautiful place, and once it warms up it should be even better!  It’s usually been in the 50s here, but compared to leaving the States when it was 80, it’s quite the change.

It’s Bush Week here this week, meaning there are activities planned for every night to get students to mix and mingle with each other within Fenner Hall.  I’ll write another entry about that, and hopefully I’ll have pictures this time too!

Catch ya later!

Location: Canberra, ACT, Australia