"Study abroad is extremely important; just for kids to get outside this country and experience the fact there is a big world out there." - George Lucas, creator of Star Wars

I know I said I would blog on Sunday, but classes began this week and I couldn't resist! :-) I will also have a blog up on Sunday too so no worries, mates, you'll get to hear about my Wednesday, Thursday and weekend.

Me on the first day of classes - Feb 28th

On Mondays, I have one class, Romanticism in Literature. My lecturer, Eric, is also my tutor for my tutorial which is nice. As a whole, it seems like a decent enough course -- the lecture seems manageable, and he is even putting up the lecture Powerpoints on Blackboard so they can be reviewed later! We get to read Frankenstein (Yay!!) and a bunch of poetry by Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, etc. The tutorial was also the same day as my lecture which was really nice because it means I get to focus on one subject the entire day. This means it is a discussion, where the students and tutor (in this class, the same as my lecturer) talk about what we have read and discuss it more in depth. It really reminds me of how Lesley's class works, which is something I was concerned about when I learned that classes here were lots of lectures. We went over how to do a close reading of a poem by Charlotte Smith, which was good because we have some close readings due in two weeks time. I have two research papers due for that class in April and May, and I believe that means I have no final exam. :-)

I ended up having lunch (in between my lecture and tutorial) with two Australian boys, who are pre-med or on the medicine track. It's weird how majors work here, but I'm going with the flow and learning. We sat under the shade of a tree for an hour but when I got home later I noticed I had a huge sunburn on my back! It is in the shape of my dress, which I laughed about, and I just wore a t-shirt and loads of sunscreen to protect myself today.

On Tuesdays (today!), I also have one class, Australian Indigenous Issues: Past, Present and Future. I found out while waiting for the lecture theatre to open up that one of my roommates, Caroline, is also in the same class. I think, at least so far, it is my most interesting course. The lecturer is named Linda but she prefers to be called by her Indigenous name, Payi. She also greeted us in her native tongue and hopes that by the end of the semester we can even understand some of it.

It said on my timetable that it was a 3-hour lecture and I was a little freaked out by it. Lesley doesn't really do long lectures; to be honest I've never really had a lecture because I've been awesome and avoided it (except for one history class I took sophomore year). It turns out though that 2 hours of the course is a lecture -- and we have guest speakers quite a bit! -- and the last hour is a tutorial, the discussion part of the course. Our class is huge, at least by my standards but isn't as bad as Laura's (you can click on her name to get to her blog) 500 person lectures, and so our tutorials will just be the people sitting in our row versus the class as a whole having a discussion. Today we had a 20 minute break and I bought an apple at the Bio Sciences cafe, cleverly named Darwin (don't get me started on how much I love it). For our work, we have to write a discussion board response each week, and 2 papers for that class with 8 sources each. Whoever said study abroad classes were easy never took mine...and this is an intro/fresher level class!

I had lunch on campus again and ended up eating with two 18-year-old boys (why do I have this habit, so strange but not bad...I mean...boys!) who were engineering majors. I doubt I'll ever see them again, but they were good company and it was so hot outside (91 degrees F with humidity!) that I was glad I was indoors even if there was just a slight breeze with the fans.

Tomorrow is my longest day. I have a lecture from 11 to 12 and then a tutorial from 2 to 3, and then another lecture at 5. My tutorial for my second lecture on Wednesday is actually on Thursday at 11 am, and then no Friday classes. Woo hoo! I promise to blog again on Sunday to recap the rest of my week and weekend. Hope all is well wherever you are and don't forget to let me know you read this... I'd love to hear from you all!

xo