My last weekend of summer

This weekend I was able to have a bit of a summer vacation before school started. Friday I went to the beach and had a good time being a beach bum for the 1st time in my life. Then, Saturday I left to go camping and kayaking at Myall Lake. It was about a 2 hour drive north of Newcastle, pretty remote, but it was beautiful. We camped on this strip of land, maybe 2 miles in width with the lake on one side and the ocean on the other side. While we were at camp, I was surprised how close the "wildlife" came close to us. We saw a few dingos sniffing around, and some sort of an iguana, which was rather large, maybe 4 ft in length. I wasn't close to my camera otherwise I would have gotten a few pictures. Today we kayaked down a river back to town, which turned out to be a lot longer than we had anticipated, and a lot harder, because we were going against the current, but overall it was good fun.

The center of campus, I guess they decided to have a nature reserve right in the middle. A good idea to some degree.....you can see koalas, but it is also a mosquito heaven, or as the locals call them, "mossies"

Nobby's Beach (as seen from atop Fort Scratchly)

Tree at campsite

Sunset over the lake we kayaked in

Exploring Newcastle

Friday Yoon Sun, a girl from Korea I met on the bus to Newcastle, and myself went exploring around Newcastle. This meant that I got to experience public transportation on my own for the first time. Woo? As it turns out, it's quite expensive if you do not have a student id card, which I will be getting as soon as possible! Newcastle was originally founded as a steel mill town, but has outgrown that considerably. There is a huge coal shipping industry here, as many as 75 coal ships can be seen on the horizon waiting to get into the loading area. My host family told me that most of the coal goes to China. The "Newcastle" area is about 350,000 people, but spread out quite nicely. It has a busy nightlife, but can be a bit dangerous in the early morning hours. We wandered around for the most part, taking in the sites and sounds of a different place, and ended up at Nobby's beach. Nobby's beach became famous recently when a large flood washed a giant coal ship on shore. I think it was about 2 years ago, but it made world news.

Saturday we went to Blackbutt reserve, which is just a few blocks from my house. I left my memory card for my camera at home, because I'm smart like that, but I think I can borrow some pictures from Yoon Sun eventually. There we saw koalas and kangaroos. Koalas are very cute when you see them in person. We then walked to a shopping center and ate sushi, which had to be the best I've tasted thus far. It was so fresh! Later that night, a local guy that my host mom knows was kind enough to take us to see the nightlife. We went to a park right by a bay where there was a band, it was very beautiful. I'm not sure if it is legal here, but at public functions everyone drinks wine and beer outside. I wish we could do that in the states.

That's about it, I haven't been doing anything to terribly exciting as of late, but I plan to change that soon once I get my school schedule sorted out. Orientation starts tomorrow, so I will be busy with that all this week. I'm looking forward to getting back into a schedule, meeting new people, and learning more about Australia's business practices and government.

On a side note, I enabled anonymous comments, so anyone may comment. Please feel free to let me know you're reading this, and if there is something I can do to improve it.

American lunch in Australia. Complete with mustard and "tomato sauce"

Lunch companion

Lunch view, can't beat that

Uninvited guest for lunch

Finally made it!

Above: (from top to bottom) Home

Jeremy and Jared (so nice to come up Alb to send me off, thanks again guys!)

The parents (were kind enough to drive me to Alb)

My home now (what a difference!)

After some wonderful airplane delays, I finally made it to my host families' house sometime around 3 yesterday, making the grand total travel time somwhere around 30 hours. Fun! Along the way, I met a girl from NMSU that is studying at Macquerie (sp) University which is just north of Sydney. She and I are hoping to find some time to go to New Zealand. I also met a girl from Korea on the bus. She is also staying with a host family that lives just a few blocks from me. We are hoping to find some time later this week to go to Newcastle and the beaches.

My host family is quite nice, they also have a young man from Saudi staying here, he is getting his MBA, and a young girl from Japan, but she is only here for 2 weeks. The house was built sometime in the 1940s, but they have remodeled it and it looks very nice. They are very into 50s culture, especially dancing. Apparently they used to compete and were quite good at it. Their backyard is a full acre and is amazing, all kinds of plants, complete with a vegtable garden. My host mom loves to make dresses, and they also love to throw big parties (they even have bands play on their patio!) I will try to post more pictures, but the one included above is the view from my window.

Today my host mom walked me to the local shopping center (about a 20 min walk) It was very similar to our malls, except it also included a grocery store and the restaurants were nice bistro places and were scattered throughout in the middle of the walkway. She let me pick up a package of tortillas, but I was sorely disappointed. They were "plastic" feeling and had no taste to them. She did have some salsa which I tried but it tasted more like tomato sauce. They have "taco kits" but I wouldn't consider them tacos, not sure what to call them. However, they had a huge selection of fresh fish and asian food, so I'm looking forward to trying some of that.

Australia, thus far, seems very much like America, except that they drive on the wrong side of the road, and I believe my english teachers would have a cow listening to them speak. They do not like to be addressed with "yes sir" and "no ma'am", I'm going to have to break that habbit.

Being a person from New Mexico, I feel like I woke up in a dream. It is green, hilly, and there are huge trees and vegatation everywhere. Parrots are naive birds here, which is quite strange. I'm used to seeing them in cages at pet stores, here there was a flock of them eating a tree.

I guess that's all for now, I have so much running through my mind, kind of hard to collect my thoughts, so I apologize for the scatteredness.