begin Australia

So this is my sixth day in Australia, third day in Canberra at the ANU. It has been 6 flights, 30hrs in the air, and many more hours in airports getting here. I spent my first 3 days in Cairns ("Cans") at AustraLearn's "program orientation."

Cairns was a great time. About 30 of us AustraLearn students shacked up in a hostel called Serpents. This was the *dodgiest-place-ever.* I roomed with seven other guys (four of them frat brothers from a Connecticut university) in this rectangular space with bunk beds. Our room was basically wrank, the carpet was stained all over from god knows what, and the communal bathroom down the hall was a sauna in itself because if there was any ventilation, it wasn't working. There's a hostel for you. Right, and it was so humid in Cairns that whatever swimsuits or towels we used never fully dried. The climate in that part of Australia (Queensland) is best explained by the term "wet tropics" (as opposed to dry tropics) because it's tropical (rainforesty is the official term, I think) and super wet. So lots of rain and humidity is pretty standard there. It was also very sunny and hot. Something like 30+ degrees Celsius every day, which is like upwards of 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, Cairns had been and still is on alert for dengue fever which is a tropical disease carried by mosquitoes and your friends. You get aches, fever, weakness, and sometimes a rash. It really sucks.

But like I said, Cairns was actually a great time.

Day 1 (on arrival in Cairns):
~At the airport we met up as a group and with our 4 AustraLearn coordinator dudes/dudettes, who were all pretty cool. The AustraLearn reps were all fairly young. Two were Americans who had been living in Australia/NZ for a while and two were native Aussies. They were in truth pretty cool people and ridiculously fun guides. After traveling on planes for more than a day without showering, we were all pretty grimy, so the guys in my room and I dropped our stuff and went straight to the hostel pool. Then we played volleyball a bit and finally took showers. Later that evening I went to the hostel pub with some new friends, had a few drinks, went up to bed around 10-ish, opened up a book to read, and promptly fell asleep.

Day 2 (Cairns):
~This was RainForeStation day. We went on a bus up a mountain that had undergone a rock/mudslide earlier that morning. On the way up this thing we were looking out the bus windows and saw a car that had fallen off the edge of the mountain road and down onto the side of the mountain in the bushes. Good stuff. Anyhow, when we got to the Rainforestation Nature Park we learned about the rainforest there, held snakes, koalas, learned about cane toads (Australia's national pest), and hung out with kangaroos whom we were able to feed, pet, and just chill around with. Kangaroos seem like the furry, mellow, marsupial versions of velocirators. At the park we also watched an indigenous Australian dance, threw boomerangs, played the didge, and had a good time.
~then volleyball and swimming back at the hostel
~Later that night... most of us when to this pub/restaurant and we all sat at these long rectangular tables and drank and ate and yelled back and forth just to talk to each other. Well, it was a good time.

Day 3 (Cairns):
~Scuba diving and snorkeling out in the Great Barrier Reef. Scuba diving was amazing. I'd say it's something you should try before you die.
~found out that the father of one of the 4 fraternity students from Connecticut was in the mafia. That bit of information helped me put in perspective the gold chain he wore, why the other frat guys constantly surrounded him like groupies, and his indifference to the nice crack in the screen of his new apple laptop which fell from the top of a bunk bed.
~In the evening the AustraLearn reps did a final information session for us about Australia and dispersing to our unis, which included an orientation wrap-up complete with pictures and memories from our 3 days in Cairns. Being in a completely different part of the world for the first time for even just 3 days is enough time for you to form an incredible number of new memories and a huge impression of the place. Really, our 3 days in Cairns for the AustraLearn orientation was almost in miniature a smaller but similar arc to what will be my entire time here. I arrived, met 30 other students who were going to various other universities in Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, etc., learned a lot about Australia and had a lot of experiences with other students, then exchanged goodbyes and flew off. I had only just met the other AustraLearn students a couple of days before and I was sorta sad that we were all splitting up already. We all shared what was for most of us our first intense experiences in Australia. So when I left Cairns (with 3 other ANU students) to fly to Canberra, I was sort of wishing we had had more time. I can only imagine what it will be like to leave Canberra to fly back home in 5 or so months.

Note: AustraLearn gets my approval. The reps were wicked nice, knowledgeable, and helpful. Made for a great first 3 days in Australia.

Day 4 (CANBERRA):
~Arrived in Canberra at the ANU after a couple of flights and a bus ride. Explored the city a bit. Met heaps of new people (veteran ANU students as well as newbies and internationals like me).
/day 4

This is what I have been telling everyone about my first impressions of Canberra -- Canberra reminds me a lot of Wachington D.C. (which isn't surprising, I'll explain in a second) and New Mexico. Imagine Washington D.C. in the middle of New Mexico surrounded by bush and mountains and nothing else for miles. That's what Canberra's like. ANU is located on the outskirts of the city, and within 15 minutes you can walk to a large mall and shopping centre (one which rivals some of the big malls back in the U.S.). Pubs, restaurants, and grocery stores are pretty abundant too.

Canberra sits inland between Sydney and Melbourne (two of Australia's most happening cities) on the east coast of Australia. For the longest time, before Canberra existed, both Sydney and Melbourne fought it out to be Australia's capital city. Soooo...they planned out and built a third city in between the two and called it Canberra. Canberra was in fact modeled after the U.S. capital D.C. So it's a bit odd when I walk through the city that it reminds of being back in D.C. Except Canberra seems to be on the whole a lot cleaner and less confusing to wander around in. More on the city when I've done more exploring.

So there are major fires tearing apart Australia's southern territory Victoria. In fact, I met a 5th year ANU law student from Victoria yesterday and he was asking me if I knew where Victoria was, and I was like "of course, that's where the fires are" and I guess he wasn't prepared for me to bring that up because he grew quiet for a few seconds and explained that just thinking about it made him feel pretty emotional. The point is, the fires are a huge deal here. I opened a national newspaper the other day and stories about people who had died in the fire or whose houses and belongings had been destroyed filled every page. At least a few of the fires are known to have been arson. It's pretty crazy.

Also, really quickly let me just tell you how weird the idea of unisex communal bathrooms/showers in the dorm seemed to me at first. My first thought: "really!?" But after a few days of bumping into girls pretty regularly in the restroom or showers, well, it's pretty standard and not all that odd now. The bathrooms in my dorm are the only ones I know of to be unisex here. All other restrooms around campus and in the city have been "men" or "women." I think it would be a good debate about whether restrooms and showers should or should not be unisex.