Week One

The Week has been insane. We left Monday night and landed in Melbourne on Wednesday morning, where we met up with Arcadia staff. There were about 100 American students and the first thing they did was to take us to see Kangaroos, and they are huge. We had a crash course in Australia history and culture, and were basically told not to drink ourselves into oblivion because at the end of the day we are still at University.

I spent a day in Melbourne with Lachie Julie’s friend from Bielefeld he took me out to some of the bars and I went to my first AFL (Australian Football League) game. Everyone here is obsessed with sports it is a different culture than they way we deal with sports in the US. Or maybe they are just more exciting because they don’t ware any padding like our football players do.

I arrived at Griffith on Saturday, and I am one of two American students studying through Arcadia at the Nathan Griffith Campus. The campus is in the middle of the bush, and after being told this about half a dozen times I finally asked what the means. Turns out that the campus is in the middle of forest. The University wanted to preserve as much of the natural surroundings as possible so they left as many trees as possible. There are Wild Turkeys all over the place and dozens of different birds flying in around. I have 6 other flat mates 5 Australians and one Korean. The first night they had a game of trivia and our team won, I mean we were team Awesome so we had to win, and last night we had inner campus game, and that basically ended with a free for all on a giant slip and slide. The people here couldn’t be more welcoming and have been very patient, we trying to get my bearings. I think the greatest thing is that on Thursday night we have the official “O-week” pub crawl, which I cannot wait for.