After spending 17 days with my girlfriend Katie who came to Australia to:
a) Visit Me
b) See Australia
c) None of the above
d) Both a & b

I've been studying for finals that are fast approaching and am in the multiple guess question mind state. I'm just playing around, I hope the answer was d.

After leaving Newcastle at 2:30 in the morning and picking her up at the airport. We walked around for the better part of the whole day and saw the Botanical Gardens, the Sydney Opera House, Darling Harbor, the Sydney Fish Market along with a lot more.




Me and Katie at the Sydney Opera House


Darling Harbor




Inside the Sydney Fish Market (very crowded)

We had a hostel booked that night in Sydney but we decided that we wanted to get back home. So we took the 3 hour train ride back to Newcastle and hung out for the rest of the weekend. That week I had class and Katie went to campus with me. She sat in on my Thermodynamics class that was going over the Carnot Cycles for Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Cycles as well as the Schematics of Diesel vs. Petrol Engines. Pretty exciting stuff if you ask me but I'm sure she was board.

That Thursday morning my roommate Cody, my German mate Freddy, Katie and I rented a CamperVan and decided to drive up the east coast to Brisbane. Its a 12 hour dive but it was defiantly worth it. We thought about flying but decided to go with the inexpensive option and rented a van. We got to see so much more country side and so much more of Australia driving and I don't think there would have been a better way to show her and myself Australia. We drove to Brisbane that Thursday and went to the Australian Steve Irwin Zoo the next day. After seeing the town we drove down the coast to Surfers Paradise and hung out on the beach that day.


The Advanced CamperVan we rented for 4 days and fit 4 adults in


Katie and the soft Koala


Me and a roo


Downtown Brisbane at night


Me and Katie at Surfers Paradise Beach

After relaxing on the beach that day we drove further down the coast and spent the night in the Van at Bryon Bay. After spending the next day on the beach playing frisbe and body boarding we left and made the drive back to Newcastle yes just intime for class!! For those of you wondering I didn't even miss a class for this long weekend. :-)
Going to class the next week Katie and I went on a Wine, Cheese & Olive Oil tasting tour. The tour took us to six different wineries in the Hunter Valley Region and two cheese and olive oil tasting places. This tour was absolutly amazing. The Hunter Vally is known in Australia for the best wines in the country it was difintally a step up from the wine I've had before.


Katie and I sipping some wine


Katie and I on a vineyard in the Hunter Valley Region

The last weekend Kaite was in Australia we spent in Newcastle hanging out with friends and seeing the city.
This comming week two of our college friends from back home are coming for a week. We are planning on going on a harbor curse in Sydney and possible another wine tour. Should be a lot of fun showing them around.
Hope everything is going well back home for everyone!!!

Newcastle to Sydney, Sydney to Cairns and Back

After completing half of the school year in Newcastle Australia Easter came and we had a week off from school. Me and some of my mates decided that we should make a trip up to the northern tip of Australia. I ventured into Sydney Central Station by myself to meet up with Cody, Alyssa, and Jill.

Me on the train riding to Sydney Central Station.

We all then got on a plane and three hours later we were at our destination, Cairns Australia. Cairns is defiantly a tourist town that has a lot to offer. The sights are breathtaking the weather remains around 30 degrees Celsius, 86 degrees Fahrenheit, even in the winter. This part of Queensland is the only place in the world where two World Heritage listed Sites, the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics Rain forest, lie side by side. Fortunately we got to visit and tour both the Word Heritage Sites in two days. The first day we toured the Rain forest which was an exciting experience.

We saw some wildlife including Fat Albert pictured below. Fat Albert is a crocodile that is 4.5 meters long and 500 kilos. Now for those of us who aren't familiar with the metric system that's 14.78 feet long and 1,100 lbs, pretty intimidating right. Our tour guide pulled our boat up approximately 10 yards away from this guy who was laying out sunning himself just on the shore.

The jungle itself was a great experience but unfortunately the jungle is visited by tourists everyday and there are some people that are looking to make a quick buck rather than preserving this 110-million year old rain forest. I understand that I didn't help matters paying a tourist company to show me around but as in the picture below the jungle has been invaded by the humans.

The next day we went white water rafting. It rained the entire day but it didn't really matter because we were soaked anyways. They were class 4 rapids on the Tully River about a hours drive from Cairns.



We met a local Australian that someone in our group knew from their college. He took us around in his car to several beaches and showed us some great lookout spots.

Me sitting on the rocks looking out over the ocean.

The beach was beautiful, although you couldn't swim outside the net due to blue bottle jelly fish.

Miles of beaches line the coast followed closely by mountains.

A two hour boat ride out to the Reef was also on our schedule for the second to last day. A couple of people in our group went scuba diving but I was content, not paying extra, and just snorkeling.

Me diving down to get a closer look.

Beautiful brightly colored fish swimming every ware.

I followed this approximately 100 year old turtle around for half an hour watching him. He was huge!

A huge clam that was just hanging out.

The final day we had something special planed. We got picked up at our hotel at 6 in the morning and went sky diving over the ocean landing only a short distance from the beach.

Anyone else feeling nervous?

Running though my head right now "What have I gotten myself into?"

No thinking involved.

Free falling for 60 seconds.

Gliding gently to ground, I can't stand up yet because my hands and legs are shaking.

Over all it was a great Easter Break. Hope everyone enjoys the pictures.

I'm getting excited about the coming weeks because Katie is coming down to see me. I haven't seen her for a little under 4 months! She flys in May 9th and leaves May 25th. It should be fun showing her around!

Studying Abroad.

After completing my first two weeks of school there is a lot to share.

School is going good I’m taking Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics and Organic Chemistry. Some pretty tough courses but it should go good. Classes here are different; it’s an unfamiliar style of learning. Every class has a workshop, tutorial, lab, and lecture. For each class have one workshop, tutorial a week but several lectures and one lab every two weeks. The workshops are where everyone gets broken up into small groups to solve problems, getting help from other students and teachers along the way. Tutorial is where the teaching assistants solve more complex problems allowing you to see each individual step of the problem solving process. Laboratory is where experiments are conducted and 10 to 20 page lab reports are written after each lab. This helps me with what 99.9% of college students struggle with, procrastination. A 10 to 20 page lab report seems bad but half an hour each night for two weeks makes it a lot easier. For some reason this amazing concept hasn’t registered in my mind tell now. Putting together a well written report I know is one of the most important part of being and engineer or just a person in general no matter your profession. You have to be able to communicate in writing. I am the first one to admit that writing is not my strongest subject and hopefully this will help. Finally, the most boring, are the 2 straight hours of sitting in front of the professor and listening to him/her lecture. Pretty exciting stuff if you can pay attention that long. The first thing that jumped out at me when I started class was that a lot less emphasis is put on the theoretical practice of engineering, learning formulas, “plug and chug” problems, and more emphasis is put on communication and writing. Hopefully this will help me improve my weaker writing skills. The campus day by day is starting to become more familiar. I don’t quite feel like a freshman anymore getting out my map and asking everyone where am I?

We have a fall break for a week starting on April 9^th and we are planning on heading up the cost to Cairns for 5 days staying at Hostels. Through our school we have set up a day trip to The Great Barrier Reef with snorkeling. We have also set up a guided tour through Cape Tribulation a rainforest, white water rafting, and the most exciting sky diving over the reef landing on the beach. Should be a fun experience!

The Harbor in Sydney at night.

Last weekend we attended the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney. It’s supposed to be the biggest festive in Australia. And with no disappointment it was a very interesting and sometimes disturbing weekend. Half a million people flocked to the streets of Sydney for the parade and following celebrations. After being at the festival I imagine it being Mardi Gras in New Orleans, then put half that crowd in speedo’s and or less and you have the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Cody Freddy and I stuck together and kept our distance from anything that looked suspicious. In the end the parade and the festival was a lot of fun and definitely something that I won’t forget anytime soon.

Pretty Fancy.

Can you tell which ones are real? I can't.

Just enjoying the sights.

That’s all the updating I have to share with everyone. I hope everything is going well back home!

Just Heaps of Fun.

One of the first things that you must know about the University of Newcastle in Newcastle Australia is that 40% of the students who attend the uni are study abroad students.  So at social events it gets very interesting talking to vast array of people with different accents and levels of English. Its a very different cultural experience than back in the states.  I've become really good friends with Will from Holland who is taking 6 months of his life and traveling up the cost of Australia then New Zealand then Japan. Another one of my good friends who is also going to uni is Frederick from Germany.  You never know who your going to bump into on every given night and what their story is.  

We are fully moved in to our new apartment and have made several day trips to the beach a short 10 min walk.  We have also made a couple of 10 min train trips into campus to look at our buildings and find out way around.  The University is like a national forest with a scatter of buildings with paths in the trees connecting the buildings.    

Newcastle Beach is only a short 10 min walk away.

Walking from building to building on campus is like taking a nature hike. 

Cody and I are officially moved in to our new apartment and just completed our traditional college "Super Cleaning Wednesday."

Kitchen of our apartment is attached to the living room below.

The bedroom with two single beds. 

I start school this coming Monday 3/2/09.  I will be taking Thermodynamics, Fluids, and Organic Chemistry.  I am also thinking about taking an Aboriginal Studies class as well.  I'm ready to start having a schedule and some sturcture.  I hope everything is well back home with everyone!

It finally feels like home

We have found an apartment. After 4 days of searching and getting pretty frustrated we found a place to live. Its a one bedroom with two single beds fully furnished pretty nice apartment. It was the cheapest one we looked at in our four day search. It right on the bus route to the University of Newcastle and like a 5 min walk to the train which takes you right next to the University. Everyone says the train is cheaper so I'll probably make the walk.

Its been raining here just about every day since we got to Australia which a bunch of local students told us that they haven't had rain since November. So its really weird weather right now. Its still in the 80's 90's every day and sunny most of the day. Yesterday we went out on the beach for a while and we couldn't get into the water because lifeguards spotted great white sharks right off the beach. Then they had a helicopter come and do flyby's to spot them. Pretty interesting stuff.

Well I've got to run. We are signing the lease today at 1 and moving in after. I will post pictures of the apartment the University and of the beach that's like a 5 min walk from my apartment soon!!!

Bula!

Hey everyone I wanted to get a post in to upload some photos and give everyone a quick update. After a long travel we finally made it to Newcastle Australia. Today we are going apartment shopping and trying to find a place where we can finally unpack our bags. Living out of a suit case gets very old after a while.

Fiji was everything I thought it would be. We had trouble getting adjusted to the time change but it definitely was worth it having a few days to just relax on the beach and take it easy. One afternoon through our hotel we went out to the outer islands of Fiji and went snorkeling. An Auzzy was snorkeling with us saw two sharks that were about 2 feet long. Unfortunately i didn't get to see them but we did get to see bright blue star fish and many other brightly colored fish along with tons of coral. It definitely reminded me of something you would see on Nat Geo.

This is a picture off of our hotel balcony in Fiji.

Cody and I stayed in Sydney Australia for 2 nights at a Hostel after we left Fiji. We got to walk around and see pretty much all of Sydney. The Opera House and the Bridge, we walked up and down the peer. The Opera House is definitely one of those things that you should see. We didn't get to walk up "The Rock" which is the bridge because it costs like 80 auz.

Me standing in front of the Sydney Opera House and the Bridge. The Rock climb you actually climb up the superstructure of the bridge and are up by the flags (you can see the flags in the picture) on top of the bridge.

Well I hope to be finding a place today and will be able to have easier access to the internt so I can keep everyone updated. I hope everything is going well for everyone back home!

Uncharted Territory

Its been a while since my last posting and I just wanted to let everyone know that a lot more postings and pictures will be coming in the near future. I will be studying next semester at the University of Newcastle in Newcastle Australia. I will be spending about 6 months in Australia and I am looking forward to this new and excited adventure. I will keep all of my family, friends, neighbors and strangers updated about my new experiences while studying abroad.