Finally! An Update!

Hi All,

I'm so sorry, I've totally sucked at keeping my blog up to date. My excuse is that I didn't have reliable access to internet connection while I was in Quebec, and then once back home was preoccupied with seeing family and getting ready to go to Australia. There is, however, an upside to me not having been a reliable blogger (besides the fact that you have had 2 months off from being jealous of my nomadic, sporadic life), and that's that I have lots of exciting stories and pictures to share with you!

I've been in Australia for nearly two weeks now, and just had my first day of classes today. I am attending Griffith University for a semester. Griffith is located on the Gold Coast about 1.5 hours south of Brisbane. Semesters in Australia run differently than those in Canada because our seasons are reversed, so that's why I've started my semester so early.

In my experience, the first month of exchange can be a little trying as you struggle to make good friends and find activities to participate in. I'm quite excited to have started school because a university campus is always choc-full of activities to participate in and people to make friends with. I'm doing well though, as far as making friends go. Luckily, within my first week in Oz I made friends with three girls who all came from the same uni in Denmark. The girls and I hit it off at the orientation session and have been hanging out every day or two since then. I have also been taken under the wing of an Aussie named Meri, who went to Ireland and Germany on exchange last year and is back at university on the Gold Coast this semester. She knows what it's like to be an exchange student, and has taken it upon herself to be my tour guide. So far she's given me a tour of the city, taken me on a wine-tasting tour on Mount Tambourine (not far out of the Gold Coast city), and helped me search for an apartment.

The Gold Coast is divided into a number of different large sections, which are called suburbs. I'm currently staying with a homestay family in the suburb of Benowa. Benowa is right in between the University and the beach, which sounds like it would be a perfect set-up, but it actually means that I have to take a bus no matter where I want to go. Ideally, I'd like to live in the suburb called Surfers Paradise, which is along the beach and has great bus access to the Griffith campus. My homestay placement hasn't been ideal and I'm currently searching for an apartment in Surfers Paradise to move into.

A full course-load in Australia is four courses and I'm quite excited about the courses I've selected. They are: Australian Literature and History, Contemporary Aboriginal Issues, Islam in the Modern World, and Fame and Celebrity (Sociology). All of these courses fit really well into my overall course requirements, and I will be graduating on-time from St. FX this May. My semester will finish mid-November, and after my exams I'll take about a month to backpack either around Australia, New Zealand, or perhaps Asia, before heading home for Christmas and then back to St. FX in January.

I'm off to a birthday party now, but you can expect to see some photos of Australia and many, many posts about my time in Quebec in the near future!