Laurin's Study Abroad Experience!

A record of my experiences in Australia! July-November 2017

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9/21/2017- Sydney

I spent three full days exploring Sydney.  I was really lucky to be able to stay with my neighbor’s brother, who lives near the train station, so I could ride right into downtown Sydney easily each day.  The first day, I went on a walking tour to learn a little history of the city and get my bearings (the history is that England sent convicts to Australia, and eventually enough people stayed there that it grew itself into a proper town).  The tour ended in the Sydney Harbour, right at sunset, so I got a really cool picture of the Opera House in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge

The first full day, I visited Hyde Park and Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the Sydney Observatory, and then walked partway across the Sydney Harbour Bridge (on the road level walkway).  The second day, I got to do the BridgeClimb in the morning!  It was totally amazing, and the views were incredible!

In the evening, I watched the sunset from the Royal Botanic Gardens.

On the third day, I took the ferry to Manly and ate lunch at the beach.  The weather on all three days was SO nice (especially compared to chilly Canberra). That evening, I met up with the group I would be taking the next part of my vacation with- I signed up for a bus trip from Sydney to Brisbane, with lots of stops and activities along the way.  We all went out to eat and everyone got along great right away (which is good because we were going to be spending the next six days together)!

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9/21/2017

Whoops, it’s been a while!  In my defense, I’ve spent the last two weeks travelling, but that means I’ve got a whole bunch of new pictures to share!  We had a two week school break at the beginning of September, and I took full advantage of it to explore the eastern coast of Australia.

My first stop was Melbourne.  The first day, I went on a tour along part of the Great Ocean Road.  The Great Ocean Road was built by soldiers who had returned from World War I, and is the world's largest war memorial.  The day started out clear with some showers (enough for a pretty spectacular rainbow!). 

We stopped at a nature reserve, where I met some very friendly parrots.

Then we went to a cool temperate rainforest, where we actually saw some snow (it was really cold)!  At this point, the rain started to come down pretty hard and the wind picked back up, but we pushed on to see some wild kangaroos, the Loch Ard Gorge (with some of the biggest waves our guide said he’d ever seen there), and the Twelve Apostles.  We all got soaked, but we had a lot of fun!

The second day in Melbourne, I went on a trip to Phillip Island, home of the Penguin Parade!  On the way, we stopped at Maru Nature Reserve and got to take pictures with a koala and feed kangaroos.  A koala’s fur is really soft and dense- Diesel felt like a big plushie toy!

We made a couple more quick stops at the Phillip Island chocolate factory and the Nobbies (cool rock formations) before the penguin parade.  Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to take pictures during the parade because flash blinds the penguins, but it was so cool!  The “little penguins” are the world’s smallest penguin species, and they were so cute!  At sunset, they start coming out of the ocean in small groups, and often wait for their friends to catch up before waddling up the hill together towards their burrows for the night.  By the time it’s dark, the air is filled with the sounds of penguins calling to each other.

My next stop was Sydney, but I’ll write about it in a separate post! 

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8/7/2017

Those of you who know me well may know that I’m a bit of a stress baker.  I was feeling a little homesick this week, especially because I missed my mom’s birthday on Friday, but at least it resulted in these yummy chocolate chip zucchini muffins for my roommates!

I’ve never actually made muffins before, so I think these turned out pretty well!

Last week I went out to my first bar/clubs with my roommates (they were very excited for my first time out on the town once I reminded them that the drinking age in the states is 21).  It was crazy crowded since it was the first weekend back at school, but still pretty fun!

Things have been pretty busy with school, I’ve already had a few homework assignments due.  I’ve got a really wide variety of classroom structures- one is a traditional lecture with a tutorial/workshop on Fridays, one is a flipped classroom (watching lecture videos at home and working on problem sets and homework during class) with lab workshops, one is an independent research study, and one is sort of self-directed right now because it’s difficult for me to get to class.  

A few differences between UA and ANU:

I have graduate students in a couple of my classes, which doesn’t really happen at UA.  They also have no idea what’s going on, which is reassuring.

My physics class only requires 4 labs for the semester, with a report every after every two weeks of lab.  This is a nice vacation from a 3 hour lab and report every week (though if I were at UA this semester, I wouldn’t have any labs at all :P)

Some universal similarities:

No one teaches profs how to use classroom technology

Everyone hates lab

I have my first physics lab this week, from the photos in the lab manual it looks like their equipment might be newer than the equipment at UA (my lab partner was shocked when I mentioned this to her).  I picked labs that I already knew a little bit of the theory behind (or knew how to work the equipment) so it shouldn’t be too bad.

I also signed up for a “Tidbinbilla” trip which will be on Friday.  We’re going to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve where we’ll see lots of kangaroos, koalas, and other native Australian species, NASA’s Deep Space Center, and Mt. Stromlo Observatory (so expect lots of pictures)!

I’ll end with another photo from Mt. Stromlo this morning, I saw a rainbow on the way up today but it was too faint to take a picture of.  This is the view from one of the walkways that connects the buildings.

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I've got a pretty nice view from my desk at Mt. Stromlo! (At least until my advisor's partner comes back and I have to move to the other desk that faces a wall 😢). Perk of the job that they don't tell you about: observatories have the best views!

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7/25/2017

It’s been a busy couple of days for me in Canberra!  Classes officially started yesterday, but I don’t have any regular class meetings on Mondays.  One of the four classes I’m taking is a research independent study, so on Mondays I’ll be up at Mt. Stromlo working on that!  I’m working with Dr. Katie Jameson on some early star formation research.  I had my first day there yesterday, everyone was really nice and welcoming.  The project I’m working on seems really hard right now, but that just means I’ll learn a lot from it.  I have to keep reminding myself I felt the same way at the start of my research project last year too.

Today is my first day of normal classes.  I have a few schedule conflicts (two of my classes are Tues/Thurs at 9 am) so I was planning on going to ASTR 4004 (Astronomical Computing) on Tuesdays and PHYS 2016 (Electromagnetism) on Thursdays, but I realized this morning that the computing course is at Mt. Stromlo (the equivalent of having a course at Kitt Peak for anyone from UA who’s reading this :P).  I don’t have a car, so the only way up there is a shuttle at 8:30 am, and I’d be stuck up there until 5 pm when the shuttle takes you back down.  There is basically nothing but offices up there, so I’d have to bring a lunch and I’d be pretty bored. Attending that class would also mean missing the ASTR 3002 (Black Holes and Cosmology) class that I have later in the day. This is... less than ideal, so I’ll have to rework my schedule and figure out when (if at all) I can go to that class.

One thing that ANU does differently than UA is they record all of their lectures and put them online, so if you have a schedule clash you’re not totally screwed.  This means that I can miss some classes in favor of attending others without needing a time turner or falling behind, but I’d still rather be in the classroom than watch a video.

I’ve also met all of my roommates!  The last one came back late last night, so I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to her, but everyone has been really nice and welcoming.  I’m living with one other exchange student (she’s from South Korea) and then 3 other girls who were all here last semester.

So, a lot of adjustment from the way I’ve been doing things at UA, and it’s definitely not going to be easy, but I think it will be a pretty good semester!

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The view of Telestra Tower on Black Mountain from my room!

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These are some of the science buildings on campus

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My hall theme is “dad jokes”