Finally on Wednesday I had my first class. There are two campuses at New South Wales. The main campus, and then the college of fine arts campus (COFA as they call it here).

Main campus is enormous, probably bigger than Lewisburg. I think this campus has around 40,000 people at it. It's a slight change from Bucknell to say the least. I had my first class on the COFA campus, which is right near the city. This campus is much smaller. If you took the Bertrand Library, Vaughan Lit, and Coleman Hall and squished them all up against one another, that is about the size of COFA. It's a very drastic shift not only in looks, but the atmosphere is very different over here.

This campus houses all the art classes including computer graphics, drawing, painting, photography, video, and fashion/jewelry design course. Since my class wasn't until 2 p.m. I arrived early to find where my classroom was, and then I occupied myself with shopping.
The campus is located on Oxford Street, which is full of shops, restaurants, and movies theaters. I got so caught up in shopping that I was almost late for class. However, I arrived just in time and had my first 3-hour class on the introduction to analogue photography. The course sounds great and I'm very excited to get started. Then from 5-8 I had my second class which was the introduction to fashion design. My thinking, when I signed up for this class, was that we'd be sewing. I recently started sewing at home and really enjoy it, so I thought it'd be beneficial to take a course and learn the skills of this craft. However, when I was sitting in this class, the professor told us that we would not be sewing at all. It was kind of a bummer. We spent an hour or so watching videos on famous fashion designers, which was definitely entertaining, but not really my cup of tea. I don't know any fashion designers, and I'm not all that inclined to learn about them. Even though the professor was really nice and the class sounded interesting, I decided I didn't especially want to spend my time in Australia learning about fashion. I thought it would be more beneficial to learn about something while I was abroad that I couldn't necessarily learn about from home. Like Australia. So on Friday I switched my classes and joined an Australian Society course, which I think will be a little more appropriate.

On Thursday I had my Documentary and History film course. This lecture was followed by a tutorial, and I'm positive this will be a great course. This one is on the main campus and my last one is on COFA so I have to take a bus between the two campuses. I'm pretty sure I'm taking the extra long bus route, but I'm sick of getting lost so I'm just going to stick with what I know for now. My last class was a video art course, which looks very challenging. So my classes are all set to go. It's weird having 12 weeks of class and since I only have my classes once a week I only technically meet with the class 12 times. I'm not used to this. So now I have 11 weeks/classes left.

Now because I'm used to always having a job, and I only have classes three times a week, I thought getting a job here would not only be a nice way of earning a few extra bucks, but also a good way to meet some locals. So after asking around at some restaurants, and being told to leave my resume, I realized I should probably type up a resume before I kept looking. So after doing that I dropped it off at about eight different cafe/restaurants around Bondi. Later that day I got called back by one of them and asked to come into an interview. I later realized that I didn't write the name of the restaurant down and couldn't remember if it was Sahina's or Sababa's. (I applied to both of these places) So I was all frazzled and couldn't figure out how to determine which place to go to without sounding irresponsible and making a horrible first impression. Luckily Sababa's called and asked if I could come in earlier than scheduled. This solved my problem. I arrived to my "interview" and they just had me start working. That was the easiest interview I've ever been to! The way I described this restaurant to my family was that it is a food version of the Lewisburg Freez. Well, and it's Middle Eastern food. So they have falafels, pitas, babaganoush, hummus, tahini, tabouli, and lots of other toppings like that. After working a long day, I got a break and made a pita for myself. It was delicious! After working at the Freez for four years, I think I'm catching on pretty fast. I have some trouble understanding all the different accents and for some reason keep confusing tabouli and tahini (not a good mistake to make!). I'll be working here two or three days a week so hopefully with that and classes, I'll fulfill that desire to be busy and have a schedule. Now I'm off to do some homework and take a nap! Until next time...