Sarah Bunk '09

Hello everyone!!! My name is Sarah and I will be spending the semester in Sydney, Australia. I will be studying at the University of Sydney, or, as they call it in Australia, Sydney Uni. I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think I'm the last of the bloggers to leave for our respective countries. I leave on Feb. 11 and don't arrive in Melbourne (for orientation) until Feb. 13! Door to door, the trip will be about 30 hours.

Well, I'm leaving for the airport in 20 minutes, so I thought I'd write a short update before I left. Studying abroad has turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. When one imagines studying abroad, one thinks of walking through the streets of London or laying on a beach in Australia. They do not think about banking issues, cell phone issues, or visas. Even packing turned out be be a bigger project than I had anticipated. I now have two bags weighing a total of 100 pounds that I can kind of carry. I'm told that I'm going to have to carry my bags up stairs in Melbourne? We'll see how that goes.

Hello from Down Under! My travels got off to a rocky start when my luggage didn't get checked all the way through to Melbourne, but everything worked out. The greatly anticipated 16-hour flight was not nearly as bad as I expected. Although the seats seemed even more cramped than a regular flight, we were fed constantly, slept half the time, and we had tons of new movies and TV shows to watch on demand. I was actually a little disappointed when the flight ended and I wasn't able to finish the movie I was watching.

Wow, today was busy! I ended up meeting up with a few friends this morning and we spent the day exploring Sydney. In the morning we met at Victoria Park where the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival is taking place. This morning there was some sort of dog show going on. We then walked to Darlington Harbor where they are celebrating the Chinese New Year. We watched a few dragon boat races where the rowers were all breast cancer survivors. Our next stop was the Maritime Museum. By this point, we were pretty hungry so we started heading away from the tourist area looking for something cheap.

It's been a while. I have only been in Sydney for about a week, but it feels like so much longer. I have continued to spend a lot of time in the city, which is always fun. I went to the botanical gardens to watch the "Royal Rendezvous" of two cruise ships, the Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Victoria. The entire shoreline of the harbour as far as I could see was packed with people and the harbour was full of boats wanting a closer view. The sky was full of helicopters patrolling the area and taking footage from the sky.

I am losing my faith in the dollar. Since I've arrived, the exchange rate here has gotten worse. The exchange rate is still in our favor, but only slightly. When I exchanged money the other day, I actually got less money back than I gave to the bank. The bank teller was shocked and was showing it to the other tellers; he said he's never seen that before ... great. Note to family: No more sending cards with money in them. Just deposit it in my account.

I'm excited about the classes that I'm taking. They all seem they are going to be a lot of fun (well, except for one of my very math-based engineering classes, but that is to be expected). A class that has been particularly interesting is Archaeology of Sydney. I took an archaeology class at Bucknell and really enjoyed it, so I thought this class would be a great way to learn about the city. So far we've discussed the imperialism that was taking place in the world that lead up to different nations claiming Australia as well as what life was like for the first European settlers. Fun fact: Holland claimed the western part of Australia before the English claimed the area that is now Sydney. We're taking several field trips to the older sections of Sydney to look at old buildings/neighborhoods and current archaeological dig sites. The lecturers are really engaging and funny which makes the class even better.

It's about time for another blog entry ... now that I have some good material to write about. The past school week was relatively uneventful. St. John's had a cricket game against another college, we had a long meeting, I went to a few dance classes, and I caught up with some friends. On Wednesday I trekked into the city with a friend to do a little shopping for our upcoming outback trips. Becca had looked online and found the location of one or two outdoor stores. We headed off to the first and stumbled upon one while on the way. We looked around for a bit and BAM, saw that there was another next door. Almost every store on the block was an outdoor store carrying essentially the same merchandise. So FYI, if you're ever in Sydney and in need of some boots, one block of Kent Street has about 10 stores to choose from.

Greetings! I have returned from my "spring" break trip to the outback. It was AMAZING! Basically I flew to Alice Springs and did stuff around there, dove to Darwin and did stuff around there, and then flew back to Sydney. I went not knowing anyone, but met "heaps" of amazing people along the way and made some great friends. Warning: This post is ridiculously long, but definitely check out the PICTURES!

UPDATED WITH CAVING PICTURES

Time is a confusing thing, especially when you study abroad. So I lost a day when I flew over here (Feb. 12 just didn't happen) and when I arrived I was 16 hours ahead of the East coast. One issue with being so off from everyone at home is that most of the time it is a different day here than back in the U.S. Wishing people happy birthday has never been so complex.

Wow, it seems like everything is happening at once. Since the Blue Mountains I've been working like crazy ... or at least "working." This past weekend was, I think, my first "regular" weekend since I've been in Australia. And by "regular" I mean I slept in, bummed around, and did work. It was AMAZING to sleep in.

No worries, mate, I'm still alive and well down here. The past few weeks have been what should be my busiest weeks of the semester in terms of school work. Midterms (yes, I know you all are finishing up), projects, presentations, assignments...why is it that professors feel the need to make everything due at the same time? Also, before this weekend, it rained for about two weeks straight. Cold and rainy? Wait, am I in London or Sydney?

But seriously, folks, I didn't realize how cold it would get here! Tonight (aka right now) it is going to be in the 40s. Fahrenheit. I'm really appreciating all the warm clothes that everyone teased me about for bringing. It is a little depressing that the weather is only going to get worse while I'm here.

OK, time to talk about all the fun things that have happened!