I Blog from a Land Down Under: One Month Down

Hi again!

Sorry its taken me so long to post. I am just too busy settling into my new life in Australia. I can't believe that I have now officially been here for one month. It feels like so much longer. I am so thankful to have this wonderful opportunity and to have met so many amazing people since being here. To start off this blog post I will talk about the real reason I am actually here which is school. I am taking four classes while I am here and they are Introduction to Event Management, International Food and Beverage, Event Marketing and Sponsorship, and OrganiSing and Staging the Commonwealth games (Yes, organising is spelt with an s here). In case you do not know what the Commonwealth Games are, they are a gaming competition where countries that are apart or once were apart of the Commonwealth compete. No, I had not heard of these before I came here. I gather that they are like a miniature version of the Olympics, but here is the exciting news......They are being held in the Gold Coast in 2018!!! There is construction all over the city preparing for the games which are four years from now. The games will be held right across from Griffith University (where I go). They are also constructing a tram that goes all across the city. They are expected to finish it right when I am leaving, of course. So far, my classes do not seem too difficult and somewhat interesting. I have a lecture and a tutorial in all of them once a week and have Thursday and Friday off. I am so thrilled to have a five day weekend every weekend! Griffith is a pretty nice school and I am getting to the point where I see someone I know almost every time I walk across campus! I love seeing familiar faces around because I can't always say the same thing about UCF. Overall though I feel like it will be a good semester!

Next, I want to talk about my weekend in Brisbane! I had so much fun traveling with such a great group of international students. We left on Friday and the trip to Brisbane was so easy and cheap. I spent less than 5 dollars getting to Brisbane. After we got off the train and headed towards Griffith University Nathan Campus to meet up with old friends and new ones. Some of our international friends from the Nathan Campus set us up to stay with their friends. So we ended up staying at the house of three French students. To thank them for letting us stay, we made them dinner. Maria and I made a wonderful sweet potato salad for them and got chicken wings to barbecue. (If you want Maria's recipe just ask, its so good!) We hung out at there house for a little while and than headed to the city to meet up with more of our friends in the center of Brisbane. We went to a place called down under and hung out and played some pool. Our friend Dorris even won $50 dollars in a dance competition. I would have entered, but I didn't think it would be fair to the other dancers. ;) The next day we explored Brisbane and I have to say it is a beautiful city. There are many tall intricate buildings and the Brisbane river flows right through the city. We took a ferry to the other side of the river where we went to a street market and a public pool. It was very cool and the vendors had so many nice things, I wanted to buy it all! We later walked to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens where we lounged in the grass and enjoyed the vegetation. Afterwards we headed to Cole's (grocery store) and bought food for a barbecue. (We have a lot of barbecues here). We had so much funny barbecuing by the river and the food was delicious! Brisbane is such a pretty city and I can't wait to go back now that I know how easy it is to get there.