First Two Weeks

Hello Everyone,

I decided to start a blog so I could keep in contact with more people about my Australian experiences. I hope to keep this updated about once a week, so be looking for a new entry each Sunday. To give just a brief background, this opportunity was presented last November in one of my Civil Engineering classes by Joy Erb who is the Student Services Coordinator for the Engineering department. Coming into Northeastern I wanted to explore the option of doing a study abroad and figured my Middler year would be a good year to do it as I’ve been in school long enough but at the same time if I wasn’t accepted to a program I would still have time to do one. I explored the few other options for Civil Engineering but this seemed the most interesting. Well so far it has been great. My flight left Boston at 5:10pm on Friday, August 1^st and thirty hours later added on to the fourteen hour time difference I arrived at Swinburne University at my on campus residence in the afternoon on August 3^rd (August 2^nd back east). I traveled over with two girls from Northeastern, Mary-Beth and Julie and we had only met once before the trip so we were all basically going in alone.

Some initial reactions from when we landed: it’s cold. Not New England winter cold, but certainly colder than New England in August. The temperature has ranged from the 40’s to the 60’s, sunny to cloudy and rain most days, but never for a long period of time. Jeans and a sweatshirt are usually enough to be comfortable but like Boston, the wind can pick up and make it much chillier. There are palm trees and one story homes which look and remind me of southern California. They do drive on the left side of the street with the driver sitting on the right side of the car and I’m still getting used to what direction to look before crossing the street. As I had expected, they do have quite a few McDonald’s which they refer to as “Macca’s” but they also have other US imports such as Subway, 7-11, Pizza Hut and Bugger King (although they call it Hungry Jacks).

Once we arrived and got checked into our rooms we walked out to Glenferrie road which is a main road in our Melbourne suburb called Hawthorn. Glenferrie has a range of shops and café’s and we stumbled upon the Greasy Spoon for lunch. We spent the remainder of the day settling in and meeting our roommates. I share a suite with three other guys, Conrad who is from Australia, Bret who is from California and is an exchange student with California Polytechnic, and Stephen who is from Massachusetts and is with a large group of freshman from Northeastern who are spending their first semester in Australia. Each of us has our own bedroom and we share two bathrooms, a kitchen and living area with a balcony.

We jumped right into things on Monday with an orientation for international students. There they had various people come in to talk to us such as an agent from STA travel about various opportunities to travel and a professor came in to talk to us about what to expect in our classes. They took us out to lunch where we were able to meet and mingle with other international students and we also broke up into out various studies where we could meet other international students in our specific study such as engineering for myself. The day ended with about a third of us being led into the city by train with the orientation leaders. The train stop is only a minute walk from my dorm with the city about a fifteen minute train ride away, making it very convenient to get in and out of the city. The train system here is very efficient with trains running every fifteen minutes or so for ones comparable to the commuter rail system in Boston with many more people using it as public transportation. In the city there are a lot of trams which can take you all over the city. After they took us to a pub in Federation Square, a main square in the city, Mary-Beth, Julie and I proceeded to find the Big W which is comparable to Wal-Mart, with the same selection of items, low prices and even same colors and fonts. Most things here are more expensive then back home, although it’s all relative for them as their minimum wage is around $15. Since we arrived the exchange rate has also gotten better in our favor, being about $1USD=$1AUD and is now $0.86USD=$1AUD. After shopping we ended the day at Grill’d, a chain burger place which had great and healthy burgers.

Tuesday we spent hanging around Hawthorn. Julie, Mary-Beth and I got pay-as-you-go cell phones at Crazy John’s and then went grocery shopping at Safeway which is, again, right around the corner from our dorms. Wednesday and Thursday we had orientations with our specific studies for all incoming students, although the vast majority in engineering were international students with a few new local students. These orientations served as a good tool to meet other students in engineering as well as take a campus tour and meet a few professors. Afterwards they took us to the Glenferrie Hotel to again meet and mingle with other incoming students, and to continue with this trend, there was a barbecue in our building on Wednesday and a barbecue in the west building of the same complex on Thursday. These have been great as I’ve met people from all over the world and we’ve gone out to a local bar called the Hawthorn where many people from the university tend to hang out on any given night.

On Friday they gave the international students the opportunity to go on an excursion to the Healesville Sanctuary which most of us took advantage of. It was a great day as we were able to see Koala’s, Dingo’s, Wallabies, Emu’s, Pelican’s a Tasmanian Devil and of course, Kangaroo’s which we were even able to hand-feed and pet. On our trip back we did a little bit of wine tasting at a wine vineyard, although the vineyard wasn’t really in season so I’m sure it is much more beautiful in the summer. Nonetheless the vast fields and rolling hills reminded me a little of Tuscany and on the bus ride back I noticed many more open fields, filled with rows of post’s to hold up empty grape vines. Friday night was the opening ceremony for the Olympics which was pretty spectacular (although I now know the girl we saw wasn’t really singing and some of the fireworks were digitally enhanced). I’ve been watching the Olympics when I can catch them and they’ve been fun to watch, especially with the focus on Australia from the television stations here. I’m also on a similar time schedule with Beijing, actually two hours ahead, so I am able to catch all the events throughout the day.

Saturday Bret and I went into the city and walked around a little bit along the Yarra River which runs through Melbourne and had lunch at a Sushi place. There are little Sushi shops all over the place, which I can’t recall seeing any specialty sushi shops in the US unless you were to go to a restaurant. After lunch Bret wanted to check out the Crown Casino which is right along the Yarra so we hung out there for a little bit but I can’t compare it to any casino in the US as I’ve never been to one before. We headed back to Swinburne and went out for a little bit with some other international students before calling it a night. Sunday was Mary-Beth’s birthday so her, Julie and I went into the city and went to Lygon Street which is their little Italy, to find a nice place for dinner.

Monday was the first day of classes but I didn’t have any classes scheduled for Monday so I took the day to do some miscellaneous things such as grocery shopping and to do some laundry. Tuesday was my first scheduled class, a lab for Fluid Mechanics, however being the first week no labs were scheduled since we had yet to have our lecture for the class. So my classes started up Wednesday morning, starting with my Geomechanics lecture. Geomechanics is primarily used for foundation building, combining soil mechanics with geology. I believe at Northeastern the equivalent would be Soil Mechanics however I am interested to learn about rocks as well. In the afternoon I had my first Fluid Mechanics lecture which seems like it will deal with a lot of physics. Thankfully at Northeastern they taught us in International Standard Units (SI units) so I learned mostly in the metric system with some in the American system. Wednesday night we again had a barbecue in my residence which I believe is a regular occurrence each Wednesday.

Thursday I started the day with my History of Ideas lecture followed by the tutorial for the class. The tutorials are just the class broken into a smaller section to get a more focused learning. The History of Ideas is a history class based on the idea of progress, specifically in the sciences and the development and consequences of ideas. This class probably excites me most as it isn’t something I would have been able to take at Northeastern and it seems like it will be a fun history class. Friday I started the day with another lecture in Fluid Mechanics, although it was only an hour compared to the two hours I had for the other lecture. This lecture focuses just on solving problems which will be helpful to better understand the material. After the tutorial I had an hour break before my Geomechanics tutorial where we examined various rocks and distinguished different properties to specify each rock. After classes on Friday there was another welcome event for new students, this time for us to be paired with a local student so we could have a local connection. Although I didn’t find my local student I still met other local students and had a good time.

Saturday I went into the city with Bret, Julie and Mary-Beth to do some shopping and explore a little more. Bret and I weren’t up for much shopping so we went downtown and walked around a little before meeting up again with Mary-Beth and Julie for dinner at Beer Deluxe. There they had a large variety of beers as well as hamburgers and chicken burgers for dinner. After our dinner we headed back to campus before meeting up with a group of mostly Australians and heading back into the city for the night. Sunday, Mary-Beth, Julie and I went into the city to go to the movies to see Pineapple Express at a movie theater in a mall in Melbourne Central. The mall had about five floors with a huge atrium, although each floor didn’t seem to have too many stores.

So far I have been having a great time. There’s a lot that I still want to get out and see and hopefully can do most of what I want to do. I’ve heard Cairns is a great place to see, along with Sydney, New Zealand and Tasmania among other places. I have a week off for spring break at the end of September so we’re hoping to get to one of those places during that time. So far in store for this week are classes and a trip to an Australian Rules Football game, or footy as they call it, on Friday, right in the city so I’m looking forward to that. Until then, I hope you are all doing well and I’ll update you in a week!

Hans