G’day!
I am Krissy, the new SUNY Oswego student blogger all the way from Brisbane, Australia. I am spending a semester on exchange here and have been at Oswego for nearly a fortnight now, and loving it! I’ll give you a quick background on my journey and what it entailed for this first blog post.
Background
My favourite spot at QUT
In Australia, I study a bachelors of Information Technology at QUT (seriously an awesome university and friendliest place on earth) and am currently in my third and final year of my degree. I decided at the very beginning of my second year (early 2014), that I wanted to participate in the exchange program with one of QUT’s partners. So the research began. I could waffle on more about this, but essentially I chose SUNY because it has a highly regarded Computer Science Program, and Business School, which is exactly what I am into and subjects I would be taking. And of course because I have been in love with the idea of living in America and in the snow since I was a child. Prior to attending SUNY I had only seen snow on ski fields or on mountains in the far distance.
Trip from Australia to Oswego
soaring from the west to the east
It still feels surreal that I am actually in Oswego, on exchange and 9482.75 miles away from home. During the lead up to going on exchange it always just felt so far away, when I received my acceptance from SUNY in October it was still a good 3-4 months away and I just could not picture myself actually there. As time creeped on, I actually moved to Sydney over summer for an internship and was working full-time at Atlassian. This kept me occupied and as a result I didn’t really have much time to reflect and think about the long, exciting journey ahead of me. I left Sydney on a Friday, spent the Saturday and Sunday in Brisbane with my family and friends, then flew out on Monday morning. When I was on the plane Monday morning, it was the first time I was actually like “Wow this is actually happening”. I think this was a good thing because I was super excited and felt the flights didn’t take too long. In total I travelled about 26.5 hours to finallllllllllly arrive at SUNY Oswego. Before I left Australia we were in the midst of a steaming hot summer. I’m talking like 104 degree days and nights – it was painful, then when I stepped off the plane in Syracuse it was like 19 degrees, then Oswego was 3.2 degree – farrrrr out.
Arriving in Oswego
Hanging out in the cold
Driving from Syracuse to Oswego was incredible! I had never seen that volume of snow on roads, footpaths, grass, trees etc! And seeing so many dead trees was crazy – they are beautiful! I remember I was also very shocked by how warm is actually was inside vehicles and shops – in Australia, in winter, I am constantly freezing my butt off because we don’t have central heating 🙁 so I thought this was fantastic. When I arrived at Oswego I moved into my dorm which is in Hart Hall – this building is very central which is fantastic. I found making friends very easy because SUNY organised heaps of orientation events which gave me a chance to meet new international students like me, as well as new in-state freshman. I am having so much fun and seriously never want this semester to end!
Take it easy
Krissy x