Oz Down Under

Posted on September 2, 2014
by Kelsey Thomas

It’s been such a great month and a half here in Townsville. There are so many fantastic people I have met and made friends with. I was lucky enough to spend my 21st birthday here with all of them and was surprised to find out how fast you can become good friends with people. They all made it such a special day for me, even though I had class for the first time ever on my birthday! We celebrated by going out for gelato, hanging out on the beach and taking a drive to the top of Castle Hill (no drinking seeing as it was a Monday night).

Love these guys!

Other things that have been going on down under:

Townsville’s Cultural Festival: this was filled with food from different countries including, Thai, Greek, Italian, Indian, etc. and several performances by each culture

Drinking Coconut Milk straight from the coconut!

VisitedPallarenda which acted as an old fort base during World War II and walked along the beautiful beach that included the city of Townsville and Magnetic Island in its view

Pallarenda

Had a holiday themed floor party that included St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Australia Day,Cinco de Mayo, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and New Years.

Floor Party: My quad was St. Patrick’s Day

Attended my first touch rugby game as well as my first netball game

Touch Rugby: Uni Hall vs George Roberts Hall

Completed the ice bucket challenge

Completed and handed in my first assignment! (GIS related)

I made this beautiful masterpiece.

Learned how to identify leaf families and have now started to press leaves

Figured out how to get netflix on my computer (it has not come to this country yet) and have made new friends by sharing the wealth

Fed a polychaete

Took a road trip up to Cairns for a weekend and spent it visiting waterfalls, walking through the rainforest, mountain biking and canoeing

Road trippin’ to Cairns

Stopped at the beach on the way to Cairns

Female Cassowary!

The gals.

Cathedral Fig Tree

Milaa Milaa

Saw 3 wild Cassowaries!

Swam under a waterfall

Learned about culture and life in Singapore

Went for a hike up the mountain behind Uni

Have used the word “keen” to show how excited I was for something

Say “oi” on the daily

Held the world’s largest cockroach

Found out cotton candy is called “fairy floss”

Ate my first mandarin

Ate my first scone

Completed all seasons of Breaking Bad

Planned trips to Sydney and Melbourne

Played a few jokes on some of the wonderful Australians here

Painted faces using ochre

I am truly blessed to have all of these wonderful opportunities and couldn’t ask for anything more. Classes are going really well although I find it difficult to want to go to class and do work while I am here. My next assignment is due this Friday but it’s going pretty well so far. I get to use the concepts and ideas of behavioral ecology in the real world by going out into the field and finding examples. It is a lot of fun and a new way to learn material that will be useful in the future. I have not received any grades yet which makes me a little nervous because a majority is based solely on the final exam. I just need to stay on top of the work and I am sure it will all work out. I am still loving every second here and will continue to keep you updated!

Week 6: Life is what you make of it.

Posted on August 12, 2014
by Patty Pollard

I have now been in Tasmania, Australia for one month.

I haven’t left the state of Tasmania at all, I’ve been to the city of Hobart a couple of times, and to be honest I’ve hardly left campus.

However, I have done many things which surpass any amount of land that I could step foot on, in my opinion. Here are some instances:

I’ve………………………..

Went river rafting

Seen 5 wallabies at the same time in their natural habitat

And a possum

Learned to play League of Legends- an intense computer game

Begun watching Game of Thrones Season 1

Went bushwalking

Perched inside of a fern plant

Applied to work at an Australian McDonalds

(I didn’t get the job….)

Breathed fresh air that smelled of eucalyptus

Eaten 5 (and counting) Cadbury chocolate bars of different varieties

and sizes… they weren’t all this size…

Seen abundant, green wildlife & snow covered mountains in the same day

Walked to and from the stores weekly to buy my groceries

Blew an Australian’s mind when I pointed out that they have a platypus on one of their coins (he thought it was a koala…)

Met amazing, friendly people that make my day every day, and that I wold never had met if I didn’t come here.

There’s a small chance that I would have done any of these things at home, even in a whole semester at SUNY Oswego. Some of them would not be possible at all.

However, I also believe that “travel” is what you make of it, meaning your experiences are what make traveling so breathtaking. While being in a different place makes it easier, anyone can get the same thrills as a traveler: all you have to do are things you wouldn’t normally do.

ANYWAYS… I’m having a great time. School is school. Hopefully I will be going to a wildlife sanctuary soon to hang out with kangaroos.

Until then!

-Patty

Touring Townsville

Posted on August 4, 2014
by Kelsey Thomas

Wombat! What a cutie.

The first 2 weeks of my stay in Australia are officially over. I feel like I have been here for a longer period of time though. My floormates are all so nice and friendly and I have made some great friends so far. O Week was filled with talks about everything from the basic rules of Australia to a tour of the campus to fun things to do around town. JCU also offered so many fun things to do during orientation week as well, besides all of the informative presentations I had to sit through, including a visit to Billabong Sanctuary where I met some beautiful koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles, wombats (my new favorite animal), snakes, birds, dingos. They were all so precious and we were able to touch and hold some of the animals as well. A lot of the animals were rescues that were taken in to live out their lives in peace.

A koala named Ray Charles. He was hit by a car that blinded him when he was a little joey.

There was also a scavenger hunt that took our group all over the campus to find random items such as a ukulele, surfboard, wig, jump rope and some other difficult things to find, especially since we were all study abroad students that brought the least amount of things with us possible. Most things were borrowed from Australians, so we made quite a few friends along the way.

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Take a picture in front of the menu board at Green Plate Cafe

Over the weekend a group of friends and I took a trip to Magnetic Island, which is a 20 minute boat ride away and stayed for the weekend to relax on the beach and get out of Townsville one last time before school started. We went hiking from the backpackers resort to the other side of the island where we found a beautiful beach to go snorkeling at. The water was a little cold, but for winter it was absolutely amazing. There were giant boulders on each side of the beach so we got to do a little rock climbing as well. We spent the whole day there and eventually caught a bus back to our hostel. The next day we went to a closer beach and laid out for the day and looked for seashells.

Horseshoe Bay

Florence Bay

The gang.

The vacation ended of course but the first week of classes went pretty well. My schedule was very difficult to understand at first but I thankfully made it to all of the classes. It was basically an introduction week so there wasn’t much to do but all of my professors are funny and nice so the semester should go well. I also get to go on a field trip for my Rainforest Ecosystems class to a rainforest! That was definitely a good choice for an elective! Now that the second week has started there are assignments already so I know I need to stay on top of them all before it becomes overwhelming. Each subject seems really interesting so I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to keep up. When it came to buying school supplies I cut back so much from what I usually have at home. I didn’t bring anything with me so I had to buy it all. The basics for me included notebooks for each subject, post-its, a highlighter, and a mini stapler. Luckily I only had to purchase one textbook so that was another money saver. Also, I only have 4 classes to take here, Rainforest Ecosystems, GIS, Invertebrate Zoology and Behavioral Ecology. It’s nice to have a smaller work load for a semester and the behavioral class is even based off of field work every single week! Everything is great here so far and I can’t wait to share what happens next. (:

We Have Arrived: James Cook University

Posted on July 17, 2014
by Kelsey Thomas

After travelling for over 35 hours, I am happy to say that I made it to Australia! This was the longest trip that I have ever made away from home and it was not a fun time. I started my travels by leaving my house at 9 AM on Tuesday, July 15th and drove down to JFK with my parents where I met my travel buddy, Deanna. She is in the same program however she does not go to Oswego, but goes to Oneonta instead. We had been discussing everything before the trip but this was the first day meeting each other. After having trouble printing my boarding ticket, I finally said goodbye to my parents and headed toward the gate. It was easy to find the gate and navigate through the airport. But of course there had to be a thunderstorm directly headed our way so our plane to LAX was delayed 3 hours! It was a good thing we had a long layover there because by the time we landed and got our next boarding pass, the plane was boarding for Sydney, Australia. This wonderful flight was a whopping 14 hours over nothing but ocean water, and it was a red-eye flight so there wasn’t much to look at. Luckily it wasn’t too hard to fall asleep and I slept for 8 of those hours, making the trip a little more bearable. There were also plenty of movies to be watched which took up the rest of the time. But this flight did have one good part to it; the girl who sat down to my right happened to be going to the same exact place as Deanna and I; town, school, dorm building and all. So we made a new friend, Natalia. There was another study abroad student, Luke, who sat in front of us who was traveling from Kansas State to Perth, Australia.

We all got off the plane together at about 6 AM on Thursday, July 17th. After collecting our luggage in Sydney, and going through customs, we got separated from each other! I did freak out for a few minutes but then realized that if I just keep going to my next gate that we would meet up there. As I got back in line to recheck my bags, I found Natalia but Deanna was still nowhere to be seen! I waited with Natalia for a few minutes before getting on the bus to our next terminal. Finally, when we found the gate, Deanna was there with Luke, safe and sound. Luke’s plane left first and we said goodbye as we prepared for boarding as well and after landing 3 hours later at our final destination, we went to pick up our bags and meet our ride to the Uni (what they call the college campus). There was of course one more setback; my bags were lost. Come to find out, they were left in Sydney and never boarded the plane to Townsville. But I brought 2 changes of clothes and travel size shampoo. Deanna let me borrow a towel for the shower and I should be getting my bags today (Friday)!

Townsville Airport

After arriving to uni and our dorm building, I met my RA, Andrew, and got to see my room for the next 4 months. It has its own balcony which is the highlight of the whole building. People, mostly those here for the whole year, have decorated them and even have hammocks too. But besides this awesome feature, it is a pretty standard dorm building. It’s not as enclosed as those in Oswego, for obvious reasons, so there is more air flow making for a beautiful tropical feel.

The view from my balcony

The balcony

My room

My room

Deanna, Natalia and I decided that we would go to the store and get a few things after we showered and looked decent after travelling for such a long period of time. We asked someone on our floor how to get to the store that was on the uni and they said it was a short walk down the street, so off we went. It was literally a 5 minute walk, and I just got a few things, including a phone that I could use just in Australia. We walked back, dropped our stuff off in our rooms and walked around for a bit, exploring a little before we went to the dining hall for dinner. We had a nice chat with one of the cooks who told us about some of the local birds and the kangaroos that enjoy sitting on the grass right next to the dorm building! I also met another exchange student from Norway! She got there the day before. Her name was something very Norwegian (I could not pronounce it to save my life) so she told us to call her Chessa. There are so many people to meet still and O week hasn’t even started yet. It is going to be an exciting time here in beautiful Australia!

Australia in T minus 7 Days

Posted on July 7, 2014
by Kelsey Thomas

Hi everybody! My name is Kelsey Thomas and I am a senior zoology major with a photography minor and I am studying abroad at James Cook University in Townsville, QLD, Australia this upcoming fall 2014 semester. It has already been a stressful process of filling out an endless supply of paperwork however this last week is going to be crazy! There are still so many things I need to do, such as going to doctors and dentists appointments, verifying my visa (which was not completed correctly the first time), verifying my flight, printing out all necessary papers, visiting family and friends, oh, and packing too. I am just praying that I remember to do everything. Determining what is necessary to bring with me will probably be the toughest part of this whole process! What to pack and what not to pack will be difficult but starting a week early will hopefully give me enough time to look through everything a few times over.

I have to say, I am very nervous about the trip. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely excited as well, but I will be sad about leaving everything behind for the next four months. Learning a new culture and finding my way to classes is going to be stressful at first but I know it will all be worth it in the end. It does make it a little easier with Australia speaking English (kudos to those studying abroad in countries that don’t). I really can’t wait for all of the new memories and friends that will be made in this country. The school looks absolutely beautiful and the town itself looks nice as well, not to mention that it’s located right on the Great Barrier Reef.

Heads up to all of the Biology and Zoology students out there; I picked this school because the man I talked to in the international office said that Australia was the best option for our major. It is so different from what we have here and they do focus a lot on science majors. If you’re looking to study abroad, check out JCU’s website!

http://www.jcu.edu.au/

Townsville, QLD www.nextstepaustralia.com

Departure is in one week and now I am just counting down the days. I will be sure to keep you all updated on this wonderful adventure!

-Kelsey

Intro to Tasmania

Posted on May 20, 2014
by Patty Pollard

Hello! And welcome to my OZ blog. I am hoping this blog will demonstrate (somewhat mundane) sociological and cultural differences that I come across in Australian culture in Tasmania. For now, I am keeping the blog light, as this is just an introductory post to prepare my followers for my adventure (and to practice blogging skills…).

Honestly I still don’t really think about how I will be across the world In Tasmania, Australia in about a month and a half. It really hasn’t sunk in yet, I suppose. At the same time, I don’t know how I would be able to “expect” anything since I’ve never done something like this before. Sure I’ve traveled before, but never alone. Which happens to be the most appealing part of the entire experience for me.

It’s funny because being alone is what was once deterring me from the idea of studying abroad. Oddly enough, I eventually decided to follow in my sister’s footsteps, who recently traveled for a semester abroad to Tanzania, Africa. DISCLAIMER: Sarcasm should be included in the previous sentence. Following in my sisters’ footsteps is something I have been doing since I can remember.

I’m weirdly excited to be in a place where no one has any idea who I am. And I happened to choose Tasmania… mainly because I’m not ready to take on another language (AKA: I’m lazy).

a building on UTAS campus that I thought looked cool

Check out the school’s website here!

Before I go, I’d like to give a few shout outs. As the Spring 2014 semester came to a close, I became sad thinking about the many ineffable people I would be leaving behind for almost five months.

Dear…

OSWEGO:

I will miss you, my geese….

PATHFINDER:

I will miss working with this wonderful, hard working, personable crew. Thank-you so much for opening my eyes to a group of dedicated and caring individuals, and for being patient and helpful. You have impacted me in ways more than you will ever know, and I’m glad that I am showing my appreciation before I graduate! I’m excited for working for you for one last semester! 😉

me workin’ hard

NEWMAN CENTER:

Ahh.. the center. Sorry for not saying bye to anyone, by the way… I really wanted to avoid any crying that may have occurred, and I’ll see you next semester anyways so no harm, no foul. I hope everything goes well with the retreats and please know that I will miss all of you so much! I’m also upset I’ll be missing the Fall retreat… make sure you folks stay up late and have extra special conversations in dedication of my absence. And have some of those sugar cookies at the meetings at LEAST one time. You know what I’m talkin’ about.

peace OUT.

MY FRIENDS:
OMG you know I wish I could put a personal picture up with special captions for each of your individually, but I would say too much and then no one would take the time to read the blog. I will miss all of you SO MUCH and hope you have AMAZING SEMESTERS (but then have an even better one when I’m back from Australia). Thank-you for constantly supporting me, listening to my troubles, and giving me a good time. That’s all we need in life <3

Cats & hats!

the last [high school] dance!

FAMILY:

Thanking you over a blog post seems so lame… but if I didn’t include you it just wouldn’t be fair. I cannot express my gratitude to you in words. I hope I can show you it through my actions for the rest of my life. It is through your love, hardship, fighting, honestly, and trust that I am how I am today, and that alone is inspiring enough for me to go across the world in confidence. Thank-you Mom, Dad, Jenn, and Becca for making me a large part of who I am! I love you all.

Well, the next blog I post will hopefully have a picture of me holding a koala. See you then!

-Patty