My B&B in Sorrento!

Here's a quick (and unedited) tour of my bed and breakfast in Sorrento during my Orientation about 2 weeks ago. It was a very pretty place! Enjoy!

Australia... The Most Expensive Place Ever?

As I previously mentioned, Australia has shown herself to be INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE. Seriously, anything you buy is twice as expensive here as it is in the US, and the tiny bit of strength our dollar has over theirs does not at all make up for the difference. Here are some things I have purchased in the last few weeks that have shocked me:

Liquid Detergent: $15

Bottle of soda: $3

A "$5 Footlong" at Subway: $8

A snackwrap at McDonalds: $4

Any bottle of beer will be at the very least $7

Notebook for school: $4 (that was the cheapest price)

4GB flashdrive: $40

A shot of standard alcohol: $6

Package of 3 mechanical pencils: $5

One slice of pizza: $4

Scissors: $7

Bus ticket (one-way): $2-4

These are just a few examples. Fortunately, Australia has no sales tax and you don't have to tip anyone. That's because the minimum wage in Aus is $15. That's right, America... double ours. My coordinator, Cat, told us of an American student last year who worked as a dishwasher, and at overtime on the weekend, could make as much as $40/hour. We pay the Mexicans how much for the same job?

There is one thing I've saved TONS of money on - Textbooks. NONE of my classes require me to buy the textbook. All of the professors have said that they see no reason to make us purchase a book that we're never going to open, especially when we are going to be tested only on the material from their lectures... which comes from the book. So, what is normally a $500 - $600 expense is now obsolete. And here's a quick tip - don't print out your syllabi before your first day of class, your profs will give them to you. I did print them out, and now I'm down almost $15 worth of printing costs. :-/

Another thing which is the same price and in some cases, significantly cheaper is SCUBA certification. I almost wish I would have waited to get my certification until now. For just about $200 (compared to the $250 I paid), you can get your open water certification. Although, I must say, $50 was worth not having the stress to do it before field trips started.

Basically, I'm getting at the fact that it may be better just to purchase the essentials before you leave and make room in your luggage, because your money will fly out the window once you're here. Just a warning!

My First Week in Oz!

Follow me from St. Louis to Townsville, and a few exciting places in between!

This documents my flights to Australia, my time in Me

lbourne and the Melbourne area, and my flights to Townsville... including our near-death experience!

I cannot say enough good things about my first week in Australia. Arcadia treated our group very, very well.

After saying good-bye to my family, I happily left a cold and snowy St. Louis, Missouri afternoon and flew to an even colder and snowier Omaha, NB, followed by a mountain-less Denver, CO, and finally made it to LAX. As we landed, I saw the Quantas planes with the Kangaroo, and for the first time, it really hit me what I was doing. I actually cried. I couldn't quite decide why I was crying, either. I felt excited, but overwhelmed and intimidated and anxious. I had no desire to go back, but to go forward would be a huge adventure and like it or not, it was happening. I then gathered my luggage and walked almost 15 minutes from the Southwest terminal to Bradley International. I breathed in the stuffy LA air and even though I was sweating like crazy, I enjoyed the polar change in temperature from home. As I checked my baggage at Quantas, the attendant gave me a "G'day!" and I'm absolutely positive that the smile painted across my face made me look like a fool. By a crazy coincidence, I found one of my Arcadia mates in the LAX mess with whom I had been corresponding over facebook for the last few months. We ate McDonalds and tried to chill despite the roller coaster of emotions. We went through the security mess, which took about 45 minutes to go through, and made it out to the other side right in front of our gate. We met a bunch of other Arcadia kiddos, and got on our plane.

After just over 30 straight hours of travel (I timed it), we landed in Melbourne and were gathered by Cat and Lyndon, our coordinators for the week. They guided us to St. Kilda, a little area of Melbourne right on the beach with a creepy clown

theme park, and an awesome beach. I also had my first legal drink... at $8 for a bottle of beer!

Then, it was off to Sorrento. We stopped to see wild Eastern Grey Kangaroos, which was super awesome, and we settled into our new digs right off the beach. I'm pretty sure the group got pretty sick and tired of hearing me repeat, "Oh my God... We're in Australia!" But I didn't want to ever want to take one moment of my new reality for granted. That evening, we went on a night-hike up a mountain to a lookout and I saw more stars than I've ever seen in my life. We found the southern cross in the sea of stars above us. I've only seen the Milky Way once or twice before that night, and never had it been as brilliant as it was then. We hiked back to our hotel, and finally, after being awake for 48 hours, I fell asleep.

Over the next 2 days we participated in a lot of meetings on Australian culture and tried Vegemite and Tim Tams. While I don't think I'll ever be eating vegemite again, I'm pretty sure I have developed a lifelong addiction to Tim Tams. We went to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful rock pools, went into town and ate some pizza at $9 for a personal pan, and searched high and low for internet. To the people coming to Australia, internet is NOT EASY to find. And when you do find it, you will pay for it (and it's not cheap). Free WiFi is an almost unheard of concept here. As is central air-conditioning, but I'll get to that more later. We went on a night cruise and had fish n chips to mixed reviews (I really liked it). We saw more Kangaroos, Seals, and endangered birds before going back to port.

The next morning, we drove into Melbourne city, got cell phones, and ate sushi. By the way, Australian sushi is not like our sushi. Here, they don't cut it into slices, they leave it in a whole roll. And you pour the soy sauce into the roll and eat it like a wrap.

That night, we had our first taste of goon (boxed wine) and I had heaps of tastes after that. The ladies ended up pretty intoxicated, and so our group walked around the city looking for a club to go dancing. We walked for an hour and a half and finally decided on a club whose name I can't recall, and neither can anyone else. We danced until 3:30 in the morning. And then came back to our hotel for a few hours of sleep.

Australians dance WEIRD. They do a shuffle thing and no one touches one another. We Americans remedied that. :)

We sat in the airport for a few hours and slept while waiting on our flight to Townsville. During our landing, our plane experienced a lot of turbulence right before the landing and with just meters to go before we touched down, our pilot sped back up and took off again. It was so crazy! When we finally did land, we were a little shook up, but no worse for wear. All of our luggage made it and we walked out into the hot, sticky, steamy, rainy sauna that is Townsville, Queensland. We had dinner that night downtown with Cat at a Mexican joint and once again realized the insane expense of things here in Australia. My quesadilla meal that would have been $9 at Chevy's, was $22 at Cactus Jack's. I've come to expect that things will be twice as expensive here as they are at home. I will also address this more later.

For now, I am required at my dorm's kegger. Yes, you read that right. My dorm's kegger.

Packing!

Now that we're down to the wire, it's time to get to business! This video outlines what I'm taking to Australia and some offers pointers to guide one in the direction of modest packing.

Here's some extra information that I didn't include in the video:

Baggage fees are a bitch. Heather (see introductory video below) went to Italy this last summer to study abroad and had a $130 fine for being just a few pounds over the weight limit. Check the airlines' baggage policies. Here are the webpages for Southwest and Quantas:

http://www.southwest.com/travel_center/baggage.html

http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/checked-baggage/global/en

Arcadia suggested that I just buy bedding once I get there to save weight. When I checked JCU's website, they said that they sell bedding for something like $30 on campus. If I didn't have so much extra weight available, I would take advantage of this offer. Instead, I'm going to take my pink bedding with me.

Apple sells international adapters for their products. 40 bucks gives you all of the adapters you could need for travel and they work with all of their products. Here's the link:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB974ZM/Afnode=MTY1NDEwMQ&mco=MTA4NDE3MDQ

Well, time is ticking away and I am so crazy excited. I'm going back to Columbia on Thursday to see my friends in RENT at the community theatre. If anyone else wants to go, here's their website: www.cectheatre.org

I'm coming back to St. Louis on Friday afternoon and my family is taking me to HuHot for dinner. I LOVE HuHot. I want to give a shout-out to my little brother, Alex, because Friday is his birthday and I'm unintentionally stealing his glory.

I would like to also thank the SCUBA diving community for bringing back the hot pink color that has been missing for at least the last 6 months. When I read my Diver magazine today, there was hot pink everywhere and it made me very, very happy.

5 days!