Hey Everyone!

Finally arrived in Brisbane yesterday and got settled. My room is really nice and has a huge closet and desk-I also put up all of my pictures!

Yesterday we explored some of the city and went to Toowong Shopping Center where the main highlight was Kmart for supplies such as hangers haha

We also got our UQ id cards and took a quick tour around campus. My "college" aka dorm is really nice and centrally located which is awesome because most of the dorms are farther away. The campus consists of a beautiful quad where the library, cafe and academic buildings are and an outer ring of the bookstore, bar etc. and then the colleges are even farther outside.

So far, there aren't many people other than Dickinsonians on campus because classes don't start for another two weeks however, I did meet someone from Luxembourg and another girl from some crazy place in India.

Today we went into the city for the first time by taking the ferry, which was neat because we got a really good view of Brisbane. UQ is located just outside the city and you can easily take buses/ferry to see the sights. We had a nice lunch and then took a bus tour of Brisbane.

Australia is kinda strange, its a mixture of European and American with a twist of Australian culture. The shopping areas and downtown are fast-paced and revolve around shopping/food and reminds me of the U.S. However, all of the restaurants have outdoor seating and everything is very open just like a European cafe. The architecture is the one thing that stands out so far because the buildings are extremely modern-many windows, cool structures outside and oddly shaped buildings.

Australian mindset is pretty different from the US in the sense that they suck it up. Rather than install heat or air conditioning, they just suffer through the freezing cold haha good times. The people seem pretty chill and relaxed kind of like Ireland ha

Last night we went to the bar and experienced legal drinking for the first time! (dont worry mom, we were too tired to actually drink) and we're headed out again tonight.

K this blogging thing is weird.
-Kristen

p.s. i'll put up pictures of brisbane in a few