List of Information

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I haven’t felt like I had much to say. This is supposed to be a travel blog, but since I haven’t really been up to much besides waiting for classes to start, I haven’t really had many travel adventures to mention. But here I will assemble a list of some interesting information I have encountered in my days going around Brisbane, my Uni, and the occasional night out. There will likely be more information like this in the future, as it comes to me.

1. There are crumpets in my dining hall. No, seriously. Crumpets.
2. There is an abundance of tropical fruit here (for obvious reasons I guess). Kiwi, pineapple, and passionfruit are commonplace in my dining hall, and I’m pretty sure the filling in my pastry earlier was guava.
3. Australians cannot dance. Now I’m not judging, because neither can I, but it really is funny. Picture a room full of Americans dancing in the way they do when they are kidding around, except picture them all doing it, and being serious.
4. Australians listen to an awful lot of American music, apparently because theirs is too mellow to dance to.
5. One nickname for a redhead is an abbreviation of orangutan (because they are orange): Rang-er.
6. During the song “Eagle Rock” (or something like that) it is traditional for the men to drop their pants. I have no explanation for this.
7. All schools, even public schools, have a uniform in Australia. The uniforms are usually mind-bogglingly ugly. I don’t know who designs them, but you really cannot imagine how ugly they are. Much worse than American school uniforms.
8. They drive on the left side of the road here. This may seem like basic information, but I was certainly surprised.
9. A timtam (which is a chocolate cookie) is ten thousand times better when dipped in a hot beverage and used as a straw for a second (to melt the inside). The whole thing collapses into a blob of melty chocolately amazingness.
10. Junk food is really expensive here. Like a soda from a vending machine is about 3 dollars, and a bag of chips from a vending machine is like 1.50, and candy from a vending machine is even more than that. Apparently this is intended to fight obesity. Also the candy is different. I won’t go into all the different kinds of candy, but I tried something called a ‘musk log’ the other day. The clever among you may have noted that ‘musk’ is like perfume; this candy was like solid, sugary perfume. It was disgusting.
11. Because the city I live in has a giant river running through it, part of the public transportation system is ferries, called the CityCat (or citykitty, as I heard it referred to today). It is really cool.
12. Australian people think University in America is like the TV show “Greek,” at least according to some of the girls in my college. I am glad we are well-represented abroad.

That is all that is coming to mind right now. Uni starts tomorrow, so hopefully I will have more going on with my days and more to say. It has also occurred to me that I will be watching the Olympics from another country, which could potentially be an interesting cross-cultural experience. Finally, pictures in the next post, I promise.