This week was the first week of classes. One odd element of Australian classes is that they meet once a week, and often, the “practical’s”, which are kind of like labs, are on the same day as the lecture. So on Mondays I have three hours of practical for ‘Tropical Entomology’ and after a lunch break I have two more hours of lecture. Luckily my teacher is an extremely enthusiastic man in his 30s, and I assume he is going to be fun because he wore swim trunks as pants to the first day of lecture. Plus there are about seven people in the class so loads of one on one attention, hypothetically. On Tuesdays I have an hour of lecture for ‘Photography’ then a break for two hours and a practical two hours, which involved talking with him and taking photos for an hour and being in a computer lab for an hour. He’s an actual photographer and not just a teacher so he’s a bit intimidating, and oh ya, he grades on a curve so only two people will get the highest grade (an HD) five will get the grade below that (a D), 10 will get the grade below that (a C), and 25 people get a Pass or Fail. That’s a real confidence booster, but he seemed to like my Bob Dylan shirt and that I brought my camera to the first practical so hopefully that’s bonus points. On Wednesday I have no class so that’s laundry and reading and hopefully pool time, whenever it gets hot enough. Thursday I have ‘Biodiversity of Tropical Australia’, a class with about 25 students, 20 of which are international, and one of which is a retired loud old man.
On Friday I have ‘Crime, Deviance and Society’. This is taught by a guy who looks like a normal sized version of one of snow white’s dwarves and he loves purple, and what color folder did I happen to pick for the class? Purple. I’m choosing to view this as a positive omen. He seems very intelligent and it seems like it will be a fun class, if only the adults in my class would shut their mouths. On the first day of class our speaking topics ranged from sex slave trafficking to gay marriage to the colors of babies clothing, and oddly enough did not seem to touch on the goals of the class. People asked him about his criteria for a paper, which is not even due until October 24th. A man in class stated that if a society has no laws and therefore no technical crime there can be no deviance, however, as the kid next to me muttered, “taking a dump on the table might not be against the law, but no one will want to be friends with you”, or at least that’s the cleaned up version of what he said. Another lady proposed that scientists should study what is universally deviant by studying how rats react to things because they have a similar neurological structure, to which my teacher replied “Well they don’t really have a language so….”. Needless to say we got through 4 PowerPoint slides in two and a half hours. However, as we were all walking out he managed to make it clear that we should have the four readings read by next week, he will have the essay topics emailed to us within the next two weeks and describe the nature of tutorials that we will be having for the hour after lecture every week. Quite brilliant.
Today was our grocery day. The morning began with a trip to rusty’s market where one of the stall owners gave me a “custard apple” because I seemed so intrigued by it (I will post photos when we eat it). And I found a pair of weird super baggy extreme harem pants that they love here for 5$. Then we came back and relaxed and I was able to skype with our new kitties! They are pretty adorable. We took our cart down to the shopping center to fill up on essentials from Coles and we got kicked out of Kmart at closing time, which just happens to be 5:30. We cooked a huge pasta meal and now we’re all just laying around unable to move. Tomorrow is our first expedition with the “walk-about club”. We are swimming in a volcanic crater, seeing the giant fig tree, going to a crocodile farm and seeing a big waterfall, sounds pretty good to me.
Our very well stocked pantry.
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