Week 1 - Check!

I am officially done with my first week of school! I only have class 2 days a week, Tuesday and Wednesday, which gives me a nice long weekend to enjoy this beautiful country! Classes her are structured somewhat differently that at home. Most of my classes meet for a 2 hour lecture once a week and then a 1 hour tutorial with a smaller class size. So far, I'm enjoying most of my classes. Here's what I'm taking:

Australia: Dreamtime to Dust - It's all about the history of the country and the aboriginal people so we talked a lot about the tectonic plates and such in the first class. The teacher seems nice but I'm not really sure how interested I really am in the subject matter.

Minds, Bodies and Machines - I can already tell you this class will be the source of all my angst. It's a philosophy class all about the nature of the mind and thought. It's just a straight 3 hour chunk and I really struggled to stay awake and focused on the lecture. If I zoned out for even 30 seconds I was totally lost and confused. Plus we have two 10 page papers due in the class and I am not about that life at all.

Wine Studies - Definitely my most exciting class. In the first class we just talked about the history of wine in Australia and the industry of it but even that was so interesting to me. Every other week we have a tasting assessment where we learn tasting techniques and such. That should be very exciting too.

Australian Popular Culture - We get to watch movies or TV shows every week in class and then just discuss how they portray the Australian stereotype and culture. I'm really excited for this class too!

I was hoping that my classes would have more Australians in them so I would have the opportunity to meet people but they don't. Even my philosophy class, which I would have assumed would have a lot of Aussies, only had 2 non-Americans, and, with only 12 people in the class, 5 of them are from SLU and 3 of us are in the OT program at SLU. So there's definitely not much diversity there.

Other than classes, I haven't done much this week. This weekend we have some bigger plans so I can't wait to tell you all about them! I'm off to go shopping now, I didn't pack enough tank tops for this extreme heat!

Sorry I don't have any pictures with this post.. there hasn't been much picture worthy happening!