Aww...I have to go to class now?

Week one of classes = done. Monday: My Australian history class is pretty boring. Boring like I almost fell asleep the first class boring. Next class was Differential Equations and they're doing some weird video conference style thing with another uni. So the professor will speak to us in our class but a camera is pointing toward him and is being sent to some other uni far away. He also writes notes and puts them online which is cool. But he reads directly from them so it's also a really boring class. Being that I have to pay $0.11 to print a single page, I don't think I want to print out his lectures that go about 30-40 pages.

My physics E&M professor is a freaking badass. He legit looks like the old military dude from Avatar. Apparently he's the best physics professor in the department, so that's good. The labs are weird though. The normal students are taking 3 physics classes this semester, all which come with labs. E&M, astrophysics and quantum mechanics. They have three labs a week. The way their labs are set up is also quite weird. They combine the lab grade for all their labs. So the lab grade you get for one class will carry over to the other three. They also have to do one lab project per class per half session. The labs they do here last about 6 weeks per lab and there are no lab reports, just a formal lab paper thingy at the end. So a typical student will have 3 labs a week with 6 projects total throughout the semester. 3 in the first 6 weeks and the other three in the last half. For us American students, we only are taking one class, so we do only 2 projects. My project deals with transmission lines, and I have no clue how to do it. Thankfully I have 6 weeks to putter around and learn stuff. They gave us free lab manuals and also gave us the instructions, but also gave us a packet of theory that we needed to understand before we do the project. So it's actually an independent class from the actual theory classes and we're learning stuff different from lectures.

Summary of feelings toward this: HELL YEAH NO LAB REPORTS AT THE END OF EVERY LAB

Connie's director's course doesn't seem that bad. The first class was pretty cool and she seems like a down to earth professor. She definitely gives more work than any of my other courses.

We went out one night to one of the bars to chill. We hung out there for a bit (cheap drinks, $3 for random mixed drinks). We then went to the Glasshouse, a dance club and I accidentally walked into the other Colgate people, so I chilled with them for a bit. Stayed there for a while, then went home. At some random point which I forget, we went to go see Valentines Day....what? A romcom chick flick? Well I'm always up for a good romcom, or a really really bad one just to crack jokes, but this one came out of us not really wanting to see the other movie (Shutter Island I think) and us joking about seeing V-day instead. And man was it bad. Anyway, the reason why I even mention this is because of the discovery of Wollongong's version of Slices. Sorry, it's not pizza. It's kebabs. And holy crap are they good. $7.50 for a kebab, which is just basically a Turkish burrito. Add a dollar for other ingredients like humus, jalapenos, sweet chili sauce, shrooms and you're in heaven. It's right next to two of the really popular clubs and they're open late on party nights. What more could you ask for? Oh yeah, and they are a lot of food. They don't deliver, but me and a few friends would literally take the 20 or so minute walk to this place just to get some kebabs.

Little excerpt from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebab#D.C3.B6ner)
"In Australia and the UK, kebabs (or döner meat and chips) are most popularly eaten after a night out, representing a large part of nightlife culture."

So the week passed, and work was done, and fun was had, and then there was Friday. Oh, Friday...my old foe. You crazy physics problem sets on Thursday night made me get up close and personal with your beginning hours...not anymore. Us science people finally get to bask in the light of humanities and social science majors who have the option of having friday off, while we have to suffer with awkward scheduling like Tuesday and Thursday from 9:55-11:10 and Friday from 10:20-11:10. So how do we spend our Fridays? Ethnic Friday! We pick an ethnicity and then hit up a restaurant of that ethnicity in Wollongong city. This week was Indian. The food was really good, and the lady even started a conversation with me because I was Indian looking. She even gave me some of her own special chutney hot sauce on the house.

One bad thing about sleeping in on Fridays is the drawback of no food. The dining hall opens for breakfast from some early time to around 10:30AM, and you have to pack your lunch during breakfast. Otherwise, they close up shop and you need to wait until dinner at 6PM to get food. I bought oreos and instant noodles to combat this.

Over and out, weekend ahead!

Dangerous animal count: 1