Category: Australia

Time is flying by! We just started Week 6 here at JCU. Linfield just started their fall term and I can’t believe I am almost half way finished with my semester abroad and my friends at home are just moving in. It is safe to say this week I have been getting serious FOMO (fear of missing out) with everyone moving back to school. In times like this when I am sad I am missing out on my friends and family at home, I remind myself, I’m in Australia!

These past few weeks have been full of fun events. Let’s start with Netball. Each dorm has sports teams and the first sport to play during the season is netball. Netball is a mix of basketball and handball. This sport is one of the biggest sports here in Australia. Safe to say when I told the Australians I have never heard of it before, they were shocked. We have a men’s and women’s team and we watched them play games against the other dorms. Even though we didn’t make it past the semi finals, it was extremely fun watching our friends play a sport we Americans have never seen or hear of before!

This past Sunday I went on a field trip with my Linking Indigenous class. We learned about the Aboriginals who are the indigenous people of Australia. It was very interesting learning about their customs and their beliefs, as well as, their way of living. We toured around indigenous land and looked at their art and different plants they eat and use in their daily lives. We also visited a burial site. We were taught how aboriginal people are buried, in addition to learning about their arranged marriages. I was in awe how the Aboriginal people live.

Lastly, I went to Billabong Sanctuary! Which is basically an Australian Zoo. It was so much fun! We fed kangaroos, watched crocodiles being fed, saw some emu and held a snake and a koala! I haven’t mention as to why I chose Australia as my study abroad choice. When I was in second grade, we had a habitat project. I was required to build a habitat for my favorite animal, which at the time was and still is, a koala. I researched information about koalas and Australia and I absolutely fell in love. Throughout this project, my mom pulled out a photo album of her when she visited Australia at age 25. She showed me a photo of her holding a koala and from that point on, at age eight, I have wanted to visit Australia, especially to hold a Koala. Now that I am finally here and experiencing some of the same things she did, I am living my dream!

Almost half way through my time here in Australia and I am loving every minute of it. Oh yeah, the school is great too!

Cheers,

Makenna

I cannot believe I have almost been in Australia for a month, it feels like four.

The amount of relationships and people I have already met in the past three weeks is crazy. I look back on the first day of orientation when I knew one person and now, I know all of these amazing people, American and Australian! JCU does an great job of creating unity within the University, especially the dorms. Every semester, JCU holds a toga party. This toga party is one of the biggest parties all semester. JCU sells toga kits, containing a sheet, a flower crown and a rope. Everyone gets dressed up in their yoga attire and heads to Uni Bar across the street. This night was extremely fun because this is when I was able to meet a lot of the Aussies in my dorm. Another event that was held just this past Saturday was Floor Games. My dorm, Uni Hall, put together multiple games for everyone to play while competing against other floors. To go more into detail, we also had a theme on each floor. For example, my floor’s theme was super heroes, the floor above me dressed up like animals, another floor dressed up as things that don’t exists (unicorns, fairies, etc.) Anyways, we played fun games such as tug of war, dodgeball and water balloon toss. This was a fun way to meet new people on our floor.

As for adventuring off campus and exploring, our friend group these past two weeks haven’t gotten around as much as we’ve wanted to.

These past two weeks everyone has settled down to focus on our studies and adjusting to a different university. We do have a few places on our to do list that we will hopefully be able to cross off in the next week or so. We did go to lagoon pools which is a public pool right on the river. It is only a few miles away from campus, but unfortunately a long bus ride around town!

These next few weeks will hopefully be a bit more adventurous for my friend group. We also are planning our lecture recess (spring break) soon! Keep ya updated!!

Cheers,

Makenna

Wow! Where do I start? The beginning of my adventure began in the Vancouver, BC airport. While waiting for my 15.5 hour flight to Sydney, Sophia (also a Linfield Student going to Townsville, aka my travel companion) and I met a group of Australian track athletes and coaches returning from a big track meet trip. We began talking to them about their US experience, to sum it all up, they were amazed at the fact that we had squirrels (crazy I know). After our very long flight, we hopped off the plane and had less than an hour to make our connecting flight to Townsville. Long story short, we were running through the airport like maniacs, each carrying two 50lbs bags, trying to find where our gate was. Basically, we get to the gate five minutes before we board, not to mention we were both hungry after not eating for approximately 5 hours. Anyway, to conclude my travels, the JCU arrival service found us at baggage claim and drove us to campus along with more US students who had arrived 30 minutes previous to our flight.

The next few days consisted of meeting tons of US international students and becoming best friends two days later. Many of the Aussie students were not on campus yet due to the fact that it is winter break. After days of orientation and meeting other international students across the world, our friend group had many adventures planned. We went to the mall in town, called Stockland, which is only a ten minute bus ride away. We went on a hike looking over the whole city of Townsville, took a dip in the river by campus (which contains crocs, but they’re called “freshies” because the are only found in fresh water and are not fans of eating humans) and then we took an afternoon trip to The Strand, which is the long strand of beach in Townsville that contains shops and restaurants. We quickly learned while swimming in the ocean that we were not in the “safe zone” this meaning we were actually swimming in croc infested waters (salt water crocs are known as “salties” AKA the human eating, scary looking crocs). It was only until an Aussies walking on the beach told us to get out of the water and walk down The Strand half a mile to find a lifeguard station, as well as, two massive flag poles dictating where it is safe to swim.

The past few days have been very fun just waking up and figuring out what adventure we want to go on next. The Aussies have been nothing but nice to all of us clueless Americans who can’t help but walk on the right side of the sidewalk. There isn’t too big of a culture shock, but sometimes I still don’t understand what the Aussies are saying. Gday Mate how are you going? This is a common sentence that translates as “What’s up?” but of course we didn’t know that, so we would just stare at them with a blank face and reply, “umm to the gym?” thinking they were asking us where we were going.

To summarize my past week here in Townsville, it has been quite a fun ride. Next week we start classes, which I am excited for, considering I am taking interesting classes, and it will give me a little bit of structure with my schedule.

Cheers,

Makenna Clizer