The second week ended well, especially when I finally got my university ID. The past few days have been a lot of studying to catch up in the classes that I was late to enroll in along with keeping up with the new work I have. The Queen Mary building is nice because there are study rooms on each floor and also a huge study room downstairs. The downstairs study room has computers with free internet and study nooks and rooms within it, and now that classes have started it’s a great place to find a quiet area to study. Once it gets warmer, I am looking forward to studying outside on the terrace or the rooftop garden. They have already started to add more to the outside area, like table tennis and more benches and barbeques.
One of the views from the rooftop garden area.
Thursday I had my first class that was off campus. It is in the Australia Technology Park which on the other side of the train tracks in Redfern. It’s about 45 minutes walk from where we live and 30 minutes from campus. It’s the temporary building for the Agricultural Sciences while that building on campus is being renovated. It’s a really nice area and lives up to its name with an actual park in front of it. There is a lot of great food in the area and the classrooms include labs, computer labs and lecture halls. I have the Forest Ecosystem Science class there and there are only ten of us in the class. Luckily I only have that class once a week, so I don’t have to go down there too often.
The Forest Ecosystems class has a three day field work component that takes place in Batesman Bay. We use this opportunity to apply everything we learn in class up until that week to field work. We are very fortunate that it is completely funded, considering it is a four hour drive and a two night stay by the beach. It is a senior level class so it is small and most people are ready to graduate, but it seems like a good group that is excited about this class. This class is interesting because it not only covers a lot of botany and tree identification, but also a lot of governmental policy. I love all my classes and I’m excited for the new challenge here at the University of Sydney.
Today we went a checked out the markets, including Paddington Market and went down to Bondi Junction. Paddington was a lot of fun and had a lot of great food, plants/flowers and clothes. The Bondi Junction shops were huge and had just about every store you could imagine. It was basically like a King of Prussia mall, just much easier to get to! We just walk to Newtown and take a bus to Bondi Junction and walk across the street. Sydney is definitely starting to feel more like home every week we are here.
