more stuff...

today is wednesday... this is gonna be my busiest (word?) day of the week, but i'm really excited about it. i guess i'll start from where i left off before...
photo is gonna be so great! i'm really really excited about the class. we get to do portraits, which are my favorite thing ever, and we're gonna learn all kinds of sweet techniques and stuff. i can't wait to be able to use my sweet camera to its full potential! the only downside is that it's basically all asc'ers except for 2 aussie girls. so i still haven't really met any sweet aussies outside of my host family and some of their friends. but i'm not too worried :) yesterday (tuesday) i had my asc class, which is basically about all things aussie (minus aborigones... that comes in the second half of the semester). it's definitely going to be time-consuming and hard (we already have homework!), but i'm pretty excited about it. then i had the rest of the day off, so some people came over and hung out in our flat. then we went and saw the dark knight with neil, braedon, kieran, and kieran's friend pacey. it was at the coolest movie theater i've ever been to in my life! it was absolutely huge and the seats were like frickin couches! i was pretty excited and was being very american and embarrassing the guys. but o well... :)
this morning i had my first pilates class, which i am so excited about! the teacher is also the registrar here at wesley, and she is absolutely adorable. this is another all asc class (it's not supposed to be, but they had to put us all in a different one than everyone else because the real one interferes with our required friday class). none of us had ever really done pilates before, so it was very basic, but i still felt like i got a workout. and it's so fun! i also decided that i'm going to take the jazz technique class that is right before the pilates class and audit it (take the class but not get graded or get credit... i didn't know what that meant before, but i like it!) a bunch of girls in my pilates class are in it and said it's super fun, so i'm pretty excited about that too. on wednesdays there is this thing called the gathering, which is basically chapel, so we went to that. it was there that i realized just how tiny this school is! there were seriously no more than 150 people there. but it's really cool and i'm actually pretty excited about it. in about an hour i have an arts and culture class, and i really have no idea what to expect...
also (this is mostly for mom...) the grading system here is really different from home. basically the goal for most aussies is just to pass the class. getting good grades is not really the main idea, and if you do happen to do really well, you don't tell anyone. they have this thing called "tall poppy syndrome" where they basically don't focus on achievement. if someone is really proud and boastful, the group will almost unconsciously cut you down to their level. it's awesome.
so far i am really really loving it here. i've definitely already had plenty of moments when i missed home, but then i remember where i am and it's okay :) it's funny because driving (or walking, which i do a LOT of here ) around, everything actually looks very similar to the states. they have all the big restaurants (mackers is everywhere... i even saw a lone star last night!) but at the same time it's so incredibly different! i can't really describe it... i guess it really just feels like i'm on the other side of the world! makes sense i guess.
all the people i'm here with are awesome, and i love a lot of the girls that i've gotten to hang out with some. i'm definitely going to try to branch out from the group more, though, because i don't want my entire time in australia to be spent with a bunch of americans. but i'm glad they're here :)
ps: apparently there's a psych prof from ccu that just moved down here. rudder or rutter or something... i haven't met him yet and i had never heard of him before, but d.j. (totally the principal of the school... he's frickin cool.) told me that he's from there. so maybe if i need a coloradoan fix, i can talk to him. hehe