First Week of School

Lygon Street

I finally started class! It only took three weeks, but the semester has officially started. As it was the first week, I wound up having three out of four of my tutorials canceled, which actually made transitioning to the campus life a lot easier, especially trying to find buildings. The campus is such a maze!

That's the pizza. We wanted to steal a piece, but it looked gross.

I started on Monday with my first huge lecture, Food for a Healthy Planet. The first week was a little boring (the lecturer was not my favorite), but every week different professors will lecture on a variety of topics, so I'm sure some weeks will be better than others. My other huge lecture was today, in Australian Politics. My professor (they actually call them lecturers here because many of the class leaders don't have PhD's) showed us a clip of a Daily Show-esque take on Australian news, and I realized how I basically know nothing about what goes on in Australian politics, as most of the jokes were completely over my head. This class will definitely be a lot of new information.

In all my classes, it was kind of a rude awakening on how much scholarship in America is focused solely on American writers, research, and American issues. For example, I'm taking a class on sexual politics, which has a very similar syllabus to a class I took at Grinnell on human sexuality. But there is basically zero overlap in readings we're doing. Certain writers I think of as canonical in America are just not viewed that way internationally. Although I haven't experienced extensive culture shock here, it is clear I'm studying in a different country.

Not the best angle, but Federation Square

This week was the last night market, boo. It's a summer thing, and it's weird to think of summer as winding down here. We have had a few cool days, but there are some warm days in the forecast, so I'm hopeful we're not moving directly to winter. The Aussies clearly aren't from the Midwest; they all bundled up when the temperature dropped to the upper 60s (I shouldn't use Fahrenheit, I know. I'm working on it).

Because of class, I didn't have a lot of adventures this week. Sunday there was a festival a few blocks away on Lygon, which is predominantly Italian restaurants and cafes. They tried to make the world's longest pizza, though I don't think they succeeded. I'm also putting some pictures up of the river, the Yarra, which goes right through the city, and Federation Square, Melbourne's attempt at a European piazza. There are a couple museums in Fed Square, some cafes and bars, and there are always street performers. One of the museums is free, and I visited it on Sunday, too. It was all Australian artists and I hadn't heard of any of them! Sunday evening a couple friends and I had dinner in Chinatown. Chinatown food is pretty ubiquitous, though they call dim sum "yum cha." And no fortune cookies!

The Yarra

This weekend I think I'm going to Brighton, a suburb just a little outside of Melbourne, for a food and wine festival. It's on the ocean, so even if the festival is a bust, we can hang out at the beach. Hopefully we'll have good weather for it! The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is starting today, too. This city loves their festivals! And I love them for that.

Lots of pretty bridges over the river