6 Days in New Zealand

Phoebe's House! Goulburn, NSW

Uluru (Ayers Rock)

I had finished with finals after the first week of exams so while everyone was still studying and i was done i decided to take a trip to the center of the country, the real outback to see the largest monolith in the world known as Uluru by the Aboriginals who now own the rock and formerly Ayers rock before possession was given to the Aboriginals.

My trip started early Monday morning to catch the 6:30am train from Wollongong to International Airport, a $19.60 train ride.  Which is extremely annoying because it cost $7.80 to go anywhere except for the airport which they charge you a fortune to get to by train.  Once at the airport, about an hour train ride I had plenty of time to relax before my flight left at 9:50am to Northern Territory.  It was a 3 hour flight into the red center and it was a pretty cool flight.  The fist half hour you could see Sydney and the suburbs, then we crossed the blue mountains and on the other side was not much, mainly just green/brown fields with occasional houses.  The last hour and a half of the flight was nothing but red soil, it sounds boring but it was kind of an amazing sight.
Upon landing you could see Uluru and the Olgas in the distance and they looked huge, it was an amazing sight.  Once out of the plane I was hit with the hottest wave of heat i think i have ever felt.  It was approaching a 40C day which for us americans is nearly 105F.  I then went to the Avis rental desk to pick up my car which to my surprised had received a free upgrade from a crappy sedan to a 2011 RAV4.  I couldnt have had a better car to be whipping around the empty outback roads in then this.  I was a bit nervous at first after seeing all the posters at the Avis rental company warning you to drive safe and to watch out for kangaroos, dingos, buffalo, and camels crossing the road which could all damage the car as well as myself.  Fortunately i didnt come across any while i was driving and didnt even see any the entire time there.  All the wildlife I saw was a ton of rabbits, and a few lizards.
Ayers Rock airport was the smallest airport I had ever been in as well, it had one landing strip and it was a good day if they saw more then 2 planes a day.  There was only two planes a day going from sydney to ayers rock each day, one by Qantas and one by Virgin Australia.

My first stop was Ayers rock which was 12km away down the one road there was leaving the airport.  You could see it the entire way but it once I pulled up to the very edge, after stopping at the kind of useless info/cultural center which was basically just promoting the aboriginals, you could not look away. It was amazing, it was so big, and red. I have never seen anything like it.  After starring for awhile I found where the spot was to climb about a quarter mile high up to the top of the rock; however, it was closed due to extreme temperatures. So i decided to drive to the Olgas which are a bunch of smaller monoliths and went for a hike/drive through them, then on the way back stopped at Uluru to watch the sunset.  The next morning I woke up early and saw the sunrise at Uluru and then drove to the climb but once again the climb was closed, this time due to the chance of rain.  So instead i hiked the 10.7km around the rock with these two guys who drove there from Perth. It took approximately 2 hours to hike around it.  By then it was about time i headed back to the airport in order to catch my flight back to Sydney at noon.  It was an expensive flight but it was well worth it, i have never seen anything like it.




Spot where you climbed up!

 Panoramic of the Olgas

 Kangaroo Crossing

 Olgas

 Canyon in the Olgas

 Olgas hike

 Uluru

 Uluru at sunset

Uluru at sunrise

Final Exams

Well im home now but theres still a lot of things I didnt add to the blog in the last few weeks...

After classes ended on October 28th we had a full week for "stuvac" or a study week before finals.  I wasnt planning on studying at all but I got a little bit done, more then I expected because everyone else was studying and there wasnt much else to do.  Anyways the next two weeks were exams.  I had four exams.  Biology practical, biology lecture, locating australia lecture, and psychology of sport lecture.  All of them went pretty well i thought.  Psych was definitely the worst because it was full of random statistical questions which were nearly impossible.  The exams were a little stricter then here in America, they had large rooms with a few hundred desks with atleast 50 old ladies walking around with those bright orange construction vests on.  I swear they just rounded up them all from the local nursing home because honestly none of them couldve been under 60 years old, but they took their jobs seriously.  Once you sat down you had to fill out two forms of all your information and leave your student id on your table as they came around and checked.  They took what seemed like 2min at each table to verify that the person sitting at the desk was in fact the person on the ID card, idk if they were almost blind or if they were super suspicious that someone was trying to have another person take the exam for them.  Also you had to take everything out of your pockets and put them in a plastic bag beneath your table and your backpack must be left outside the lecture hall in another room or building.

Anyways I survived the exams and have already received my final grades which were:
Biology - D
Psychology - C
Locating Australia - C

Now dont think I did horrible by looking at those, remember we are using the Australian grading system which goes...

HD - High Distinction = 100-85
D - Distinction = 85-75
C - Credit = 75-65
P - Pass = 65-55
F - Fail = 55-0

So i did fairly well, considering it is really hard to get an HD in Australia.  The grade equivalent for an HD at UMass would be an A+,  a D would be a B+ to an A, a Credit would be C+ to B and so on...so ill probably end up with an A and two B's which I am happy with for trying to study while in Australia.

Melbourne Cup

Well one of the main reason that Halloween is not very popular in Australia is because of the Melbourne Cup which is always on November 1st.  The Melbourne Cup is a horse race that takes place in Melbourne which basically everyone is involved in someway, either making bets, sweeps, or just watching it.  They call it "the race that stops the nation" and lots of people dress up for it especially girls in their pretty dresses and huge hats with flowers on it.   Anyways theres a bar/gambling place a 2min walk from college so a few of us walked over and made some bets on the horses.  At first I made two bets, I put $5 on Dunaden for the win and $5 on Niwot for the win.  You could either bet for the horse to win or for the horse to place (top 3) but the payout was much lower so i just stuck with betting on the win.  I enjoyed betting on the first two and the anticipation and nervousness of hundreds of people placing bets that I decided I really wanted to win and that in order to win i needed to bet on more horses so in the end I ended up betting $5 on eight different horses all betting for them to win.  Now I just had to keep myself away from the betting table before i spent all my money.  Finally it was 3pm and the race was off. (3200m race or 2 miles)  One lap around the track.  At first the horse Illo which was one of my 8 was way out in front so i was cheering him on but he died 3/4 into the race and then the final 400m was neck and neck between a few horses and as it came down to the wire Dunaden and Red Cadeaux were a photo finish.  Nobody knew who won and it took what seemed like forever for them to decide.  Even in the photo finish still pictures that slow it down to like the millisecond it was hard to tell which horse won.  It seemed like forever because Dunaden was one of the horses I bet on but Red Cadeaux wasnt.  Eventually they awarded the win to Dunaden which meant I had won $45.50.  $5 times his odds which was 1 : 9.1   So in the end I bet $40 and won $45.50 so I made $5.50 and had a lot of fun watching the race.  I cant wait until next year.  Oh and theres 24 horses in the race so I had bets on 1/3 of them, I couldnt loose with those odds.

Weerona Formal

This past Friday, October 28th, was the last day of classes for the semester.  Oh how it went by so fast, I dont even feel like I was going to school....maybe because I skipped a lot of classes.  But the last day of classes means Formal which is when everyone in college (204 people) or dorm we would call it in America  , dresses up in shirts and ties and some suits for the guys and fancy dresses for the girls.  It was kind of like a prom, but you didnt bring a date.  Once we got there everyone was taking pictures and then just like at a prom you sat down at your table and ate dinner.  Once done with dinner, everyone went to the dance floor and used up their 5 free drink coupons!  The event lasted from 6:30pm until 11:00pm and was a lot of fun and a great way to end the year before everyone starts studying for finals and heading home.

Here are some pictures...more will probably be uploaded later.

Don Giovanni at the Opera House

So today a bunch of us decided that we couldn't leave Australia without seeing a show at the Opera House even if we weren't sure an opera show would be our thing, especially when the show is going to be in italian... but they have this thing called student rush which is when students can show up at the Opera House box office an house before the show starts and buy tickets for $50, thats if there are any left.

Me, Andy, Joe, Amy, Tim

So at 2:30pm we took the risk and left from North Wollongong hoping that they would have tickets available for tonights show and we wouldn't have to just turn around and come home.  Eventually after taking the train and walking through the light rain we made it to the Opera House and there were tickets available.  We were very lucky and got 6 tickets together in the upper balcony....there was actually quite a few open seats, probably because it was a Tuesday night and it was a rainy day.  But anyways the show started and this being the first Opera or actually play I have been too outside of like high school plays I didn't really know what to expect.  We were right that the entire show was in Italian but they flashed up english translation above the stage.  The entire show was basically a play with them singing every line and it was actually a pretty cool experience.  The play Don Giovanni by Mozart (1787) was about a man named Don Giovanni who sneaks into a woman's house and begins to abuse her but then kills the girls father and runs away.  As Giovanni continues to seek woman like this, the woman seeks revenge and wants to kill Giovanni.  Eventually the woman finds Giovanni and recognizes his voice.  Later the woman's fathers ghost appears and asked for repent.  Giovanni refuses and is sent to hell.