By Grace Griffiths (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
So as well as my video blog (which is my main blog so check that out if you haven’t!) I just wanted to write a little something something – mainly because it gives me a further reason to procrastinate from work, but also because I forgot to mention some stuff in the video.
Firstly, the name of the tour guide to the Blue Mountains was Rod. He was great – your stereotypical outgoing, sarcastic, says-it-as-it-is Ozzie. I’ve noticed that a lot since being here. Australians keep it real, their humour tends to be quite honest and deadpan and I love it. Also, apologies for being the worst Drama student in the world because I completely forgot to mention the Sydney Opera House! Even if you don’t like that kind of thing, the Opera House is extremely impressive! Louby and I got up early one morning in a rare spout of motivation to see dawn, and were lucky enough to see the sun rise over it which was insane – the picture doesn’t even do it justice.
Secondly, just to clarify the housing situation, I ended up finding somewhere with three other students, so it’s not impossible to get a decent place off-campus, but I stand by what I said about it making settling in harder. I’d highly recommend applying to halls if you are going on exchange to ANU next year. There are benefits of living off-campus as well, of course: it’s probably slightly nicer than halls, usually cheaper, and a by-product of house hunting was that I got to see areas of Canberra that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It made me realise how nice Canberra is. The streets look very suburban, they look like they could’ve been modelled on Desperate Housewives. It’s the weirdest capital though. It was designed because the officials couldn’t agree on whether to make Sydney the capital, or Melbourne, so they decided to create somewhere half-way between the two. As a result everything in Canberra was designed with a purpose in mind, which has resulted in some really cool architecture. However, it is as if they designed it with the intent of filling it with far more people than are actually here – everything is huge and spaced out as you would imagine them to be in the capital city, but it’s really quiet and empty. Which is why it’s criticised by lots of Australians – even people who are from here! It’s known as a cold and boring place, but this is definitely not the case if you are a student who’s used to English weather! It’s quite funny though, you soon get used to people’s reaction to you telling them that you’re studying in Canberra to be: “Unlucky mate”. It is true that compared to somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne, there’s not as much to do, and if I were to move somewhere permanently, I think I’d prefer a bigger city, but as a student there’s always plenty going on, and locationwise it’s pretty ideal – only a short bus ride (in terms of Australian geography) from Sydney and the east coast.
Thirdly, I mentioned the Purple Haze Party that was at the end of O-week. It was there that I discovered SAFIA. They’re a trio from Canberra who describe themselves as electro-indie, and I now listen to them loads. They’re great if you’re into that kind of thing so check them out!
Fourthly, I completely forgot to mention the towns in New Zealand, especially Queenstown. So as well as all the crazy beautiful sights that were so nice they didn’t seem real, (this is something I get a lot on this side of the world. I’ll see something and won’t believe it’s actually there – I’ll feel like I’m looking at a picture online. I got it a lot in Sydney as well. I guess that’s a result of being a 21st century kid!) the towns in New Zealand were awesome!
A lot of them were really quirky and edgy… kind of like the Northern Quarter in Manchester. They had a really chilled out feel, and there was some really good artwork and a lot of live music.
One of the towns was famous for all its art deco, and there was another town called Bull that was filled with really bad puns. The kind of jokes dads make. I loved it! A shop described its food as ‘unbeliev-a-bull’, the police station had a sign saying ‘Const-a-bull’ and there were pictures of bulls dressed in cop outfits, the bin was shaped like a carton of milk and had a sign saying ‘Response-a-bull’, the toilets were listed as ‘Relieve-a-bull’. It was everywhere, and it was brilliant.
There’s actually so much more I can say about New Zealand – we definitely packed it in. We did caving in the North Island, where we saw glow worms, and we also went to Hobbiton where The Lord of the Rings was set.
We also stayed the night in a Mauri village. The Mauri people are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and they invited us to their village and put on a cultural show and experience for us. It was really interesting. The Mauri tradition involves a lot of music, art work, tribal dance and warriorhood. We had to select someone from our bus as ‘chief’ to represent our tribe, and they performed an initiation ceremony to make sure we were not a threat, and to welcome us to their village.
So to wrap up, I’m having an amazing time, meeting some amazing people and being introduced to some amazing things. I’m very happy that I chose to study abroad, and I’m really looking forward to what’s still to come! I’m going to try and blog more often but sometimes life just gets in the way… you know how it is!