Week 1 Australia - University of Queensland

It’s already been a week in the land down under! While it has gone by really fast, I have also done some AMAZING things within this short week! Its been pretty laid back since “real classes” don’t start til next week. Here’s a little breakdown of what we’ve done this week. Were staying in this nice little place called Benson Court Motel, and we have the whole place to ourselves :)
Every morning we get breakfast at the hotel, then hop on the city bus for a quick ride into to the University of Queensland where we meet up with the group. Our morning introduction course runs from 9-12, but get this, we have a MORNING TEA break at 10:30!!! Every morning, we have around a 20 min break, and the university provides tea, coffee, fruit, and some amazing pastry! It’s a great little morning pick me up! We have lunch at the Women’s College Dining Hall (apparently its the best dining hall on campus) then head back to class from 1-4.
During the first week, they also mixed in an introduction BBQ, campus tour, library tour (FUNN) and some other fun activities. A lot of the sessions didn't last all 3 hours, which was also a nice surprise, giving us some free time to explore!
Here is a pretty large group of us waiting for the ferry into the city heading out to a little local bar called "Down Under" Tuesday Night. Unfortunately...right after boarding the ferry, KL took a picture (below) with the flash on, and the driver wasn't very happy. 5 minutes later, we were back on the dock, and forced to take the bus into the city. It was a fun little adventure, and we learned our lesson that when they say no flash photograph they're not kidding!
Here's some pictures of campus, after the dust storm in Sydney. I guess dust storms like this don't usually effect Brisbane this much, so I guess were lucky that we got to experience it! It was really weird cause in the morning the sky was perfectly clear, then by lunch, the entire campus looked like this:


By Wednesday night, the sky was pretty much clear again, and we headed out to take a tour of the Australian XXXX (Fourex) Brewery.
It was an awesome tour through a working factory (we weren't allowed to take pictures), and it even included a free dinner afterwards!
On Friday, instead of having class, we all met up and played Lawn Bowling. It’s an Australian game a lot like Bocce Ball (ok so I’ve never actually played bocce ball, but everybody else says its pretty much the same.) Basically you are rolling a mini bowling ball on a grass field trying to get your team’s balls to land closer to the golf ball than the other teams.

Since we had this day off, a group of us decided to start our weekend off early and take a trip out to the Glass Mountains, about an hour from Brisbane! I'll let you know how it goes!