Hugging koalas and such

Yup, thats right, hugging koalas. Well, sort of. Ok it wasnt a real one, but close enough! About 2 weeks ago, Swinburne University put together a trip for all the international students to the Healsville Sanctuary in the Yarra Valley. A Sanctuary , sounds fancy right? Im not sure what exactly qualifies as a sanctuary, but it was zoo. At the zoo there were all the normal local wildlife like Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabies, Platypus, Emus, Dingos, Tasmanian Devils, and Echidnas. It was pretty awesome to see all these animals up close. I gotta say, Koalas are a lot bigger than I expected and Platypus are much smaller than I realized. Go figure.

But some facts : Koalas sleep up to 22 hours a day, and when they are awake, they are eating. They spend almost all of their time in the trees. They find a fork in the tree and prop themselves against the branch and sleep slumped over. They also have very calloused skin on their rumps to prevent them from getting splinters. The more you know....

After seeing the animals we went to the "Birds of Prey" show and watched the trainers with their birds. Right after the show an aboriginal local came out to talk to us about his culture and history then play some diggery-doo for us. It was actually really interesting and sort of sad. He was 50 odd years old and he said that it was only in the past 20 years that he learned how to read and write and as a child he had zero rights and did not have access to any sort of education. On the bright side though, since the whole equal rights thing and what not, he was precious commodity and he was making a decent living teaching and selling boomerangs to ignorant white people. Well, after a life story like that, of course I bought a boomerang. I am happy to report that yes it really does work and comes back to you. Its pretty awesome.   

Anywho, after the zoo we went to a vineyard and did a wine tasting and got to test out our new boomerangs! From the vineyard you could see the valley and the surrounding mountains, it was  so beautiful.

Sweet action pose

Since the Healsville trip, my time has been filled with getting ready for school, school, settling in, and figuring out the trains. As you know, Julia, Doug, and I finally found a house and got all moved in, along with the new roommates. As of 3 days ago everyone has arrived and there are now a total of 9 people living in the house. Yes, 9.  8 women and 1 guy...poor Doug. Our 6 roommates all knew each other previously from traveling around Asia for the past month. Interestingly enough, they are all from Ireland and they are all nurses. They are a lot of fun and it should be a good time living together. 

Since I mentioned school, today was the end of my second week. Classes have been pretty good so far, but its going to be a pretty busy semester. Im only taking 3 classes this semester and each are only once a week. Apparently its normal to only go to class 3 or 4 times a week here, which is nice because it opens up time to work part time. Right now I only have class on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Its the first time ever that I dont have to show up to a 4 hour studio 3 times a week and Im pretty happy about it. Dont hate me yet though for my skimpy schedule because the 3 classes Im taking are a Sustainable Design studio, an Inhabitation Studio, and a Furniture class. Both studios have 2 projects each for the semester and for Furniture I will be making a lightweight stool for the first project and then a full chair for the second project. 6 projects in total for one semester...finals are gonna be rough. If you want, you can follow my furniture studio and all the work I will be doing for it. We had to create a blog for the class so we can post new work each week. Im following that blog as well so you should be able to find it pretty easily, if not the link is....

http://blevins1793020.blogspot.com.au/

Yay more blogs to follow!

Ta-ta for now!