drum roll please....

Ta-da! Congratulations everyone, we have completed week 12. For those who are in the same lucky boat as me, no finals for us! I am now free to spend my time as I please, when I am not working. I hope that everyone had a successful term and a successful year. I apologise for not posting this yesterday as I should have, but I was stuck in the computer lab finishing up my last assignment before I had to go to work. So what kind of tips can I give for surviving the summer?

1)wear SPF 30+ (for anyone who is new to the australian summer, the sun is VERY intense here and it is easy to get a sunburn)
2)stay hydrated. Summer is a time to have fun, but a little too much fun in the sun can lead to getting very sick
3) invest in a fan
4) travel! find some summer deals and take a trip, there are lots of other countries too that are close by
5) do something new! last year I went skydiving for the first time. it was amazing
6) make some new friends. i shouldn't have to explain the significance of that.
7) if stressful times have gotten the best of you like they did me, and you aren't quite ready for the beach, then I would recommend Jetts gym. Its about 25 dollars a fortnight, its open 24 hours, and its located in Stockland so you can take the bus if you don't have a car!

So yeah, thank you everyone who read and commented on my blog this term. It was my first time doing something like this but it was a good experience. Thank you again to CQU and the ladies in the international offices that help me with all my problems and always with a smile. To any potential exchange students, go out there and achieve your dreams! I am looking forward to what experiences and trials that the summer will hold and I wish the best to all of you!

-Mallory

working over the holiday

Summer break is right around the corner and I'm sure everyone has big plans. I would just like to remind any international students out there that while school is not in session we are allowed to work 40 hours per week, rather than 20. Even though all I want to do is lay on the beach/hammock/bed and drink beer/cocktails/water I know that I have to be realistic and that trying to fit as much work in as possible for awhile is a good idea. I'm sure I have said it before, but one of my number one reminders is being realistic. Everything costs more than you think it will, sometimes its harder than you thought it would be, and sometimes its just not fun. So my plans are stay home, horde cash, and then go on some crazy australian adventures.

Before you Study Abroad

This week I met someone who had tried study abroad and came back early. This led me to consider what do I have, that other people don't, that allows me to leave my family and friends for extended periods of time? It isn't often that I get homesick, usually only major holidays or when I am sick (everyone needs their mommy when they're sick). I still don't know what it is, but I just want to warn anyone considering doing an exchange in the future, make sure you consider your goals and priorities before you sign up. Not only do you need to think about what you are leaving behind and if thats okay, but you need to also consider why you want to study abroad and is your destination right for you? Even though there are lots of countries I would love to visit, I don't necessarily want to spend and extended amount of time there. If you are planning on going to a third world country, you need to think about whether your destination is going to have indoor toilets or even plumbing. And more importantly can you live for 6 months or longer without it?

Mix and Match Week

This week I don't have one particular topic that I want to discuss. Although eventful, nothing has happened that would serve as a good piece of helpful information. So Im just going to throw some random stuff out at you:

1) I work at the Victoria Tavern and every Thursday Friday and Saturday we have an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ. It's $28 per person and I highly recommend it! I promise that my boss hasn't set me up to do a promo for her business, the best part about working there is the left overs. If you have read these student blogs before than you might be familiar with Billy, he also works with me. So for a relaxed night, eating Brazilian food, served to you by Americans call in and make a reservation.

2) Week 10 is coming up in a hurry and after putting together a little schedule for my assignments I have realised I have less time and more things to do than I thought! It is easy to get off track planning your summer activities or laying in the hammock ( I just recently bought one) but we all need to stay focused a little bit longer.

3) On the 25th of October the Uni's music course is having their annual Big Night In. I saw it last year and the student's do a great job. If my memory serves me correctly its under $10 to get in and it open to the general public.

Hopefully next week something inspiring will happen to me and I will be able to relate the story to you! I will do my best to find something!

Christmas Plans

This week my boyfriend's parents invited us to join them on a trip to Thailand over the Christmas/New Year holidays. I am way too excited for my own good. The message I wanted to share with my fellow international students was that if for whatever reason you can't go home for the holidays, go on vacation!

For me it's about 1300 dollars just for the flights to go home to New Mexico, but its only 400 to go to Bangkok. Plus I wont have to deal with massive time differences! In my excited state I have been doing a lot of research on Thailand and it seems very affordable in terms of travel, accommodation, food and shopping. (yay!) While I was looking at flights I noticed there are also very reasonable flights to Bali along with a few other places. Why go home when you can go somewhere you have never been before?

All of my traveling has been kept to North America, Europe, and Australia so I am looking forward to the opportunity of experiences in a very unique culture.

I hope everyone is either getting their final assignments in order or has their sights set on the end of this term. Only four more weeks so use your time wisely!

Summer Festivals

This week I have been booking my camping on Stradbroke Island for the Island Vibes Festival this year. I can not reccommend attending a music festival during your stay enough. Hands down, no questions asked, Island Vibes was one of the best weekends of my entire life. There are many festivals spread out all over the country, some of the most popular are :

Sound Wave
Big Day Out
Woodford
Meredith

However I know that Yepoon is having a cultural festival in September and lots of towns have similar ones. Island Vibes is the only one that I have attended so far. Its held over the last weekend in October on Stradbroke Island which is an absolutely beautiful spot. We camped right next to the beach and went swimming every morning and spent all night listening to amazing live bands. Most of the music is Reggae/Islander so it makes for a really calm atmosphere and the people that I met were very friendly, i dont recall seeing a single fight. Even if you cant make it to a music festival, John Butler Trio and Blue King Brown are playing in Rockhampton soon as well as Agnes and Julia Stone. Make a night of it and go have some fun!

Over that last few months, I have noticed that every day I find something new that I didn't used to do. I think that I am actually becoming more Australian. Now don't get me wrong, I will definitely not be indulging in a Vegemite sandwich any time soon but slowly the little things are starting to creep up on me.

When I went home to America for the holidays last year, my friends and family were really surprised that my American accent was still intact. I always felt it would be really fake for me to come back after only six months and have picked up an accent, because I am not Australian. However since I have come back here and started working in a restaurant, I have found it easier to just submit to the Australian pronunciations of most words like Basil, Cilantro (Coriander), Bell Peppers (Capsicum), etc. But with those changes more of the Australian language has been added into my vocabulary. Recently, "G'Day" slipped out in conversation without me even realizing it. And yesterday I said "aye". Never did I think I would end up integrating myself in that sense. Not that I am opposed to integration at all, I have accepted everything that Australia has offered me with open arms. However, even though both countries speak English, the language is still different and my language was something I could hold onto from home.

Week 5

Hey readers,

So we are currently in week 5 of term 2 and that means that next week is break! woo-hoo! Personally I will be using this opportunity to catch up on some homework and get some extra hours in at work. However this coming week is the perfect opportunity for you to get out of your current city and get to see a little more of the country.

Last year four other exchange students and myself took a trip to Sydney for a week. I decided to go like two days before we left but we had an absolute blast! Instead of staying in hotels I would recommend staying in backpackers. These are great places to meet people who are also travelling in Australia which means you are going to find a lot of people who have something in common with you! Also, we stayed at the Great Aussie Backpackers and they gave us a booklet full of coupons to spend on everything from food to skydiving. That really helped us so we could save money for more important things...

If you don't have the time or money to go too far away, remember that Yeppoon and Great Keppel Island are only a bus ride away. I recently went camping at Agnes Waters which is also really close. It is one of the only beaches that has surf-able waves and I noticed that you can sign up for lessons.

There are still museums and things to see around Rockhampton as well so there is no reason why anyone should have to spend their break totally bored.

Wishing you all the best,

Mallory

So this Friday is my one year anniversary with my boyfriend. Although that is important to me, this day is significant to me for more reasons than just that.

At this time last year I had just moved to Australia and was having a hard time breaking away from my shy tendencies and meeting new people. After a considerable amount of pumping myself up for confidence, I introduced myself to my neighbors who in turn introduced me to their friends. From this one incident stemmed my entire Australian experience. Now the people who I was so afraid to meet are the people I see every day and share all of my most memorable experiences with. At that time they changed my life and they have come to change my future.

It is hard for me to imagine what my exchange experience would have even been like had I not known these people. They are in all of my pictures and memories. In fact, I am not even sure I would have made the decision to stay here if they weren't in my life.

So tomorrow is the day I get to celebrate having spent an entire year with my best friend. As I am, I couldn't be happier and I hope the same for all of you.

dealing with meanie-heads

This weekend I had the displeasure of having to deal with the rudest man I have ever met...ever. It was absolutely shocking to me that someone though they were for some reason entitled to treat another human being with so much disrespect.

Now this is not the first time that I have run into people like this, all with their own varying reasons to justify their actions. I have just never met anyone like this man. There have been a couple of...well how do I say it...real jerks that I have run into while in Australia. So my message for this week is that if any of my international readers are unlucky enough to run into these jerks, I hope that you will be able to walk away from the situation with your healthy views of Australia intact.

Something that came as a surprise to me when I first moved here is that some people are not as happy about foreigners coming to their country as others are. Being that I am white and American, it is not very often that I run into too many oppositions. However, I am aware that some people have very strong prejudices towards other races. One thing that I have found is that for every person that has something mean to say to me, there are many many many people who love having me here. And I am sure that stands true for all the rest of you.

Although these people are very rarely polite, I am trying to talk about this subject as delicately as possible so as not to offend anyone. The only advise that I can give is to not waste your time, effort, or words on someone that chooses to be so ignorant. I know that sometimes it can feel really satisfying to throw out a quick witted reply or to just down right tell them what you think abut them. Believe me, it won't be worth it and you'll probably just end up getting into more trouble than it was worth. Just turn your back on them, walk away and remember that person is only one in a million.

Friends

A really hard part of being away from home is learning how to balance your old friends and your new friends.

Having done two separate exchanges in my life, one thing I have learned is that being away from home for an extended amount of time really helps to weed out the "kinda-sorta" friends from the ones you know will be there forever.

Since we are only at the beginning of the term and a lot of you exchange students have just arrived, I'm sure you still want to spend time calling, and messaging, and chatting with those you left behind, but make sure you don't become alienated from the people around you. It is important to use this time to get to know the people in your classes and make some good friends. If you don't make an impression now you may get left behind in the dust, and next thing you know its time for you to go home and you may not have had the experience that you hoped for.

The other side of the story though, is that as the year moves on you may lose touch with people you were once closer with. I've lost a few friends due to the excessive space between us, but what I have found is the ones that really truly love you are always waiting for you to come back. I still remember the day I met my best friend when we were six years old. We haven't lived in the same city since we were 15 and we don't even talk to each other weekly, but I can count on her to be exactly the same as she was the last time we spoke.

I hope that everyone had a great second week of school, and we should all look forward to only having ten more weeks left in the term!

Good luck,

Mallory Bailey

Transportation

This is one of the problems that I am running into more than I would like. I don’t have a car, and as much as I would like one, I can’t have it. Having to pay for insurance, petrol, registration, plus any other expenses is too much for me to handle on top of my everyday living expenses and Uni fees. Just writing about this has left me fantasizing about life with a car. I wouldn’t have to bum rides off of my friend, pay for expensive taxis, or take the bus. Having a car opens up what feels like a million other opportunities, but you have to be realistic and understand what you are able to handle financially.

In the meantime my most common mode of transport is the bus! I totally recommend it and would advise all of you to go to the Student Association and apply for a Tertiary Transport Card. With it you get a concession, and an all day pass for all of the zones is only $2.40

Most of the time this a totally adequate mode of transportation, except for the rare moments when it doesn’t come at all…yes readers it’s true! I have been left basically stranded by the bus system not one…not two…I wish I could say three but no, its actually been four different occasions! Although it is times like these that make me really want to tell the bus company exactly how I feel about them, it is best to keep calm.

Now I know that it sounds selfish, but making a friend who has a car never hurt anyone. Having had so much experience dealing with a crisis like this, I am happy to share some of my expertise.

1) First of all make sure you get a bus timetable, in fact get a couple. I keep one in both my purses and my backpack. Hopefully you’ll be able to use that and find your way to another bus stop or figure out if another bus is going to be headed your way

2) Keep in mind that often the buses are running a little behind schedule. There has been one time that I thought my bus to Uni wasn’t coming and just as I started walking home it showed up

3) Write down the phone numbers of your most reliable friends and keep them somewhere you know you can get to in case of an emergency.

4) Keep some spare change in your wallet; it’s only 50 cents to make a phone call from a payphone.

5) Always be kind to your bus driver. There has been a couple of times that when my bus didn’t come, another bus driver recognized me and offered to give me a ride home. They know I’m just a “silly Yank” and luckily they keep an eye out for me.

I hope that all of you make it through issue free, but if you run into trouble, I understand your frustration. With that in mind put it behind you and move on, you are here to enjoy yourself!

Hello students, alumni, and staff of CQUniversity. My goal for this blog is to try and provide some insight into not only being a student, but more specifically an international student here at CQUniversity Rockhampton. Ultimately I would love to be able to inspire someone to take the same leap that I did and study abroad, but I will be happy with just answering a few questions and hopefully providing a good read.

My name is Mallory Bailey and Term 2 will be the beginning of my second year here at CQUniversity. I originally came here in Term 2 of 2009 as an exchange student from The United States, but I fell in love with the country and the people and now I am here to stay until I finish my degree. Many people question me on why I decided to come to Rockhampton rather than a major city like Brisbane or Melbourne and it is an interesting question. My counsellor at the uni I was attending gave me some very wise advice, he said that If I decided to go to one of the more major cities I was sure to have a good time, however if I went to a smaller city then I would probably meet more Australians than other international students and have the opportunity to experience “authentic Australia”.

I have wanted to come to Australia for as long as I can remember. When I was young I did quite a bit of travelling with my family, but my parents wouldn’t even consider taking the fourteen hour flight from L.A. to Brisbane. When I was in high school I applied for an exchange program and was accepted, but when I said that I wanted to go to Australia they denied my request because Australia is an English speaking country and therefore had a culture similar to the United States. Then when I applied to come to Australia once I was in college I found out that there were hardly any scholarships for students coming to Australia because it was an English speaking country and they didn’t consider it to have any “culture”. So when my counsellor told me that I was going to have the opportunity to see the “authentic Australia” I jumped on the opportunity.

I still stand confident in my decision. Living here I know that everyday promises a new experience and a new opportunity for me to learn something new about this amazing country, its people, and its culture.

For any international students that are reading this and have just arrived, welcome! The first week can be overwhelming but take this opportunity to talk to some people in your classes and get to know your lecturers. It’s easier to just melt into the background but take a chance and put yourself out there! In my next blog I’ll cover some more suggestions and advice for surviving the term.

Good luck!
Mallory