I haven't really been up to much, but I thought I would keep everyone updated on the lifestyle here. It is a lot different than that of the U.S. or at least from where I grew up. I have to say that, even though they speak English and I had anticipated a lot of similarities, it seems to be a whole different world from the close they wear, the way they talk, how their school system operates, and the extracurricular activities.

Let’s start with the obvious. Most girls here wear the skinny jeans and usually flats, which is rarely ever seen back home. When we go out, a lot of girls wear super short dresses but their shirts are never revealing like they are in the States. And the boys wear skinny jeans as well and a lot of them wear really ugly pointy toed (semi pointy) shoes. It’s just a lot different style than my jeans and t-shirt style at home.

I also seem to find myself asking people what they mean when they say something. Surprisingly, there are a lot of terms, a lot more than I thought that I don't understand. They call sunglasses sunnies and football footy and those are pretty basic. A lot of terms that we use in the U.S. they use here but they pronounce them differently. They put the emphasis on different letters or instead of T's, they say it as if it were a D like tattoo. They say tattoo like if it were spelled taddoo or ninedeen. It just seems very confusing sometimes.

Their school system is different too and I think I like theirs better. At home I might go to the same class two or three days a week for an hour to an hour and a half and i might have two or three classes a day. Here I still might have two or three classes a day but they have lectures and tutorials and you only have a lecture once a week and a tutorial once a week. The lectures are usually two hour lectures and they just present the information to you or in some cases, just read the posted power point slides and then in the tutorials, they actually explain the information and what it means. It is kind of nice to only have that lecture once a week.

Let’s just say that their "extracurricular activities" are somewhat different than ours as well. On campus, they don't have a gym for all students to use for free. Students have to pay around $300 per semester to use a gym located on campus and all their intramural sports and club sports are the same way, we have to pay to play. I must say, they party an awful lot too. It seems that every Wednesday, which is their big party night, there is a theme or it is a dress up party. It’s kind of fun but then they also go out Saturday night and sometimes Sunday night. There is a bar on campus and they throw parties in the basement of the building I am living in. Our RA’s drink with us and its okay to have alcohol in our rooms and to party in the halls. They also have Autonomy day, which was just yesterday, and everyone gets up at 3a.m. to start drinking. The people here must be used to it or they are just crazy, extremely nice, but crazy.