Last Day of Summer :/

I am not as good at this blogging thing as I had originally hoped. I don't know who I was kidding, to be honest- every journal I have ever attempted has failed within the first few weeks. This time, though, I'm going to use the "I've been too busy exploring a new continent" excuse for my tardiness.

This past week, a bunch of international students visited Victor Harbor and a wildlife area right next to it. Even though it's still winter and it barely got past 12 degrees, it was good fun. My group visited some shops, ate some fish and chips (honestly, though, we fed more to the seagulls than we ate ourselves), and then went down to Granite Island. Apparently, there are little penguins on the island, but we weren't able to see any. Robert "saw some penguins" and I got super excited, but it turns out they were just black-and-white birds. Bah.

At the wildlife resort, we saw kangaroos. And by kangaroos, I mean a lot of kangaroos. Kangaroo food was only $1, and so we all got some. My gosh, kangaroos are greedy. You would think they had never been fed in their lives by the way they ran/hopped(?) up to anyone with a bag. They were pushing each other out of the way, and some greedy little buggers even tried to tear through the bag themselves. I can kind of understand why Australians see them as rats.

Besides the kangaroos, there were wallabies, dingos, crocodiles, koalas, lots of reptiles, and chickens. Most of the animals were pretty chill since it was so cold outside (the crocs looked like they were dead), but some of the animals were pretty lively. The echidna was my favorite animal out of all of them. I mean, just look at it:

Isn't it adorable? Its tongue comes out through its nose. It's weird, but endearing.

Speaking of weird but endearing, the people I've met here have been really great. So far I've mostly been meeting international students, but everyone here has been very nice to get to know. I've met people from Germany, Italy, Greece, the UK, Kenya, Malaysia, China, Denmark, Holland, France, Canada,  and Sweden (this is probably short of one or two countries, but it's all I can remember right now). It's amazing how many Germans and Malaysians are here in South Australia. They might be able to annex the state for their own if they really wanted :)

School starts tomorrow. Blech. I finally figured out my schedule, so I will definitely receive credit for all of my classes, whew.  I only have 4 classes, which ends up being about 14 hours in American credit. It doesn't seem like much now, but I've been told that Australian classes are a bit more difficult than their American equivalents. I really hope I can keep up my GPA, but I figure all I can do is try my best and learn as much as I can while I'm here.

On the bright side, I get to see the Batman movie tomorrow! I have also gotten the go-ahead from my parents to go shopping (thanks, mom and dad) so I will finally be able to have more than 2 weeks' worth of clothes. In a place where the washing machine costs 3 dollars, I am really looking forward to that.