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My Adelaide Escapade

Published on by ashleybmuirheadLeave a comment

This past week was the mid-semester break (despite it happening in week 9, but I digress). My friend invited me to go to Adelaide with them for a family wedding and the Easter holiday. Of course I couldn’t refuse, and soon after, the tickets were booked, and my bags were packed.

My adventure to Adelaide started with quite the kick – I missed my flight. Yup! Me! Missing my flight! One thing about me is that I am a planner until the day I die. I take pride in maintaining an organized calendar, having a structured weekly to-do list, and always being five minutes early to every event. I try not to miss a simple lunch meet up, let alone a whole flight! In all fairness, the flight was scheduled to take off at 7:20am, and I woke up at 7:00am. So, if I lived a little closer to the airport I probably could have made it (or so I tell myself), but unfortunately that just wasn’t the reality. So, after waking up with a jolt, a long phone call to the airline, and a $100 missed-flight-fee, I managed to book us another flight for 1:00pm. Thank goodness, because I don’t know what else we would have done with our week!

Eventually, after a long stressful morning, we landed in Adelaide. As I previously mentioned, we had a wedding to go to. Did I mention that it was the same day as our flight? Yeah – the wedding was the same day as our flight. We ended up getting dressed in the airport gender neutral bathroom, which is no easy feat. There was one point when I was leaning against the wall trying to put on my shoe, when suddenly my butt hits the door-open button. There we were, carry on contents spewed across the floor, my friend is trying to put product in their hair and I’m struggling to stand on one foot while I put my shoe on. The automatic door opens painfully slow, only to reveal a small crowd of onlookers waiting for their turn for the bathroom. I profusely start apologizing while simultaneously smacking the close-door button. Unfortunately, the door must have had some sort of timer, because it stayed open for a solid thirty seconds before slowly, so slowly, closing again. Talk about awkward.

We unfortunately missed the ceremony and the first thirty minutes of the reception, but everyone at the wedding was so happy that we made it. Now, I had never been to an Italian wedding before – but wow – these people know how to have a great time. Not only was everyone so kind and welcoming, but there was dancing and food galore! Everyone was happy to be together, and the newly-weds had the time of their life. If you ever have the opportunity to go to an Italian wedding, I would highly recommend it.

The town that we primarily stayed in is called Murray Bridge, a petit little town with a collection of bakeries, rivers, and of course, bridges. We were able to go on a family friend’s boat and cruise down the river, where I tried to wakeboard, something that I had never done before. I wasn’t able to get up, but I gave it my best try and (I feel) that I did pretty good for my first time.

Me, trying to wakeboard. Emphasis on ‘trying’.

Before getting on the river, everyone kept warning me of ‘the bunyip’ – an eel-like creature that lives in the water. I was told that they’re super dangerous, and quite scary. Being in Australia, a place known for their freaky animals and deadly beasts, I was a little on edge, to say the least. Thankfully, I didn’t see the bunyip until a few days later, where it was revealed to me that it’s an urban legend created by the native peoples of the land. The story goes as follows: there was a greedy man who was catching far too many fish. The elders weren’t happy that he wasn’t respecting the laws of the land, so they turned him into the Bunyip – a half man, half fish creature – and banished him to the river forever. The story of the Bunyip was used to teach children to not swim alone and to only take what you need, nothing more. As great of a lesson the Bunyip is, the commemoration statue is a different story. Well, it’s not exactly a statue – more like an aquatic animatronic that emerges from a small pond and roars when you click a button. I had a good laugh, to say the least.

The Bunyip, lurking
The Bunyip, ready to attack

I also went to the Monarto Safari Park, which was a really cool experience. We took a bus that drove us all around this safari park. We drove into the enclosures of the animals (including lions, giraffes, elephants, cheetahs, chimps, and of course, kangaroos). The animals seemed to be used to the busses rolling around in their enclosures, as they weren’t skittish at all. In fact, they were all very up close and personal with the busses, which was great for sight-seeing. Additionally, this safari park is the largest open-range safari experience outside of Africa, and actively help several different species fight extinction through ethical breeding programs.

The chimps swinging around
Lion laying right outside the bus

Overall, as stressful as the beginning of this trip was, it was really great to get out of Perth and see some new scenery. I was really grateful to have some family time, even if it wasn’t with my family per say. I felt right at home, and I wouldn’t have changed anything!

Classes Start, Confusion Follows

Published on by Katie SandovalLeave a comment

Before classes started, I took a short trip to Osaka with some friends. We explored a lot of places like Osaka Castle, Namba Yasaka Jinja, Dotonbori, Shinsekai, and more. One of my friends found out about the Eco Pass, which is part of the Osaka Metro system. It made traveling cheaper and even gave us discounts at certain spots—definitely a good find!

While Osaka was a lot of fun, I actually want to talk more about registering for classes and how the first week of school has been going.

To be honest, registering for classes was more confusing than I expected. However, I also feel like I made it more confusing than it should have been. I needed to take seven classes, and finding a schedule where they didn’t overlap was harder than I thought. Since some classes are held at the Imadegawa campus and others at the Kyotanabe campus (which is over an hour away from each other), I had to make sure I didn’t end up with only ten minutes to get from one to the other. I tried to group most of my classes at the same campus each day to make things easier for myself.

There was also an issue with one of the classes I registered for during the advance registration period. It ended up conflicting with another class I really wanted to take. I was worried about not getting enough credits, so I signed up for that first one without double-checking. At DU, dropping a class is as easy as clicking a button, but here it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t just drop the class online, so I emailed an advisor at Doshisha, who pointed me in the right direction. They told me to register for the class I wanted, then head to campus to fill out a form to drop the other class.

Once I finally had all seven classes, I needed to watch these videos called DO (Doshisha Opening), since this week was technically the first week of classes. Most of the videos were just introductions to the course, but a few included some assignments that I needed to complete before our first face-to-face class. Some professors explained the assignments directly in the video, which were easy to follow, so I just completed them on separate sheets of paper.

One of my classes, however, used a system called e-class (kind of like Canvas, but different). All of my courses are technically on e-class, but so far only one has actually uploaded any materials there. Knowing how to use it was a little confusing at first, especially when I couldn’t access the assignment, but after some trial and error, I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

Next week will be my first week of in-person classes. I’m both excited and a bit nervous to finally meet my classmates and get started!