August 22
Happy anniversary to me and Rachel! As of today we've officially been dating for 2 years and 5 months, and have been officially engaged for 2 months. :)
Today and tomorrow are my longest days of classes. Today I had three one-hour breaks from 8:30 to 4:30 pm. During one of them I came back to my room and made lunch. During the other two I stayed up on campus in the library the first time, then in a computer lab the second time, doing some school work and browsing the world wide web.
After classes were over I went down to the local state library to look for a book for a book review. I have to do a "critique" of either an Australian text or film by next Friday. I couldn't find any books that looked interesting, so I asked a couple of my Aussie friends if they knew of anything good. I got several friends that agreed that I should watch The Castle, which is apparently a funny Australian-made movie. So I went down to the video store and rented it. I think I'll watch the movie this weekend and then write my review as well. It's crazy how this one assignment (approximately four pages) is going to be worth 25% of my final grade in my literary studies class.
Speaking of assignments... we had our first exam in Intro to Exercise Science last Thursday. Our grades are now posted online, and I found out that I got 35/50 = 70%. Normally I wouldn't be too happy with a 70%, which would be a C- back home. However, it turns out the highest grade (out of ~200 students in the class) was 80%. The average grade was only 47%. The cutoff for passing is 50%, so that means that the average grade was a failing grade. Pretty crazy. In class today he said he wasn't able to talk about the exam because apparently 11 people didn't show up for it, so he needs to see if they have excused reasons for missing and want to take it still before he talks about it. I'm thinking almost certainly he will have to curve if greater than 50% of the class is failing. I talked to a couple other people in the class, and learned about one American girl that got the high grade (40/50), one American that got a 25/50 (just passing), and one American that failed (She didn't tell me her grade). I also talked to another girl that failed. It was a lot harder than everyone expected. We'll have to wait and see what happens. I passed though, and that's the most important thing for me this semester. :)
On my walk back from my last class today I wished I had my camera. Not more than 30 feet away from the sidewalk was a group of 5 kangaroos. The biggest kangaroo was the closest, and he every so often would take one more creeping "hop" forward while supporting himself by his tail. I think they were eating the grass. The other kangaroos were all smaller, but they all appeared to be much too large to even consider hopping into their mother's pouches. It was probably some mothers and their big, grown babies or something. The most distant kanagroo was probably not more than 60-75 feet away. It was really neat to see them grazing so close to the sidewalk. They told us at orientation that University of Canberra is the only university in Australia where you have kangaroos on campus. I don't even see deer that close to me on campus back home! It's so cool! Next time hopefully I'll have my camera.
This evening when I walked back from the video store it was just getting dark, and it was mostly cloudy and a little breezy. It smelled and felt like a cool, almost "crisp" spring evening when you can tell summer will be coming soon. Funny thing is though, it's winter. I'm tending to think that winter here is much like winter in the south, say, northern Florida or southern Georgia, however. Which means that spring really starts coming before spring is officially here. And I've seen evidence for this. There's some sort of shrub that has recently begun blooming with bright yellow flowers. Some shrubs and trees have had flowers all winter, but these are new ones. A few weeping willows and other trees along the lake are also starting to look a bit yellow-green and have swollen buds. A pair of apple or cherry trees on the way back from the mall are also just starting to blossom, as I saw at least a half dozen opened blooms along the branches today. It may still be winter here, but the warm weather we've had lately (about 60 every day) is making the plants think it's spring. Only one more month until the official first day!
Today and tomorrow are my longest days of classes. Today I had three one-hour breaks from 8:30 to 4:30 pm. During one of them I came back to my room and made lunch. During the other two I stayed up on campus in the library the first time, then in a computer lab the second time, doing some school work and browsing the world wide web.
After classes were over I went down to the local state library to look for a book for a book review. I have to do a "critique" of either an Australian text or film by next Friday. I couldn't find any books that looked interesting, so I asked a couple of my Aussie friends if they knew of anything good. I got several friends that agreed that I should watch The Castle, which is apparently a funny Australian-made movie. So I went down to the video store and rented it. I think I'll watch the movie this weekend and then write my review as well. It's crazy how this one assignment (approximately four pages) is going to be worth 25% of my final grade in my literary studies class.
Speaking of assignments... we had our first exam in Intro to Exercise Science last Thursday. Our grades are now posted online, and I found out that I got 35/50 = 70%. Normally I wouldn't be too happy with a 70%, which would be a C- back home. However, it turns out the highest grade (out of ~200 students in the class) was 80%. The average grade was only 47%. The cutoff for passing is 50%, so that means that the average grade was a failing grade. Pretty crazy. In class today he said he wasn't able to talk about the exam because apparently 11 people didn't show up for it, so he needs to see if they have excused reasons for missing and want to take it still before he talks about it. I'm thinking almost certainly he will have to curve if greater than 50% of the class is failing. I talked to a couple other people in the class, and learned about one American girl that got the high grade (40/50), one American that got a 25/50 (just passing), and one American that failed (She didn't tell me her grade). I also talked to another girl that failed. It was a lot harder than everyone expected. We'll have to wait and see what happens. I passed though, and that's the most important thing for me this semester. :)
On my walk back from my last class today I wished I had my camera. Not more than 30 feet away from the sidewalk was a group of 5 kangaroos. The biggest kangaroo was the closest, and he every so often would take one more creeping "hop" forward while supporting himself by his tail. I think they were eating the grass. The other kangaroos were all smaller, but they all appeared to be much too large to even consider hopping into their mother's pouches. It was probably some mothers and their big, grown babies or something. The most distant kanagroo was probably not more than 60-75 feet away. It was really neat to see them grazing so close to the sidewalk. They told us at orientation that University of Canberra is the only university in Australia where you have kangaroos on campus. I don't even see deer that close to me on campus back home! It's so cool! Next time hopefully I'll have my camera.
This evening when I walked back from the video store it was just getting dark, and it was mostly cloudy and a little breezy. It smelled and felt like a cool, almost "crisp" spring evening when you can tell summer will be coming soon. Funny thing is though, it's winter. I'm tending to think that winter here is much like winter in the south, say, northern Florida or southern Georgia, however. Which means that spring really starts coming before spring is officially here. And I've seen evidence for this. There's some sort of shrub that has recently begun blooming with bright yellow flowers. Some shrubs and trees have had flowers all winter, but these are new ones. A few weeping willows and other trees along the lake are also starting to look a bit yellow-green and have swollen buds. A pair of apple or cherry trees on the way back from the mall are also just starting to blossom, as I saw at least a half dozen opened blooms along the branches today. It may still be winter here, but the warm weather we've had lately (about 60 every day) is making the plants think it's spring. Only one more month until the official first day!
posted by itsbenrael at 8:23 PM
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