It's not wrong, it's just different

Cairns absolutely flew by.  Nine-ish days felt like two. We had our final exam there, but being able to do activities and hang out with people that you may never see again (or for a while) made that part of the trip fly by.  I went bungy jumping this past Friday, and it was absolutely awesome. The place we went was designed by AJ Hackett, who basically invented modern bungy jumping and came up with its name.  He has designed about 10 places worldwide.  I did five jumps, and each time it was a little weird because human instinct tells you to not jump off of a perfectly good platform 50 meters above the ground. On the other days in Cairns, I was able to visit local markets, go to different beaches, and visit the lagoon.

As I sit here in the Brisbane airport, it is weird to think that we are actually on our way out.  When I flew in from LA to Sydney, I thought to myself about how quickly the trip would go.  I knew at the time that the trip would go way too fast and I’d feel like I was flying out of Australia the next day- and it definitely feels like that.  We’re leaving more and more friends behind as we travel farther and farther as they make their own extra trips to Queenstown and Auckland in New Zealand, to Bali, Fiji, and random places in Australia. 

A study abroad trip is not any typical trip or vacation and if you’re a student, the opportunity of a lifetime is right in front of you.  I’ve made some really good friends from all over the US (and some Australians), and I’ve had the opportunity to see places that most Australians have never seen. One of the songs that we talked about that naturally defined this trip was Price Tag, because an experience like this is truly priceless and you only live once.  I have thousands of pictures on my laptop from this trip, and they won’t even come close to describing how amazing our experience was. When I was in high school I knew I wanted to study abroad, and as I got to college and got settled in to my major and life, I felt like I was going to be unable to study abroad.  Chemical engineering, like many other majors, has many classes that are only offered one term of the year, and if you miss that class you end up being a year behind and delaying graduation.  I thought that because of that, and how much I love being at Michigan, that I’d never get the chance to go abroad.  Regardless of how busy you think you are, you can probably fit it in. 

Like a bungy jump, you just kind of have to go for it.  For me, I saw the Energy Tomorrow program and knew that it was exactly what I was looking for.  Looking back, it would have been nice to go to a country that spoke a different language, but at the same time there was so much that I learned that I’m not accustomed to in the US.  I realize this is the top blog post, and if you’re thinking of studying abroad in Australia I encourage you to read my other posts, because the opportunities in front of you are mind blowing whether you know it or not.  A major goal of mine for this blog is to help future travelers by giving them an idea of what they’re getting into by studying abroad, and that through that the process of studying abroad would go much more smoothly.  So in accordance with those goals, here’s a few helpful hints, which are by no means the end-all-be-all tips but nonetheless meant to be informative.

What I did right and what I’d do differently if I did it again:

Get a cell phone- it helps to meet up with students and stay in contact with people back home

Do the optional day trips, especially the Great Barrier Reef, surfing, and something that pushes your limits like bungy jumping, skydiving, or white water rafting

Pack a few days ahead of time, so that if you forget something you’ll remember it in the few days you’re still in the US

Use cash rather than a credit card, surcharges end up being higher for credit cards

No one had any opportunity to use their ISIC card once on the entire trip, it was pretty useless

Take LOTS of pictures, and have a good camera- you’ll share pictures, but it’s good to have your own

Go to the local places and don’t always travel with a huge group

Learn about Aussie rules and go to an AFL game if you can- it’s really interesting and even better than rugby

Take time to reflect on the trip, and write a journal

Have fun!

The Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef

I was going to make the title "Another Gateway Town", but I feel that a title like that would make it seem like this trip is repetitive, maybe even monotonous.  Although, as you know and expect to hear, this trip has been everything but that.

Since my last post, I've been pretty busy- hence the delay in my posting.  We had our project papers and presentations which took a considerable amount of effort and time, I went surfing at Bondi beach, and went on a two hour walk from Bondi beach to Coogee beach along the cliffs on the shoreline all before flying out of Sydney.  Surfing was really cool, and was one of the best single experiences of my trip.  If you're studying abroad here, you have to try surfing.  Australian surfing is some of the best in the world, but it doesn't make too much of a difference because as a beginner there was no way I was going to be able to ride 10 foot waves.  Still, I'd consider my surfing experience to be an absolute success. Back to the itinerary though- we flew out of Sydney and traveled to Cairns in north eastern Australia, and here we've been pretty busy as well preparing for our final exam, exploring Cairns, visiting multiple beaches (and getting sunburned), as well as a few games of rugby which can scrape you up pretty bad.  The other big thing I did here was scuba diving and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.

Did I just say that? Scuba diving and snorkeling on the reef? Yeah. I never thought in my life I'd do it. This past Sunday was my first time ever scuba diving, and I'm pretty sure it will be impossible to ever top that experience scuba diving again unless if I return and do a 10 day dive trip on the reef (one of the many reef diving options, which are all really interesting). While out on the gigantic reef we were able to see all different kinds of wildlife such as sharks, clown fish, turtles, among many other interesting fish, anemone, and coral structures.  It is a little weird at first to intentionally breathe only through your mouth, when human instinct is to hold your breath underwater. If you come to Cairns or Australia, its one of the big things to do, and probably the reason that Cairns is as developed as it is. 

I alluded to the idea of Cairns as a gateway city earlier, which is something I've come to believe.  Darwin is the gateway to Kakadu and warm weather, while Cairns has the reef.  They're not particularly large cities, but nevertheless they have a lot of activity.  Cairns has a pretty relaxing atmosphere and there are not too many things to do other than go to the reef or do other activities such as skydiving, bungy jumping, island hopping, snorkeling, white water rafting, trips to the Daintree rainforest, and relaxing on the beach.  These are definitely fun activities, and at the same time it is kind of a vacationing city.  One of the restaurants even had a special deal on Tuesdays if you were a local, you just had to show some ID.  Pretty weird.

I just took my exam, and now it's time to relax by going bungy jumping for a full day this upcoming Friday in the rainforest.  Cairns shows that Australians know how to have fun, and enjoy the scenery around them.  Australia is a pretty unique place, with wildlife and terrain you will see nowhere else. And they know it. 

Some of the Michiganders after surfing at Bondi beach

 Ice Skating on Bondi Beach? Whaat!?

The Great Barrier Reef- hard to capture without an underwater camera

Scuba diving gear

The view from my room of tennis courts, palm trees and the bay- not bad, huh?

A Discussion with the Coordinator

This trip is going faster than I imagined it could have.  We have less than two weeks remaining here in Australia. We're still in Sydney, and on Friday we fly to Cairns for about ten days before flying home (or to New Zealand and Fiji, in some cases).


It makes sense, though.  The group has been incredibly busy, always moving.  I had my first day off since the beginning of the program this past Saturday, and it felt weird.  On our day off some of us took the bus down into Sydney, and went to the weekly markets, the Sydney aquarium, and walked around the city.  So far, other than what I've mentioned in my previous blog, I've had the opportunity to visit the town Manly across the harbor by ferry, walk through The Rocks region of Sydney, travel to Bondi Junction (just an interesting super-busy place of town. They have a 7 story mall there, pretty crazy), and attend a professional rugby game at the Sydney Roosters' rugby stadium.  I honestly felt like I came away from the game knowing fewer rules than I did before the game began.  The intricacies of rugby are really confusing without a rulebook. For example, after a foul, a team would intentionally kick a ball out of bounds and they themselves would start a new possession at the point it went out of bounds. Like a punt out of bounds, but you keep the ball.  Who does that?!?  Tomorrow I am going surfing at Bondi beach (I probably will at least twice), and eventually I want to make it to Sydney's 2000 summer Olympic venue and to Coogee beach.


Alongside all of the Sydney sightseeing, I had an opportunity to meet with the program coordinator of the UNSW incoming study abroad program, Nick Dowd.  I was interested to see what he considered to be the most significant similarities and differences between Americans and Australians.  I wasn't expecting him to give me much of his time, and I was surprised when over an hour later I finally made my way out of his office.


Nick and I agreed on a lot of things, however I learned a great deal from him. Quick aside: If you're Australian and I'm getting this wrong, don't blame me. I'm just doing my best to piece it all together. For one thing, the education process here is quite different than education in the states.   After students graduate from high school, if they want to pursue higher education they fill out a form for part of their university applications detailing what they specifically want to study.  They choose only six options, which are specific majors at specific universities. They don't apply to the school, but to the individual majors at their colleges of interest.  For example, you could choose six different majors from the same school, the same major at six schools, or a happy medium of the two.  The process has got to be a challenge for the undecided students.  law, business, and medicine are all undergraduate programs, however they are five to six years long and students start the material immediately after high school.  This is a big reason why there are fewer lawyers per person in Australia than in the states- if you don't have the credentials after high school, you just can't be a doctor or a lawyer.  Also, electives are few and far between in their academic fields of study.  


Students rarely leave their own state to study at university, because of the complications in applying to universities in other states.  In comparison, in the US many people study in other states, of course- I'm from PA and I study at Michigan.  Here, each state has its own high school evaluation scale, and if students want to study at a university in Queensland, for example, their high school performance has to be changed from the New South Wales scale to the Queensland scale- and it doesn't always turn out favorably.  Also, students are generally always expected to pay for university entirely on their own.  When they leave their house for university, their parents rarely pay even if they have the money.  Australians end up being a bit more independent in this regard once they head to school, and mostly all of them end up having to work full time during the school year and during breaks.  I would too, if minimum wage was around $15-18/hr in the states.


Another thing that I found surprising was the amount of people involved in organized sports (you'll notice, its hard to have a conversation with me or read something I've written without it occasionally coming back to sports. Straight forward answer? I like sports. <= shout out.) And I'm not talking about university or high school students, but adults.  You see, beyond popular belief, being active and participating in sports doesn't actually end when you get out of college.  They still watch their professional teams on tv and all, but most Australians are very active in organized leagues up into their forties and fifties.  Sports end up being a great way for them to get together with their mates, play some footy, and barbecue while watching their kids play with each other's kids.  They play hard and compete, but the main point of the game is to get out there and enjoy sport.


A good example of not becoming overly involved in the outcome of sports is the 2000 Sydney Olympics itself.  The Australians are the best Olympic performers per person, far outshining any other country.  Their swimming is particularly impressive, and in the 2000 Sydney Olympics their 4x100 freestyle team was no exception.  The Australians and Americans were the top ranked teams and got into some pre-race smack talk as usual, and in the race the Americans beat out the Australians by a hand length.  Later that night, the anchor of the Australian team made an appearance on the famous Australian comedy show aired during the Olympics, and a few jabs were made at him about the team's performance that day.  The relay anchor was pretty light-hearted and had some jokes, stating that it was fine that they had lost and they were just going to do their best next time, fully meaning it.  In the 2004 Olympics, the Australian team won gold.


The example of the Olympic teams shows a bit how Australians view sports- they're awesome and its great to do well, but winning is not the end game.  Australians have what is called the "tall poppy syndrome"- look it up on wikipedia- which is basically a way to put sports in their place.  Basically, it means that athletes have no right to think that they are better than other people because of their on-field performance.  there is no stereotypical "football jock crowd", and if someone thought that they were better than others because of athletics, they'd get smacked by their mates real hard.  And even if they are stronger athletically, it still doesn't matter. You'll get some "nice job, you did really well comments", but it stops there.  The mentality may have something to do with professional athletics in the media, where athletes and professionals such as actors and musicians are not put on a pedestal like they are in the states.  Nick himself has met actors such as Russell Crowe (or however you spell it) a few times and said hi, but that's really all thats needed.  There is no reason to freak out or follow him with media cameras, because he's just a person.  And Australians get that (One example of media getting too involved was when the paparazzi followed Nicole Kidman and who she was with.  The truckers association decided it needed to be stopped, and entirely blockaded entrances to where the actors were staying with their trucks, preventing paparazzi from going in.  The police came, and said good work.)


Overall, Australians just let the unnecessary be unnecessary more effectively than most Americans.  In Nick's words, cars and clothes don't define what kind of person you are or what you do here.  You may really want the car and if you can afford it, thats great- go buy it.  But if you can't, its no big deal.  How you display yourself, such as being fit and healthy, shows much more about how you respect yourself as a person.  The Prime Minister had a news conference one time about the topic one time wearing just a collared shirt and some dress pants, suggesting that Australians not wear jacket coats or ties to work on occasion, but just a collared shirt.  Doing that would allow people to deal with warmer temperatures in the work place, and help companies decrease their energy bills.  Many people just wear jeans and a collared shirt to work, and there is no pressure from management to change that.  What you wear does not determine your performance on the job.


A last thing that I've noticed is that Australians are very aware of their importance in the global environment.  At UNSW, there are majors such as Energy and the Built Environment, as well as Photovoltaics and Renewable Technology Engineering.  An entirely new building, the Tyree Energy Technologies Building, is currently being built on campus.  The Australian labor government has also done their part and just passed a very controversial bill, a carbon emissions tax.  Even though there are roughly 25 million Australians and they emit less than .1% of global emissions, Australia is being a proactive leader in developing alternative technologies to be more environmentally conscious, not to mention more competitive in industry and the commercial sector.  Most people may believe differently, however being energy efficient and investing in new technologies is a way of becoming much more competitive in the marketplace.  I've seen ten times more PV arrays in the past four weeks than I have in my entire life leading up to the program.


Although I didn't experience much of a culture shock when I arrived and settled into Darwin, there are definitely some noticeable ways in which the US and Australia are different.  The things that are different make Australia absolutely awesome and special, and make the UNSW Energy Tomorrow trip absolutely worthwhile.  I'm impressed if you've held on for this entire blog, this was a long one.  Go treat yourself to some ice cream or something.  Or maybe some vegemite.

 The Sydney Roosters stadium.  Roosters? Really? 

 The sign at the entrance to the main walkway through campus

 At the rugby game

The college, or dorm, we are staying in on campus

Back to School

Cheers, mate!  Welcome to Sydney, and the University of New South Wales. It's been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened because there is so much to do in Sydney.  I've visited the Opera House twice and seen a theatre performance, visited the downtown area multiple times, seen the Harbour Bridge, visited the Hunter Valley vineyard region, traveled to and hiked the Blue Mountains, as well as explored all around the University's campus.  

Now that we're in Sydney, there has been much more emphasis on the classroom aspect of the course.  While we were in Darwin and central Australia, other groups such as wildlife, tourism, and business have had class-specific experiences.  We definitely saw real-life applications of what we have been learning like visiting a few photovoltaic (PV) systems, including one of the most prominent PV research facilities in the world in Alice Springs, however the groups are getting much more into their work now that we are in Sydney.  Specifically, we all have group research projects that are due in two weeks before we leave Sydney.  My project involves research into the recent improvements in photoelectrolysis versus relatively more mature PV/electrolysis systems for hydrogen production, including cost analyses of the two systems.  I had very little idea of what that meant two weeks ago too, don't worry.  

When we flew in, immediately we knew we were somewhere else entirely.  Besides the Opera House which we saw from the plane, there was a noticeable temperature difference, and an entirely different demographic- especially around the university, or uni, specifically (the University is called the Uni, and the dorms are called college). The road that our college is on is basically a Chinatown, and the university population has a strong Asian presence.  One of the students I talked to from Taiwan said that students have to try really hard to compete with the strong international presence.  Most Asians at the university are in more of the technical subjects- engineering itself is around 80% Asian.  It may be surprising, but when you put a huge Asian population close by an incredibly prestigious university with only 26 million Australians nearby, the numbers start to make sense.

One thing that you have to remember, though, is that the university is in the middle of its winter break, so there are not very many students around right now.  The university is comparable in size to the University of Michigan, however at this time of the season there are not many students around.  Resident hall advisers are still around, so we have had a chance to talk to them as well as a few of the students who have stayed for break.  The social setup of the university seems somewhat different than the US.  A lot of students seem to meet and get to know the people in their dorm/college very well, however they do not know as many of the students outside of their colleges.  They stay in their colleges a little longer than Michigan students- a decent amount even end up staying in the college all four years.  Right now, we are housed in New College, which has a population of about 200 students. The Australian students have been very nice, and have made a good effort to try to get to meet us in our time here.

I hope to have another post up soon, and maybe have some sort of interview with one of the program heads such as Nick Dowd or Tom Kuffer about what differences they see between Australian and American college students and in general.  But until then, cheers!

 The Sydney Opera House

 Feeding kangaroos- there were about 40 of them around us

 The Tasmanian Devil-  Tasmania is very close to Sydney

 The Blue Mountains a few hours outside of Sydney

 I guess the Koala thought I was pretty boring..

Downtown Sydney at night