One Flight, Three Days

It still hasn't hit me yet. I'm leaving tomorrow, my bags are mostly packed, and still it is hard to conceive that in just a few days I'll be in Darwin, Australia. Packing has been going well under the scrutinizing supervision of my dad the past week or so, but you can't blame him for wanting it all to go well. 


I have learned some things about my family in the process- for example, how much my dad loves sunscreen (or sun tan lotion, if you are one of the many that believe the words are interchangeable, like myself).  Apparently we have eleven bottles/tubes of sunscreen in our house- you'd think we live in a desert or something.  Let me repeat that- eleven. tubes. of. sunscreen. You have to pack light, too- they suggest that you bring a sleeping bag, which will take up at least 30% of your total luggage space.  But packing is only one aspect of pre-travel arrangements. After all, there is so much to do before traveling to a different country!


At least there are no required shots for traveling to Australia, but the list of to-do's still piles high.  You need to get travel health insurance, get travelers insurance, book and confirm flights, call credit card companies and inform them you are leaving, get Australian money (they use the Australian dollar, which currently is a little stronger than the US dollar unfortunately), make sure your passport is current, get an international student ID card, alongside packing and other preparations. After all of that and having to wait endlessly in anticipation for the day you leave, its time to fly. And that day is tomorrow.


And if the pre-travel sounded like a lot, the flights alone will take even longer. I fly from Pittsburgh to Dallas to LA to Sydney to Darwin, four flights. The LA to Sydney is undoubtedly the longest, and notably the 23rd longest flight in the world.  We fly out of LA at 10pm on Saturday, and arrive in Sydney around 630am on Monday.  That's a three day long flight! However with the international date line, and knowing that Australia is 15 hours ahead of Pittsburgh/Michigan time and 18 hours ahead of LA time, its not really as long as it seems. Pull out your calculators and you know that it's going to be a long flight- around 15 hours long. Not to mention the other flight lengths, which add up. However, the flight is going to be filled mostly with students from the 7ish programs that UNSW sponsors (Energy Tomorrow is one of them), so it will definitely be exciting to meet everyone on the long flight out from LA. But that's all for now though, keep checking in once we start getting to the meat of the story- the actual trip!

Qantas, the Australian airline we'll be on

Two Countries, One Ancestor

Maybe it's because I was mowing grass with a push mower on a golf course today for 8 hours for my summer job. Maybe its because it has rained in Pittsburgh, my hometown, daily for the past month with abandon. Maybe its that a camping trip in Darwin, Australia sounds incredible. Whatever the reason may be, right now I can't wait to go to Australia!


And who wouldn't want to go? Studying abroad in a foreign country is probably the one chance you get before you're retired and can't walk to travel for an extended period of time in a completely different cultural setting. If no other reason, that should be the one why studying abroad in a place like Australia is unforgettable.  Before talking about Australia though, I should introduce myself.


My name is Brian Nimmo, and I'm a rising junior Chemical Engineering major at the University of Michigan. For the six weeks from June 11th through July 24th, I'll be all over Australia- in Darwin, Alice Springs, Uluru, Sydney, and Cairns. This program I'll be a part of is called Energy Tomorrow: An Engineering and Management Perspective, which is organized by the University of New South Wales in Sydney. As you could guess, the program is about energy, sustainability, and energy technologies in practice today. We'll be learning about energy in all different ways from lectures to lab work to visits to places such as a uranium mine in Darwin and a solar energy site in Sydney. The program is based around six main topics: Energy and Sustainable Development, with a focus on international outlooks on energy sources and their comparative economic benefits, international climate change negotiation issues, environmental implications, and energy services; Energy and the Built Environment, about energy use in buildings using computer simulations; Energy and Process Industries, discussing energy use in industry and sustainability development; Energy Storage, including thermal, chemical, and electrochemical batteries and fuel cells; Renewable Energy, including biomass, photovoltaic, and wind energy; and Emerging Energy Technologies, discussing energy technologies with potential such as carbon capture storage, hydrogen, geothermal, solar, and nuclear energy technology.  It  definitely is a pretty thorough analysis of the energy industry.


Now the program itself is exciting and all and one of the main reasons I am going- I have an interest in a career in the energy sector. But the program itself is only part of the experience- Australia itself is an extraordinary place, home to animals and many things that can be seen no where else in the world.


And right now we're both in the same situation, you and I. Neither of us have a clue about the real culture and goings-on of Australia, an intriguing country on the other side of the world. So what is it that makes Australia and the United States so different culturally, given that they had the same British ancestry? My hope is that through this blog this question will be answered, and maybe I'll give some insight into what's important to know about Australia as a world citizen and important things to know before visiting.  I'm reading a book right now by well known author Bill Bryson called "In a Sunburned Country", a sort of humor travel diary about Australia, and from that alone I've gotten a glimpse of what Australia has to offer. I'll reference the book a few times throughout to pull some comparisons- just a heads-up. But you can't travel the world by reading books, a book can only do so much- the real experience is to go to Australia, and you have to try it!

 Uluru, the famous Aboriginal site

Harbor Bridge in Sydney