Last Day in Canberra

So the time of orientation has quickly come to a close. Tomorrow, the 16 of us who have spent our first few days together in Canberra will be taken away to the Canberra Airport tomorrow morning. We will head to various places around this big country/continent... Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Townsville, and finally Brisbane. But it has been a fun last couple of days, we've all gotten spoiled by the fantastic hospitality of our hosts, and have had some fantastic meals and wines.

Yesterday and today were both very busy days. Yesterday we got a lecture from one of the top researchers from ANU (australian national university) who spoke for an hour about kangaroos... (it may sound boring, but it seriously was very good)... did you know, female kangaroos have the ability to produce two different types of milks to synchronously feed two of their young who are at different stages of growth? I sure didn't. In the afternoon, we went to the Australian Parliment House. We were very lucky to be able to sit in on one of the delibration sessions... which is very much like the house of commons in London.... absolutely hilarious. But no Cameras were allowed unfortunately... check this place out. The evening ended up with some dinner downtown at a Thai restaurant.

Today was relatively laidback. After a short visit with some campus faculty, we went on a trip to the Australia Botanical Gardens. Since I was fairly uninterested... I'll just skip that part and next talk about the Australian National Museum, which was very interesting and had a good mix of Aboriginal Heritage as well as modern Australian history... Unfortunately, we had such a short amount of time, I felt bad for our guide who was literally powerwalking and talking through the whole place. After that, our stellar driver Dennis took us searching for Kangaroos, which we eventually found.

The evening was quite the celebration. With everyone on the heels of heading off on their own, we of course had a great big dinner at an Indian restuarant downtown, then headed off for the nearest Irish pub for drinks and a little bit of dancing later on... If you're interested in seeing the aftermath, feel free to check my photos on Flickr.

My next entry will be from the warm flatlands of Queensland and Brisbane!