G'day family and friends! This is my first blog entry in my new home, so please forgive it's blandness. I was able to talk to my darling sister today, and I read her blog, and it inspired me to face my fear and start this thing. As a result though, this blog is uncomfortably bland, with no pictures or anything fun like that. But they will come in time, trust me.

So, where to start. I should let you all know that I am in Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, which is the island state of Australia. It didn't take me long to realize that Tasmania is the butt of all mainland jokes. Just an example:

"Oh, you're going to Australia?"
"Yes! To Tasmania!"
"Oh... so you're not going to Australia then."

or there's the harsher:

"Why do Tasmanians have a scar on their neck?"
"It's where the doctor removed their second head." (Mutation and inbred jokes are more common than anything, but someone laughing at them is really rare)

But no amount of jokes could stop me from not being wildly enthused with this place. I was picked up from the small, one runway, one room airport by some university students, and I rode into Hobart with two Chinese students. We looked like crazy tourists, pointing out the Eucalyptus trees, squealing as we thought we were going to collide with cars on the left side of the road, comparing notes on Australian slang.

The drive into Hobart was beautiful, all the houses along the hillsides are every different color you can thing of. Normal colored roofs, like black grey or brown, are lost among all the red, green, blue, lavender, tan and orange roofs. It makes quite a pretty view, no matter where you are in Hobart.

Hobart is the second oldest city in Australia, after Sydney. It started out as a penal colony, after American gained it's independence from Great Britain and they needed somewhere else to send their prisoners. Quite a bit of downtown is incredibly old buildings from that era, and on my walk home I pass a graveyard where Tasmania's finest forefathers are buried. Creepy, but cool. Hobart is also relatively small, with about 209,287 people. Roughly. I've met three of these people. I've harassed about fifteen more, trying to figure out how the Australian Education system can possibly justify having a scheduling system that resembles an instruction manual for an atomic bomb.

So you'd think that between my 3 Australian friends and the 15 people who duck under their desk when I come to their office, I'd be pretty lonely, right? Wrong! I'm actually making oodles of friends! The first day I was here we had orientation for international students, and kids who are in a foreign country tend to network like crazy. That night my roommate and I hung out with all of these students, and we all realized that we had a lot in common. Over the past week I've been hanging out with two boys from Germany, three girls from Sweden, one boy from Holland, a girl and 2 boys from Denmark, one boy from Kuwait, one boy from Saudi Arabia, one girl from China, and about 5 other Americans. There's a pretty solid group of us that call whenever we go to restaurants, parks and shops around town, and hang out together at night. It's really fun, and I've already scouted out which ones will go to the sixth Harry Potter movie with me this weekend.

I should take a little time now to blog my appreciation for my roommate, Hannah. Hannah is from Texas, and her wonderful accent is really rubbing off on me. She and I get along great, and we have a lot of the same interests, like: staying warm, eating, getting the Internet set up in our house, Australian football (I'll admit, this interest is very recent), staying warm, art, silly jokes, staying warm, and traveling. Since Hobart is in the dead of it's winter, and our house is so frigid, we have done a lot of bonding while huddled around our house's one heater. For the first five nights or so, we even slept in the living room, right by the heater, until we bought space heaters for our room. Even those aren't powerful enough, so we still spend most of our time at home by the living room heater.

We are also both prone to huge bouts of homesickness, but we find that just telling each other what we miss about home makes things better. Right now we don't have internet, and it costs an arm and a leg to call home (I found this out the hard way, when my prepaid phone shut off on me) so we just distract ourselves by exploring Hobart and hanging out with people with accents. Classes start tomorrow, and once they do that will be a huge rush of business, so I'm thankful for that.

Also in the future, I want to take trips out to see the rest of the island. Tasmania is breathtakingly gorgeous, even when you're looking at pictures of it. There are so many beaches and mountains and waterfalls and everything around, that I can't wait until it warms up a bit. The second biggest city in Tasmania is called Launceston, and it's only about a 3 hour bus ride away. (On an unrelated note, Australians shorten everything. Launceston is also Launi, Tasmanians are Tassies, Australians are Aussies, Barbecues are Barbies, etc.) We've also talked about renting cars or something to drive and see more of the island.

It's getting dark here already, so I'd best be on the move. But another entry will come soon, never fear!