The Land Down Under

Hey all!

My 2nd study abroad semester has finally commenced and I find myself in Perth, Australia. The transition here so far has been amazingly smooth, more so than last semester when I was in Spain. Australia is very similar to the states in many aspects, and above all, they speak English, which really does make everything easier. In Spain, everything about me (the way I looked, talked, walked, etc) screamed American, but here it seems just the accent (or as I see it, my lack of one) which gives me away. Which brings up an interesting point; I was talking to a lady at one of the orientation functions and she asked "Is that a bit of an accent? Or do you just speak well?" American English considered speaking well? That amused me.
One thing that kind of surprised me here is the prevalence of drinking. There are at least three clubs at the uni solely devoted to partying/drinking/pub crawls, and almost all clubs list pub crawls as one of the things they do (Groups hire out "Night Cruiser" buses which take them from bar to bar blasting music...at least it avoids drunk driving). In the states, most uni clubs have a social aspect but it usually isnt so blatantly alcohol-based. I really don't know how they can afford it either, because alcohol here isn't cheap. It also cracks me up; all the freshers who are just 17 are complaining because they can't go out yet. If only they knew how easy they have it compared to the states.
Oh, and one more thing. The colleges (residence halls) had dragonboat races on the river the other day, and that water was chock-full of jellyfish! At first I was kind of freaked out because there are some deadly posionous jellyfish in the waters off Oz, but these were completely harmless. People even started picking them up and throwing them at each other. Yea for jellyfish fights!

Let it snow

Yesterday, Oxford had its first sustained snowing of the year. It only totaled about 5 inches, but my British friends have not seen this much snow in 10+ years. And snow does this wonderful to the Oxford student. Mass snowball fights ignited at St. Hugh's. Walking to lectures, I got ambushed by hughsies on their way back from classes. And in the park by the science buildings, I saw human-sized snowmen being erected. One was sleeping on the bench. Another towered over the others, shaped somewhat like Shaq.

Why is snow treated so differently here from at IU? Perhaps we get so much that it's no longer a novelty. That's a shame. If it snows at IU next year, I suggest a snow art fun night in the Arboretum.

Spelling

Two of the other Americans here, both of whom are studying humanities, were recently complaining about the differences between American and British spelling (color/colour and minimize/minimise, for example). Apparently some of their tutors accept American spelling, while others mark it as incorrect, and they're starting to confuse the two standards. One of them remarked to me, "You're lucky that at least math is the same everywhere."

The funny thing is that there are actually some differences in notation. A lecturer at an American university will usually draw a little arrow over a letter to show that it represents a vector; here the letter is underlined or has a ~ beneath it. Then the cross product is written with ʌ instead of ×, and when working in spherical coordinates, the roles of the angles θ and φ are reversed (but only by the physicists - the math department, confusingly, seems to use the same convention as the Americans). And, though I have yet to encounter this myself, one professor mentioned that "right-polarized" means the same thing to American engineers as "left-polarized" does to British engineers.

These are mostly minor differences, however, and the underlying ideas are exactly the same. It's almost as if they just spell things a little differently here.