I cannot believe I am going into Week 6 of my semester already there are 12-13 weeks total of lectures depending on the course. So I am practically half way there now! Its going by so quickly. I have now been here for 2 months and I feel very adjusted into life in Adelaide. The stress of my courses will just be setting in this week with my very first exam here. It is a midterm worth 20% of my grade for accounting. So the stress is real! But hopefully I will do okay. It will be 25 questions online and they aren't giving us scratch paper so hopefully they are more definition and theoretical based then. So good luck to me on that exam!

I also recently got a job! It is in sales which can be very difficult. But since I am only here for a short time its actually a miracle I was able to get a job. I'm really hoping I can develop some personal and professional skills working in sales that I can carry with me in life. It can be a difficult job but I like a challenge I'm looking forward to what I can learn from it. I start my training on Tuesday and hopefully will have my first official day on Thursday.

This Friday April 10th, I am heading on my super awesome road trips! The itinerary is leave around noon on Friday and start driving on the Great Ocean Road towards Melbourne. This drive is typically a good 12 hours will beautiful stops along the way. Many people have done there and back in 3-4 days. But we decided to do a full 5 days just to Melbourne. Along the Great Ocean Road I've heard there are of course beaches, the 12 apostles, a forest, and many more that I look forward to seeing just can't remember now. Once in Melbourne we will be staying there for 2 nights/3 days and enjoying what the city has to offer. From what I've heard from friends Melbourne is their favorite city in Australia. It's very artsy/hipster, with great restaurants, art, and scenery. I will be going on this road trip with four other lovely people from my Uni all European except for me haha. From there I will be going with two of my travel mates to fly to Tasmania. We will stay in the capital city of Hobart for one night. Then pick up our campervan (a really nice one since we are staying in it for a whole week!). Then we will be driving all over the state of Tasmania over the course of 7 days staying at campsites in our campervan. I never thought I would be going to Tasmania but many locals have said it is just stunning and one of their other favorite places in Australia for beauty. We will return the vehicle and then be staying in Hobart for two more nights before making our way back to Adealide to finish off the semester! What an exciting trip!

When I come back from that trip I will have about 4 days to study for my Stats midterm exam which I am not nearly worried about because he posted a mock exam (which is essentially the same as the real). Thankfully but I will still be studying hard core to make a very good grade. So far I've been making high distinctions on my assignments for this course (similar to A's I'm guessing. Grading goes as: high distinction, distinction, credit, pass, fail-I need distinctions to get A's back at A&M, so I am on a good track in all my courses for now!). I will also have an essay, assignment, and a presentation the following week. Yikes!

Now onto the Pubcrawl from last weekend. I went with a few of my friends from Unilodge (my apartment building) and a few new friends. First we went to a place called Burp (a "Mexican" restaurant) where we got two gigantic King margaritas. Now I've never actually had a real margarita but these tasted pretty good to me, but they were huge. I actually didn't buy any alcohol after those they were plenty. Then we went to a bar called the Stag and danced for a bit inside and traveled our way over to and Irish pub and did some dancing there as well. Some bought some drinks for the specials and we just talked and immersed ourselves with all the other pubcrawlers. We wanted to try a few more places near by but the lines were just way too long! As we were walking outside to head back to where we lived there was a huge double decker bus. A friend asked if it was free and they said yes its free for pub crawlers. So what did we do?! We took ourselves onto that bus and just totally enjoyed the ride like any other college kids who felt like royalty would. We were the only ones on the bus so that made it extra special. Finally, we went to one more place to just dance the night away… well till 1 am so not to late since it's a pubcrawl haha. But it was definitely a fun night to remember and I'm glad I was able to partake in it.

This past weekend was just one of the most amazing weekends I've ever had! Thursday I got together with all my friends here at Unilodge. Friday I went to the beach with some friends and we hung out there for probably about 4 hours. Then I met up with my host family! They are a lovely local family Joanne and Paul and their 3 teenage daughters. They invited me and the other exchange student named Alan from China over to their home for dinner and dessert. The food was amazing and just great company. I really enjoy getting to know them and spend time in a family environment being so far away from home. I am really looking forward to spending more time with their family while getting to know different things about local families that I would never know otherwise. We also went to their youngest daughters basketball game. I learned that the schools here do not really have competitive sports among other schools. If you want to do sports almost everyone joins a club team and competes against other clubs. The main sports are… netball (women's sport, similar to basketball), basketball, cricket, and footy (Australian football, similar to American but very different still). Then on Saturday I went to the botanical garden with my friend Kaylee (from Minnesota) and it was just beautiful there so many interesting and unique trees/plants/architecture. From there the two of us went to the beach again and got some sun. We watched the sunset which was just absolutely stunning just a bit cold after it went down. There was supposed to be a special moon but we didn't really see it unfortunately it was a bit cloudy and cold haha. It was just an amazing weekend full of fun and friends and I feel so blessed to be here and to have met such amazing people to make the experience that much greater. Tonight my friends from Unilodage are having an Easter dinner together since we are all away from our families so just things like this make me so thankful.

Well this entry is pretty long so I will close it out now with a Happy Easter to all!