To do/Have done

1. Settle in.

It felt a bit odd to be back in the dorms again, though this time it's a bit different. The units are generally called 'residential colleges,' rather than dorms, and I'm supposed to have school spirit for Burton and Garran Hall rather than ANU. I applied to B&G as it was one of the self-catered options, meaning instead of a cafeteria, there is a giant kitchen where we cook for ourselves. By giant, I mean a basketball gym-sized room set up with cooking stations to meet the needs of 500+ residents. That's a lot of burners and sinks.

Meeting people has obviously been a huge part of settling in, mostly done through college social events since no classes or clubs have started. Traveling beforehand has had the advantage of giving me some picture of where students say they're from whether it be a small inland town, Sydney, Melbourne, the Blue Mountains, or other places we visited. Regardless of hometown, most people are friendly in the sense that they go out of their way to help you, which came as a bit of a surprise at first but is pretty nice!

2. Classes.

The enrolment (not a typo, enrol has one 'l' here) process was actually quite pleasant; the adviser(s) who worked with me were very helpful and asked a lot of questions about interests and classes I'd taken at Berkeley. The main adviser I worked with is actually the professor for Theoretical Physics this semester, and when it came down to choosing my final class between his and Physics of Fluid Flows, I felt quite guilty for picking the latter. That filled out the four class required load along with Energy Systems Engineering, Maths Methods 1 Honours: Ordinary Differential Equations and Advanced Vector Calculus, and Principles of Intellectual Property. First lectures tomorrow!

3. Play tourist.

All of the above has been about campus and school, probably because after the first day or two here, I had seen next to none of Canberra apart from B&G, the central mall with a Target, and the streets in between. I started my further explorations with a run up to Telstra tower on Black Mountain. It was the first time I realized the size of Lake Burley Griffin and how everything sits in relation to it. It really adds a lot of beauty to the city overall... but I guess the architects thought of that when they planned to put it there! (In case anyone wasn't aware of it, Canberra is a planned city, constructed specifically to be the capital of Australia. It was a fair distance between Sydney and Melbourne who both wanted to seat the government. An American architect won some competition to do it, but I recently learned that there were actually many architects and planners involved, often a different one for each suburb.)

Though there "isn't that much to see" in Canberra, I've made a pretty pitiful dent in taking in its notable attractions. I walked to Parliament House, took the guided tour, and found it very worthwhile-- a post to come on why it's such a cool place! The National Gallery, Museum, and War Memorial remain unexplored, something I'll be remedying in the coming weeks.