The weather has been pretty constant the past couple of weeks. I check the weather every morning before I go to class and everyday, never fail, it's always 57 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't feel quite that cold usually though, especially in the sun! Temperatures usually get up to the mid-60's, and it's not too bad. It seems like every day it gets above 65, then it's super windy so you can't even tell that it's warmer! The news always gives the temperature in Celsius. A quick way to approximate the conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit is to double the temperature in Celsius and add 30. So if the temperature is 18 degrees Celsius, which it frequently is, that's approximately 66 degrees Fahrenheit. So there you go! There's your "science" lesson for the day.
If you're wondering what the time difference is, I'm 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, 15 ahead of Central Time. Another quick conversion (I'm all about the quick conversions today I guess) if you're in EST is to take whatever time it is, add 2 hours, and flip the a.m./p.m. (Central - add 3) Pretty crazy to think of how different that actually is! When you're getting ready for bed at 10 p.m. Thursday, I'll be eating lunch at 12 noon Friday! Makes it a bit challenging when trying to Skype with friends and family. It usually ends up being either really late here and early at home or vice versa. We still manage to make it work though! I believe I changed the timestamp on my blog so that it show when I post it in my local time, not what time it is at home.
This past weekend I went on a wine tour to Hunter Valley, about 2 hours outside of Sydney. (Pictures below) The legal drinking age in Australia is 18, so nothing illegal was going on =) We were picked up in a nice, about 21 passenger bus at 7 a.m. Made some stops to pick others up, and made it to the Valley around 10:45. Throughout the day we went to 4 wineries and 1 brewery and had tastings at all! It was really interesting to try all the different types of wine. I'm not an extremely experienced wine drinker, so some of the flavors really surprised me! I thought I would like the sweeter wines, but for the most part they were too much for me. We had a couple that tasted like straight maple syrup. Yuck! Not exactly what I'm looking for in a wine. I ended up buying a bottle at the last winery and got one free with my purchase! What a deal!
The rest of the weekend I was pretty useless. I was exhausted from a long day, and I had a lot of work to do! Thankfully I've gotten everything done I've needed to do so far. Lots of reading to keep up on though! I usually spend at least 2 hours reading (or trying to read) every day. You know, sometimes it's just really hard to stay awake!
I went to my first footy game on Monday! (Picture below) We saw the Sydney Roosters play against the Gold Coast Titans. Feel free to look them up to figure out what league they're in, because I'm not sure. It's kind of a long story, but I'll tell it anyway. I'm in a class called Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and for this class we are building our own businesses in groups. My group is manufacturing a product called "ComfyBag." It is a backpack that folds out into a seat cushion to fit over those uncomfortable stadium seats. (If you weren't sure, I'm practicing my pitch on you!) It has plenty of room for snacks and drinks and can be designed in support of your favorite team! I know in the States there are plenty of seat cushions you can buy, but in Australia there isn't any sort product like this in existence, that we've found. So, we needed to do some market research to see how the public would respond to the ComfyBag. The whole team went to the game after class Monday, and (I think) had a great time! There are 3 of us that are not from Australia (one from Denmark, one from South Korea, and me) and 3 from Australia. Quite a diverse group! The three of us from overseas had never attended a rugby game though, so it was very interesting to see. One of our group members, Dave, was a professional Cricket player for 8 years, so he was quite familiar with sport of all kind and was helpful in explaining the rules.
Round 2 of postcards went out the other day. Check your mailboxes sometime next week! I was pleasantly surprised with a letter from my Uncle Bob on Monday. As I told him in an e-mail, it's nice to receive some "snail mail" every now and then! Hopefully I will be sending even more letters out over the next week or two.
That's about all I have for the time being! Hope everyone who's reading is doing well.
A quick view from inside our bus.
Inside the first winery, my favorite, Savannah Estates.
Actual vineyard!
My group of girls minus a few!
This is the only picture that turned out halfway decent from the footy game.
Love, Em.
No comments:
Post a Comment