Saturday, February 26, 2011

Locations and travel

Here is the beginning of your tour of where I now live! :D
In case you're not quite sure where Perth is, here is a picture.
(yes, it's on the opposite side of the country from Sydney)


And here is a view to get the idea of my new world and some of my daily travels. Listed are: Perth CBD (Central Business District), King's park (one of my favorite places in Perth), University of Western Australia (where David plans on getting his PhD in linguistics), Murdoch Uni (where I go to school), my work (Kenwick Veterinary Hospital), the Barrick's house (where I stayed when I was first in Perth), and of course, my house.


And now here are some close-ups for you. :) If you want your own special experience Google earth is amazing! :)






There is an amazing train system that operates along the Kwinana Freeway going N/S (the Perth/Mandurah line) and at the Perth Underground station there deviates other trains (North to Joondalup, West to Fremantle, SE to Armadale...etc.) I catch the bus outside of my house and that goes to Cockburn Central Station (pronounced Coburn :P) where the train takes me up one station to Murdoch Station and then I either walk the 10 minutes to uni, or catch a bus there.

To go to work I catch the same system, but go up to Perth Underground where I then catch the Armadale line and get off at Kenwick station. Luckily the vet clinic is really close so I walk about 5 minutes from the station to work.

Most people have a Smartrider card that you use to tag on and off of trains/buses/ferries and it automatically figures out how far you traveled and charges the card, which you put money on. It's very handy I must say, and saves lots of time! Here is a picture of the card as well as a train and one of the tagging machines.





Once inside the CBD you can take the red/blue/and yellow CAT buses free of charge. Here is a picture of what the CAT buses look like and their routes.



Stay tuned for more information about Perth, Australia, and what's up with me! I will leave you with a lovely picture of the Bells in Perth.

-Cassie
*Pictures sourced from the internet

Thursday, February 24, 2011

And it starts

School started on Feb 14th, and has been busy but very good so far. I haven't really had much time to write, but I'll put in a brief overview before I head off to class, and I'll write in a bit more detail later. :) I have biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, and veterinary professional life (how to be a vet in all other aspects... behavior, customer service, etc.). I like that they have the VPL course cause I've met so many vets from previous generations that have no personal skills whatsoever! I have made a pretty good group of friends in my program at uni, so that's very good. We're a fairly large group, so often spit up into smaller groups during the day and it's almost always different who I'm hanging with, so it's a neat dynamic. :) I am happy that physiology and biochem seem to be mostly review for me right now, but there are still some things to study. Anatomy is different that anything I've ever had, it's learning the names of the parts of bones (even the little knobs on the bones), the muscles, and where the muscles originate from and insert. It's a lot of information, but I really like it! Well, I'd better get going, but stay tuned for more info on what I've been doing as well as some pics of my house and some other random bits of information and pics on Australia in general. :)

Until next time
-Cassie :D

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Orientation part 1

The main orientation for all foreign students (so study abroad and international) was on Friday. They went through all relevant information etc. so it was good. I made some friends with a Canadian, also in my vet program, named Lauren, as well as a group of Norwegians who are going to chiropractic school here (they don't have one in Norway). We've been hanging out the past few days, which has been a lot of fun. There have been some other acquaintances also, including a girl from Malaysia and some Germans, and Americans. On Saturday we had a bit of a scavenger hunt on campus to find places, which we divided into groups of 10, so that was fun. There was a sausage sizzle afterwards, and later that night I went over to the student housing on campus and hung out with people and partied, it was great fun!
More to come as orientation week progresses, so stay tuned! :)
-Cassie