Intro to Life in Oz

G'day, mate!

Welcome to my blog "Life in Oz". Why is it called "Life in Oz"? Because "Oz", I learned, is another spelling of "Aus", which is obviously short for Australia, my soon-to-be home for a year as of July 5. On this blog, I'll try to give you glimpses of my adventures down under over the next year.
Just for starters, here is a quick overview of what I will be doing and where I will be in Australia:

WHAT I'LL BE DOING: I will be spending the next year in Melbourne, Australia as a 2006-2007 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Melbourne or Melbourne University (I still haven't figured out which it is--the website has the former, but people I've corresponded with call it the latter). Specifically, I will be studying Philosophy as a follow up to my Masters in Philosophy and Education, which I just received from Teachers College, Columbia University this past May.

WHERE I'LL BE: Australia is REALLY far, as you can see. It is so far and takes so long to get there that you mysteriously lose a day of your life in the process. So I head out on July 3 and arrive July 5. [Side note: I think it's rather funny (perhaps symbolic?) that the day erased from my life is the Fourth of July, the most American of holidays. ]

In total, my flying time there will be 21 hours (3 hours from Dallas to LA, then around 18 hours to Melbourne). Yikes! What I will do to occupy myself on the plane is TBD. Please feel free to post any suggestions :)

A FEW FACTS ABOUT MELBOURNE: Melbourne is located in the southeastern state of Victoria, the smallest Australian state. It is the second-largest city in Australia (behind Sydney) with 3.2 million people. It has more than once been given the honorable title of "the most liveable city in the world." Not entirely sure what that means but it sounds good to me. It was the site of the 1956 Olympics and is home to the Australian Open. Last March, Melbourne hosted the Commonwealth Games, something that I heard of for the first time this year and struck me as a rather strange concept. It's basically the Olympics for all the countries that are or were a part of the British Commonwealth. So all the former colonies are invited to compete against their former coloniser--how nice. Anyway, the city is also the heart of Australian Rules Football, or Aussie Rules Football (but more colloquially referred to by Aussie's as "the footy"), which Melburnians are apparently crazy about. And finally, according to the travel guides I've read, Melbourne is supposed to have great cafes and the best coffee in Australia--too bad I don't drink coffee! Oh yeah, one last thing--the time difference between Melbourne and U.S. CST is 15 hours.

Well, I hope this has enticed you all to visit me sometime over the next year. Just remember, the seasons are reversed down there, as is the direction the water flushes down the toilet! Pictures of that phenomenon and other Australian wonders to come...