Wollongong, NSW, Australia

April 29, 2018

 

Hey, long time no see. I’m so sorry I haven’t written in a while, it’s just been a crazy past couple of weeks. One of which included a week to Thailand, which I will write about in another blog post, which I know that I have said before about other trips, but those are coming soon! The reason it has been so crazy is that it is halfway through the semester, so things are really kicking into gear with exams and assignments. But I thought that I would write a little reflection about what I have figured out about myself over that past 3 months.

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1. I’m in my head…a lot. I am what you call an over, OVER thinker. Yeah that thing, you said to me in third grade? I still remember it and stay up to think about whether my response was good or not. Like my natural face is RWF, resting worried face, which most of the time I’m not worrying, I’m just thinking about whether or not I should get lunch at 1 PM or 1:30 PM. As an over-thinker, I analyze everything, and I talk myself out of a lot of things. I’ve missed out on a lot of cool things in my past because I let myself get in the way. And since I’ve come to Australia, I‘ve developed more of a Nike attitude of “Just Do It”. Of course, for my parents’ sake and my own life, I am making safe “Just Do It” decisions. For example, I don’t know if I would have done Karaoke at that bar, jumped into an extremely deep lake in Thailand, or said “bless you” to a random cute guy in the library. These things aren’t going to kill me, but for the over-thinker in me, it’s a hugeeeeee deal. Also, I was just tired of missing out on these things. By taking those little scary steps, I am taking leaps in my life and doing the things that I want to do.

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2. I’m extremely independent. I love going on walks by myself, getting coffee alone, and hanging out in my room alone after hanging with friends (introvert alert). When I decided to go abroad, I knew that I wanted to go somewhere that I didn’t know anyone and personally I think that was the best thing that I could have done. Studying abroad has made me so much more self-sufficient with things like figuring out busses/trains, how to set up a bank account, meeting people and how to do school (it’s pretty independent study based). Usually when traveling Brooke (my sister) and I would split up the roles, but since I am in Australia, I need to do everything (of course I have friends to help with that) but I have to figure out things a lot on my own. This has helped me a lot figure out how to organize what I really want to do and to be okay with doing it by myself. Of course, it’s more fun to travel with other people, but study abroad has reminded me that it’s 100% okay to do things alone. I would really encourage you to travel alone so that you can see who you are on your own, and but if that isn’t in the books, make sure that you take the time to travel on your own while abroad at some point to see how you grow.

 

3. I’m 100% more confident and happier with who I am because of Australia. Honestly. I have never been so comfortable with who I am and whom I want to be. I think a lot of it is that I get to just be 100% myself because nobody knows who I am. This sounds dumb like I should just be myself back home, but it’s different because there are always people that have known you and think that they do because they know the Amber they knew 5 years ago. It’s not that I have different personalities or I’m not myself but there is a difference between “Lake Stevens Amber”, “NAU Amber” and “Australia Amber”. The context of life is different in these places, but I can say that I have never felt more in touch with whom I am than while Living in Australia. It’s been cool to see my confidence come out and just be happy and comfortable with myself. I don’t know what it is, I just feel more at home in Australia than I have anywhere else. I love NAU and my hometown, and it’s not that I’m not happy there or not self-confident, it’s just that the only expectations I have are the ones that I make for myself here. I wasn’t really planning on studying abroad to “find myself” or go on a “self-discovery journey” and that’s not really what happened but I think it was just a realization of “Hell yeah, you’re awesome, so just go do you” sort of discovery.

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Well, those are just three things that I have learned about myself in the past few months of studying abroad. I promise, more posts are coming!!

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Cheers,

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Wandering in Wollongong

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February 26th, 2018

Wollongong, NSW, Australia

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It’s the first day of Uni! Today I had my first class of the semester and it was pretty cool to see campus alive and filled with students. My first class was about Happiness and UoW is one of two Australian schools that has this course because it is a relatively new area of study. It looks like it will be an interesting class and the professor is really cool.

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This past week has been a whirlwind between orientation, moving in, meeting a lot of people, and a fun/interesting trip this past weekend. I plan on going over this week in more detail soon, but since it’s been so crazy, I haven’t had the time to write about it all yet (don’t worry, it’s coming soon though)! But I will update you on a few things!

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I live in a suite styled dormitory with three other girls and they are awesome! Two are from Australia and my 3rd roommate is from Indiana. It’s been really fun to just sit around and chat about how things are different here and how we say words compared to how Australians say things.

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There are a lot of Americans in my residence hall. There are 350 people and about 200 of them are American. I’ve met a lot of Americans from around the country and it’s been cool hearing their stories of where they are from and why they chose Wollongong.

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Since my dormitory is so close to the beach (7-minute walk) we all had to undergo a water safety course and then jump into the ocean and figure out how to handle the waves. It was a great lesson but an interesting one. We also had a two-day orientation just for my residence.

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When enrolling for classes you have one lecture and then a tutorial. At the lecture, you listen to your professor and take notes while the tutorial is where you go apply what you have learned in assignments and discussions.  Classes here are also more focused on large assignments and independent study. You also don’t enroll in classes until the week before. Meanwhile, I had to enroll for ALL of my classes for next year at NAU while I was at a bar at 1 AM because of the time difference.

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I’ll be posting one more post this week since I have so much to update on! So look out for that next post!

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Cheers,

Wandering in Wollongong

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February 14th, 2018

Wellington, New Zealand

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Hey there, welcome to my blog for studying abroad! I was planning on starting a blog for my studies abroad because I am absolutely horrible about writing in my journal or updating people about my life (whoops). But those were two of my resolutions for this year, so that worked out well. I also received a scholarship that required me to blog about my experience abroad (if you are a potential study abroad student, I will talk about scholarships in another post). So… two birds, one stone, haha.

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So… I’ll tell you a little bit about myself and why I am studying abroad. First of all, hi, I’m Amber Dalgleish. I am currently a junior at Northern Arizona University. I am a Marketing and Finance major; a Public Relations Minor and I have a certificate in Non-Profits and Social Entrepreneurship. My career goal is I would like to help educate athletes about financial literacy and planning for their life after sports (my work experience is in sports marketing). Even though I go to school in Arizona, I am from Washington state.

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Ever since I can remember my family has been traveling and exploring. A typical Dalgleish Family road trip would be to a different state and many National Parks. My mom and sister both studied abroad while in college and for me it was always something that I had wanted to experience too. I chose Australia because I have always wanted to go there. I have been very lucky enough to be able to travel internationally before, so I felt it was time to take the leap and go out on my own in a country that I did not have any experience with.  I started looking at universities during my freshman year and the University of Wollongong was at the top of my list. Two years later and I am officially studying at the University of Wollongong for my spring semester. I am so excited for this journey and to see how much I grow and learn from this experience.

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I don’t actually start school until February 27th and I don’t arrive in Wollongong until the 18th. Since I basically had an extra month during my winter break, I decided to head to Australia a little bit early and my wonderful sister decided to come with me! We left the United States on Feb. 4th and traveled around Sydney and Melbourne from the 6th to the 11th, and now we are currently exploring New Zealand (Queenstown, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland) until the 18th. I am planning on posting about this trip within the next couple of weeks!

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How I am planning on structuring my blog is to do two posts every week at least once. Every other post will flip from experiences/what I learned/tips and then to preparing for studying abroad/how I prepared/What I wish I would have known. I’m going to tell you right now that there is going to be a few slip-ups and a learning curve with posting on this website, but I promise to do my best to keep everything running smoothly. I have an email Wanderinginwollongong@gmail.com. So email away if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for places to go explore. Thanks for following me on this adventure!

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Cheers,

Wandering in Wollongong