Getting Settled at JCU

I'm almost done with my first week in Townsville, and I have to say that I love the area around here.
At the beginning of the week, I got acquainted with a couple ozzies (Jason and Chris) that I've been hanging out with all this week. They're pretty cool guys, and my new workout partners.
University Hall is a great place to live. Apparently they are very proud of their reputation on campus as being one giant community. I find that to be very true. Almost everyone I see is eager to introduce themselves and make an effort to get to know you.

Despite all that, this week hasn't been terribly social, as many of the American students have been very busy with meetings and orientations. The orientations have been rather dry, but on Tuesday, I did get to have a talk with my head of school, Dr. Anthony Leicht. He seems like a very nice guy, and will be teaching my Exercise Prescriptions and Practices course. We talked for about a half hour about various topics, including all the facilities that are available to Exercise Science students here at JCU. They have a very large heat chamber for studying enviromental performance, and a motion analasys lab that consists of many large, force sensative plates and 6 infrared cameras (each one costs about $300,000). Others meetings were less interesting, like getting my ID card, and other logistic stuff.

On Wed. a large group of us all went out to see the new Harry Potter movie. Still no comparison to the books, but definetly entertaining. Then we all drove around a little bit and Jason showed us around Townsville a little bit. I was riding shotgun, and it was little wierd to be on the "wrong" side of the road when driving. although, the wierdest thing isnt even being on the left; it's that the center lines are white, instead of yellow like we are used to. So, at my first glance, it's not real apparent where the center lines are. It all made me very glad that I don't have to drive anywhere.

Tonight (Fri.) should be a pretty fun night though. It's to the point where almost everyone is moved in here, so a bunch of us are headed downtown to see more of townsville, and maybe do some bowling or something.

This next week is very highly anticipated by everyone on campus. O-week (for orientation) is jam-packed with tons of dorm-wide, and campus-wide events for everyone to attend, and should be tons of fun. All that, and classes starting should make for a pretty great week.

I've been doing some exploring around and have found some really nice running trails that go all around the south part of Townsville. It is all very scenic, and my new gps watch is doing wonders for me. It's nice to just go out for a run, and not thing about time or distance until i get back, and it tells me everything. :)

Well, that's all for now, but i hope to hear from all of you soon.

love from,
Matt

P.S. pictures from the Rain Forest Station should be up on shutterfly now.