Australian Museum... and First Day of Classes!

On Friday, I visited the Australian Museum with some friends.

This museum is more than anything a natural history museum, but not just focusing on Australia. They had a section featuring Aboriginal artifacts, a section about DINOSAURS, a whole wing of taxidermy animals, and much more. I loved the dinosaur wing, but my favorite part was probably the wing entitled "Surviving Australia" that was about all the dangerous animals people always associate with Australia.

The most entertaining part of that section was they had these GIANT spider replicas scattered throughout, and my friends and I completely believed that they were life-size. We were really freaked out, and kept saying how we would NOT like to meet those guys in the wild. Until about the third one when we finally noticed that there was a sign labeling them and saying their actual size, and they were all in the millimeters. Probably still deathly poisonous or whatever, but at least they are small in real life!

The dinosaur section was really cool - I love a good dinosaur skeleton. It was also interesting to read about some discoveries from another point of view. Many dinosaur bones are found in North America, so in American museums, information will usually say what state the fossils were found in or something. But Aussies don't know American geography very well (which is totally fine, I don't know much Australian geography), so most American fossils said just that - "found in United States." Just an interesting little difference there.

One thing I did NOT like in the dino section was they had this autopsied T. Rex? I know that doesn't really make much sense so I'll try to explain. Basically, a few years ago, National Geographic was like, "We have a great idea! We're going to build what we think is an anatomically correct T. Rex! And then we'll autopsy it and see what we learn!" I don't know what they could have learned from that seeing as how they built the body, so I feel like they would already know everything about it. Anyway, they made a documentary about it, and when they were done, they gave the autopsied body to the Australian Museum. It was so gross. I have a picture, so if you want to see it, let me know. But it was kinda bloody and gruesome, so I'm not going to post it here.

ANYWAY, back to more fun stuff! Here are other highlights of the museum:

Yeehaw! The horse's name is Sir Hercules, and the rider has no name

Like I said, lots of taxidermy

Why'd they do my boy like this? They DON'T stand like that!

I <3 megafauna! This is a diprotodon (like a giant wombat)

Wahoowa, baby! (This is a wahoo)

After the Australian Museum, we walked over to the Opera House (again!). We found the place where Benny the Seal usually rests. As far as I understand, there is a seal that likes to sun himself on some steps that come up out of the water. Unfortunately, they are doing construction on those steps right now, so he wasn't there. But I took a picture anyway! Hopefully he's there next time I'm at the Opera House - probably won't be long.

No seal, just some construction workers :(

Imagine this seal on the stairs from my picture

Side note: you may notice some of my pictures are super blurry or distorted. That's because I'm wearing so much sunscreen every single day! And it gets EVERYWHERE! Including on my camera. I keep forgetting to wipe it off before I take a picture.

Saturday and Sunday were chill days because we all knew going back to school was imminent. We did some walking around campus to find classes, but all the buildings were locked and we don't have student IDs yet, so it was not that helpful.

Monday was First Day of Classes! I know some of you have been wondering when I would FINALLY go back to school, and rest assured, I am now attending classes like the rest of you. My endless break has ended :)

Classes seem good so far, although it's hard to tell from just the first day - it was mostly going over syllabus - or rather, unit outline, as they call it here. In the afternoon yesterday, there was a HUGE thunderstorm. Like heavy rain, building-shaking thunder. I saw a headline that said there were 75,000 lightning strikes in Sydney in two hours. Luckily, I had a big break between morning classes and an evening class, so I was very happy to be inside. As I write this (Tuesday morning), it is raining again, so hopefully that stops.

And now, I will leave you with this. Imagine you are in a lecture for two hours, and this is your seat. The table thing in front of you is only a foot wide. And if someone needs to get out of the row, you all have to get out of the row.

This is my reality for multiple of my classes. Hooray for uni!

Edit: For those who were wondering, no, it did NOT stop raining. I am soaking wet :(