Annette's blog: the life of a uni student

So much has happened in the last few days!

First of all, I have given some people a wrong postal address!
My postal address is

Annette ten Brinke
Unit 1 Room 6 ECU Village, 505 Robertson Drive
Bunbury WA 6230
Australia

Now that that's sorted I am expecting letters, postcards and parcels! :)

So, the rest of last week I tried to get organized. On friday my mum came past with Annemijn and Anne Martha, so I slept a night at Gerwin's place with them. On saturday Gerwin was nice enough to come with me to the shops to buy new light globes for my car. Next time I need to buy a car, I will buy a type of car that EVERYONE has heard about! Every time I go to the shop to get something for my car, or ring a mechanic, I get the same reaction!

So what kind of car do you have?
I have a ford ka.
A ford?
Yea, a ford ka.
So....is that a laser?
No, it's a ka.
So what kind of model is that?
It's a ka.
Ok, but is it a focus or something?
No, IT'S A KA!!!!!!

And then the guy will look at me like i'm a some kind of female that doesn't know anything about cars! I have to admit, I don't know anything about cars...and I am a female. But that's besides the point.
I am getting rather sick of have the same conversation over and over again, so I asked Gerwin if he could go to the shops with me to get the lights. Although he got exactly the same response from the guy behind the counter, at least he didn't get the look!

So on Saturday afternoon, I was rather bored so I decided that it was time to put the new light globes to the test and drive up to Armadale. I love the road between Bunbury and Perth! It's so easy! You just hop in your car, drive for 1,5 hours and you are there!
I had dinner at Arjan's house and slept the night at Terpstra's. Sunday after church Steph and I invited some people over and when we came home the room was filled with 8 visitors. That is one of the many things I love about Armadale. You can just go around after church and invite people over for coffee or dinner. Before you know it you have a room filled with an interesting mix of people and it's always good fun!
I drove back to Armadale after I was fed and watered, which was just after 8 and was home 1 hour and 36 minutes later! Great!

On Monday my classes finally started. I started with the Aboriginal Histories of the Present unit. In previous years they had an indigenous lecture delivering the unit. I was really looking forward to that bit, because it is always good when someone who is actually part of the culture is teaching you about their culture. However, this person has moved on to a bigger and better job, so my lecture for this unit is just a boring white Australian. Actually....there is nothing boring about her. She has worked all over the place, including up north, and she has heaps of experience! She really knows her stuff and she has an interesting way of delivering the unit content. At the beginning of the class we had to discuss in a group what we knew about the Aboriginal history. I was quite surprised that I knew more than most of the other people in my group. Although I haven't grown up in Australia, I have always been interested in the culture of the Aboriginal people. I actually researched it in my last year of high school. We all had to pick a topic of interest, do research on it and have about an half an hour presentation on it. Now that I think of it, we had to do it twice. Once I had to do it by myself and I chose 'Aboriginals in Australia'. And once I did it with Annelies and we chose 'migration from Holland to Australia in the 50's' as topic.
We also watched one episode of a series which has been on SBS. It's called something like 'the first Australians' and it is very interesting! I'll see if I can find it on internet somewhere and put the link on my blog, for the people who are interested.

On Monday afternoon I had my second unit which is called Human behavior in the social environment. When I walked into class I realized that it's pretty much just developmental psychology. I do like psychology, however I've just done a week of it in summer school and my head still hurts of remembering all the theories and names of psychologists! I enjoy the more 'practical' part of psychology: looking at why people act or respond a certain way. I am not a great fan of learning theories! Some people might say that you can't have one without the other. I guess in a way it's true...but to me it's a bit like history. I LOVE history, but if you give me a list of years and tell me what happened in each year, I will never remember and probably fall asleep while studying it. What I do find interesting is things like: how come Hitler could get so much power in Germany or what kind of people lived in the castles in Holland and how did they live there. For me, that is real history, not a bunch of years and boring facts.

On Monday afternoon my brain was pretty friend and I wasn't really up for doing any readings yet. One of my housemates had the great idea of going to pub for a 'bonding session' as housemates. We went with all 6 of us, had a few drinks and played some pool. It was really good and it did break the ice!

On Tuesday I had another two units. In the morning I had the unit 'Addiction and Practice'. It looks like a pretty interesting unit and the lecturer is very good as well!
In the afternoon I had my last unit which is called 'Gender, Families and Professional Practice. We have a one hour lecture and a two hour tutorial. The person who delivers the tutorial is from Bangladesh and has worked for the united nations in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and a few more countries! A very interesting person. However, her accent is pretty bad and after spending 1,5 days in class already, it is extremely difficult to understand her! I hope next week goes better!
This last unit is going to be a very interesting one. When you talk in class about things like gender and family you realize how far society has drifted away from how God has intended society to be like!
Even things like: if you look at the well being of people it has been proven that generally marriage is a protective factor for males (positive) but a risk factor for females (negative). I found this very alarming. I think the government should put less money into delivering educational programs about safe sex and STI's and develop programs to teach people what it means to be in a healthy and functional relationship. So many people these days have no idea, because they come from broken homes or from homes where their parents have not had healthy relationships!

At the end of the afternoon I had an extremely bad headache and felt physically sick. It's amazing how not just your brain, but also your body has to get used to sitting in a class room all day and absorbing information! It doesn't help that they have the air conditioning blasting through the room and every time you walk outside you walk into a wall of heat!

For the rest of the week I don't have any classes! O, what a feeling! This morning I had one of the best sleep ins ever and afterwards I decided to go for a nearly 2 hour walk. Of course I forgot my hat and didn't put any sunscreen on, so my skin has a nice shade of red! I have calculated that it takes 15 minutes to walk to the shop and 45 minutes to walk to the beach. Not bad! Seeing I a poor uni student, who still hasn't heard anything back from centrelink (grrrr) and had to pay more then 250 dollars for uni books...just for one semester, I can't afford to take my car anywhere, unless there are no other options!

My plan was to have lunch and start my readings. It is now 3.40 pm and I have just finished my lunch. :)
At least I have another 2 days to do my readings for next week.....

That's all for now!
Would love to hear from you all!

Annette