Brisbane Welcomes International Students!

This event was hosted by the city of Brisbane, and held in the City Hall.

The international center on campus offered bus rides there, so I walked to campus, when lo and behold, I run across this guy just walking along:





I'm not sure you can tell from the pictures, but this monster was about 4 feet long, maybe more. Cool and scary all at the same time!

I hopped on the 9:30am bus, where I got to talking to a couple of other Americans, Lindsey and Eric, as well as a girl from Finland, Jenni, that I had met previously.



Set up inside the building were a multitude of different booths advertising a multitude of things - everything from knowing your rights as a renter, to hostel accommodation in the Gold Coast. The four of us wandered around collecting stamps (if you collected 20, you could enter into a prize raffle) and plenty of informational brochures about the Brisbane city buses, the Wild Dolphin Resort, and even Australian Whip cracking!





There were a couple of bands that performed on stage, as well as some aboriginal dancers, and a whip cracking demonstration, of course, so we were kept pretty busy. Eventually, we wandered out of the main room, and took the lift up to the clock tower.



At one time, this was the highest building in Brisbane, and the sights are still pretty good.







We listened to the bells chime the hour, and then headed back downstairs to wander through the museum, which was featuring an exhibit on the history of the local mental hospital. Eventually, we grabbed some lunch (by this time the line was no longer out the door, and we only had to wait a couple of minutes).

We also checked out this cute guy who was on display as an advertisement for the local koala sanctuary. But he spent the day sleeping.



We couldn't find out if the university offered a bus back to campus, so we had to find the bus stop, and make our own way home, but all in all, a fun day!