Student Blog Update: Our First Few Days in Brisbane

UW sophomore Cara Mischinski is currently in Brisbane, Australia with the OMA&D-affiliated exploration seminar studying the design of engineering materials and structures at the Queensland University of Technology. During the group’s time “down under,” Cara is sharing regular updates on our Student Blog along with classmate Lunden Harris. Here is her third entry.

by Cara Mischinski

Sydney was a great time for all of us to take it easy, bond, and do all the standard Australia tourist-y things we wanted to do (see: obligatory Sydney Opera House picture in each person’s camera roll). However, now we have reached the main event: Brisbane!! The first night in our new (really nice) apartments, our program coordinator Cathryne Jordan gave us some hot tips on what food is good to get around Kelvin Grove (spoiler alert: Nando’s is not overhyped and needs to make its way to the States ASAP), and a lot of us turned in early to rest up for our first day of class. 🙂

Cara's Student ID — Picking up official student ID’s really made us feel like a part of the QUT community

Wednesday morning, we took the QUT shuttle from Kelvin Grove to the main Garden Springs campus where we met Matt, our QUT correspondent. He let us know what the university had to offer: beautiful botanical gardens, a giant interactive periodic table, the LaunchPad maker lab, a huge selection of places to eat, and an art gallery. By the end of the week, we had taken advantage of all these amazing resources. After the tour, we had our first official lecture from our instructors, JK and Raj, and we picked up our official QUT student IDs. Then, we all hit the Wednesday farmers market in the CBD (Central Business District, the equivalent of our downtown).

Farmer's market — After grabbing food from the farmer’s market, we all tried to map out the game plan for the rest of the day

After munching on the wide array of what the market had to offer, we tried to explore the city, crossing over the Victoria Bridge in search of a beach. Unfortunately, our destination, Streets Beach, turned out to be more of a riverside pool than a beach, so we decided to just walk around for a little bit longer and then call it a day. We travelled back to Quest to do our homework like the good students we are :).

After the disappointment of Streets “Beach,” we bounced back quickly and took a family photo at the iconic Brisbane sign

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