Finally seeing the university I’m enrolled in

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My first reaction was… Whoa! this is huge! 

The University of Sydney is actually smaller than UPLB (the campus in which I studied in since pre-school). I was excited to see how the Sydney Uni campus looked. But I wasn’t prepared for the towering castles and grand buildings that made the school a tourist spot.

On my first few days there, I didn’t tour the campus. So on my first weekend, I started to check out the different buildings and gardens. My favourite building was the Main Quadrangle, which I think hosts the museums and the carillon of the university. It’s Gothic in architecture with so many gargoyles of lions and kangaroos. Then, inside the main quad, I found a huge garden… I felt like I was on set of a Harry Potter movie! Outside the main quad, there’s this big garden that led to Paramatta Road (which merges with the City Road leading to the Sydney central business district). Seeing students wearing graduation robes or high school uniforms further made me think that I was walking on Hogwarts.

Then, there’s the Wentworth Building, which can be reached by a footbridge over City Road. Since it’s supposed to be the Student Union Building, I was expecting the usual food stalls and the work areas that can be found in UPLB’s SU building. But I was wrong. This building hosted a coffee shop, banks, travel agencies, a clinic…

The cafeterias on campus are in a building called the Manning Bar… inside, it looked like an airport lounge with all the glass and stainless steel rails. Not a cozy place to eat (well, I was expecting the sotanghon to be hot… but it was cold! like a salad!) but a very near one to the chemistry building.

A most interesting spot in campus is the Grafitti Tunnel. Students who had things to express were free to spray the tunnel red. But sadly, the vandalism wasn’t limited to the tunnel. Many messages were written or sprayed on stairs, on walls, wherever there’s space.

The Sydney Uni Camperdown Campus dwarfs in comparison to the UPLB campus. But I like it just as much as I like UPLB.

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