O Weeeeeek Madness!!

Wow I cannot believe how much has happened since last time I updated this and it was only last Thursday, not even a week ago! Soo on friday the 18th a bunch of us traveled down to the Gold Coast to a WONDERFUL WONDER WONDERFUL place called Surfers Paradise! (check out my photos on the book, god I want to permanently stay there and never ever go back! [speaking of which I am actually going back this weekend because it was really cheap and gorgeous]

At Surfers Paradise: It was a group of 10 us (people who are also doing IFSA Butler with me) got up early in the morning and then took the hour and 15 minute train down to a cute little city. We found a hostel named Backpackers in Paradise, which was relatively cheap for how nice it was- arguably thought it was my first hostel but I thought it was quite nice. Then we immediately went straight to the beach, I slip, slap, slopped (the official slogan of putting on sunscreen in Aussie) on tons and tons of sunscreen and just laid on the beach for at least 4 hours going in occasionally to the perfectly temperature water to cool off when needed. I can totally get how people just sit there for tons and tons of time because of how nice it is, I never wanted to leave. Then around 5 we all headed back to the hostel to shower and get ready because we had signed up for a 5 bar pubcrawl around the city so that we could really experience the Surfers Paradise nightlife. It was relatively inexpensive ($20 for 5 bars and a free drink at each one plus dinner was served) God had such a fun night. The club scene, at least there (I have not yet had time to check out Bris-Vegas' yet due to O-Week) was pretty cool and they really know how to have a good time. By the time the pubcrawl was over we all stumbled back to the hostel where a guy who was staying there was putting on a local concert in the hostel- people who can play guitar really well and sing honestly have a gift. It was wonderful and the perfect way to end such a great day. The next morning two of us left early because I wanted to get back for O WEEEEEEEEK!

Definition of O Week: Stands for Orientation Week and it is for the new "freshers" who are moving in to the different colleges on campus- a week long and you do tons and tons of fun activities and it's a way to get them to all meet each other and get introduced to college life in an awesome way!

So Saturday when I got back to Emmanuel I was immediately given my "freshman nickname" (everyone has one and they are written on a construction workers' hat which you are to wear AT ALL TIMES NO MATTER WHAT OR THE UPPER CLASS LEADERS WILL HAZE YOU- mine is Bo Peep - no idea why. How they choose the names is that the executive leaders all go out to a bar one night with a list of the new freshman and their pictures and drink and come up with all the fun names. Here is a lovely photo of me and my hat, out a bar- on the other side it says BoPeep - these are just other "freshers" living it up at a bar one night. so much fun!

So after all the freshers checked in we had like a convocation type ceremony where they individually called us up one by one in front of everyone and made us sign a welcome contract, mind you while doing this we were in our "robes" which picture harry potter and those are the robes. It felt like graduation, especially after the president of the college said, "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives..." Thank goodness I didn't trip on the stage, that would made a great first impression on everyone.. The freshers are cute, but a ton of them are 17 so it is a little weird especially because they can't drink and a lot of the activities that we do at night revolve around drinking. But as any typical college student in the states they always find a little way around it. Later that night we "bush danced in the parking lot" it was just a huge excuse for everyone to drink for the first time and then dance around doing aboriginal dances... like I wrote before this aboriginal stuff must be nonsense because when they broke out the makarena i called fowl on that being legit.

So after a night of drinking you could kinda say I was struggling, especially the next morning when I was woken up at 5 am by the leaders pounding on all of our doors and blasting music in the hallways. We were ordered to get us and led into the quad where they were ready for us to go on a little morning run followed by push ups in the wet grass and then we learned some cheers. Needless to say it was a little harder for some of the freshers than others and they left some evidence in the trees during the run.. But a nice way to start out the day I guess.

The next day (Sun. Feb 20) We just had meetings in the morning and afternoon about the regulations of the college, thank goodness though being an international and 20 I did not have to attend anything other than the one where they talked about playing sports for Emmanuel (they do like a Harry Potter thing where the colleges play against each other) After Dinner we all headed (hats and all to a local pub called the Pig 'N" Whistle where we were treated to lovely drink specials and lots of fun traditions + activities that the execs had in store for us. (That is the picture above) It is so weird to be able to buy drinks in a bar legally!

The next morning (Mon. Feb 21) I was promptly woken up again during the wee hours of the morning but thankfully this time it was at 6 am and after doing a nice morning run we were taught a dance which we are performing tomorrow at the local activities fair. God kill me, I am the most awk dancer as everyone knows but! IN AUSTRALIA AT THE CLUBS AND BARS THEY DON'T BUMP AND GRIND THEY DO 7TH GRADE CIRCLE DANCING SO IT IS JUST ALL AWKWARD! So I guess it's a win win win for me!! After that we had some free time to go back to sleep! woot and then we had a fun meeting about "Expectations at Emmanuel" but being a wonderful international student I did not have to go to it because they were like you are a 3rd year in college, you know how to behave or we hope! So the internationals went to the "International Orientation" god what a joke- it was again a meeting that I probably did NOT need to attend!  but whatever, after the meeting we broke up into wings and all of us went ugly clothes shopping in order to prepare for the night's activity which was UGLY MINI GOLFING. I bought the ugliest dress probably ever made for a nice 3 dollars, such a find in a thrift store- I don't know how anyone ever bought it in the first place! After dinner just as we were all changing into our wonderful outfits, probably the biggest and most ridiculous storm x10000 that I have ever heard/ seen the lightning flashes broke out and needless to say we could NOT go mini golfing. So they rescheduled the ugly night for tonight I believe and then they set up board games and other fun things that would entertain 17 year olds but us older ones decided to go causally drink at the ON CAMPUS AND RUN BY THE UNIVERSITY bar- probably the best idea ever on that part because I'm sure they don't pay that much in taxes on the alcohol because they are a school and they allow people to come and buy stuff! It's called the Red Room, seems like a fun place to chill and drink on the weekends or casually during the week- overall not a terrible night.

The next morning however (Tuesday) I could not wake up, they were pounding at my door at 5 am but no way after getting up two mornings in a row was I going to be participating in it- I did however miss the second part of the dance, which when we perform it later today will be slightly embarrassing however I will just stand in the back and hope that no one sees me. After lunch we had a meeting about the "Sports at Emmanuel" which actually seem pretty cool, again they do it harry potter style where the colleges face off against each other. They are trying to recruit me to play NetBall because of my wonderful height (it's like basketball but you cannot bounce the ball or travel with it, you just have to pass it up the court and then shoot it in the net) I am probably going to pass though because I want to play touch rugby! The aussie's are obsessed with Rugby so I figure while I'm here I might as well experience it! Plus a nice rugby shirt/ souvenir can't hurt!! Then later after dinner we had a pre activity called "trivia night" where they broke us up into teams and quizzed us on aussie slang + other australian things + things about UQ in general. My team was not the greatest and I know absolutely nothing about Aussie Slang so that didn't end well but after it we went on a PUB CRAWLLL in the city!! WHich was really fun, again we were broken up into teams and at all the bars had tasks that we had to do! The girls on my team started the night off with a wonderful tequila shot so clearly it was a great night for everyone! These activities really do help to bond all of the freshers together, I am so jealous that we don't do this type of thing in America, god it would be SO much fun.

This morning I did go at 530 am after I was woken up and we marched to all the other colleges and yelled our dirty cheers at their buildings and then we ran back to the main field where they had set up an obstacle course where the last piece was a slip-n-slide but instead of water to make traction they were using GOON (Definition: Boxed Wine or in the states Franzia) I thank goodness managed to avoid that part of the course, but they are crazy, I have no idea where they come up with these types of things! Woah looong post, I must be off, we are going to go perform the dance and then head to the HUGE activities fair! yay free swag! more sooon! pictures on fb soon as well!

AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE, OY OY OY

Yeah about that "after breakfast comment"

sooo after breakfast really turned into a couple of days later but what can I say, I have been doing so much and really have not had time to go anywhere near my computer let alone fb, this blog, anything!

Continuing Feb. 14: oh right now looking at the date it was valentine's day, thank god no one in australia cares about the silly holiday. After surfing we were all physically exhausted and it rained towards the end so we were all super excited to get out of the water- went back to base camp and ate a wonderful dinner. The food so far has really been awesome, such fresh fruits and veggies + these people really know how to cook! After dinner we had people from one of the "aboriginal" tribes of Australia come and give a presentation of their culture and do a couple of "tribal dances". It was very convincing until the main guy's cell phone went off mid presentation and then the "paint" they used to cover their bodies in, per ritual, was from target- but details details. and then everyone was extremely tired and just ready to get to Bris-Vegas (official name) the next day that no one really drank, we just played an intense game of catch phrase. I have officially turned pro at catch phrase, god such a good game.

FEB 15: BRISSSSVEGASSSSSS. I arrived finally! And wierdly enough they don't believe in daylight savings time or something so it was an hour behind Sydney.. interesting and questionable I know. From the airport our group all divided up into the separate places we were living and got driven there! First of all let me say the weather here, is like a gift from above after being in NOVA for almost two months and having snow constantly on the ground! 80 ish degrees everyday. A little bit of humidity but not too terrible and usually an afternoon storm will wash it all away anyway! Arrived at wonderful, gorgeous Emmanuel College and fell in love- even though my room is literally the size of a broom closet, I really have not spent too much time in it, so nothing to worry about. I will post photos soon, once I figure out how to upload them to my computer... Emmanuel is so cool, so none of the real people have moved in yet so its just like the people from my program and the "RAs" but the RA's are somewhat different here. They are in charge of the college in general and as like a school we compete against other schools and apparently it gets really intense. They also have already called us (the people from my program) freshies and we are going to get hazed like all the other freshman who are just starting out school. They do this thing called "O-Week" (orientation week) and its a blast, or so everyone says.. We are supposed to get freshie names and get painted blue, (the color of Emmanuel- THANK GOD NOT RED AND WHITE ANYMORE) and gets lots of attire etc. I am super stoked for that, it starts on Saturday! After moving into Emmanuel we all just kinda got settled and then did a couple of walking tours of the campus, and a little of the city- just so we could get oriented to what was happening. Then later that night, paaartaay at the all boys college (named Kings) next door! free alcohol (boxed wine and beer). SPEAKING OF ALCOHOL, since I can legally buy it, I have resorted to either drinking wine or not too expensive beer- hard liquor will be on reserve for only the special special nights. But back to the party, a really fun experience, everyone is super nice and super friendly with wanting to really know "americans" even though they call us seppos as in septic tanks. A little bit insulting if you asked me! They have a really funny tradition with this song called golden phoenix or something very close to that where if the song comes on, which it usually does much later in the night, all the boys at the party have to drop their pants. ... it was an experience to say the least and apparently one that will happen again and again!

FEB 16: dayyy 2- finally truly acclimated with the time change (or at least I thought I was/am!) got up normal time for breakfast, which at the college is from 630-9, lunch is 12-130 and dinner is 5-630. I know, wierd times but it's been good keeping a schedule so far and once classes start we will have to see what kind of madness goes on! Ate a wonderful breakfast vegemite included, then I proceeded to barf, ha just kidding but really the stuff tastes like shit, I don't know how they eat it- it's an acquired taste apparently. Speaking of those, the coffee over here, amazing! I totally can see why people are addicted now, its yummy yummy yummy. Spent the day going around campus again getting my id card, bus card, just trying to get into the groove of things. Finally finished unpacking so of course had to hit up the local mall for supplies that I couldn't bring over like a hair straightener, etc. It will be tough to describe what their local malls are like but I'm going to try. All the stores are either super super expensive, or, they are kmart, target, or the equivalent of a walmart. Soo wierd, I have never seen those kinds of stores in malls before. But it gave us a good experience of riding the bus and we learned all the cool places that "the vill" has to offer. (The place where we get on and off that particular bus). After all that I went for a glorious run, it's super flat here and they have tons of trails so, I ran along the river trail and god the destruction was honestly terrible. The flooding really truly did a number on the school's physical environment and I couldn't believe how high the water actually got! After my run + dinner I set up internet, FINALLY, and then we all went to a pre-drink party (apparently here they do not call it pregaming but predrinking) and just played a huge game of kings with all the people around in the college. They pretty much play it somewhat similar to how we do, which was good!

FEB 16: The Brisbane River is dirtyyy and it smells like shit. All the people from our program, whether they were living in Emmanuel with me, in St. Johns, or in off campus apartments met up for lunch and to go kayaking in the Brisbane River. Which if you can picture the Potomac River make it more polluted x 10, plus bull sharks, plus it felt like warm bath water. But after kayaking for 3 miles I guess you could say I got the hang of it and typing this blog entry is extremely painful! We stopped in the middle of it and played this game where everyone lined their kayak up in a circle, and the main guy counted off us up to 21 twice so that there were two people with the same number on the opposite of the circle. When he then yelled out that number, you had to stand up in your kayak and try to get around the circle faster than the opposite person, and take their remaining seat in their kayak. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE, I have no balance on the ground let alone floating in water, still fun though and I didn't fall in thank god for reasons stated above. But some people did, yuck. Then came back to Emmanuel for dinner and then headed over to the off campus apartments to hang out with the people I became friendly with during orientation. We drank at their apartment and then the three girls, including myself, went to go meet up with our kayak instructors because during the trip they asked for our numbers. We met them at a local pub and just sat outside and drank on the patio for a while. It was really nice just being able to casually drink and not have to worry about it being illegal. When do I turn 21 again?!! Then we went back to meet up with everyone else in the apartments and took the buses (which are super cheap and convenient) to a bar where people from Emmanuel were meeting and danced the night away. I ended up going to sleep at 5 this morning and then waking up at 9. so needless to say I am exhausted! gooooood night and goood luck world. I shall post soon with your weekly Brisbane update!

(:

In Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oy Oy Oy!

Helloooo everyone!

So first of all I want to apologize to everyone for not updating this thing for such a long time but you really and truly cannot blame me because I was without internet and a phone for five days and it was honestly really different and wierd and yeah, never again I hope!

Okay so I will start at the beginning...

WED Feb. 9: Day of endless and endless and endless traveling. Woke up nice and early to catch a 905 flight from Dulles to LA which wasn't bad, flew over Vegas (made some mental notes for future travel plans), and Aspen (if only I could ski well...) and then landed in LA at noon their time. My first experience with some time change, went pretty well... I slept a little on the plane anyway so I wasn't terribly disoriented. So in LA I met up with the wonderful Caroline Given who picked me up in her lovely red car and took me all over LA because my next flight to Sydney didn't take off until 1025... can someone say longest layover ever? In LA we drove around, went to a wonderful little fresh healthy "LA" place for lunch, spent 8 dollars on a glorious salad thing (little did I know that would be the cheapest salad or lunch item that I have purchased so far- more to come on that) and we went to a wonderful little carnival on the pier in crap some beach... I don't think it was Venice beach, eh she would know. Then she showed me her cute little apartment and I met her boyfriend etc. probably the best way to spend a layover I'd say. Then I arrived back at the airport around eh 7 is (silly LA traffic) and got all checked in and ready for the flight to sydney.. a nice 15 hours. When I got to the airport there were a ton of people (college students) all ready waiting to get on the plane and go! I flew on that new plane the airbus 380 on Quantas airlines. Seriously the nicest and coolest plane I have ever flown! Two flours, comfy comfy seats, not terrible food (I missed dinner after passing out almost immediately after combining a sleeping pill with alcohol, woops) but breakfast was yummy, and the movie selection was incredible. I watched Eat Pray Love- eh not terrible. I imagine the book is better but I wouldn't know. That's a task for this summer..

FEB 10: No idea, was sleeping and lost it in travel time

FEB 11: WELCOME TO SYDNEY BITCHESSS. woot finally landed in Australia to gorgeous sunny 80 degree weather and was instantly in heaven. Went through the shortest and easiest customs + security I have ever done, and met up with my program to UQ (University of Queensland) which ended up being about 40 of us- which is still much much bigger than I thought it would be. In the airport I exchanged some money, and cried a little bit since the silly Aussie dollar is worth a pinch more than the American dollar. Hopefully that will change while I'm over here. In Sydney the group of IFSA-Butler (the program I am staying with) took up to the Sydney Academy of Sports for the weekend to not only orient us to the new time change, cause we were all soo messed up, but to get us to get to know each other and go through a mini orientation. Drove over the bridge in the Sydney Harbor and only saw the opera house (went in a couple of days later) and wow was it smaller than I imagined it would be!! The only way to describe the Sydney Academy of Sports was it looked exactly like the Dharma Initiative.. which was odd since I am in Aussie arguably somewhere near the LOST island... After we all got settled in, in rooms we shared with 3 our people going to our same uni, we were treated to a lovely bush walk- I have a feeling that was the first of many that I am going to be doing here... and then just kinda settled in the for the night and started to meet people. I met a wonderful group of people all from Vanderbilt who only half of them knew they were coming so it was funny for them and honestly in three days I don't think I have ever laughed so much in my life- may come back (if I ever come back) with a nice six pack of abs from laughing. The group included Maya, Marguerite, Meredith, Katie, Binder, Alex, and Dan- pretty much hung out with them all of orientation and even though they all live off campus, still definitely going to hang out with them a ton this semester I hope! That night Meredith introduced us to Scattegories Pictionary arguably the best game to pass the time in the entire world- I will definitely be bringing that back with me into the states.

FEB 12: Adventure into Sydney FINALLY! So after getting up super early, breakfast was from 745 to 845 and the fact that I was already up due to jet lag anyway.. We all loaded up onto buses and went into downtown Sydney! Our first stop, the Tonga Zoo- saw soo soo many animals from a Wombat who I probably want to take home, even though they are vicious, to a koala, to a kangaroo, to elephants, to a platapus (which does NOT look like the beanie baby surprisingly!) and I pet a wallaby! so so cool, and got some nice shots of Sydney cause the zoo was kinda up on a hill by the river across from the Opera house. Then we all finally split up into groups and took the ferry across the river and landed about 10 feet away from the Opera House, got some nice shots of it and in front of it- went in, almost got kicked out because we tried to go into the room but there was a show going on (I know, silly Americans you are all thinking) This group was me + the Vandy kids + a new friend I made named Sophie who is living with me in my residential college who is pretty legit! Continuing in Sydney we made our way through the Botanical/Royal Gardens which are located next to the Opera House but honestly there was nothing really exciting to see there- I would say the gardens at Miami by the Inn are nicer bahaha. Then we walked around to the "Rocks" district which is an older more historic part of downtown Sydney and immediately found a bar that us now "legal" drinkers could consume at. Found a lovely German bar bahaha will full liderhosen costumes and all and sat outside and draaaank. Everyone be extremely proud, I had some mango beer which actually tasted really good. But as I learned, everything ESPECIALLY DRINKING and ALCOHOL in Australia is like 40 thousand times more expensive than in the states, which makes me a little sad. From there, got back on the bus + ferry back to Dharma ville and drank drank drank the night away. What a really fun way to get to know everyone better- playing catch phrase as a drinking game is much more fun than I though it would be. But the night came to an end around 11 anyway because we were all still extremely jet lagged and tired from all of our travels around Sydney!

FEB. 13: Mini Orientation + Surfing! (or atleast me trying) Woke up around the same time as the day before and honestly the time change was starting to get much easier! In the morning the members of UQ had a mini orientation about just things we should know and some info about BRIS-VEGAS the most lax/chill city in Aussie + UQ =  number one party school in Australia (: Of course it is! and then after lunch we went surfingggg- actually stood up once! the waves were really good and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but my balance is definitely the worst, I will probs just stick to either laying on the beach, boggie boarding or running on the beach from now on!

ah! the fire alarm is going off in my dorm! more after breakfast!!