Hot Hot Heat!

Wooooza it's like 96 degrees outside! Not having aircon (as they call it in aussie land) is starting to become a real pain. But all the "ra's" have it in there rooms so I have been mostly just hanging out in their rooms (: I have a ton of catching up to do on here, it's been a while since I last posted and a ton of stuff has happened!

Okay so I believe I left off at Market Day. The freshman/fresher dance. Oy vey that was a mess! The dance itself was actually very well choreographed however there was one move where everyone had to get on the ground and like do this thing which I couldn't even begin to explain however there being like 120 freshers and the stage being much smaller than they anticipated not everyone could do the move so us stuck in the middle/back (yes that was totally on purpose) just ended up squatting awkwardly. The song we danced to was Usher's More. [aka I can never hear that song or boom boom boom again because it will bring back oh so wonderful O Week memories] We also had to wear our lovely BLUE (kill me if I get another blue shirt, the colors of Emmanuel College are BLUE and WHITE - of course they are) Fresher shirts so everyone could see our awesomeness. But the fair turned out really cool actually there are like a bazillion societies for every major and a club for every kind of activity that you could ever think or even imagine about joining. I guess there are perks to going to an enormous school! I opted to join the Quest Club, a club for international students were they arrange trips to places around Aussie for you + activities that would normally be extremely touristy... hopefully that works out! I was also extremely tempted to join the wine and cheese society however the admission fee was 10 Aussie Dollars and I could think of a couple of things I would rather be spending my money on instead of that. After market day we were all still kind of hurting from the pub crawl the night before so we just layed out on the quad, took a glorious nap then put on our lovely UGLY clothes (Finally!!) and had a Ugly Dinner. But actually they grouped it together with another event which was pretty cool called "Global Dinner". When you first walked into the room you picked from a box the name of a country and you were assigned to go sit at that country's table (Or lack of). I unfortunately chose Afghanistan and was left without a table or any silverware. There were other countries such a the US, Aussie, England who had lavish seating and expensive cutlery and other countries such as Sudan and Brazil who had ehh okay stuff I guess. Then they served us the portion that would be alloted to that country as if you were actually living there and while we ate they read out facts about world poverty and health, and being Afghanistan we even had a representative from the American table come and sit with us for a while, how appropriate and funny I guess. Food wise my table (or lack of) ended up with 3 tortillas for the 10 of us to split so we were over joyed when they announced at the end of the event that you could actually go eat dinner now.. :P Then after the dinner we had a talent portion where people had been signing up all week and some people did really good things, and some people like my silly wing (they call the different halls in the college wings) which's nickname is Mickey did a 30 second dance to "Hey Mickey" but one girl sang and it was VERY legit. My favorite act consisted of two silly Fresher boys doing a GLORIOUS DANCE to "Sexy Can I" I was extremely impressed by how well they actually did. Afterwards people just hung out and drank and some went off to the bars but taking a taxi is just a silly waste of money especially if I didn't want to be out that long so a few of us just drank around the college!

Thursdayyy Feb. 24: Toga Toga Toga! Today was the last day we were woken up, at a lovely 7 am! Finally a somewhat normal time ish, or at least normal for those who are going to have an 8 am sometime this semester which I am not! And we all had to put on our Fresher shirts so they could take a Fresher picture! Yay memories! Then we were told they wanted to take an arial shot of us so we went under one of the balconies and after snapping a couple of photos out of no where came a lovely HUGE shower of water and then flour all over our lovely shirts! After being directly hit with tons and tons of flour I quickly ran to the shower in an attempt to not only get it off my body because it's not a pleasant feeling to have wet flour all over you but because I didn't want my shirt to get ruined- I think it was okay but thank goodness I wasn't picking flour out of my hair all day like some girls!! Nice way to start out the morning. After that a few of us went into Brisbane City to see some of the sights and do a little shopping. The clothes here, gosh they are so darn cute! Brisbane is a very nice city as well (You can see it by looking at my fb photos). When we got back in time for dinner they announced the night's activity... a toga party! But first there was going to be a wedding! Two people at the beginning of O-Week had been given the Fresher names of Bride and Groom, so clearly they had to get married. IT was cute, the exec had set up a nice pavilion for a ceremony and the people who were given the names mom and dad walked the bride and groom down the aisle respectively , just a fun and silly overall event- but getting back to TOGA! Having seen animal house many times clearly I was VERY excited (: But I did not come as prepared as some people having multiple sheets that go on my bed so I was forced to borrow a purple fitted sheet which just ended up looking like a hot mess in the way I pinned it but it still looked a little silly, oh well this was probably the most drunk night for everyone so no one really cared that much! That is the bow from the groom's outfit which I managed to borrow to make my outfit that much more complete. Sexy I know.

FRIDAY: SLEEEEEEEPT IN. Well sort of, we were all going to the water park Wet 'n' Wild! At 9 am sharp! so I got more sleep than normal but not enough that in the states would be acceptable! However Wet 'n' Wild was probably one of the best water parks that I have been too in a while, it had so many slides, a wave pool, and a roller coaster type thing which let you free fall while spinning for 50 seconds. Such a fun fun day and I didn't manage to get any sunburn at all! yay go me! That night however we/ my group of people/ decided to take it easy because the next day we decided that we were going to go to COOLANGATTA Beach in the Gold Coast to see the 2011 QuickSilver Surfing Competition and Kelly Slater!!! We figured we could just go for a night and beach during the day, ah Aussie and all the wonderful life possibilities that come with extremely easy public transportation!

Saturday: took the train to COOLANGATTA and immediately dropped our stuff off at the hostel, which was nicer than the one I had previously stayed at before in Surfers Paradise because it was a "YHA" which stands for like Youth Hostel Association and is a national thing around Australia so they are known for being nicer but not expensive! yay! And we hit the beach, called Kirra. So SO SO pretty, probably the best beach I have ever been too, the sand was SO NICE as well as it wasn't too crowded because everyone was watching the competition. After lying on the beach a few of us decided to walk to the competition where it was a mad house and I may or may not have seen Kelly Slater surf (; Surfing is really cool if you are good at it or have any balance at all but after doing it that one time in Sydney I learned that maybe my skills lie elsewhere! After that we just layed on the beach practically all day until dinner which we decided to venture out and found this lovely Mexican Restaurant Called Montezumas! What made it even better was that we were allowed to get Margs while we ate the Mexican food, oh this wonderful country! and then we all got back to the hostel and like immediately crashed due to the loooong day at the beach.

Sunday: some of us left early to get back in time to meet all the second and third years who were finally moving into the college, while others stayed at the beach to get in another day. I left early and thank goodness I did because my wing is one of those who tons of second years live in and I definitely wanted to meet new people! Plus, tomorrow (monday was my first day of the semester! and I had to get all prepared for school!) All the girls in the hall moved in, and the boys down stairs as well and it was really fun getting to meet them and helping them and stuff. They are all groups of friends who lived together in different wings last year who are now living with small groups in this wing. You can tell in my hall at least there are two distinct groups but I seem to have settled into a cute one with Two girls from Australia, One from Malaysia and One from America who after coming here for fall semester last year decided to full on transfer and attend here full time. SO COOL. They are all great and two of them have cars, which hopefully will come in handy. Plus they are all friends with a lot of people and boys around the college which will definitely help me meet more and more people! That night a few of us/ mostly the second and third years in the college decided to go to the Red Room (the on campus bar) and have a couple of drinks and get to know eachother. Yes, Aussie's even drink on Sunday NIGHTS! I didn't stay out that late though because MONDAY MORNING I HAD CLASS

Monday! First Day of Classes! I had one. from 10-1150. and then i was done for the day bahaha! That is my mondays! It was international journalism and we spent a majority of the class talking about American Journalism so I am not too worried about that class AT ALL (: But for the rest of the day I just hung out and walked around the college, tried to find the buildings that my other classes were in for the rest of the week and get errands done! Later our college had it's first "exchange" of the semester, meeting we met another college at a bar and had a social with them. It was craazy the amount of people that were there and how crazy of party-ers they are. I know I keep repeating this fact over and over but honestly I am still impressed EVERY SINGLE TIME! I had fun though but had to be back early because I had a 9 am and a 4 pm the next day

Tuesday: My 9 am is the class that I will be dropping. Actually I did drop it. Before even coming to the Uni they told us that we should only be taking 4 classes but I signed up for 5 and figured I would drop one, well I found it. Television and Popular Culture, Miami wasn't giving me course credit, just hours for the class and after watching an episode of the Jersey Shore in class and discussing it, I knew it was the class that I could live without. However my 4 pm class, Mass Media and Society, looks to be extremely fun and interesting! Thank goodness it is going to get out early every week though because 4-550 is a terrible class time, and formal dinners are on tuesdays at 6 so I don't want to be late and miss out on those! Speaking of that, we had one last night- ehh not bad! There were just so many people crammed into the dinning hall at one time that it got very hot very quickly so by the time that they were supposed to give speeches, everyone was very anxious to get out of there!! Fun night activity though, a group of us sat in the airconditioned common room and made friendship bracelets and just played cards. They had early classes today (Wed.)

I don't have class till 5 pm today ! yuck! 5-650. SUCH A GROSS CLASS TIME. plus it will mean I will miss dinner! I guess it's finally time for me to buy my first meal off campus! good I guess. But then it's free week at the gym so a group of us are doing pole dancing at 730. I will definitely update you guys on how that goes!

Well that's it from down under. If you have any questions or anything message me!

stay cool!