O Week Ends, Semester Begins

O week has officially ended, with many stories and eventful happenings: we've had toga parties, pub crawls, city crawls, many ghosting stories, visits to the beach and markets at South Bank, the college talent show, and tons of other things.

The city crawl was basically us running around and being obnoxious while trying to finish a list of tasks that we were supposed to do (things like get a piggy back ride from a rando, take pics with the metal kangaroos, etc) that would lead up to the beginning of the pub crawl. The pub crawl basically involved us visiting three different pubs for a limited amount of time (about a half hour or so), also with tasks that we were supposed to do before we left.

Ghosting is something we did during the city crawl, and it is one of the most entertaining things I've tried before. Essentially, you have to be really quiet and sneaky and walk behind someone, mirroring their movements for as long as you can without them noticing, and if you have more than one person, one has to get in line behind the other, so eventually you have a long trail after the person you're ghosting.

South Bank is beautiful. It's Brisbane's man-made beach, with a beautiful walkway called via arbour, with artistic metal designs with vines and flowers growing all over them. I've been there a couple times already, once with some of the other seppos, and again most of the day yesterday with my wing, Hendo, and some of the exec members.

I think one of the things I love most so far about Brisbane is that it's so easy to get anywhere. The bus system is fantastic, in addition to the City Cat, the ferry that runs up and down the Brisbane River, starting at the uni and ending in the city. The Queens St mall is huge, and we've been to Indooropilly once so far to get fabric for the toga party, but everything seems easily accessible.

Classes are starting on Monday, but for the first week it's only lectures so students can come to uni and see how they like a class, giving them the opportunity to drop the class if they don't like it. Uni also has 'come and try week,' which allows students to come to all the sports and fitness classes in the first week for free to see what they want to do and choose what they'd rather not.

Aussie Confusion: Thongs are flip flops, not the underwear.

Back To Civilization

First post since having arrived in Australia, I'm currently sitting in the Sydney airport waiting for our flight to Brisbane and to my new home for the next five months. We've had a disappointing lack of internet. We've stayed the past couple days in a town just outside of Sydney, Narrabeen, at the Sydney Academy of Sports. It's come with the most healthy food I've eaten since I can remember, lots of activities, and many many new people.

Six of us got flown into LA a day earlier because of the snowfall and the worry that we wouldn't be able to make it to orientation for another week if we didn't, so we got the chance to meet each other then, in addition to having some time to get to know each other.

There are about eighty kids or so in our group, going to Macquarie, Griffith, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Cairns, so there's an interesting mix of all the people studying abroad right now. We've had activities like going to the Taronga Zoo and having a tour around the Sydney harbor on a catamaran, and other things like seeing and dancing with an Australian bush band, and getting the opportunity to see some of the Aboriginals (from Queensland, not Sydney though) and seeing them perform in dance and play didgeridoos for us, which was absolutely fantastic. It's been crazy so far, and I think I have about 400+ pictures, and that was just at orientation.

It doesn't really feel like I'm going to be starting classes in two weeks. As soon as we stepped off the plane in Sydney (after the 15 hour flight) I think just about every person who wasn't wearing short shorts and a tank top was sweating like no other. It feels more like summer vacation right now, and it still hasn't really hit me that I'm here for another five months. Driving down the left side of the road is indeed odd, but everything here is just so fantastic, from being able to take a picture in front of the Sydney Opera house to petting kangaroos and wombats, and seeing the absolutely breathtaking views available just about every time you look out the window.

Can't write too much more, running out of battery on the laptop and running out of internet time. Will post more once I can get internet access (may be another day or two).