Adventures as a Wannabe Aussie: O Week

This week has been kind of crazy so far! We've been in the midst of O Week (orientation for all new students) so there have been lots of activities and things for us to do plus unpacking and getting settled. Until yesterday, the jet lag hadn't been too bad but now that I'm not as busy, it's all catching up with me.

On Tuesday, we bought bus passes and went straight to the beach! It is absolutely beautiful! The sand is white and the waves are absolutely huge. The beach we went to is in a part of town called Surfer's Paradise. There's tons of shops and clubs and restaurants and hotels plus the huge gorgeous beach. The only downside is that the bus ride there has a lot of stops so it takes a while. We laid on the beach and then headed back to get ready for the cocktail party for new students. It was mostly a bunch of mingling and meeting new people, and then they had a few speakers and a digeridoo player, which was cool. Then we came back and got ready for the toga party. Everyone kept saying 'Oh you're Americans and you're in sororities, you should be awesome at tying togas!' except I've never been to a toga party in my life and the sheets they gave us to use were pretty small so it took a lot of effort to figure out. Once we were finally all dressed up, we went to the party, which was held at a bar on campus. It was nothing like we expected and was full of skeezy guys. We ended up coming back early and just going to sleep.

Wednesday, we hung out on campus in the morning and then took the bus to the shopping center to get some much needed items. At the shopping center we realized a few things. 1) All the stores except big grocery stores close by 6 every night. 2) Everything is significantly more expensive than at home, especially alcohol. 3) Grocery stores do not sell alcohol, you have to go specifically to the liquor store. 4) Stores like KMart and Target are very different from the ones we are used to. After shopping, we went to find our bus stop home and ended up walking in the wrong direction. Once we finally found the right bus stop, it took an hour for our bus to even come. The six of us were just sitting on the side of the road basically looking homeless. As soon as we got back, there was a hypnotist show. Earlier that afternoon, an O Week leader had warned us 'Don't volunteer for the hypnotist unless you're comfortable doing some weird stuff.' We were all kind of like 'Okay that's normal, we've seen hypnotists before.' He said to us 'Last year, he made people basically have sex with chairs.' That startled us all quite a bit. We laughed it off but I was a little hesitant about the show. What the O Week leader said was exactly right. It was so raunchy I couldn't believe the school paid this guy to do this. We all kept talking about how back at SLU, that never would have been acceptable. Because we were stuck waiting for the bus for so long, we totally skipped dinner, so after the show, Alex, Rachel, Christy and I walked to a little shopping square by campus and got pizza. It was the first thing I'd eaten here that was really good.

Thursday we ended up going back to the mall to get things for the Tight and Bright party we had that night and to get Australian phones so we could communicate with each other outside of wifi. Then we headed straight back to the beach. We stopped along the way to get some lunch at a bar where we were carded to even enter the premises. We didn't actually end up staying long at the beach... there was a big storm starting to blow in and we didn't want to get caught in it so Alex, Christy and I headed back to the bus stop, where we proceeded to get on the wrong bus, get off at the wrong stop, sit waiting there for an hour and then almost miss our real bus back to campus. Once we finally got back to campus, we started getting ready for the party. There were a ton more people at this party and it was a lot more enjoyable.

So far today we've just been relaxing and recovering from this crazy busy week! Sorry that this post is super long... There's a lot to write about! Maybe I'll start updating more often so that there's not always such long posts. Anyway, I'm off to take a nap! Livin the dream here down under even though its been cloudy and rainy all but one of the days we've been here...