Day 1- A Sign of Things Come

OK, just so y’all know this isn’t actually being posted at the end of my first day in Australia. I do not have an Ethernet cable yet and the WiFi doesn’t reach my room. But it IS being written at the end of my first day. I just have no idea when this will actually be published.

With that out of the way, let me start from pre-Day 1. Flying out of LAX was a lot less complicated than I thought it would me. It was a teary goodbye from my family, but not on my side. I guess I was too excited and anxious to feel focus on leaving my family and friends for 5 months, and I kinda felt bad that I wasn’t crying like some of my other family members. But back to my flight. My seat was 81A, but  I accidently took seat 82A. By the time the actual 82A arrived, the people next to me had got settled in. Luckily the man was kind and just took my seat. Whoops. I sat next to Annette and Ann, a mother and daughter from Southern California. We had a few nice conversations. It wasn’t one of those awkward share every life detail type of arrangements, but it wasn’t an awkward silence either. I was luckily able to see The Hunger Games on the flight.  The DVD has not come out yet, so as a rabid THG fan there was no why I was NOT watching it. I was flying on a QANTAS flight, and I was bombarded with food and drinks for the first half of the flight. Not that it was a bad thing really. The dinner was actually pretty good. It was a struggle to stay up, but I managed to try to sync up my sleeping to that of Sydney time while in the air. Even on two melatonin tablets, I still didn’t sleep that well. I woke up numerous times, and I just couldn’t get comfortable. And eventually I was woken up for good when Breakfast was being served, which was around 4 AM Sydney time. Mind you, it’s about 11:30 PM as I write this. It’s been a long day.

Clearing customs was a lot quicker than I expected I had virtually no issues, which was a pleasant surprise. I think arriving at 6:10 AM really helped with the lines not being long. I was shuttled to Dunmore Lang College (PS- I am studying at Macquarie University, but living in Dunmore Lang College. It is a residence hall just like what we have Stateside, so I hope you don’t get confused with the names.) by a Macquarie University, and their were 4 others on the same shuttle. It was actually a van with a little wagon attached at the back for luggage. I had some really nice conversations with the other 4 people. One girl was from Germany, the other from Gerogia(USA Georgia, not the country). One guy was from Canada, the other from Japan/Tennessee. We were greeted to the country by a double rainbow, hence the picture at the start of the post.  Double rainbows aren’t the most common things in the world (I think), so I took it as a good omen of things to come. Driving over the Harbor Bridge was amazing.  I could see the tips of the Sydney Opera House, but didn’t catch a full view. But I will, soon.

I arrived and checked in into DLC at about 9:40ish. Orientation started at 10 AM. So I had very little time to settle in before being thrown right into the mix of things. I was feeling pretty tired, so listening to others present important information about the university was not the most exciting. But I did my best to stay focused and keep concentrating on what was being said. Afterwards I got some unpacking done, and went to the Macquarie Center just up the street to pick up some much needed supplies. I spent $50, and I barely got what I need. I am defiantly gonna need a part time job while here.

There was an activity this night, and Aerobics themed get together in the common room of the college. It was aerobic themed because one of the activates was learning a special dance for the Freshers at DLC. All of the other activities were drinking games.

So this is the point where I talk about a big issue about my time abroad- Alcohol. See, the drinking age here is 18. I’m 20. I’ll let you make the connection. On top of that, neither of DLC or Macquarie University are dry campuses, which means alcohol may be served at some or most of the events on campus and through the college. ASU is a dry campus (I’m talking about labels and names, not reality). So this is a totally different thing for me. So I’m sure some of you may be thinking that this means that all the university students are gonna be drunk 24/7. And I guess that could be the case, seeing as I’ve been here less than 24 hours. But based on the event tonight, I don’t really think that is the case. It seems like the attitude towards alcohol is realistic. They know these young adults are going to drink, so some events provide safe places to drink and enjoy the company of others. As far as I could tell(I left the event sort of early, since I wanted to get this typed up and hopefully not sleep through tomorrows events), no one was getting totally wasted. There were two options of punch, alcoholic and non-alcoholic. You could have either or. I ended up having a blast, just playing games, talking to others, and learning the Fresher Dance. It was exactly how I expected it to be honest. And it was awesome.

There is a lot more I can and wanted to say about my first day here. But I’m already at 1,000 words for this post, so I don’t wanna keep dragging on. I’m sure I will hit on some of these thoughts soon enough. I have a long week of orientation ahead of me, both through DLC and Macquarie. Hopefully I will have a lot more pictures here and on Facebook too. But right now I’m exhausted, and need some sleep. Hopefully not too much because I want to wake up in 8 hours. Retrospectively wish me luck.