It's orientation week this week or "O" Week as its called.  I have it for both Uni and St. Marks College.  College "O" week has been pretty crazy.  On Sunday all the freshers were made to do really stupid things on the lawn for all the committee members.  The made some kids chug milk, or follow someone while fanning them with a giant palm leaf.  The committee did a lot of yelling at everyone, but it is a little bit funnier since I am older than about half of them and have hung out with them for the last week.  For the rest of this week, they make the freshers get up around 6 and they yell and make us do weird games and run laps on the lawn.  It sounds pretty ridiculous, but you really get to know everyone pretty quickly.  At night everyone goes out.  Last night we had a pub crawl, which was heaps fun.  Tonight we have a toga party!  

One of the hardest things to get used to around here is the drinking age.  I am used to drinking, but since the drinking age is 18, it is much more acceptable to drink in the open.  Here at the college, everybody keeps beer in their rooms and people bring a bottle of beer to dinner.  Alcohol is bought by the college and the Master and the Dean are around when everyone is drinking.  Even for Uni "O" week theres beer.  The Uni "O" week is pretty cool.  It is kind of like a huge festival on campus.  There are tents with all of the clubs where you can sign up for them, but there is also free concerts, food, and beer.  Its really weird, but it's pretty cool.  

Sadly, I dont have an accent yet.  I have picked up on some words.  Everyone around here says heaps.  Heaps of fun, heaps of people, heaps of work.  Its a weird word to use so commonly.  I have noticed I've started to say it.  I also have just gotten used to called school Uni.  Here, when you say school people think you are referring to high school.  If you say college, that means the housing, like where I am staying.  So everyone says they have Uni in the morning or have to spend the day at Uni.  Its pretty weird.  They also say cheers to everything.  I have heard it used as a greeting, a thank you, a goodbye, pretty much anything.

Tonight the toga party was supposed to be on a boat that goes down the Torrens River, which runs through Adelaide.  However, about a week before I got here the river had to be drained because it was so polluted.  Its really a shame because my walk to Uni is right along the river.  The water level is so low and it smells a bit in spots, but supposedly it should fill back up in a few weeks.  I cant wait to see it when its full.  I really like Adelaide.  I think that if I could pick up my whole life from back home and put it here, I would be so happy.  Downtown Adelaide is busy all through the week with people shopping on Rundle Street and at the market.  I love being there, it's like being in a mini-city because it is nowhere near the size of Chicago, but still tons of people.  North Adelaide, the suburb where I am actually living, is only about a 20 minute walk from down town and its filled with parks, trees, and the river.  Its the perfect size place to live for one semester.  It is small enough to figure out and not feel like you are lost all the time, but big enough so you aren't bored all the time.  And its about 20 minutes to any of the beaches!!!

I am officially in Australia.  Yesterday, we went on this bus trip to a place called Victor Harbour.  It was really boring, but I had delicious fish and chips.  After spending 2 boring hours there, we went to Umbirra Wildlife park and I got to see koalas and kangaroos!!!!  There were so many kangaroos, it was a little crazy.  They were everywhere and we bought food for them.  Since they are in this park, they are very docile and everyone just walks around with them and pet and feed them.  If you held your hand too high for them to reach the food, they would stand up and put their front arms onto your hand and hold on to you.  Their arms are so strong and their claws so big that it kind of hurt, but made for a really cool picture!  I even saw a joey in the pouch of a big kangaroo.  It was funny though because I always thought that joeys sat upwards with their heads sticking out of the pouch, but apparently that isnt true.  For most of the time just the long, back feet and the tail were sticking out of the pouch.  When the head would pop out it would be right between the feet which looked really funny!!  The koalas weren't as exciting.  They were very cute, but you couldn't feed them and they mostly just sat there while you pet them a few times.  We saw some other animals like crocodiles and wombats.  I dont think the crocodiles were real though because we stood there for like 15 minutes waiting for one of them to move and none of them did.  Well they moved their eye lids but still!!!  It was a really cool trip and I got lots of pictures.  I am having trouble getting my pictures to upload to shutterfly and then facebook wouldnt let me do it either.  Im going to try a few more times and I will let everyone know as soon as they are up!

We decided to try out a new beach yesterday.  Aarika and I took the bus, with her British roommate Harry, her neighbor Eli, and a few other people.  The bus here is cheap.  I bought a 10 trip interpeak pass which works between 9am and 3pm for around $7.50.  The new beach is called Henley.  Its only a few miles up from Glenelg beach, where we have been the last 2 times, but it is completely different.  The water was so incredibly clear and there were fairly big fish in the shallow water.  It was so calm, with hardly any people or waves.  I loved it.  We swam out pretty far to a sand bar.  The current out there was really strong.  We all ended up quite a ways from our stuff!  The guys were teaching me how to throw an Australian Rules Football ball.  They throw it from their side and kind of roll it.  They made fun of me a lot because I was TERRIBLE!

After the beach, I went out to dinner with people from St. Marks college.  Wednesday apparently are International Pub night at a bar near here.  We all dressed up in short shorts and tall socks and went to dinner at the Oxford.  The Oxford is St. Marks' "place".  The owner give the students good deals on drinks and food and has St. Marks shirts hanging out the walls.  They said they go there every Wednesday night.  The students were telling me about how the other colleges try to go into the Oxford and all the rivalries.  Apparently, there is this big sports competition and everyone gets really into it.  They said they need more swimmers, so I'm in.  I will probably try something else too.  Maybe cricket event though I have no idea how to play.  One girl said that if I have played softball I will probably be decent.  

So far, every single person has told me to be excited for what is called "O" week or orientation week.  Its next week.  Basically what it is, is games and fun things in the mornings and lots of partying at night.  Everyone has said it is the best week of college and you meet so many new people.  I think it will be really great.  The only problem is that I have "O" week for both my Uni (haha the schools are Uni and where I am living is called college) and college the same week.  So I will have to figure out how to do both of those.  Last night, they told me to rest today and tomorrow because next week will be very crazy and tiring.  I can't rest too much because I already signed up through Uni to do a tour of Victor Harbour tomorrow for the whole day and Sunday is a trip to Port Adelaide and a dolphin cruise.  Busy already!

I think I made a really good choice staying in St. Mark's college.  It is like a mix between the dorms and Greek life.  It has the living style and co-ed sense of the dorms, with older students living with the new ones, but it has the social aspect of a sorority or fraternity.  I suppose that dorms might be like this at smaller schools.  I just really like how involved everyone is with the new students.  I walk around and when I see someone I dont know, they usually know who I am.   If they dont know right away, they ask if I'm a new student and as soon as I say I am a study abroad student they know.  I dont know if I would have liked it at home, but here is makes me feel so much more comfortable.  I'm also happy because I have been told that sometimes international students tend to only hang out with other international students because those are the only people they really get to meet.  Here I know I will get to hang out with TONS of Australians, since there are only 3 or 4 international students.  

Anyways, so far so good!

I tried posting pictures, but I am having trouble.

There will be some really soon!

Also, the toilets dont flush the opposite way.

I havent seen a kangaroo or a koala yet.

I do however have a bunch of mosquito bites... I was hoping they didnt have those here.

Back at the beach today, I jumped off one of the jetties (piers) into the water.  It was pretty scary.  I almost didnt do it cause it was so high.  I'm really bad at judging heights so I wont try to guess, but it was high.  Aarika and I met 2 guys from Toronto at our study abroad/exchange thing this morning and we all decided to blow off all the things we planned on getting done today and go to the beach instead.  Being a Monday afternoon, there was nobody there, so we played frisbee with a cheap plastic frisbee the boys found in some shop.  As entertaining as it was to play frisbee in the wind down there, apparently it was dangerous because the frisbee cut up Aarika and Dan.   

It is awesome to go down to the beach because it is so inexpensive and quick.  We didnt bother to wait for our student IDs today, so the tram was $2.60 for both ways.  If we had our IDs it would only be $1.20!!!   It does get more expensive on the weekends, but still!  It only takes 20 minutes to get there AND the McDonalds sells soft serve cones for 70 cents!!  I suppose cheap ice cream makes up  for really expensive drinks... :(

I  think I'm starting to get used to the driving on the wrong side of the road thing.  I mean I still look the wrong way to start with, but it doesnt freak me out as much as it did at first.  When I first got here, I would get scared that the cars would crash or something cause it looked really weird.  Now, I dont even pay attention anymore.  I think that is part of how time right now is really warped.  I have a sense of short term time lengths, like half hour vs an hour, but the days seem to last forever and it seems like I have been here for much longer than 4 days.  I already know my way around the city pretty well.  However I dont have very good sense of timing as far as distance.  I keep telling everyone that everything is a 5-10 minute walk.  It isnt true at all.  We did discover though that every map we have seen so far of this city is scaled horribly.  There are streets that look the same length on the map, but one is a 5 minute walk and the other is a 20 minute walk!  My goal for tomorrow is to learn how to use the bus that comes right outside my college.

I got locked out of my room for the first time today.  Everywhere around here, they seem to have keycards instead of actual keys.  I left mine in my room and I need mine to get into St. Marks College, then to get into my building/apartment thing and then to get into my room.  I somehow found an open door to the college, but then had to knock on my roommates patio door to wake him up to let me in, where I had to find my other roommate to get the number to call the guy that has the master key.  It was a huge process, so I think I will try to not do that anymore.

Today was my first day without a whole ton of stuff to do.  I did some unpacking, got a little homesick, but I think thats normal.  I went with one of my roommates to go look for phones.  The phones here are crazy.  It costs like $60 for a phone then you have to buy the sim card and then instead of paying for minutes, you buy an amount of money per month.  It costs 76 cents per 30 seconds to call anywhere in Australia, but only 16 cents to call the US!!! How crazy is that!!!  Its also 25 cents to text anywhere, so I text people at home!!!

The phone places are on Rundle Street, about a 5-10 minute walk from where I am.    Rundle Street is like a 3 block long, walking shopping district.  Its awesome because there are tons of people out and the shops are very open.  Theres Woolworths where I finally got orange juice ( extra pulpy!!) .  Theres all kinds of people out entertaining.  Some were playing music, there was a clown on stilts, there was a magician climbing through a tennis racket, and everyone just stands around to watch.  I love the openness of everything.  We were actually there last night when we went to the bars, because most of the bars are on Rundle Street past the shopping district.  

Farther south of me, in downtown Adelaide (I'm in North Adelaide), there is a place called Central Market.  Three or four times a week it is open with all kinds of really fresh fruit and meats.  I dont have to shop for myself since I like in the college, but I just think it is so cool!  There is also a really large Asian population here and near the Central Market there are TONS of really authentic Asian restaurants.  I can't wait to try some of them.  I also can't wait to eat my first meal at the college tonight!  If it is anything like regular dorm food, I will be happy. 

The beginning of the adventures!

Finally, I'm in Australia!  The trip has been so crazy so far.  I thought I would be nervous flying myself , but it really wasnt scary at all.  Luckily I slept most the way to San Francisco where I met up with Aarika , the other girl from U of I.  The 14 hour plane ride from San Francisco to Sydney was TERRIBLE.  I could barely sleep at all, even though I drank some of the free wine!!!!  It makes me want to stay here just so that I don't have to fly back.  Dont worry I'll come back.  

Everyone around here is so friendly!  When Aarika and I were trying to get from her apartment to my college, we tried to take a free bus.  We asked directions from someone and they told us to take the free bus the was caterpillar colored.  We werent really sure what caterpillar color was but we did find the bus stop.  We waited 35 minutes because around here nobody seems to be really worried about being on time anywhere.  The bus driver would tell some people they just couldnt get on the bus because he'll be back in 20 minutes!! That would never happen at home!  The bus only held like 15 people and all of them were old people and we were the 2 crazy American girls!  All the old ladies were telling us different places to get off the bus and so finally with both of my HUGE luggages, we got off at some random stop and stood on the corner with our map trying to figure out where to go.  Luckily some lady walked by us and asked if we needed help and then offered to walk us all the way over to where we needed to go.  

After getting all my stuff into my room and meeting my roommates, they showed me the cellar thats in my room.  I can pull up a door in the floor and theres a whole room down this super steep lady.  It creeps me out pretty bad so I have been keeping my suitcases on top of it, but my roommates said they had parties all the time down there.  

Yesterday, Aarika and I went to the beach for the day.   We asked some people how to take the tram to the beach.  It should only cost $2 for students, but we dont have student cards yet.  When we got to the beach we stopped for food and I ordered what I thought was a normal tuna fish sandwich.  However, instead of tuna salad like I am used to, I got plain tuna.  It was so gross.  Aarika ordered fish and chips and had to pay extra for ketchup or "tomato sauce".   So while we were laying at the beach, the  people in front of us were from here and they starting talking to the guy next to them who happened to be from London, and then the girl next to him was from Canada and then Aarika and I were like oh hey well we are from the US.  The study abroad office at home kind of made us worried about how people would react when we would say we were American, but everyones thinks its great.  One of the first questions everyone asks about is Obama being in office.   Everyone around here is really excited about him.