Day 10 Tues, Feb 28th: First day classes for me, ENGR1711, Engineering Design at 9:00 in the morning. Not super early, but obviously if given a choice I wouldn't choose to get up then either! Anyway, I walked over to South Ridge (contains the buildings for biology, physical sciences, engineering, etc). It's a rather long walk from the Village to the campus, 10 minutes at least to get to North Ridge (humanities, law, social sciences, and most of the campus) and then another 5 at least to get to South Ridge, not to mention it's also pretty hilly. I should have legs of steel by the time I'm done studying here. Anyway after trekking I finally made it to the engineering building, walked in, up the second floor, and saw a guy talking to the topic coordinator for my course, who told us where to go. He introduced himself to me, "I'm Zac" he said. "No way, I'm Zach too!" I replied. After walking down to the classroom where the lecture and sitting down, we kept making small talk. After asking a bit sarcastically if there were any left handed desks while scanning the lecture hall, Zac asked me if I was left handed, to which I said yes... I then returned the question and he said he was as well... long lost twins? Babies switched at birth? Kind of surreal. Hopefully we'll become good friends. I then introduced him to the Echo Smart Pen by Livescribe that I use to take notes. Needless to say his mind was blown by it. People started coming in and soon the lecture started. After it, I started to get up, but then Zac told me that there was a second part to this course, from 10:00 - 10:50... oh shit. I was supposed to be headed to my visual arts course (VISA1401) by now. Time clash. I realized at that point it would make more sense to miss it, stay there for the second part of the lecture, which dealt with engineering based drawing and CAD and just email the topic coordinator for my art class and explain my situation/ ask what I should do. The lecture finally ended, I would see Zac later in the day for our computer lab session at 3:00. In the meantime I had over 3 hours to do whatever I wanted/ needed to do. I then went to my computer lab course, and did some pencil and paper engineering drawings. I was still feeling a bit sick, but for the most part was over whatever I had been fighting last week, and was able to try an Anzac cookie for the first time!
Day 11 Wed, Feb 29th: Had to wake up at 10:00 this day for my sociology lecture/workshop (SOCI2007 Sociology of Nature and the Environment). The weather was the complete opposite of what you think when you hear Australia, grey, rainy and cold with a good amount of wind. After trekking for a bit and sort of aimlessly wandering I found the classroom. Considering I was about half an hour early, I decided to use this time to put more credit on my SIM so I could finally call/ text people, since a few days earlier my NAB bank card finally came in the mail! After successfully doing that, people started going into the classroom, and soon enough Gage came in as well. Then the tc came in, a man named Dr. Ross Boyd. He's quite eccentric, often goes off on tangents, and openly admitted this to us, and he smokes! Definitely an interesting fellow; I get the feeling I'm going to like him and this course a lot! The second part of the lecture, (what will be the workshop portion) he devoted to questions. I had one that had been lingering thanks to Derrick. He told me that a friend of his who I met later this week (Liz) got marked down heavily, to the point of failing an essay because she had too many non-British (US) spellings of words! Colour vs color, flavour vs flavor, etc. So I asked Dr. Ross if he would do that, and he adamantly said no, and then of course went off on one of his famous tangents/ digressions about something else. On a random note, the wind was causing really creepy, wailing noises while class was going on. Class ended at 11:50, which gave me 10 minutes to find where my next lecture (ENVS1701 Environmental Studies) would be. I found it with time to spare, but kind of causally asked the motley group of people sitting around the stairs and outside the lecture hall if I was in the right spot, and this one girl, later found out her name was Izzi, short for Isabella or Isabelle, said "Yea, this is environmental studies." For a lecture hall as big as the one where I have my environmental studies lecture, there weren't too many people in it. I was expecting to be just a speck in an endless sea of students. Not the case at all. Not that I'm complaining. The lecture ended at 12:50 and I had the rest of the day free to do whatever I damn well pleased! This won't be the case starting next week, since I have my engineering tutorial at 2:00 on Wednesdays, which gives me about an hour between my lecture and it to grab lunch or whatever I'll need to be doing in the future. I remember at one point walking back and meeting my mate Jason's roommate, Bujo, really nice guy, dreads, from North Carolina, and a marine biologist, just like my mate Sam! We talked the whole way back to the Village. I'm sure I'll see him again at some point.
Day 12 Thur, March 1st: My other free day when I don't have any classes! I honestly don't really remember how I spent the day. If I get an revelations in the near future about it I'll update this bit. :)
Day 13 Fri, March 2nd: Against my better judgment (because I had a feeling there wouldn't be one since it was still week 1) I woke up at 10:00 because I had an 11:00 environmental studies tutorial. After navigating the campus, moving through buildings rather than taking the main roads I found where the tutorial would be held. After waiting a while I thought to check the second location to see if anybody would be there. Nobody at either location... I had just wasted a good 40 minutes... or had I? For when I went to check the first location one last time, there was a random guy wandering around. I asked him what course he was waiting for, he said the environmental studies tutorial. His name is Matt, nice guy, 19, lives about 15 minutes away from the campus. We ended up talking/ waiting for an additional 10 minutes, and then headed back down to the main part of campus in North Ridge. Maybe two minutes after walking down the stairs to the main plaza area, a random lady came up to us and asked us if we wanted to take part in a research project. It would only take 15 minutes and we would make $10AU! How could we pass it up? So we waited for her to grab a few others who had agreed, and followed her to a room, did the project, and we both walked out $10AU richer! I then said i was starving considering I didn't have time for breakfast this particular morning. I spent half of the ten bucks on something I had kept hearing about and finally had a reason to try chips and gravy (french fries and gravy):
I could definitely see this being a hangover food, or at-least something to fill you up if you're in a pinch. Matt and I sat on a bench and kept shooting the breeze, asking each other about all kinds of stuff. It was then time for the second lecture of the week for environmental studies, where we watched the first half of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. Definitely an eye opener. Once it finished at 12:50, Matt and I sat on the grass (known as central park) overlooking this duck pond in the middle of campus. He ate his lunch and we kept shooting the breeze. Eventually I had to leave to go to my almost 3 hour visual arts workshop. Made it to the workshop where we drew the tc, Fabian, learning how to break up a subject into sections of quadrants based on your perspective, a new way of holding the pencil while drawing, and a crash course in drawing the face. I met another girl who was left handed like me. Once it finally ended around 5:00, I walked back to my house, not really sure what I was going to do that night. Most of the guys were going to go with our friend Kane to a concert around where the Clipsall 500 was talking place. That ended up falling apart and Sam ended up texting me and telling me to come to Lincoln's house. I headed down and reconnected with most of them, including some of my friends from Uni, Nikki, Alex, Hannah. The cricket game against Sri Lanka was on, and they had just finished playing that drinking game involving Jenga I believe. There was a new guy there though, Jacko, who suggested we play this card game pitting the guys against the girls. It didn't last long, because the girls left to go see an origami penis show thing, which left the room as a sausage fest. To spice things up Jacko said we should all take a swig of Jaeger and cringe. I'm normally not a big fan of black licorice, but honestly Jaeger by itself isn't half bad! We then all decided to go out for the night, to this club called Swish in the city. Next question, how were we going to get there? We ended up getting one of the rental vans, three of us in the front, and 5 or 6 of us in the back on the hard metal. Definitely a fun/ interesting ride to say the least, but I probably wouldn't do it again. We got dropped off outside this upscale high rise, got buzzed in and took the elevator up, where we all met these two girls, whose names have escaped me. I'm pretty sure they were good friends of Jackos' though. Tried white goon and apple juice for the rest time. Definitely needs the apple juice. Goon in general is still nasty as shit though. The girls were really fascinated with us (Lincoln, Gage and I) being we were American and say things differently than Aussie's. After 20 minutes of waiting around, we finally headed out to Swish, getting lost once. Found it, showed ID, no cover charge. I was only to buy one drink, a pint of Colton Draught for $6AU! I had to borrow a $1AU from Nathan to pay for it! Turns out it was Nothing But 90's Night at Swish, so all the songs the DJ was playing were from the early to late 90's, a lot of them I didn't actually know. Is that bad considering I'm a 90's child? After dancing for a good 2 to 3 hours, Sam, Jason and I decided to call it quits, and headed out to to get food. After walking maybe 3 - 4 blocks in Rundle Mall, this random group of drunk chicks and this one black guy called out, "Jason, Jason, Hi Jason!" The odds that we actually had a Jason with us, slim to none. We asked Jason if he knew them, he said no but we walked up to them anyway. An interesting exchange took place. After failing to convince them we were all named Jason, they asked me what my real name was and where I was from. I said Zach and the US, California. Well they're heads almost exploded! They kept asking me to say words/ phrases! Sam and Jason were trying their hardest to put on an "American" accent. Which btdubs, is hard to define, considering we have so many states, and most who try to copy our accent(s) end up using an "actor" to base their accent on. John Wayne for the south, Joe Peschi for New York/ Boston, etc. It's really quite funny, and Sam and Jason both failed horribly at it. They sounded more like radio station hosts than Americans honestly! After that exchange we made our way to HJ (Hungry Jacks), and Sam was nice enough to buy a Whopper for me. Eventually Lincoln and Gage found us, and when we were all done eating we decided to take a bus back to campus, but then realized it would just be easier to take a Maxicab back and split the fare 5 ways. We found a 5 person one, and Jason ended up getting the back section (which was raised and made the cab look more like a Hearse) all to himself. We got back to campus, and Jason ended up paying for the whole thing, so we now all owe him two drinks. I was going to pay for Sam's share of the fare as a gesture of goodwill since he paid for my Whopper back at HJ. C'est la vie though.
Day 14: Sat, March 3rd: Woke up a bit abruptly because Leo was knocking on my door, asking if I was awake, and informing me that he would be heading out to Adelaide, Rundle Mall, for his usual Saturday ritual of Ramen, Magic cards, EB Games, etc with the guys. I laid in bed for a bit longer, and then got up. With the way Leo described this ramen, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it. After picking up two of his friends and then parking in a reserved spot thanks to a pass one of his friends had, we made our way to the ramen shop, called Ajisen Ramen. I got the seafood ramen and a lemon iced tea. SO GOOD!
After having some trouble paying, (since I still didn't have the PIN # for my NAB card) we made our way to the card shop. Walking along Rundle Mall though, outside, we happened to oversee a street performer dressed as a gargoyle on a perch, not saying anything but interacting with crowd, at one point imitating a baby in a stroller! Random yea... Anyway, the card shop didn't really didn't interest me all that much, minus the fact that there are now Justin Bieber trading cards... GOOD GRAVY! Leo and I ended up browsing around a comic/ action figure/ merch store just next to the card shop. Once everyone was done making purchases, we made our way over to this shop called Donut King, (kind of like Dunkin Donuts but a little more upscale). I'd have to try something from it some other time. We then sat down at a row of tables, and played Magic for about 2 hours or so. I almost won the entire game! We then headed back to Leo's car, drove his friends home, and then back to campus. By that time it was around 4:30 - 5:00! I hadn't realized how much of the day had gone by. The rest of my day was pretty low key. Caught up on one of my favorite TV shows, White Collar!
Day 15: Sunday, March 4th: Today was a pretty low key day. I had to wake up a lot earlier than I'd normally like to on a Sunday, because today was Clean Up Australia Day. Gained karma points for the rest of the week though. :) Met at the CC at 8:30, had a bar and some juice, then we all walked down to this park across from the medical center. My friends Ashley and Andrew (most call him Chicago since that's where he's from) were among the people who volunteered as well. We talked on the way down, then got yellow latex gloves (like the ones you use for washing dishes) and bags to throw all the trash/ litter we found into. Definitely found some interesting stuff, underwear, a tv, a random bag of stuff, female pregnancy tests, etc. When we got back there was soda and sausages waiting for all of us. I mingled a bit, had about 3 sausages, and then we all headed back to campus. I then decided to take a nap, which I woke up from 3 hours later! The rest of today has just been meh.
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