Hey! Welcome back. I figured today I have a bit of time I should probably write something wicked lengthy to tell ya'll what I've been doing -second by second!
It feels like ages ago since I've been home, but I guess it hasn't been all that long. I initially left Minoa at like 8AM Thursday morning. Mom drove me to the airport-dad waited for me to get through security. I basically had to unpack my entire carry on because it was loaded with electronics. BUT I did buzz when I went through security-dang hairclip! Made my way to my gate just to sit for an hour or so. Tested out the wireless internet-no go though, which turned out to be a repeating trend across all the world's airports I visited. I got to JFK at about 11:45. WOW is that airport a city or what? I arrived in like a mini airport all for Delta CONNECTION flights, and figured hey okay Qantas must be right in there too. NOT hahhaha...I had to walk ten minutes to find this thing called the airtrain and then travel about 10 minutes on that just to get to the Qantas terminal which was only two stops away. Imagine if I needed to go to something farther? Luckily I had 6 entire hours in which to do this. Thank goodness right-you all know I need that much time! haha. Qantas, as it turns out, doesn't even open until 2:15PM on any given day so there wasn't even a spot for Qantas when I got there. As you can imagine I was EXTREMELY confused. haha oh well. I ended up going to the British Airways people and asking them where they hey was Qantas. There was a white chick in front of me though who got there first and asked. So I started talking to her-turned out she was from PA and was headed to Sydney for a semester. What a small world! Not really because clearly if you are taking Qantas you are going to the other side of the world. Anyway she was my entertainment for the next few hours till I boarded the plane to LA.
This was a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnng flight, but not as bad as what was to come. I did get an end seat because there was a couple next to me and there were movies to watch, but of course I did get a bit motion sick. I left JFK at about 6:45 and hit LA at about 2AM NY time. Claire (my big sister) was the only one I called since she's in Denver. There was a delay in LA, I'm not sure why because I was getting back on the same plane I had just got off of.
The plane ride from LA to Sydney was soooooooooo longggg. This time I was between two people because the couple I was between before got off to catch a flight to Melbourne. Now it was an Indian girl, working as a chemical engineer for Loreal, and a sick pregnant Australian. They were lovely, but I certainly didn't want to be between two people whoever they were. Luckily there again, were movies! I think I had a second dinner on this plane trip, which was weird because it was like 4 AM. But I ate it because the sweet Australian flight attendant went out of his way to get me vegetarian (even though I hadn't ordered it-which supposedly I was suppose to have done). We later went on to have "Qantas snack pack" and breakfast, so I was content on food. 15 hours later, or in my mind a century later, we arrived in Sydney at 930 am.
Here I had to go through customs, which was silly really, I didn't get asked any questions and I went through the express lane whatever that means. I had to pick up my luggage and lug it down to Qantas transfers where there was a huggeee line waiting to go through to the domestic end of Qantas. I was nervous I was going to be late for my connecting flight but luckily I had plenty of time and the line moved pretty fast. I saw my pregnant companion from the plane, somehow she got there sooner than I did! Weird.
Oh I neglected to tell you that twice including this go through security I left my SCUBA regulator and computer in my carry on and twice they pulled it out wondering what the heck it was. hahahaha.. fools. They were all psyched that it was for diving so that was good. Here in Sydney I had to take a bus to get to the domestic terminal, so you can imagine it was a large airport too. Next flight brought me to Brisbane, which was a small and cute airport. Here I met a girl who was traveling to JCU as well!! She is philipino, name Rhona, and she is a "fresher". Hopefully you can figure out what that is. Also on the plane I met a few more people headed to JCU. Unlike Rhona I haven't seen or talked to them since then. Rhona on the other hand has become an instant friend, we have many meals together so thats great. She has been in Australia for 3 years and lives in a place called Charlieville, I'm not sure where that is.
Anyway back to Brisbane--the little flight from Sydney to brisbane and brisbane to townsville were the worst for motion sickness. I seriously wanted to vomit at every movement and the worst part was, it was lunch time so they were feeding me too!! But of course I didn't order a vegetarian meal so I was SOL. Except, again another nice flight attendant (who oddly looked the same to me as the one I had earlier) gave me an apple and pretzel packs. He also offered me wine, to which I clearly rejected (haha sorry Cas).
Once to Townsville, Rhona and I headed to get our luggage and proceeded to meet the guy with the sign for JCU pickup. Here we met a few more students going to JCU. They were wonderfully nice. One is a grad student studying archaeology and she is from LA. Another is from India and she was studying psychology as a grad student, then there was one from Peru, Malaysia and another from India though I didn't find out much about them. All of them didnt actually have accomodation on campus and some don't even have permanent accomodation yet. I feel so horrible because for the ones from India, I mean not speaking english very well kind of makes it hard to figure things out here. I've seen them once or twice since and they seem OK but not well.
Townsville is/was HOT and HUMID. Wow. We had a fun drive on the left hand side of the road to drop off those girls and then headed to JCU where Rhona and I got dropped off at Uni Hall, how ironic -we were both staying there! Cool! As soon as we got there our driver got someone to help us out. That girl I guess was an RA and she gave us keys but then decided we should just go have dinner. Mom you will hate to hear this but she told me to leave my stuff outside and that no one would bother it. (Luckily they didnt) She said she would show me to my room after, which she never did. I waited in line, with my backpack on for some grub and sat at a table by myself. Lucky me, some poor Tassies pitied me and came and sat with me. They were beautiful people and quite nice. It was a mom and her daughter. The mom chatted me up-finally inviting me to come stay at her house when I went to Tassie, which was nice indeed! The daughter was nice too -she took a year off before coming to Uni to make enough money to pay for it. I guess they pay themselves-no parental help? I should ask. Finally Rhona came around from her room--after I already had a table full of lovely folk who pitied me. It was great!
Finally Rhona and I went off to find my room. We found an RA who took us there. Man was I in for a surprise once we opened the door! It smelled/and still smells like cat pee. I guess because of the rain? Weird I say. Anyway there I was finally in my room!
Sunday
Sunday I spent a lot of time sleeping because I didn't know what else to do. I think I went to breakfast at 730 AM then had a meeting for Uni hall to go to. Here they did their hazing. This was of course for the freshers. So they gave us all underwear, or they say "jocks", and we have to wear them on our heads for all their silly events. I haven't worn mine again since then haha..whoops. Later Sunday I went on a hunt for this international student meeting that I had to attend. It didn't take me too long to find it and the meeting was helpful. I also saw some of the peeps that traveled from the airport with me. One girl, the one from LA, walked around with me after (and with her roommate) and so we hung out for a bit. The rest of the day is history!
Monday
Monday kicked off the infamous O week. I had to go to my faculty meeting, which basically is the course I'm studying. Here it is in Science and Engineering. Once here I ran into Morgan, for those of you who don't know her she is a girl I went to highschool with and who actually went to the first school I attended for college up in Maine. After the meeting we went over to find her boyfriend who lives in another college (dorm) on campus. Both of them have airconditioning!! JEALOUS. They let me try some snacks they bought called Tim Tams, which are yummy cookies that I will hopefully be able to sneak back and let you all try! Then we hiked across campus back to Morgan's building to hang for a little while before grabbing a bus to Stockland! Stockland is what I would call a mall but I guess they just call a shopping center. When I first heard of it I assumed it was simply a store in itself, oh no it was a mall. So Morgan, Scott (her boyfriend) and I took a bus to Stockland. We had to activate our health insurance cards and buy a few things (in my case many) I ended up getting a cell phone, bed sheets, towel, clock radio, toiletries, laudnry soap etc. for 135 bucks. YUCK! And they wouldn't take my travelers check. I am sparing you the details but I was kind of chaotic because the stores close at 5 and this was at about 415 and what I didnt tell you was that they ran out of adaptors (the one thing I really needed so I could write you all some emails!). Then I found out the banks close at 4pm and I had wanted to set up a bank account so I would be able to take money out more easily. Perhaps you can imagine that I was sweating from anger? There was an ATM machine close at hand but I really didn't want to use it since I didn't know how much money they'd charge me for taking money out. I ended up taking out 200 bucks and checked later online and I think they only charged a dollar for using the ATM so not too bad. I then went on to try and exchange the 4 50s the machine gave me for smaller tender so that I could pay for the bus ride back to school. This seemed like a hassle to the ladies at the store, but I think they felt bad and did it anyway.
So determined as I was to get an adaptor I proceeded to run across the street to Kmart, but when I went outside it was downpouring like you wouldn't believe. Seriously. And I found out later that that was actually light! Scary I wish I could show you a video. I decided it was a bad idea and just went back to find Scott and Morgan and take the bus back to Uni. By the time we got back it had stopped raining.
Monday night at dinner I went by myself because I hadn't been with any of the Aussies all day. I ended up sitting with this kid that was alone at a table and it turned out he is actually from Cicero North Syracuse (which for anyone not from the cuse this is a neighboring school district) so that was really cool. Eventually my Aussie friends made it to dinner so we had a lovely talk about Australia and American life.
Thats about it for Monday and its now too late for me to start thinking about Tuesday. If you make it through this far in this post please leave me a comment telling me so!! Till tomorrow--
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