Livin' the Vida Loca (Uni Life)

May 4th-May15th
This next entry is really just about life on campus for the last two weeks since I haven’t had any plans. No plans because I have so many assignments due—I almost feel like I am back at Cornell….not.
Anyway Monday after Theresa left I thought I would have a quiet afternoon, but it turned into more excitement. Scott, Morgan and I got together to work on our proposal for our marine wildlife conservation class. Our proposal is on humback whales and the effects of anthropogenic noise pollution on their ability to communicate. Basically it’s a written plan of a project we would hypothetically like to do to try to mitigate the problem. Anyway, it was quite a fun assignment—probably because you can relate it to the real world unlike pretty much any assignment back home. After this I ran off to join my floormate, Sameer, Rhona, Dylan and townhouse 1 people for dinner at Cactus Jacks (my favorite Australian restaurant). This was a lot of fun because I got to meet new people—I was on the end of the table with all the people I didn’t know. And though I was unhappy about that at first I actually am glad it happened because now two weeks later I didn’t have to sit alone at breakfast because I knew these kids to sit with! Funny how that works out. The good thing about Australian restaurants is that you don’t have to tip your server, the bad thing is, even if you were going to tip them you wouldn’t because they are so bad! It took forever for them to get us drinks of water and then forever longer to let us order. It was okay though, it reminded me of a dinner in Spain, dinners that last 2-3 hours! Afterwards everyone wanted icecream so we just barely made it to Juliette’s (the icecream shop on the strand) before they closed. What was supposed to be a one hour dinner turned into a 4 and a half hour event, but I sure didn’t mind. What fun it is to actually have the time to hang out with friends! Amazing.
That Friday was the Uni Hall home ball—this is kind of like a big dance party, pretty equivalent to a prom or something except that the theme of this was historical so we were suppose to wear costumes rather than formal wear. None of my friends were interested in going initially and I was pretty bummed about this, as anyone knows I love dancing (or pretending to dance). But then my floormates Sameer and Josh start running around like wild kids (even though they are both 23) and put on the weirdest clothes ever. This somehow got my friends pumped and we all got dressed in the most randomest clothing ever and went to the party. Since this was a spur of the moment decision we figured we wouldn’t be there for long—just enough to be able to reminisce about it the following day. It was Rhona, Dylan, Miranda, Sameer, Josh and I dancing and getting our groove on. Miranda, Josh and Sameer left after about an hour and a half but Rhona, Dylan and I had so much fun we stayed until the end. Gosh we love dancing! : ) Oh there was also food and it was so good—the richest most delicious chocolate cake—maybe more like a brownie—tough to dance with though. Highlights from the evening were…a drunk girl that was dressed as Marilyn Monroe, two girls with boxes on their body—trying to look like the Titanic (yes they won the costume contest), a guy in a man thong (and no I don’t mean flip-flops here), and Sameer dancing around with my flashlight in his pants—weird I know.
The last few weeks I’ve been really getting to know my floormates. They are all really cool and I’m glad I ended up on their floor. I think part of it is that they aren’t my age and they are actually a bit more mature than most people here—though at times they most certainly aren’t. So let’s see there is Sameer and he’s the first one I started to have some more than hows it going conversations with. He’s a 5th year med student, pretty opinionated but after you realize that it’s actually really enjoyable to listen to him talk. We like to make late night McDonald’s runs, yum, they have the McCafe here and its superb—are they in America yet? We also ran in the rain last week, which was pretty cool. Then there is Josh, and he’s also a 5th year med student—him and Sameer have been best friends since they got here. Josh is probably one of the most random people on this planet, perhaps even more than me, so I like that. He’s helped me out a lot with schoolwork—even when he doesn’t know the topic –he still knows how to make you really think about it. He has the most entertainingly random dance, that I will definitely get a video of before I leave. Then there is Sheran, another med student, and he’s kind of a hyper kid-we have push up contests and wrestling wars—oh and I creamed him, Noor and their other “curry” friends in basketball (wohoo!). Then at the end of the hall is “Tuna” or Alex—so called because I guess he use to eat a lot of tuna. He has a twin, which obviously makes him cool in my book. I try to fight him but he’s just really strong. Then lastly there is Xu and he’s from China. He’s a pretty quiet kid, I guess he’s not confident in his English, but he picked out a really cool movie for us to watch tonight so I know he’s at least got good movie knowledge. Other than that there are the two girls, Amy and Julie. Amy I talk to a good amount, though not like the guys. She’s a youngin’ still and definetly living the carefree party life. Julie, well she stole my mattress, she’s used my pocket knife and I’ve heard odd noises coming from her room when her boyfriend is over so that’s all I want to say about her. Yup so I’ve really been enjoying hanging out with all my friends—since I haven’t been traveling the last few weeks its really given me an opportunity to build my friendships more, which has made me realize I’m really really really going to be sad to leave. This semester has gone by far too fast, and I only have about a month to go before it’s over. I wish I could stay longer—I tell them all I will be back, but things will change and I know this is the only opportunity to live in this moment. This semester truly has been awesome.
As I said this past week has been a lot of work—but somehow it is so much easier to have a life here than it is when I have similar workloads at Cornell. I think its perhaps knowing that my exact grade doesn’t matter. I feel like I still go into the assignment with a similar mindset, but I’m sure I don’t give it the insane effort like at Cornell. I am interested to see how this approach turns out. I have seen a different in the amount of time I spend on things—I take breaks now when I see myself getting inefficient, I wonder if this is really a good thing or if the work is really just easier than Cornell.
What else? Ahh I’ve replaced my camera, 290 bucks—managed to negotiate with the distributor for that price, so I felt pretty good about that. Bummed that I had to replace it and that it wasn’t covered under the warranty. But hopefully now I will have learned my lesson about taking care of things absolutely perfectly and double checking that absolute perfection 50 times over. I’ll let you know how it goes—I plan on bringing the camera back to Orpheus Island for round two this weekend!
Umm I did this awesome workout with Morgan and Scott last week in the pool. They called it the hell swim workout—and ya, next day I was feeling it. It involved swimming sprints, climbing out of the water—doing lunges and then doing more sprints. Wish I had the desire to do that every day!
We were having a crappy bit of weather for a while, but it seems to have gone away. The temperature is basically perfect now, I think we are in the heart of autumn here. Nights are chilly, so definitely wearing pants but days are just right for shorts and t-shirts. I just hope I have enough warm stuff for Tassie and NZ!
And finally I had this meeting last week, figured I’d write about it because it’s about the only club type thing I am involved in here. I don’t know if I wrote about it earlier, but I am in this committee between students and staff—I represent my rainforest ecosystems class and my reef fishes class. Basically I am suppose to bring any concerns of my classmates to the attention of the school. We have two meetings a semester and last Monday was our final meeting. Yup, so that’s pretty cool, and one of my friends, Chris (the swed who went clubbing with us) is in it too—which I didn’t know from the first meeting.