Week 3: O-week and Mamelons

This week was O-week, or orientation week, at my uni. Basically it was just a load of bbqs, various talks on getting situated at uni and in Melbourne, and club fairs and gatherings to meet people and the like. Instead of having loads of fun out socializing and enjoying the scene, I spent most of my time battling with the class enrollment process and the extremely poor system it's attached to. I'm sure it's a lot easier for non-exchange kids, but if you fall into that unfortunate category... sucks to be you. 

Essentially, the guy, Aaron, who helped me enroll in my classes after my miserable orientation day on Friday, told me that I'd have to get permission from the class advisor to be enrolled in it because of the prerequisites. The concept is just in itself, we have to have a chat, either face to face or via email, about whether or not you've had adequate preparation for the course and then voila, you're allowed in. The next step, turning your written confirmation and an accompanying formal sheet of paper detailing your student information and the class information you want, seems as though it should be as equally painless, but oh, it's anything but that. 

Originally, Aaron had told me to go to the EPC (the building with the lovely take-a-number-and-wait-an-hour room) and ask for him, and that he'd enroll me in the class. Monday afternoon I'd had a brief email conversation with the professor of one of the classes I wanted enrolled in. The email listed for the second class I was interested in didn't work, naturally, so I ventured over to the zoology building to just talk to the guy. I was told he was out sick and to come back the next day. Not to be deterred from some semblance of success, I went to the library to print out the email and at least get that class registered.Unfortunately, my experience at the library only served to reinforce my growing hatred for the uni altogether. After a lot of frustrated trial and error and finally a long walk to find a held desk I was informed that the network was having issues and that most of the computers in the building weren't letting student's sign on. Eventually I found a functioning computer on a lower floor and went to print out the email.

 Printing, though, would turn out to be another enterprise all in itself. A piece of paper posted near the computer I was on read, "network printer is directly upstairs." Fun fact, it wasn't directly upstairs, and it wasn't until I'd recived some confused looks from the help desk people (why, oh why they were confused when I asked where the printer was, I can't figure out, they work in a library, albiet full of faulty computers, but full of computers none the less) that I'd finally been directed down one hall way, across into another joined building, and then around into some other room. "Directly above," pfft. Once I found the printer, it took a few minutes of random card inserting and button pressing until I realized that I needed money put on my new student id card I'd gotten printed earlier that afternoon. A lot of internet browsing and then elevator-searching later, I'd found the basement of the building that housed a stupid little machine devoted entirely to putting printing credit on my card. Ten cents and roughly half an hour of confusion and wandering later I had my email in paper form. 

Back on the other side of campus with my printed email and filled out form, I was regretfully informed that Aaron was out sick as well that day. Convenient. Luckily, one of the question-desk ladies who'd I'd had some lengthy conversations with on last Friday concerning my non-existent packet took my paper work anyways. I asked about what I should do on the next day when I would need to schedule my last class, assuming the professor wasn't ill anymore, and never really got an answer. Oh well, at least I'd gotten one thing done. After all of that nonsense, I went out grocery shopping, made some food, and watched some tv downstairs with everyone. 

On Tuesday I headed back into campus in the afternoon to finish all of this class registering business. Luckily, the zoology professor was back and, after a short chat, I was headed back to the EPC to turn in my written consent slip. Turns out that, once again, Aaron was out for the day, but because no one had given me another one of the formal papers I needed to fill out to accompany my handwritten note, I was told to take a number and wait. I had to wait over an hour until I was seen. I can't really describe how maddening that was, considering at this point I'm pretty sure most of the people in that room know me by name. Then, just to add insult to injury, I watched as the blonde lady who'd been helping me each time, and who literally did know my name, was banging out numbers like nobody's business. My number was 403, and I'd been waiting since about 360 for my turn. Then, when she finished with 402, she decided to get up, go help a coworker at their station, file some papers, and maybe even go have a nice nap in the back room. When she finally decided to get back to her actual job and called my number, I showed her my paper, she handed me the form I needed, I spent all of five seconds filling it out, handed it over and was done. Yeap, one hours wait time for that. 

I remember coming back from all of that to find some people in the lounge watching the news on the earth quake that devastated Christchurch, NZ only a few hours earlier. I think my complaints went something along the lines of, "I've just had the worst day, well--I could have been in Christchurch--but otherwise, it's right up there." I was pretty miserable for the rest of the afternoon and just hung around the lounge and in my room until I got to leave to go catch a train to head out to Elisa's for some fresh air. Naturally, the trams decided to run exceptionally slow that evening and I arrived at the station barely 5 minutes after my train had left. To sate my frustration I got a smoothie and read a paper that someone had been passing out on my way in. I waited an hour, caught the 7 something train, sat on that for an hour, and arrived at Woodend around 8:20. Elisa picked me up and brought me home, where I was greeted with a big bowl of leftover raviolis and homemade meatballs. I ate until I couldn't eat any more and then retired upstairs to chat with Elisa for a few hours until we finally went to bed.

Wednesday morning we woke up around 10. Elisa made me a tasty toasted ham, cheese, and tomato sandwich for breakfast, and then had I an amazing shower that was hot all the way through. Oh, the simple things in life. By noon we were both set to go, so we loaded up and headed off. We stopped by a grocery store in town to buy some things for the picnic Elisa had planned We drove a short distance, not even 10 minutes, and were at Hanging Rock, our destination for the day. I don't feel like rewording the nice summary wiki has on what Hanging Rock is, so here you are: "Hanging Rock is a mamelon, created 6.25 million years ago by stiff magma pouring from a vent and congealing in place. Often thought to be a volcanic plug, it is not. Two other mamelons exist nearby, created in the same period: Camels Hump, to the south on Mount Macedon, and to the east, Crozier's Rocks. All three mamelons are made of solvsbergite, a form of trachyte only found in two or three other places in the world. As Hanging Rock's magma cooled and contracted, it split into rough columns. These weathered over time into the many pinnacles that can be seen today."

It was an absolutely beautiful day to go hiking, barely a cloud in the sky, about mid 70s or so, slightly hotter in the sun etc. The trek up wasn't bad at all, it was a little steep here and there, but you really didn't have to climb far. As soon as we started finding all of the cool rocks we basically left the path behind and found our own, more fun way up. Elisa kept telling me "if it't not roped off, you can climb it." So, with her enthusiastically and often times demandingly encouraging me to climb out onto this ledge or see if I can climb on top of that rock, I had quite a blast wandering all over every nook and cranny of that place. Climbing around there was loads of fun. All of the rocks were so cool, and the views were stunning. I just put up the pictures I took on fb, if you haven't already seen. 

Unfortunately, even though I had a mind enough to request it, there was no sunscreen in Elisa's house, so I got to feel my skin slowly baking away throughout the afternoon. My face and arms were all tingly and on fire, but I'll live. And, due to the requests for more pictures with me in them, I started training Elisa on being my photography apprentice. I'd originally given her my handy little digital camera to take pictures with but the batteries died soon on. No matter, we had loads of fun taking turns climbing things, taking photos of each other, passing the camera back and forth and so on. Elisa is slowly catching the fever that is playing with my lovely new dSLR camera, and now that she's figured out the on an off switch, how to change modes, and zooming, she's starting to quite enjoy it, and even asks me for the camera before I can offer it to her. 

After much fun was had on Hanging Rock, we finally ventured back down to go enjoy our picnic that Elisa had packed. We found a nice picnic table in the shade by a little pond and spread out our delicious feast. We had strawberries and grapes, pringles, crackers, some creamy/melty brie, sundried tomatoes, and a long sausage/cold cut kind of meat thing that I can't remember the name of. We made yummy little sandwiches with the cheese, meat, and tomatoes, and dined away. Eventually, some really beautiful blue and red birds started gathering above us, and before long I had them all eating crackers and salt and vinegar chips that they would take from our hands. It was quite entertaining watching them all fight and bicker over who got what cracker, and eventually we even gave one a grape. Lucky little bird. It was rather entertaining, the whole time Elisa has been looking forward to the picnic and food, whilst I was on cloud nine getting to hike, take pictures, and play with wildlife. Luckily we both appreciate the other's interests, so it's a nice compromise. 

Once our stomaches were fully satisfied, we headed out around 3pm or so. While we were up on hanging rock, I'd noticed the funny formation called Camels Hump (mentioned in the wiki description) across the way on Mount Macedon. I remembered where the turn off for the little trail was from the last time we'd been up Mount Macedon and pointed Elisa in that direction, since apparently climbing around on one mamelon wasn't enough. A short drive later, we were back at the top of the mountain, winding up another little trail. Much more fun rock climbing and picture taking was had before we were all worn out from the sun and climbing so we headed back into town for some ice cream.

Before I could even get out of the car once we'd parked along the main road in town, Jess was running across the road to give me a massive hug. Turns out she had just come into town with her boyfriend, Aaron, to get something to eat. We hung out with them, had our ice cream, walked around town, and even ventured into a pet adoption center to oo and awe over kittens and dogs. Over food and ice cream we began discussing the mental list that Elisa and I had been making about all of the things that we need to go see and do while I'm here. Jess and Aaron helped throw out some ideas, and by the end of it I think I've roped Jess into going out trail riding with me since both Elisa and Aaron refused to get on a horse. I'd found a place not too far from them that gave hour long trail rides on the weekends, and then Jess was silly enough to bring up a place she'd been to years ago that is apparently much further away but does day-long rides. She's going to go on both of them with me, whether she wants to or not. 

We left town around 5:30 or so and headed back to Elisa's house. We sat around, completely zapped of all energy, and watched some tv while Elisa's younger sister, Nancy, made dinner. She made some really delicious stuffed red bell pepper (capsicum, as they call it) with rice, beef, and then a boatload of other vegetables inside. After a few more tv shows and some hanging out upstairs, I had to catch the last train home at 9:30. I got in around 10:30 and had to catch some trams home, and then retired to my room for an early evening after a quick aloe bath for my face and arms. 

Today was considerably less interesting. I went back to campus for some more dreaded time in the EPC, since it turned out the class I'd waited an hour on Tuesday to get enrolled in wasn't showing up on my online schedule. Now, it turned out that there was a line to get a number, which involved talking to someone to determine if your business was suitable enough, and then sitting around to wait for your number to be called. At that point, though, I'd had it with waiting around and walked past all of the lines up the blonde lady I know so well now. She told me Aaron was here today, but not at the moment, and to come back in an hour. Of course. I did some meager wandering around campus, looking through the club fair stands, wasting some time with some unilodgers I ran into, and then headed back. I had to wait a few minutes for Aaron to finish up with someone else before he could see me, only to tell me that they were backlogged on all of their paperwork and that hopefully I'd be enrolled in the class by Monday. At least this time he gave me his email and office number in case I had any more problems. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon stealing wifi from the campus to upload my pictures from the day before without eating up all of my precious bandwidth in my apartment. I also did a bit more researching into horse riding and found some really interesting options. I think I'm leaning towards a weekend horseback excursion through the High country of Victoria. A lot of the places go through trails and mountains that can be seen in the movie "Man From Snowy River." They seem to cost about 400-500 dollars for the weekend of riding, meals, and rustic accommodation, and it'll require about a 3 hour train ride or so to get out there, but it's definitely on my list of things to do now. It was also half price pizza Thursday, so I've not got loads of cold pizza waiting for me in the fridge. 

Tomorrow I'm heading back out to the country to go explore a waterfall and whatever else looks cool with Elisa. More on that later. 

Week 2 and the Uni Orientation from Hell

Nothing substantial or exceptionally exciting happened throughout the middle of this week. I spent most of my time hanging out with the kids here at Unilodge, where I live.

On Tuesday a few of us decided to go down to the beach for the afternoon. Getting there was considerably easier than I'd thought--all it took was jumping on the proper tram right outside of my building and riding it down through the city for 20 to 30 minutes until you hit the water. The beach was called St. Kilda Beach, and apparently by Australian standards it's nothing to go on about. Every time I'd brought up going to the beach to Elisa last week she would tell me about how shit Melbourne beaches are, and that you had to go further up the coast to find anything worthwhile. She must be crazy, I thought it was a lovely beach. We hung out in the sun for a couple of hours, taking occasional dips into the water, walking along the shore, and hunting for cool seashells.

After a while we stopped in at a bar/restaurant on the beach and the others got beer while I sipped on some tasty pineapple juice. We wandered around about a little more and eventually found a nice plot of grass with some shade under a stretch of palm trees for an afternoon nap. We never really ended up napping, but it was nice sitting around and chatting. We caught the tram back home some time between five and six, so it got quite packed for a bit there, but we basically road the line from start to finish so by the end it was nice and empty again. I think I was supposed to be doing more things with everyone later that night, but the sun had zapped all of the energy out of me and I ended up falling asleep for an unanticipatedly long nap around 9pm or so.

Wednesday was rather overcast and eventually thunderstorms rolled in throughout the night. I spent most of the day inside, but at one point I did venture out to go down to the bank to pull out a bank cheque to finally pay off my bond. Unfortunately, when I gave it to the oh-so-helpful asian front desk girls they started asking if I'd already gotten my passport back. When I informed them that I had taken in out for perhaps 30 minutes last week to set up my bank account and then brought it promptly back to them, they began to look skeptical and quite lost. They haphazardly looked about for a little while before informing me that they couldn't find it. Throughout the process though, I was interrogated as to whether or not I actually brought it back, because they'd suddenly lost all recollection of the event. Dumb asians. I gave them the date that I had the passport out so that they could look through their security cameras for a better idea and left them to it.

Thursday was generally nice, other than the ongoing battle with the people at the front desk. I'd gone back down in the afternoon and got to speak with the manager/douche named Bradley. He swore he couldn't see anything on the tapes and continued to question me about whether or not I'd actually brought it back. I'm not entirely sure why they think that I'd lie about that, but they're all obnoxious. I even game him a window of about 1 and a half hours of when I would have been in the office, he's so useless. Luckily, a nice distraction from unilodge's ineptitude arrived in the form of a nice afternoon outing to one of the popular hang out spots nearby called South Lawn.

It's a really small little patch of grass in the center of the University of Melbourne campus where a lot of people like to hang out. We met up with a couple other unilodgers there and spent an hour or two out baking in the vicious, ozone-free sun. A fun game of both frisbee and a soft australian rules football being tossed about ensued. There were about 8 of us all spread out in a large circle hurling either of the two objects in any direction at any given time. The variation of ways to through the football was rather entertaining--there was the traditional american football overhand, british rugby underhand, and then the weird aussie rules punching and kicking. It was wicked hot out in the sun, but it was loads of fun.

We all went out for ice cream and then pizza afterwords. There's a little cafe called Intersection Cafe a couple of blocks from unilodge that has a half price pizza special on Thursday nights. I got a really tasty hawaiian pizza for 5 bucks. I love Intersection Thursdays. Everyone ate in the lounge and watched the end of Might Joe Young on tv. Later that night Kate, another junior animal science major from Penn State who I know from a few classes, arrived and we hung out for a little before I retired to my room to look over class information for the next day of orientation. Oooooh, orientation.

Friday morning I got a phone call around 9am from Katie, one of the Americans that lives here, saying that she realized that the asians downstairs had given her my passport. That was a huge relief, and a testament to just how dumb those girls are, passing out the wrong passport and then trying to make it look like I never brought mine back. Ugh, so stupid. Anyways, I quickly got ready, had some cold pizza for breakfast, and then left with some of the girls for orientation.

Our first meeting was a giant information session that everyone had to attend from 9:45 to 11. A really spastic lady that looked a lot like a gopher was giving the presentation. She was really annoying, the the entire thing was basically useless. Each slide was about something important that we should probably know about, but it never actually gave any information, just links or other sources where we should go to find out all of that information. For "fun" she threw in a few interactive slides where we had to answer some extremely hard trivia questions, and by extremely hard I mean not. The theme was "What do these mean?" with the first set being "Ta" for thank you, "Arvo" for afternoon, and "Hows it going" for--you guessed it, how's it going. At one point a traffic officer got up to talk to us about how much he doesn't like public speaking with some brief smatterings of general road safety like, don't drink and drive, wear a seatbelt, and if you're driving a car, be careful. Just in case anyone forgot.

After the meeting, chaos ensued. Essentially, everyone was supposed to split up based on their respective schools like, science, art, architecture, economics, etc. A paper had been passed around earlier detailing what "faculty" everyone was under so that you knew which of the 8 or so sessions you were supposed to go to. For some reason, I was put under vet science, along with maybe one other person out of the entire list, while Kate, who has the exact same major as me back home, was put into something about land management? Gopher woman started calling out different groups and instructing them to leave to their various locations around campus, and eventually I got up and asked which session I was supposed to go to, since vet science wasn't listed anywhere as an option. I was told that I was supposed to go to the vet science building, how hard could that be? Well, as I was about to find out, it was a lot harder than it should have been.

I left the building and consulted my map of campus that I'd been given. Apparently the vet science building wasn't even on campus, and was instead located in a very small little insert labeled "western precinct." On the map, then, there's an arrow pointing down Grattan St saying "this way to western precinct," but then once you look at the inlet, the building appears to be on the corner of Flemington St and Park Rd. And yeah, that was about all of the direction I had. I spent about 30 or so minutes wandering around, asking various people for directions, until I finally found the buiilding.

Once I got to the building, however, the woman at the reception desk looked at me like I was slightly retarded when I started to explain that I'd been sent there for my orientation. I was left to wait around in the little office while she made a few phone calls, I suppose, before coming back out to inform me that I'd been sent to the wrong place and that I needed to go right back to where I'd come from. Lovely. She tried to be nice and tell me about some short cut that would get me back to campus faster than the way I'd came, something about cut through a car park, down some stairs, take a right, then a left, and you should be home free. Oh, if only that was how things had worked.

I ended up spending the next 45 minutes or so wandering about lost in a lovely little residential areas. To give it some credit, the neighborhood was really cute and all of the houses were lovely, but I wasn't really in the appreciative mood at the time. There wasn't a single soul out on the streets either, so I just kept on a wandering until I acknowledged that I probably wasn't heading towards campus anymore. I finally found another main road and was informed by the first person I found that campus was way back the direction I'd just come. Cool.When I finally did find the damn science seminar, I was extremely hot and tired, my feet were sort, and I was definitely getting sunburnt--I hadn't planned on an hour and a half long excursion through Melbourne when I was getting ready that morning.

As I walked in, the presentation just finished. My friends told me that I didn't miss much, and that whatever information I had missed was in their little packets that they had been given, along with an appointment time for when they should go to schedule their classes later that afternoon. I went down to the front to collect my packet, the man checked my passport, rummaged around in the bin of packets for a while, and then regretfully informed me that mine wasn't there. Naturally. I was given instructions to go to a different building at 1:00. I had about a half hour before one, so I went off with the rest of my group to go find the where we were going to be given our free lunches.

Once we found the courtyard where lunch was going to be served, we realized that all we were going to be getting was a plain white box with a sandwich, piece of fruit, and juice box in it. You couldn't just get lunch though, because that'd be too easy, so we had to wait for the next 25 minutes or so while we watched some guy perform the most ridiculous box stacking, unstacking, and then restacking again. He'd spent the first 10 minutes we were in the courtyard taking all of the boxes, conveniently stacked in trays for easy transport, out of the trays and stacking them up on two picnic tables. Once he'd nearly finished that job, a group of other people showed up with big fold out tables and decided that the boxed needed to be put on there. So then we got to watch for another 15 minutes as they had to restack all of the boxes back into the carrying trays and then stack them back up on the other tables. It must have been a lot more fun than it looked.

By the time I was able to get my little box of shit free food, it was 12:55 so I had to leave and go find whatever building my packet and appointment time were in. Once I found the building, it turned out that no one there had any idea of what I was talking about. I spent the next half our or so being sent from one place to another, and talking to plenty of good-intentioned but also uninformed people. Eventually, I was finally put in contact with a woman who actually knew what I was referring to, but she regretfully informed me that whoever was meant to bring the packets to their building hand't arrived yet and that I should come back at 2.

At that point I was beyond frustrated and annoyed, so I just went back to my room to eat the rest of my cold pizza after tentatively tasting the sandwich thing I had waited so long to get earlier. A little after 2 I went back to the building, waited around for a while again because the woman I'd spoken to earlier had apparently gone to lunch, and was then directed to yet another building. Luckily it was the last building that I had to go to on this endless search. It turns out I didn't exist in the science system, due to the vet science folly, and didn't even have a packet after all. No one could figure out why I'd been registered under vet science, though, because that isn't even an undergraduate course.

Eventually, though, I was allowed to sit down with one of the guys there to finally go about enrolling in classes. Going off of the study plan that I had had to send in with the courses I had initially wanted to take, I was already enrolled in two of the classes that I wanted, Australia Now and Australian Wildlife Biology, and a third biology class that I didn't want. I was told that to get rid of the biology class and schedule my other two classes, one being a genetics class and whatever 4th class I chose, I would have to go to the department of each class and get permission from someone to enroll in the class, fill out some paper work, go back to that building, find that guy, and then have him schedule the classes for me. Next week is going to be so much fun.

After the huge headache of the entire morning and afternoon, I wasn't in the mood to socialize with everyone and spent some time up in my room until Kate came over. We decided that we wanted to go out to eat, so without much of a plan, we headed off to Lygon St, a big street a block or two away that is known for its endless array of restaurants. We wandered up and down a few blocks, bombarded with billions of choices of places to eat: italian, indian, chinese, japanese, thai, indonesian, malaysian, turkish etc. After a lot of indecision, I decieded to take her to this one cafe/pub place I had passed several times while going back and forth to the bank. It was only just around the corner off of Lygon, but it was exponentially quieter and less hectic, so I was a fan. It was also moderately priced, which was nice since a lot of the restaurants on Lygon are also really nice and expensive, and finding any meal under 20 dollars was quite a task.

I had a really tasty, "pick 3" kind of meal for dinner, so I had a some scalloped potatoes, really cheesy pasta, and then grilled chicken breast and vegetables, which ran me only 16 bucks with a drink. Not too shabby. After getting entirely stuffed, we headed back and hung out with everyone else in the courtyard for a few hours before going out to a place called Turf Club, which I had coincidentally found earlier that day on my tour around the city, for the MUSEX (Melbourne University Student Exchange Society) Orientation party for the night.

It's been exceptionally windy and its supposed to start raining and thunder storming at some point this afternoon, so it will probably be another chill, stay inside kind of day. I think I'm going to head back out to Elisa's for the day tomorrow, it's so nice to be able to get out and breathe some fresh country air and take a break from the city. Next week is O-week, which basically has a bunch of different seminars, talks, bbqs, and social gatherings planned at school to get to know people and such before classes start on the 28th. More on that later.

Week 1 in Melbourne and an excursion to the country

The rest of the week was rather uneventful. I continued to hassle with the headache of paying off my bond. I finally opted to open up a bank account at one of the major banks here in Australia a. to be able to pull out a bank cheque and b. so that I could have a card that I can use at the ATM without having to worry about obnoxious fees and the like. Once I got my bank account set up, the next fun hurdle was trying to get money put into it, but after a few days of confusion my brilliant dad was able to wire money to it. Otherwise, I occupied my time doing a bit more necessary shopping, hanging out with people downstairs in the lounge, and spending evenings with Elisa and her friend, Jess, who I met on Friday night. One fun thing that I have discovered about shopping in a city is that there is a fine line you must balance between buying in bulk to save money or not, because you don't want to have to haul it all back. Needless to say, I've been getting my daily workouts in, that's for sure. 

My weekend started Saturday afternoon after some skyping. I headed out into the city to take some pictures. I had been so preoccupied with getting settled and the like that I hadn't really had the time, but I was itching to get out with my camera. Instead of wandering around completely aimlessly, I decided to follow the same route down my street that Elisa had taken me down a few days before. It was a lovely day for walking about and taking pictures. A bit down the road I ran into a very boisterous bunch of Egyptians parading down the street celebrating Mubarak's resignation. I stopped into Federation Square, the big square place across from the Flinder's St. Station (the largest train station in the city), and listened to some live music being played by a band there. Then I crossed over the Yarra River and wandered down into some gardens along the river. After a little exploring I found a really cool little skate park and decided to hang out there for a bit to take some fun action shots of the kids. I left the gardens, then, and went across to the other side of the bridge to an area called South Bank along the river. There are a lot of really nice restaurants and things that line the bank there.

It wasn't long before I ran into a guy who was starting to set up for a street show along the walkway. Whatever it was he was planning on doing looked interesting, so I stopped along with another small group of people to watch. The guy's name was Callan, and he turned out to be quite entertaining. There weren't very many people there to start, so he was doing some funny modeling for me. I decided to stay and take pictures of the show. As it went on, the crowd kept growing and by the end it was quite formidable. His show included stunts with fire torches and things, at one point he was doing some impressive balancing and handstands while his shoes were lit on fire. For the finale of the show, he was balancing on top of a ladder while juggling two flame torches and a machete. Once the show had ended and the crowd had generously thrown some tips into his top hat, I went up and had a chat with him. He gave me his email to send him some of the pictures I'd taken, so I'll have to get around to doing that at some point. 

Oddly enough, as I was watching the show, Elisa texted asking if I remembered where south bank was--funny story. Her and her guy friends were en route to the city to meet up for dinner and drinks, but I realized that I hadn't brought my purse or anything useful out with me other than my camera. I hopped on the tram back up to my apartment to gather my belongings and the like and the headed right back down to where I'd just been. The boys had decided to eat at a restaurant along the bank called Automatic. I got to meet some of Elisa's guy friends: Zach, Jay, and Michael. They were all really nice and easy to get along with. I gave them (and everyone else that I've met since I've been here) a nice geography lesson about how New York is, in fact, not only a city, but also an entire state. It's quite a mind-blowing concept to wrap your head around, but I think after enough enthusiast insistence I had them convinced. 

I had some really tasty potato and cheese gnocchi that ran me 22.50, but it was quite delicious. At one point during dinner Elisa dragged Jay and I out to the front of the restaurant. Apparently there are a couple of large pillar things, maybe like a story high, that start shooting off fire shows every hour once it's dark out. It was rather impressive how warm it was, even though we were standing pretty far underneath them. At first they just spat out some small puffs of fire, but by the end of it there were some rather massive mushroom clouds of flames roaring out of the top of them. Many discussions about ill-fated birds ensued. I also discovered that here, instead of eating chicken parm over pasta, they eat it over french fries. Such a good idea. Also, they don't have tootsie rolls or reeses here (more things to add to the list of things I need to have shipped over). Funny story about that list, by the way. So far, the number one thing on the top of it is buffalo sauce. Much to my dismay and despair, I discovered one night at McDonald's that they haven't even heard of buffalo sauce here. The woman at McD's looked at me light I was slightly crazy when I asked for some. 

Despite my greatest efforts, Elisa and the boys demanded that I drink with them, even though the drinks were 8.50 to start. I don't think I'm ever going to get over the price of things here, no matter how long I stay. For some reason, though, everyone else kept buying me drinks, so I actually made off pretty well. After we ate there was a very engaged debate about whether we should leave to look for another (cheaper) bar, or stay put and drink there. Laziness won over frugality and we drank there for another hour or two. Elisa bought a round of Illusion? shots for the table. They were amazing. For starters, they were lime green (winner winner) and I think they consisted of midori (some green watermelon alcohol?), vodka, and pineapple juice. Don't ask how, but somehow watermelon + pineapple = apple slash super tasty. After the first round of shots, Elisa tried to stack the shot glasses, which resulted in a leaning/falling/broken tower of glass. They tried to hide the broken shot glass amongst the others, but our little asian waitress lady may or may not have cut herself on it when she tried to pick them all up. We heavily weighed finding another bar over angering the waitress even more, but Zach was generous and tipped her, so I think she was fine. After that I had two vodka sunrises (so pretty) and another round of yummy green shots--all courtesy of Elisa or the boys. I've taken up the practice of yelling at Elisa every time she pays for me: "you're killing me!... with kindness, but still!" etc. 

After dinner and drinks we ventured out to start walking to the train station around 11pm. The train ticket out to Elisa's town (about a 45min-hour long ride) only cost me 6.40, which wouldn't have even bought a drink back at the restaurant. Cuz that makes sense. Zach left us at the train station to head home, while Michael and Jay bought loads of onion rings from Hungry Jacks (apparently their version of Burger King) for on the train. Once we got to the Woodend station, Jay's sister drove us the short drive back up to their house. We ended up watching The Blair Witch Project at their house, Elisa and I had never seen it before. We mostly laughed our way through it. At one point Elisa was asking if I'd met any of the people appearing in beginning of the movie, insisting that they were in Maryland and well, I'd been in Maryland, so naturally I should have met them. I slept on a comfy pull out couch in Jays room. The next morning/afternoon when we all got up Jay made us pancakes before we headed to Elisa's house. 

I still haven't gotten used to the whole driving on the wrong side of the road bit, it still freaks me out. I also kept on trying to get in on the wrong side of the car. Silly australians. I got to meet Elisa's parents briefly before they left to take her younger brother and his friends out for laser tag for the day. Her house was really nice--it sat on a little bit of land with two small ponds (or damns, as they call them). They also had to cute labs, Max and Sephie, that were loads of fun to play with. After getting the tour of the house and property we settled down and watched How To Train Your Dragon. I sat on the couch squeezed between the two dogs, it was quite cozy. We lounged around until her younger sister, Nancy, came home so that we could steal her car. She showed me her town, Woodend, which was quite small and quaint like Clinton. After the drive by I pointed Elisa in the direction of the nearby mountain, cuz it looked pretty and she said we could drive to the top of it. 

We spent most of the afternoon driving around, blasting my music in the car, and occasionally stopping out in the middle of some country road so I could jump out of the car and take pictures. I told Elisa that I'm going to make her get out and explore her own country with me, luckily she's down with that. After braving some very narrow and windy little roads, we made it to the top of the mountain. Turns out there was a giant cross memorial for veterans, so we walked around and took pictures. At points I was climbing down over the little lookout areas to take better pictures, leaving Elisa safely up top yelling down at me to not slip and fall and die. She kept saying she wished she had a camera to take pictures of me taking pictures slash me falling to my death. One or the other. Fortunately, I survived the excursion, and afterwards we stopped at the little cafe on top of the mountain and had some tasty grilled ham, cheese, and tomato sandwiches for an early dinner. Down the mountain a little ways there was another road leading to a little lake that we got out and walked around, it was really pretty there. Eventually we headed back to her house where we hung out for a a bit longer until her parents came back with her car. 

Around 7:30 or so we left to drive out to Jess's house. The drive took 30-40 mins but I loved every minute of it. Originally the plan had been that I was going to drive Elisa's car around on the crazy back roads, but I decided to defer my driving opportunity to her to take in the sights and snap a few more pictures. It's quite shocking how many of the roads out in the country are just tiny little dirt roads that wind around--most of the drive to Jess's was unpaved. After a while, I took up the habit of hanging out of the sunroof of Elisa's car while she zoomed down the bumpy dirty roads to take pictures--it was well worth it. And then, just because Elisa's such a good sport, she would stop the car every time I enthusiastically yelled "SHEEP" or some other fun farmyard animal so that I could jump out and take pictures. Unfortunately, the sheep weren't nearly as excited to see me as I was to see them, and they usually ended up running away, but I had loads of fun. 

Once we got to Jess's house I got to meet her parents, they were fun. Jess and her mom are both artists, so there was lots of pretty art and sculptures in and around the house. Elisa and Jess and I hung out in Jess's room for a while. Mostly they talked and caught up while I would enthusiastically jump off the bed and run out the sliding glass doors in Jess's room to survey the outside. Firstly, there was a beautiful sunset over the trees right out the window, and secondly, THERE WERE KANGAROOS. I was so excited, my first kangaroo sighting! At first I saw two off to the side of the house, but then once it got darker, an entire herd? gaggle? group? bouncy bundle of fun? of them showed up in the backyard. There were probably 20 or so out there, so I had loads of fun trying to get up close to them to take some pictures. I was quite tempted to run out and frolic around with them, but then Jess warned that I find the biggest one in the lot and avoid it, or it might box me in the face. I decided against the frolicking, maybe next time, when there's more light. Eventually we had a lovely three course meal that Jess's mom had prepared for us: tasty pasta, grilled chicken over salad, and lastly chocolate pudding with cherries and cream on top. We stayed up a little while longer hanging out before calling it a night.

The next morning I was pleasantly woken up by some loud, slightly obnoxious bird sounds. Upon further investigation, I found that the back yard was filled with maybe 10-15 giant white cockatoos. So exciting. Jess's mom made me some tea and we had a lovely chat about the birds before I decided to take pictures slash chase them all away. Jess came out then, to inform us that her Valentine's day had taken a turn for the worse and that we needed to leave asap because her boyfriend's car had broken down on the way to his aunt's funeral, so she needed to go chauffeur him. I'll have to explore their 25 acres of fun and animal filled country later. Jess drove me to the train station back in Woodend because Elisa had had to wake up early and leave for work that morning. Another 6.40 dollars and not even 5 minutes later, I was on the train heading back into the city. The scenery on the train was beautiful, it was a great hour long ride. Once I was back at the city I caught some trams home--I'm getting so good at this whole tram business. Unfortunately, upon entering my room I proceeded to break the little plastic loop thing that raises and lowers my curtain, so I got to spend the next 20 or so minutes trying to fix it. Let me just tell you, it's a lot harder than it should be. 

After that was all settled, I had a lovely skype date with my friends in State College during the Sunday party, ate my ramen lunch, and then headed out to run some errands. I went to the bank first, to get my bank cheque for my bond. Unfortunately, I seem to be slightly retarded and didn't make it out to the proper organization, so I'm going to have to go back and do it again tomorrow. Oh, and when I tried to give it to the dumb asians (oh yes, the very same) at the front desk in exchange for my passport they seemed to be having a hard time of finding my passport. Needless to say, they'd better have found it by the time I come back tomorrow with my cheque or there'll be hell to pay. 

Then I trammed back down into the city to QV to go shopping for a bit. I really needed to buy some sunscreen because apparently the sun down here is vicious. I'd never heard of the UV index before, and I'm sure most of you back in the states haven't either, so here's a fun little lesson. Apparently the UV index runs on a scale from 0 to 11, with 11 being the most dangerous level of UV radiation passing through the ozone to give us all skin cancer. The reason why you've probably never heard of it is because it isn't really that big of a deal in the states, but down here in the summer the rating is usually up around 10 or 11. So, sunscreen was quickly added to my shopping list. I also stopped by the grocery store and bought a few things--namely one of those precooked chickens and a head of lettuce. Yep, you guessed it, I made a super yummy chicken caesar salad for dinner.

And now I'm off to find something to do for the rest of the night. Stay tuned for more later :)

Day 2: loads more successful than Day 1

As the title indicates, my second day in Melbourne went much, much better than the first. To start, I enjoyed a lovely sandwich thing that Elisa brought me around 1pm, hung out in my room to strategize a bit, and then headed out. First, she introduced me to the tram system--which still slightly scares and confuses me, but only because of the left vs right thing. I'm still thinking I'm very likely to get hit by some sort of car or tram because I keep looking the wrong way every time I go to cross a street. So odd. I'm also constantly running into people because they tend to walk on the left, and people on elevators yell at me cuz you're suppoesd to idle on the left side, not the right. It's all so odd. Anywho, I bought a day pass thing and learned how to validate it and all of that lovely stuff. It's really quite a convenient system, so I'm sure I'll like it a lot once I get to know it. 

Next on the agenda was my cell phone, or mobile phone as Elisa keeps telling me to call it, which actually proved to be a lot easier to go about getting then I thought. I bought the cheapest phone, some 50 dollar non-flip, non-touch, non-keyboard phone, but it does have a camera and all of that at least. Going back to texting on a number pad is going to suck, though. Oh, and their numbers are all quite confusing, like the amount of numbers in their phone numbers all vary between cells and house numbers and I don't even know the rest of the intricacies yet--something about adding a 0 or not adding a 0 or possibly adding a 61 to the start? Like I said, confusing. Anyways, it'll certainly do for now, and the prepaid bit of it doesn't seem too bad, basically I pay 30 dollars each time I want to "recharge it" and I get 200 dollars worth of credit, which is then used up in whatever intervals each minute or text costs. Speaking of which I should prolly look up those costs at some point.

After the cell phone, we went to QV, which is kind of like a mall set up, it had a food court upstairs and below a "Big W" which seems to equate nicely with Walmart. I got my trashcan, some silverware/cups/plate/bowl, hangers, and a few other things. Then we went to Woolworths or something like that across the way to get groceries, though at that point I was tired of carrying shit around and wasn't in the mood to really buy much of anything so I got the bare essentials: milk, tea, sugar cubes, apples, tim tams (amazing chocolate cookie things), honey nut cheerios, coke, and mac n cheese. Yep, I'm set. Oh, as a fun side story, it's been really interesting trying to use my card to pay for things. People don't ask you if you want to use credit or debit, they ask if you want to use savings, credit, or chequeing (yes, funny spelling and all). After many, many annoying bouts of trial and error I've finally discovered that my card will only work if I use credit and sign for it, apparently using my pin won't work. Good to know. Anywho, my arms got a lovely work out trucking all of that shit around until we trammed back to my apt to drop it all off. 

Feeling about 50 pounds lighter, we went right back down my street, Swanston St, and just went exploring. She took me to a place called Melbourne Central, another kind of mall that was in a beautiful, cool building. It was filled with lots of food places and stores and things, on the lower floor was a train station, and on the highest floor was a movie theatre. I can't wait to properly explore all of the stores, I absolutely love the style of the clothes over here. OH! and they even had a little pet store where I found the cutest little puppy on earth that I was extremely tempted to buy. So sad. 

After that we just kept walking down Swanston. Living in a city is so interesting, every where you go there's different restaurants and bars and cafes and stores and they're all just so interesting and unique and I want to go in all of them, and I was only on one street. So much to do... Anywho, the further down the street you go, you end up in the CBD, or central business district, which is where lots of the big skypscrapers and other shops and things are. There was one funny building that I go by a lot on the tram that has like, restaurants and shops on the ground floor, an audi dealer on the second floor, and a giant rock climbing venue with big glass windows so you can see all of the people and giant walls above that. So odd, but cool. Oh, and there's a really cool building that has a movie theatre kind of thing on the roof and bars below that, such a good idea. We walked down the street until we got to some square which I forget the name of and a bridge crossing the Yarra River until we finally decided to tram back to my place around 6 or so. 

We hung out in my room, listened to music, I taught her KenKen, played with my phone a little etc. until we decided to go get some dinner. So, back to Melbourne Central we went, and I actually don't remember the place we ate at but we got burgers. It was interesting though, I ordered a "plain grilled" burger, because all of the other variaties had weird healthy things on them like carrots, avacado, beetroot, and lord knows what else. I explained to Elisa that when we want to make a burger special we put more meat on it, or bacon, not veggies. Elisa paid for my dinner, even though I yelled at her for it, it was like 30 some odd dollars for the two of us. So expensive, ugh. Also, they call ketchup "tomato relish". Weird. Oh, and instead of calories on their nutrition labels they call it "energy" and use kJ, for kilojoules. Wtf? After dinner we chatted for a bit more and then she had to head home and I managed to get myself all the way home using the trams all by myself. I was so proud. I spent the rest of the night hanging out downstairs with a bunch of people in the lounge. They were pregaming to go out to a club, but I was still under the evil influences of jetlag so I opted to stay behind and sleep. 

Day 1: 50 hours of little to no sleep

It all began around 7am on a very bitter morning in upstate New York. After having just finished packing my life away into two suit cases and a backpack the night before, we loaded them up and set off to Syracuse. I had to wait about an hour for my flight out of Syracuse, which left at 10:10 am. The little jet had only two rows of two on either side of it. When I first sat down at my assigned seat, there was a small, ancient asian woman next to me at the window. Within the first few seconds of my arrival, she started making quite disturbing sounds that pointed towards the eventual hacking up of a hairball. Fortunately for me, the flight attendant (who happened to look identical to Kevin Spacey) informed us that the row I was seated in was the exit row. The old woman had to move on account of her being unable to speak English, so I thought I was in the clear.

Instead of lucking out and having a row to myself, an older pilot who was hopping to Chicago came and sat next to me. Over the next two hours, I got to learn all about piloting, airport security, his time spent training air force pilots in Texas, his travels to Dubai, the baby squirrel that befriended his granddaughters (I even got to see pictures on his phone), and a whole lot more. Some of it was interesting, some of it wasn’t, but I didn’t have much of a choice. The way he talked and told stories reminded me a lot of Chris, my old boss at Agway.

The plane landed in Chicago a little after 11am, so I had about four hours of waiting around to do. I wandered about O’hare for a while, had some lunch, and tried desperately to find an outlet to plug my laptop into. Outletless, I conceded defeat and read my book for a while instead. My plane out of Chicago left around 3:30pm. I sat in the aisle, with two highschool age looking kids next to me that, from what I gathered, were on some group trip to somewhere. I watched the movie Unstoppable, the train movie with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, on the plane and then read for a little while more. As much as I liked my roomy aisle seat, I was quite annoyed that I only got to see glimpses of the sunset over the mountains as we neared Los Angeles.

The plane landed some time after 5pm in LA. I got some dinner and then went outlet searching again. Luckily, LAX has a few scattered cell phone charging hubs that small groups of people were gathering around, so I staked my claim and hunkered down with the rest of them. I spent the next 5 hours clustered about with the rest of the airport’s population—all spread out to the ends of our respectable chords for some semblance of privacy.  

My flight to Sydney boarded around 9:30pm. I sat at a window seat next to a cute old couple from California. The 14 hour flight from hell was just that. It was sooo long. The dumb lady in front of me decided to turn her little air blaster thing on but then pointed it away from her so that it conveniently ricocheted onto me—oh how I hate air blowing on me. Then, I suck at sleeping on planes, even with sleeping pills. I probably got like, two to three hours tops of sleep, scattered about in like 10-20 minute intervals. But yeah, I literally got to stand up once to go to the bathroom. Once, in 14 hours. My legs hated me. Oh, but the sunset over the pacific was reaaally pretty.

We landed in Sydney at 7am their time. I was half tempted to waltz into one of the airport bars and order a drink but, it was 7am, and I was mostly exhausted so I didn't. I had to hang out in the airport then for another two and a half hours. It wasn't bad though, I found the book that I have to read for uni, The Boat by Nam Lee, in the airport so I started reading that. It's actually reaaaally good, it's a collection of 7 short stories, and the writing is spectacular.

The flight to Melbourne was lovely, it was on the exact same huge plane that we took from LA, but with about 80% less people. I got to have a whole row to myself and just stretched out and read my book. Oh, and the best part was that it only lasted an hour, so it felt like I was hardly even on the plane compared to the 14 hour long flight.

Sooo then I got to Melbourne and had to go through customs. Oddly enough I met a kid in line that goes to RIT and is studying abroad at the same school as me, so that was random but nice. We kept each other company while we waited forever and a year at the baggage claim. That was fun too--apparently I missed the memo about getting a cool little push cart like everyone else, so I was a champ and hauled all of my shit around myself. It wasn't fun.

Theeen I got to take a lovely 50 dollar taxi ride to my apt. But really though, 50 dollars? WTF. And, the whole driving on the other side of the road thing is reaaally going to take some getting used to, it's just soo odd. So, I get and walk to my apt place, and right about then everything started getting really frustrating.

First, I had to wait forever in the little front room cuz the two asian chicks working the counter are useless and annoying. Oh, and, just for your waiting room pleasure, there's literally a constant, relatively loud ringing noise that never stopped, and no one seemed too concerned to make it stop. Oh, and I was suuuper hot, all sweaty and gross, tired, and just wanting to shower. Then it was my turn to talk to the annoying asian girl.

I thought all I had to do was pay my rent and bond and be set, but it turns out that you can't just pay for a bond, oh no. First the lady said I needed a check for the bond, so luckily, I planned ahead and packed a check book, but first I had to dig through my backpack to find it--in the meantime the dumb asian moved on to helping someone else instead of waiting one minute, then I had to wait all over again. Oh, but get this, they don't accept personal checks.  Apparently there are only two acceptable ways to go about paying for my bond: A. go open up a bank account at an aussie bank and then wait a couple of days for money to get wired to it so that I can have some kind of bank check or B. have 997 dollars cash on me so that I can go to the post office and have them give me a money order check thing. That's it. So, until I figure out how or where to do either one of those, they're holding my passport hostage. You would think that they would mention details like this on their FAQ section, instead of just saying “arrive and pay your bond and first month’s rent.”  

Next on the agenda, the annoying girl was asking if I had a copy of my CoE or visa, which I didn't cuz they're both electronic, then if I had a student ID card to prove that I was a student at Melbourne, but I don't get one of those until the 18th so no. Luckily, I convinced her that I wouldn't have been allowed into the country if I didn't have a visa, and I couldn't get a visa without my CoE, so she finally dropped that. Finally, she let me sign some papers and gave me my keys and what not.

I finally got to leave the annoying, loudly ringing front room and go find my apt, room 717. So, I drag my suit cases and carry all my shit to the elevators, only to find out that getting to my room wasn't going to be an easy task either. Turns out that one of the two elevators never works, and the other one only works when it wants to. Me and some other kids literally stood there for at least 10 minutes, pushing the buttons and watching the door close, pause as though it was goooing to start doing its job and lifting us to our destination, and then beep mockingly and open back up again. 10 minutes. So, I FINALLY got to my room and put down all of my shit.

Want to hear about my room? Of course. Well, let me tell you, it’s something. All you need to know is that it's extremely small. There’s literally a wardrobe (no hangers, add to shopping list) and a long desk unit with shelves and drawers on one wall. On the other wall there’s a single bed and in the corner I have a sink and mirror/medicine cabinet. The view out of my window looks creepily directly across a courtyard thing to another apartment building with balconies and all of that. It’s probably only like, 20-25 feet from my window. The girl on the 6^th floor is watching futurama right now. Yep. Creepy. Oh, there’s also no trashcan in here. So annoying. Anyways, I set my things down and start prioritizing.

Task 1: hook up internet so that I can check my email/hear from Elisa/talk to people at a reasonable hour. Should be simple, the sheet I was given even said "3 easy steps to instant connection!" pfft. Before I dive into how uneasy and not so instant the connection was, let’s discuss the internet in general first. To give you an idea, here’s a direct quote taken off of the back of the 3 easy steps paper: "Australians are paying 9 times more for broadband that is 35 times slower than the world's fastest networks. A report from the US has reveals that Australia has become the Third World of broadband developed nations, ranking 26 out of 30 countries for its transfer speeds." Followed by: "International students beware--you will notice the difference. Our beloved government are working on a solution--don't hold your breath!"

Yep. So, the minimum package starts at 26$ a month for a 10GB quota. For the month. And the 10GB includes downloading and uploading. Oh, and it's not actually just 10GB per month, it's 5GB during the "peak hours" (I already forgot what those were) and 5GB for "non peak hours." The next option on the list is 20GB for 50$ a month. Shoot me.

Anyways, back to hooking it up. I filled out all of their dumbshit forms and payment things, thinking that would be the end of it. Instead, I got a response saying that I need to find out my username and password, which would usually have been texted to me if I had an australian phone, which I didn’t. That was when I started to get really frustrated. After a bit I decided I should go downstairs to talk to the annoying Asians in the ringing room to figure out my internet. Luckily, on my way there I passed by the main lounge room downstairs and heard football talk so I wandered in and sat down.

There were 4 or 5 kids there and I got to catch the last 2 minutes of the superbowl, that was fun. But, as we were sitting there I heard someone say Joe Pa, and was like uhm, what? So yeah, one of the first people I met here, other than Chloe, my aussie friend I made in my 10 minute elevator experience earlier, was a girl from Penn State. Go figure. So started talking to Laura (Penn State girl) and Katie?, a girl from Chicago, and this one aussie named Leah who was reading a book. I started whining about my internet and Laura told me she had the same problem and had to call the company to get her login info. After a little more hanging out I went back up to try that, but every time I tried using my phone to call the number some aussie computer chick came on and told me it was disconnected. That’s about when I decided to blow off task 1 and move on.

Task 2: take a shower—also not nearly as easy as it sounds. First, I needed shampoo/conditioner etc. I thought it would be easy since there was a little convenient store right outside of my apt, but it turns out that they only sold shampoo and no conditioner? Who does that? I also thought I’d try my luck at the ATM in the store to see how much I could withdraw a day, (keeping in mind that I need 997$ in cash). Turns out I could only get 60 dollars? So I left angrily with nothing and decided to go looking for a different store. Generally, it shouldn’t have been bad, it was still hot outside but it was nice and I liked walking around. That was until I realized how stupid I was for not putting socks on when I changed into my slip-ons before leaving the apt. I am now the proud owner of many huge, painful blisters—so that’s fun.

Blisters or not, I carried on to find some damn shampoo. Laura and Katie told me there was some kind of relatively big-ish store some number of blocks down the street, but I finally gave up cuz of the blisters and ducked into the next little shopette thing I found. Luckily, this one at least had some shampoo. Right about now is when I start realizing that everything here costs a fortune and a half. I bought two rather small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and a tube of tooth paste for 25 dollars. Cool. My walk back was quite painful, but I stopped halfway to grab some Subway cuz the last thing I ate was gross airplane food at about 5am (keeping in mind that its prooobably about 4pm now). Oh, and there’s no 5 dollar foot longs here, I paid 9 bucks for a 6 inch sub, with no oil and vinegar (very disappointing), and what would pass as a smaaall drink in the US.

Finally, I had food and shower supplies! Things were looking up, right? Wrong. I got back to my building to find a small posse of people, Laura and Katie included, lounging by the elevators. Turns out the one elevator that works didn’t feel like working. We all literally stood there for probably 15 minutes talking, bitching about overpriced Australian shit, much to the dismay of the one Australian boy in the group. Laura apparently bought a 24 pack of coke cans for… 24 bucks. Wtf. Also, apparently minimum wage here is like, 15 dollars? Ugh. Sooo expensive.

I think after about 15-20 minutes I finally gave up on waiting around cuz I still desperately needed to eat/shower. Turns out the only stairs are actually the fire escape stairs outside of the building, so I got to climb 7 flights of stairs, carrying my lunch and shower stuff, with aching, blistering feet while suffering from the heat. Yeap, that was fun too. Eventually I made it to my room and got to eat. Unfortunately, showering wasn’t nearly as relaxing as I’d hoped, since apparently the two little turn dials for hot and cold aren’t reliable in the least. My shower started off sweltering hot and then suddenly switched to something akin to ice water about mid-shampooing. So I blindly fumbled around and turned a bunch of knobs and probably made it a lot worse. Eventually I gave up and just took a rushed, luke warm shower. At least I was finally clean.

With eating and showering out of the way, I decided to tackle the internet again. I’d discovered earlier during the elevator hangout session that the number I was dialing was still in service, so long as I didn’t use my own phone to call it. Turns out the elevator didn’t want to work then, either, so I got to walk back down 7 flights of steps to go back to the ringing room of death to hang out with my favorite Asians. Once again, I had to wait for eternities to just use the phone, but I finally got my information. After all of that, I holed up in my room, went on skype for a while, and then wrote this short novella for you all. 

I went downstairs around 9 or so and hung out with a group of kids in the lounge flipping through random tv shows. I spent at least an hour and a half down there hanging out and waiting for Elisa to arrive, but naturally she showed up the minute that I decided to run up stairs for a second. In the end, we found each other, and retired to my room for a few hours of chatting. Finally around 1am or so I got to get some sleep, it'd only been about 50 hours since I'd last woken up, no biggie.