New Read.

February 23

Day two of school!

I only had one class, Gender, Power and Change. It was an hour long lecture that started at 11. It is a first year class so it’s pretty full. I really enjoyed the class! My professor is this skinny little lady who has a short boy hair cut. I will have lecture twice a week and then tutorial once a week. The tutorial professor is a gay guy with long, curly white hair. When she introduced him he stuck his arm straight up in the air and starting flinging his wrist around wherever it would go. It was hilarious; remind me to demonstrate his wave to yall! I think I’m really going to enjoy that class, it’s an interesting subject.
Oh, and in my class I saw the first “gangsta” black guy that I’ve seen since I’ve been here. He was wearing a tall tee, baggy pants and diamond star earrings. It kind of made me feel back at home. haha.

When I was walking back from class I ran into Amy (AustraLearn girl from Colorado). We went to some expo that they were having for O-Week (orientation week). We got tons of free stuff! I got a t-shirt, hat, candy, VIP card to some club, grocery bags, and a coin purse…and lots of other little stuff. I love free stuff!

After dropping off all of our goodies at Amy’s house we headed downtown to meet up with Natalie and Stacey. We went to the Hobart Museum for a little bit while we waited on Marina to get into town. Once she was there we went to Voda Phone to set up our internet! Yay!

Too bad the lady at Voda Phone was SO RUDE! Marina has a Voda cell phone and when the lady asked if we got service in our house Marina told her that only one time had her phone not worked. The lady then refused to sell the internet to us. We asked if we could buy it and try it out and she wouldn’t allow that. She was going to mark on our account that it wasn’t going to ever work at our house so then if we ever had an issue then they wouldn’t help us or even listen to our problem. I’m glad that she was concerned about it possibly not working in our house but she was incredibly rude about it. She directed us to another place that sold internet services.

We went to that place and talked to a guy about our different options and ended up getting a service where we will have 20GB of internet usage for $60 a month. It was a little more expensive at first but in the end we will get more internet usage for less. They have to mail us the modem so we should have internet in our house starting on Monday. When we were filling out all of the paperwork the guy told us that there was another $13 shipping fee. Jokingly I told him that we didn’t want to pay that fee. His response was “you Americans, you’re always trying to get more than what you’re paying for.” That kind of made us mad. I told him that the difference is that in America you have to work hard for everything that you have.

Aussies like to take stabs at Americans. Amy and Jeff’s roommate, Mark, tried to tell us the other day that if a girl was cold than an Aussie would give him their jacket but an American wouldn’t.

Another thing that we’ve picked up on is that Aussies VERY much so work to live rather than living to work. Most every place closes at 5PM. When I asked someone if they delivered mail on Saturdays they looked at me like I was completely insane. Servers and sales people will not go above and beyond to make the customer happy because regardless of if they make the sale or not they still get paid the exact same amount.

More Aussies than I thought would be are in love with the idea of the “deep South” as they call it. They want to go to Texas and meet the kids from Friday Night Lights and see South Fork Ranch.

Anyways, after setting up the internet we shopped around the mall for a little while before heading back to Sandy Bay. We just hung around the house and didn’t do much of anything that evening. Our Aussie friend Brett came over and taught us some new lingo! I’ll fill you in on that in the next post. J Cheers!

February 24

Words of the day:
Macer’s = McDonald’s
Afsie = afternoon
Arvo = afternoon
“That just went pear shaped” = “That just got awkward.”

This morning I went to breakfast with Brett. We went down to Salamanca and ate at some little restaurant whose name I cannot remember. I was pretty confused by everything on the menu. I ordered hot cakes but instead of the King Island cream (whip cream) that normally comes on them I asked for some good ole maple syrup.

While we were at breakfast we were talking about some of the differences between the States and Australia. Brett mentioned something about the Lawyers wearing wigs. I thought that was the funniest thing that their lawyers have to wear wigs here! I told him that at some point I was going to have to get into trouble just so I could go and see the Judge and Lawyers all in their white curly wigs. Brett told me that right down the road from where we were eating there is a court where we can go and watch trials so that way I won’t have to get in trouble to see the crazy wigs. I was SO excited to go watch! I really wanted to laugh and take pictures but court was in session so of course I couldn’t do that. We watched a trial about some guy who was drunk and beat someone up and then another one where the father had sexually molested his daughters when they were younger. It was intense!

After my exciting morning in court I had to go to class. But it was okay because it was Gender, the class that I love! Today in there we talked about the different ages in which biological sex starts determining the way one acts and is treated. Interesting, yeah?

I then came home and ate lunch (I’ll give you one guess…a sandwich!) while watching some awful children’s version of Survivor. The television shows here are ridiculous. The Dutch news was on four different channels along with the German and Japanese news on three others. I don’t need to watch the Dutch news…let alone watch it on four different stations! Haha.

At 3 we went up to the Uni for Societies’ day. Societies’ day is HUGE here. All of the different clubs and organizations set up outside of the Union building and try to get you to sign up for their society. A lot of them have offers that if you sign up and pay $10 then you get four free beers or something like that. Pretty much the whole thing was like a bad house party. It was loud, lame and crowded. It wasn’t really our scene so my friends and I didn’t stay too long. The only club that I signed up for was the sailing club and I haven’t paid for that yet, just got added to the email list so that I can get more information. It sounds fun though; they will teach us how to sail and then once we have learned we will get to race and stuff like that!

Once we left there I went to the grocery store with Stacey, Marina and Natalie. I didn’t have to buy anything this time but it was just something to do!

When we got back home I ended up falling asleep for awhile; I guess I had been pretty tired! I woke up around 8 and chilled with the roommates. Around 9:30-10 we went up to Metz to meet up with Jeff, Amy and April. It was SO crowded there tonight! It didn’t stay crowded for long though. Either people were already hammered from society’s day or they moved on to another bar. Stacey, Marina and Natalie bailed kind of early. The rest of us only stayed there for about an hour or so before we went to La Bella’s Pizza place. We saw our friend Danny! He’s awesome…it’s always good to have friends in the food industry!
While we were eating at La Bella’s this super drunk Aussie came in and sat down at our table. His name was Aaron and he was telling us all about how much he loved the “deep south” and how he wanted to go to Louisiana or Mississippi. He told us about his “friend” who plays football for the panthers in Dillon, TX…sounding strangely familiar to the TV show Friday Night Lights. He kept offering us his pizza which he had pretty much slobbered all over. He also kept asking what part of the States we were from and what our favorite bands were. He was so hilarious!

Once Joey and I got back home we stayed up until about 2 AM talking with Stacey. I’m really happy with the roommates that I have and with my living situation. I couldn’t ask for anything better! J

It is now WAY past bedtime! Thank you for your prayers, keep ‘em coming! Cheers mates!