O-Week

For all of you out there who are about to go on spring break, I am pleased to inform you that my classes finally started today. About time too. There are only so many orientations a person can go through before they become disorienting. I moved into my dorm two weeks ago and had a few days to myself before O-week (O for for Orientation Week) commenced. Fortunately my next door neighbor had also moved in so I wasn't the only one on my floor. She is the most wonderful Victorian girl. I've come to the conclusion that rural Victoria must hold a lot of resemblance to the old South. Everyone from the country sits with her back stick straight, eats with the most impeccable table manners and always seems to be smiling from ear to ear.

I'm really glad I had that breather break, because O-week was pretty 'full-on'! Whenever I wasn't at Uni figuring out my subjects (Intro Microecon, Australian Wildlife Biology, Australia Now: what Australia is now and how it got here, and Famine in the Modern World), I was quite busy with IH's own traditions (IH stands for International House, the residential college I am in while in Melbourne). These traditions included running around the college yelling and making mayhem, running around campus yelling and making mayhem, and finally running around the city of Melbourne yelling and making mayhem. Did you know that when you cram 200 people into a tram about 60 ft long, you can break it? And did you know that when you break a tram at rush hour you get at least 15 trams stuck behind it creating a traffic jam that extends beyond the edge of your vision? Or perhaps you may be interested that the best time for 200 students to run shouting down a busy city sidewalk taunting fast food chains and dodging passersby is not while a protest march for Libya with the accompanying tense police is occurring on the same street. That would have been good to know ahead of time actually. Hinds sight is 20/20.

There were more traditional initiation rights of course, such as 7:00 am boot camp and room crams presided over by some trigger happy seniors with super soakers. It was all in good fun though, nothing actually dangerous or malicious.

So now O-week is over and I am left with more than one set of germs, remarkably no sunburn, many great acquaintances, and some seedling friendships. It's actually been quite fun to be a 'fresher' all over again. I was way to scared the first time round to really make the most of it.

Still, there have been the bouts of homesickness. This time when I say home I mean Yale. Things Yalies take for granted:

- THE FOOD! Seriously. We need to stop complaining guys. I don't even have the option of opting for toast for dinner.
- Free unlimited internet! We maybe free isn't exactly the case given our tuition bills, but we can use however much internet we want! There is nothing worse that not being able to Skype home because your 500 MB of weekly allowance was used up on some stupid automatic update that probably doesn't install properly anyway. VPN to the rescue in this area though.
- Small departments. I waited in line for 4 hours on Tuesday so that they could give me an email address. Really guys?? Really.

But that being said, it was cold today when it got down to 65 degrees. There are palm trees here, as well as koalas and kangaroos. In a boxing match between a bulldog and a kangaroo, the kangaroo will always win.