Officially a Junior!!! WHAT.

Week of Sunday, July 27th - Sunday August 3rd:

This was the first week of classes...which means I'M A JUNIOR IN COLLEGE. Or as the aussies would say...I'M A THIRD YEAR AT UNI!!!!!!!! WHAAAAAT!!! Most classes have a large lecture class and unlike Princeton, there is not a maximum for the number of students allowed to enroll in a class (at least I don't think so) so classes are HUGE, but luckily most classes split up into tutorials, or abbreviated as tutes, and meet in smaller sections to go over assignments and discuss class material. Tutes are pretty much precepts....except they are called tutes...duh. The classes I am taking are called Developmental Disorders of Childhood, Neuroscience for Psychologists, Intro to Australian Literature, and Australia's Marine Environment. We don't start tutes until Week 2, so those will start tomorrow, but so far, all of the first lectures for my classes went well and I think I picked classes that will be really good (fingers crossed!! but like not actually, because its really hard to type with your fingers crossed. this ois what it oooks like o typw with fingers crossed. kimnda trippy). moving on. 

first day of school!!!

lecture slide says "Bring colored pencils to your tutorial"

On Monday Night, St. John's had its first formal college dinner. BUT before we had dinner, there was a service to formally admit us (freshers and sepos) as members of St. John's College. Oh, quick vocab lesson first. 

Freshers = anyone who is living at College for the first time even if they aren't first year Uni students.

 

College = the residential college aka St. John's.

Here "university" is not synonymous with "college." They call "university," Uni and "college" is solely the term for the on campus residence place...so confusing. Now we get to the good one. I don't know if people use the term "sepos" elsewhere, but here at St. John's we are referred to as sepos...

Sepos = a term for American Study Abroad Students, abbreviated as a slang word for septic tank which came from the stereotype that Americans talk $h!t...lol

...it's casual..whatever. haha. Anyway so all the new freshers and sepos had to participate in this service, which well...let's just say it was my first time saying some of these prayers/hymns. We all had to dress in our formal gowns and yeah, it was pretttty interesting. After a few ceremonious prayers, we each individually went to the front and wrote our names into the official College Roll book. I think my hand was shaking because I was so nervous that I would trip that my signature was legit unrecognizable. so funny though. At some points, I was consciously holding back laughter. But I kept my cool. no worries. 

After the service, we all went to the dining hall for Formal Dinner. At formal dinner instead of going to get food from the cafeteria style servers, we sit and are served at our tables (except for me cuz you still have to go to the kitchen for the veggie meal) and it takes much longer and yeah. There is also a whole set of new dining hall rules for what order things are served in and how you are meant to pass the dishes around the table. Very interesting stuff. Very organized. There is formal dinner every Monday and Thursday so I am sure I will get quite skilled at remembering the passing rotation and what utensils/dishes are meant for which food/course by the end of the semester. Apparently they used to have Formal Dinners four times a week but they just recently cut down to twice a week. I know that the point is for people to take the time to really have a sit down dinner and have a nice long conversation with the other people at the table instead of running off to sports practice or grabbing food really quickly, but I've actually noticed that even on normal/not formal nights, after people are done eating they always spend 10-20 minutes just sitting at the table making good conversation, so that's nice. 

After the long service and super long dinner I was exhausted and I went to bed very early. 

Tuesday night, after classes and dinner, my off campus friends and I decided to go see a movie at a movie theatre in South Bank. Even though we had to spend like $7 on transport, the student price for movies on Tuesdays is only $5.50, which is like amazing. We saw Sextape which was surprisingly good and not bad. Honestly, I thought it would be the worst movie ever, but it was actually so funny. Instead of being the worst movie ever, I realized it just had the bad luck of having THE WORST trailer ever. Like they made it seem like it would be painful cringeworthy comedy and that the characters were dumb, but it was not bad at allllll. I was laughing so hard, it was hilarious. No regrets. 

saving seats in the movie theatre

Wednesday was Market Day! Okay it wasn't that exciting. That's just the name of the day when all the student clubs set up tables all around the great court and on campus and try and get you to join their clubs. I got a few chill flyers and joined the Students Psychology Association (they told me I'd get discounts, so hopefully it'll be worth it). Also there were a few sports things set up and I watched some bubble soccer. Bubble soccer is just normal soccer but every individual has their upper body inside of this HUGE air filled bubble (your legs are free to run though) and you just run around and bump into each other. Seemed...fun. That night, after classes and dinner, we went to see my first rugby game! I know we have rugby in the US, but like tbh, I'd never seen a game so like this was really exciting for me. People had always described it to me as kind of like football except more people get hurt, but it was sooooo much better than foot ball!!! Like after people get tackled, instead of stopping and rubbing their butts for 5 minutes, the players actually keep the game going, and don't do that annoying thing of stopping every 5 seconds. Kudos to whoever invented rugby. Except I would have given the players more than just a mouthguard and an optional helmet. But that's just me.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIGHTS? 

my first rugby game!!!

The weekend was pretty social and without a lot of school work yet, I had the chance to bond with a lot of new people. On Friday night there was a St. John's themed party at the college only for st. john's people, which was really fun. America has its own variety of classic party themes, but I was not prepared for a theme of "footy jocks and frilly frocks," which turned out to mean rugby outfits and ridiculous costume dresses. My friends and I just dressed up in chill sporty clothing, but I was VERY impressed with what some of the frilly frocked girls turned up in. I don't have any pictures but just imagine like ridiculous colorful and poofy dresses. so funny. It was actually such a good night because I got to chat with a lot of the people at college and I could see that it was a good choice to live at college instead of just living with 3 or 4 flatmates. I will be able to get to know more people and more importantly, live with 200+ awesome australians! Also, a lot of the music they played were australian classics, so it was really funny to watch all the Australians get excited for a song, when I had literally never heard of it in my life. One girl was super nice and, when she got the chance, would try to whisper the next line of lyrics of the songs really fast in my ear before the whole room got to singing the line together, so I was able to at least pretend I knew what was going on even if I missed a word or two here and there.

Yesterday (Saturday), I successfully went to the cardio room and worked out without being that weirdo biking in the middle of weight lifters (too soon?). Then at night, I did an international student's pub crawl with some of my friends and it was really fun! It ended up being half pub crawl/half walking tour of Brisbane's night life, because we walked from place to place and so we ended up getting some good exercise and got a nice little tour of the city, but it was really funny because we were in a group of probably 50 other people, all wearing white T-shirts. Not touristy at all. Jokes. SO touristy. Actually, we kinda looked like a hip hop dance crew. I felt really legit. Anyway. At the first place, we were given some ice breaker activities to do to get to know some of the other students and then we were split into two larger of people, and luckily, my good friend ended up being in my group which was SO good because as much as I can make small talk with new friends, I don't think I could have done that all night. There were actually a fair number of Australians who did it (the program was run by Australians who did a semester abroad somewhere, usually Europe or the states, while they were at Uni, so they are really good at making study abroad students feel welcome and stuff because they went through it themselves elsewhere) so I got lots of good tips of where to visit when I see other places in Australia! Also all of the other students I met don't live on campus so I probably wouldn't meet them otherwise, unless we had a class together, so as much as I like living at college, it's nice to have friends in different places. Overall, the whole night was a pretty funny experience. 

pre-pub crawl chilling

so many white shirts, so little time #leadingthepack

we had to find a little koala...and we did! 

pizza break!

Today (Sunday), was pretty unextraordinary. I just met up with some of my friends and went to a library on campus to do some psych and bio homework. I found out that the library we were in (the biological sciences library) is a 24 hour one so that's really good to know, but hopefully I'll be pulling less all nighters here than I do at Princeton. Also, I am getting better at the table etiquette thing at meals and tonight I successfully poured some water for people before pouring my own (previously I would just die of thirst until someone offered me water before they poured their own, because I would be too scared to say "would anyone like water?" haha) So WOOOO!!! Exciting I know...