I woke up bright and early for orientation. Bright and early
kind of describes the mornings here though. The sun comes up at like 5 am here.
It’s crazy. They don’t have daylight savings time or anything. I woke up and
got ready to go. I left and texted Aaron. We actually met in the elevator. He
lives on the 10th floor and Kyron lives on the 9th floor, so I caught it going
down. We walked to South
Bank station and caught the bus to Kelvin Grove. We
sat in the seats that say handicapped and priority seating. They flip up so a
wheelchair can fit in it. This lady with a stroller got on and looked at this
Asian lady sitting on the other side in the seats real mean. She mumbled
something and the Asian lady got up. The lady with the stroller was hateful and
rude. Me and Aaron just tried to avoid eye contact with her. Haha. We got off
at the Kelvin Grove stop and it was still rainy and nasty outside. I always
thought that the weather was going to be nice and stuff in Australia. It’s been
so nasty and gross outside every day. I had to find Z block. That is where the
Creative Industries building is. They pronounce it “Zed Block” because the letter z is
pronounces
“zed”. They also pronounce the letter h like “haych”. That’s
different. Haha. I walked up a bunch of steps and down a big hill. There were
these other people that were going to Z Block. I tried talking to them, but
they were a little strange. This one girl had a hula-hoop on her arm. I don’t
know what that was for. She carried it in the elevator and everything. I
finally found the room that I was supposed to be in. Hula-hoop girl and her
gang weren’t in my room. It was mostly full of first year students and people
just starting at QUT. That is what the orientation is for. I felt really old. A
lot of them just graduated high school and stuff. I was one of the only
exchange students there. There was this other girl from like Sweden or
something that was studying photography. There was one guy from Connecticut
there named Spencer who was born in the US, but has permanently moved to
Australia. He did all of high school there and is now starting Uni. They call
it “Uni”, which is short for University. We would just say college, but that’s
different here. They like to shorten words. Another example is air
conditioning. They seriously say “Air con”. Most of the times people in America
are just joking when they say it like that. Anyways, our instructors were nice.
They were two girls who are on their last year at University. One even studied
abroad in London last semester. We played icebreakers. What orientation would
be complete without one? I’ve kind of gotten used to them. They’ve become a
trademark of the college life. The instructors went through a lot of stuff like
being responsible for your own education and stuff that I have already heard
before. I did learn some stuff about programs at
QUT. There is this thing
called Assignment Minder, where you sometimes will have to turn in assignments
to. You take your papers to an Assignment Minder place on campus and they scan
your assignment and get it sent to the professor. They said it was a better
system than at other places. Sounds kind of complicated. We left the room we were in and went on a
tour of campus. Once again, it was pouring rain and stupid me didn’t have an
umbrella or anything. I don’t know why I didn’t think to bring a rain jacket.
After the wet tour of campus, I caught the bus back to Garden’s Point and met
up with everyone. All of their stuff had been on that campus because they are
all business majors and stuff. I had gotten some free stuff at the orientation
on Kelvin Grove campus and it was soaked by this point. We walked around at
some of the booths and stuff. The Student Guild is an organization on campus
and drives a lot of campus life. They are throwing a huge toga party later in
the week. It is at
the botanical gardens and people said that a lot of people
from all over have come to it in the past. We bought tickets and afterwards
learned that if we found Waldo in their magazine, we could have gotten free
tickets. Mandy found it pretty quick and we all sent emails in to the email
account telling where it was. None of us got the tickets though. Apparently 20
people had already gotten it. We met up with a couple of other exchange people
and went to our orientation for Study Abroad and Exchange. There were like 275
people in this huge auditorium. It is crazy that that many people came to QUT
to study! There were so many different countries and everything. At the
beginning of the orientation though, the lady called out everyone’s country and
people cheered when their country was called. We were last and we all stood up
and yelled and stuff. Haha. We were on the front row too. There were a lot of
speakers there, talking about living here in Brisbane and things that would be
going on throughout the semester. There was this one group that was giving away
free day trips to places. I really want to be able to travel and have it also
be semi-affordable. I didn’t win anything though. The Study Abroad people gave
away prizes too, but of course I didn’t win any of those either. That is just
my
luck. It was good to put the faces to the names of people in the Study
Abroad office that have emailed us and stuff. There was this police officer
that was really funny with her presentation. At one point she was talking about
screaming and she said, “You can’t scream like the girls in those horrible
American movies,” or something like that, and the whole auditorium erupted in
applause. They were clapping against us. This goes to show how America is
viewed in other countries. Bad relations? Humm… Later, the buddy group leaders
came out. We are all paired up with a buddy. They are either volunteers or have
studied abroad in the past. My buddy is Josh, who we went to the Gold Coast
with! How random! But he wasn’t there that day. We all got in our groups though
and Allie from Arizona, and Teemu from Ireland are in my group. Group I! Yeah!
After we all talked and got the free little kangaroos and koalas, we went to
get food. We waited in the rain in a line for a while, only to find out that we
had to have a ticket to get the free food. We had to go and find a ticket.
Finally Allie did and we ate. It was really good. It was still pouring down
rain, but I had put on a poncho that they gave me in one of my freebie bags.
Haha. At least I could be semi dry. It wasn’t a good day to wear my Sperry’s.
They were soaked! There was a concert going on outside too, but it was too
rainy to stay.
There apparently were people from the X Factor and Australia’s
Got Talent that were there performing. After we walked back to Urbanest, I
changed out of my wet clothes and looked at all of the stuff that I got. By the
time we got done changing and stuff, it was time to go and see that place in
Auchenflower. We took a wrong bus and it took a little longer than it should
have, but me and Kyron finally found the place. That is where a smart phone
would come in handy again. Everyone else was at Amici’s getting the $5 pizzas,
but we would meet them there. The house we saw was so nice! It is a couple, Angie
and Javier that just move in earlier that day. Kyron had called them just a
couple of hours after they put up the add on the search engine called Gumtree.
It is where people post adds and stuff, kind of like Craig’s List. The room was
nice there and everything was wonderful. I didn’t like that the bills weren’t
included, but I would be willing to pay extra because it was so good. There was
a huge deck too that overlooked the river and the city. I really hope that I
get this one. There are two rooms up for grabs and there were like 4 people
there looking. We were all guys and she was a little bit overwhelmed. Haha. I
hope she likes me and chooses me though. She said that she would call the next
day with an answer. After seeing the house, we went to the pizza place.
Everyone else had already ate and stuff so I didn’t eat anything. I still had
the other half of my sub back at Urbanest if I was hungry. We all walked back
to Urbanest and hung out downstairs. It was so much fun! I’m really starting to
love these people! Haha! Aaron’s birthday is coming up and we are planning
something big for it. It’s going to be good! Kyron left early to go upstairs
because he had work in the morning. I went up stairs with him so that I could
go back downstairs with his card, so I could get up to the room later. Woosh.
After hanging out and everything some more, I went upstairs and went to sleep.
It had been a really long day.
Until next time,
QueensLandon
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