Today is my second day in Australia, and I'm feeling a lot more comfortable than I was on the begging of my first day.
I had moved into my residence, and spent the night there. My flat turns out to be the furthest one from the university, on the ground floor, and it seems like it was in the middle of nowhere; I wasn't the happiest, but I was fine. I got a good night's sleep, and got up the next morning to go to the housing introduction session; it was all stuff I've heard before except they seemed to tell me that the campus was not safe to walk home alone with, etc etc. Kinda scared...
Anyways, I finished the session and decided to walk over to the university to get my student card and my bus pass... talk about overwhelming - the campus is huge, and confusing. But as I was walking over, I found myself increasingly more culture shocked - feeling upset because things weren't how I imagined them to be. The little things were what were getting me the most.
The grass is much different, it's really short and stubby, doesn't even look like regular grass, the cars are all different - aside from driving on the other side of the road, and having the steering wheel on the other side - they are all toyotas and nissans - very few chryslers, etc. But the absolute worst, was the birds. They have crows here, but they're not like regular crows. They make a horrible noise, and have chins that buldge out like frogs... their eyes are ghost white, and they look like they want to kill you... freaky.
So I wasn't feeling too well about Australia, but as I walked back to my flat, I met some of my roommates, who basically gave me the run-down on Curtin and Aus. I was feeling 10x more comfortable after that, and later on that night I went to a pizza social for the rez and made some new friends that I hung out with - good times!
Some stuff I still have to do this week:
- Get my courses sorted out - Brock and Curtin are fighting again, have to be the middle man.
- Go grocery shopping - (that's going to be a bloody nightmare deserving of its own post)
- Finish a bunch of little stuff.
I'm feeling a lot more comfortable, but my goal for this week, and next week (which is orientation) is to make as many friends as possible. Let's hope my plan succeeds!