O-Week is now over, and I finally have some free time.  The past week has been an incredible experience.  The week started Saturday night, with learning the King’s College War Chant, but every time someone messed up, we would do pushups/situps/burbies(a jump to pushup thing).  After that, we all had to go make a whirlpool in our pool, then make it change direction.  Not easy when there’s 130 guys in a fairly small pool.  Then we went inside for a bit and were given our “fresher names.”  I became “Autismo,” but I have yet to find out why.  We finally got to bed that night around 1:30. 

Sunday started reeeeeally early, at about 5.  We went on an early morning run around campus, and then came back for breakfast.  After breakfast, we were split into two groups.  My group stayed at King’s, and did an obstacle course around campus including swimming, a slip-n-slide, mud pit, fireman carries, and running.  We did this twice, and the first time we had to carry an empty keg around, and the second we had to carry the keg and a person.  That afternoon, we went to the Australian National Paintball Fields, where we got to play paintball capture the flag.  However, I didn’t bring any money, so I only got to play the first game, and then watch four others.  But that was okay, because it was really hot and humid, so I was alright with sitting in the shade while everyone else ran around exhausting themselves.  That night I forget what we did, but we were up late again, probably learning some other songs or chants or something.  Lots of pushups/situps/burbies.

Monday through Thursday are all kind of mashed together in my head now, so I’m gonna go into a lot less detail.  As the week went on, the “Sirs” (upperclassmen) started to get easier on us, and we did less pushups and more joking around.  We had events with different colleges, including ice skating, bowling, parties, meals, dance lessons, and going to a water park.  All of this was really fun, even though we were still staying up late learning new songs every night, and getting up early to go running. 

Friday was the last day of O-Week, and we got to sleep in until 7.  I never thought I could be so happy about getting up at 7.  That day we went to the beach, with a few other colleges.  Australian beaches are amazing.  It seemed crowded when we first got there, but we had plenty of room to play Frisbee, and when we went into the water there was plenty of space to swim around.  I was only in the water for maybe an hour, because the waves here are so much bigger than anything I’ve seen before.  According to the Australians, they were average sized, but I was exhausted after being thrown to the ocean floor a few times, so I called it a day.  A few of us then went into a restaurant looking over the ocean, and had lunch.  After lunch we found some slot machines. After quickly losing two dollars, I decided gambling wasn’t for me and I left.  That night we had our formal dinner signifying the end of O-Week, which was really fun.  The food has been really good so far, and it was especially good at that dinner. 

So I slept most of the day Saturday, and today I spent a lot of the day shopping for some last minute things to get ready for school tomorrow.  Just one last thing that I’ve wanted to say, but couldn’t figure out how to fit in: We have baked beans and spaghetti for breakfast like, every other day.  One of the weirdest things about Australia so far. 

So, I’ve been here for almost a week now, I think it’s about time I blog it up.  So, we got here Tuesday morning, at about 8 a.m.  The flight was really long, but sleeping and movies made it pass pretty quickly.  After we landed, Ann picked us up outside of customs and got a bus to bring us all to where we are staying.  We had an hour or so to settle in before heading in to Toowong Village to go shopping.  After a couple hours, most of us decided to come back to our colleges (Colleges here are like dorms that feed you here, and the University is mostly academics).  Coleman and I started wandering around King’s College, where we’re staying, and eventually got picked up by a security guard who showed us around.  We were brought up to some upper classmen’s room, and it was his birthday, so they were having a little party and they invited us to stay.  We stayed up there for pretty much the rest of the night, playing games, watching TV, and just hanging out.

            Day 2 (Wednesday) started early, with an information session led by Ann about life in Australia.  After that we took a bus to Southbank, where we had lunch (paid for by Dickinson) at a really good Italian restaurant.  After lunch we hopped on a bus tour around Brisbane, which was okay, it was pretty fast paced and mostly a blur.  After the tour I came back to King’s, had dinner, and called it a night. 

            Day 3 (Thursday) was probably my favorite day so far.  We had an early day again, and left campus at 8:30 to go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where we could hold koalas, feed kangaroos and emus, and see all kinds of other Aussie animals like dingoes and wallabies.  That took up the morning, and we went back into the city for lunch.  We then had a scavenger hunt through the city, revisiting places we had seen on the bus tour yesterday.  This was really fun, but also really tiring.  We had to finish up at 4, and my team won, so we got some Tim-Tams, which are really good chocolate cookie things.  That night all of the colleges went into the city to The Chalk Hotel.  It was an okay time, big parties and loud music aren’t really my thing, but I met a lot of Aussies from other colleges. 

            Day 4 (Friday) was pretty laid back, with nothing scheduled.  A few of us went back to the Queen St. Mall in the city to get a couple things, but nothing that exciting happened during the day.  That night, there was another all college party at St. Leo’s.  Coleman and I found out that it was jungle themed on our way there, so we were given pieces of celery to put in our pocket as our “costume.” Pretty lame, but oh well.  I met a lot of other people there, including some other Americans, but Ben, Ben from Wash U, Olivia and I left early and went to some Kebab place in The Ville, a little shopping center like 2 seconds away from King’s.  The food was surprisingly good, so I definitely be going back again. 

            Today is the start of O-Week, supposedly the best week we’ll never want to have again.  I don’t know when I’ll be able to post again, but hopefully this week is as good as they claim it is.