So it's been a fun and tiring week. This week was O-week for RMIT village, the apartment complex where I live. It's basically an orientation in order to meet more people who live in the village. Also, Univ of Melbourne had orientation as well. So Monday I got to meet with an advisor and pick out some courses: I'm taking Australia Now (a history course), the history of sexualities, and intro. to microbiology. The fourth class I'm still figuring out, which has been a very frustrating process. At the village, they held a comedy night for us. The comedians were not funny in the least bit. Ironic.
Tuesday, we had a Rubicks Cube themed Pub Crawl. It wasn't much of a pub crawl, we only went to 3 pubs and 1 I didn't even get in because it was so packed. But it was funny to see about 100+ people dressed in crazy colorful outfits walking down the streets of Melbourne. There were chants being yelled as we walked along, people were quite rowdy. By the end of the night, I ended up in all orange clothing, I did well.
Wednesday nights is open for the night market at the Victoria Outdoor Market. This past Wednesday was actually the last night, which is sad because it's so much fun. It only runs in the summer though. We got a group of friends to head to the market and we got some very tasty mexican food and enjoyed some YellowTail. There was a woman teaching people how to salsa dance so we went up and did some Latin dancing, shaking our money makers. She was wild.
Thursday afternoon we decided to go to Uni in order to look at the Clubs and Societies on campus. It was an interesting involvement fair. They had everything you could imagine, except a health/wellness club which I wanted to join. But they had a food appreciation club, a men's club (which the guy was pretty convincing, I was thinking of joining), pirate club, magicians club (the guy did a magic trick and made my card stick up on a tree, it was impressive), asian clubs of all sort! haha there were so many choices, I only joined one. Musex, It's an exchange student club. Exciting, I know! At night, there was a cover band coming to the courtyard for our courtyard party. The theme was 90s. I didn't have any 90s gear to wear so instead I just threw on my Regis Class of 99 shirt haha, it was the only thing I had from the 90s. Two suitcases do not allow you to pack for theme parties as well. People had some really good denim outfits going on though. The band was really good, apparently they are popular. We rocked out to some classic 90s jams and danced around like a bunch of idiots.
Friday was the beach day! I've been waiting all week. It was sooo relaxing just chilling out on the beach all day without a care in the world. The beach was St. Kilda's it's about 20 minutes away from where I live. I thought the beach was nice, but apparently it's pretty touristy and not that popular among the locals. There is an amusement park, Luna Park, on one of the corners. There is absolutely no waves going on. The water was kind of chilly but it felt good because the sun was brutal. It was like a wading pool basically. Afterwards, we walked around St. Kilda's, they have a ton of outdoor cafes all along the streets. We ate at a cute little pizzeria. I had a pizza with pumpkin, pine nuts, gorgonzola, and rocket on it. Weird combo but the pizza was delicious! After the beach day, we were wiped out so we just took it easy for the night. It was a nice change of pace because so much has been going on lately. It is great that I can just do whatever I want with no responsibilites.
Today we had to get our acts together and do some shopping, I was running out of food. And we have to plan ahead for our first week of school. Uni starts on Monday. It's bittersweet because I am looking forward to seeing how Australian classes are taught and learning something new. Also, I am glad to have some sort of routine to my days. But I have been enjoying my vacation, no plans or agenda. It's been nice but I guess it has to come to an end at some point. I'm excited to actually be able to plan some trips finally because it has been hard to plan because we don't know what our schedules are gonna be like. I finally booked my spring break trip: One Fish, Two Fish. It's a tour along the eastern coast of Australia, basically. It starts in Brisbane and goes up the coast to Cairns. During the 10 days, we will go skydiving, bungeejumping, white water rafting, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, sailing on the Whitsunday Islands, etc... It sounds amazing! I am exciting that I finally got that planned.
Ok well I'll let you know how my first day of school goes, hopefully I don't walk into the wrong classroom. It's a big school, about 45,000 like PSU so I guess I will never see some of the people again if I end up making a fool of myself.