Uni O-week!

I've learned a lot of terminology in the first week. What I call Coo-gee beach (Coogee) is actually pronounced Cudgee (like could-ya without the "a," and add an "ee"), college is known as uni, any kind of candy is called a lolly or lollies (for example, a bowl of skittles is actually a bowl of lollies), cell phones don't exist (only mobiles), people carry $10 notes in their pockets and not bills, I live in a unit (an apartment, or a dorm), and a water fountain is a bubbler! Who woulda thought.

O-week is orientation week, the week before classes begin. All of the clubs and societies on campus put up a booth and try to recruit freshmen (freshers) as they walk by, similar to U.S. universities' extracurricular bazzares. The campus is packed with first-years, checking out all the possible things to commit to and invest their time in.

I've been really busy in this time as well. I went on a couple tours of campus - one where you hand them your schedule and they personalise the tour to your timetable, and the other a more general campus-wide tour. I've been feeling somewhat busy just with the administration details, so I was working out some enrollment conflicts and getting my student ID Monday morning. I hadn't been given any sort of schedule to events on campus, so I had nowhere to be. Unfortunately, I later learned that there was a welcome event held by the engineering faculty - and in this case, they meant a 5 hour lecture, orientation, and get-to-know-other-students event, following by an evening barbecue. I talked to some students who have been at the university for a few years who don't find it to be any big issue, but it would have been nice to have known about it before it happened.

So far, I've seen a pre-screening of Pompeii (due to come out in Australia on March 20th, although I think it's been released in the U.S.), seen a live comedy show with comedians from all over the country (Australian humor is really similar to American humor, with a bit more poking fun at themselves), went to Campus Idol (I would have done it had I found a guitar by now!), attended a brunch put on by my residence hall (Fig Tree Hall - good to meet some fellow residents), and went to an Arduino workshop (where I programmed a Bluetooth controller to receive signals from my smartphone). These are some of the activities that you can find during O-week, but not nearly all of them - there's always so much going on.

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