Fresh off the boat

Hi everyone! Sorry about the lack of posting, I’m a little discombobulated and overwhelmed. So I made it Australia, and what a trip it was! 24 hours of flight + lay over + different time zone – 1 day= 1 very dazed and confused me. By the time I stood in front of the Townsville Airport I could only sway back and forth on my feet as I tried to respond to people with accents. Luckily I met up with the other students from my school and I met one of my roommates! Our dorms are suite style singles! Dinning halls are annoying though. There’s one for every dorm and they have strict hours so interacting with campus is limited to the dorm, meh. I have met quite a few people so far; Germans, Norwegians, Dutch, Hollanders, Ecuadorian, English…and a bucket ton of Americans. I came here to escape America! Oh well, I have noticed that foreign students tend to group together, mostly with their own nationality. It feels weird being the international student, now I know why my schools foreign students huddle together like they do; being in a foreign country is easier with people going through the same things.

I’ve mostly been getting familiar with campus and smoothing out my schedule. I had to drop photography due to a clash, so now I’m taking painting. Other than that I’ve been hanging out with my new friends and trying out the local activities. I’ve been to the tav (tavern) and we tried to go to the aboriginal full moon drum circle; unfortunately it was rained out. Which is weird because we’re in the middle of Australian winter.

At the tav last night we met one of the tav’s usuals, a beer loving possum! They’re very different from the possums back home (this guy was actually cute, I suggest you look them up on Google). A bandicoot also joined the party to snack on bugs. That's the thing about the wildlife here, its everywhere and mingles surprisingly well with the people. I wake up to hear the stereotypical jungle background sound every morning (the kind that has all the bird calls). Kookaburras are abundant; causally flying around giving students only a passing glance and laughing raucously at 6 am… They’re not the only birds around campus; I’ve seen ibis, magpies, turkeys, and other birds I couldn’t name. These animals are very unique even the turkeys are pure black with bald red heads and a double-fanned tail, and these animals are just on campus. Henrietta (my Norwegian friend) says she saw a wallaby early one morning, I’ve yet to see one.