O week

Okay, so still pretty far behind here. The week of February 20th-24th was deemed "O Week" or orientation week. New students come to meet with their faculty, which is like a general group of similar majors, but as an international student, there was a separate orientation for me to attend. Here is a link to some of the activities and such that they had lined up for us: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/Resources/Divisions/Services/Student%20and%20Academic%20Services/Student%20Administration/Images/Online%20Orientation/INTERNATIONAL%20STUDENT%20ORIENTATION.pdf
University of Newcastle is nearly twenty percent international students, so running into other foreigners, especially Americans and British, is real common. Campus is huge. Like 260 acres or something ridiculous, so getting to class is a long process. I have a solid walk to the train station, nearly two kilometers, and then I have to pay $4.60 for a round trip pass to campus, which is about ten minutes each way. Then I get to campus, and it's a solid ten-fifteen minute walk to any building in which I have class. But campus is dope as hell, it's all in the bush so walking to class is like a nature walk. There's some pretty cool buildings, restaurants--oh, and two on-campus bars!
Through the week I got really sick of walking everywhere, so I threw down on a longboard, which I got at a pretty solid price. The week was a good time, made it down to the beach a few times, hit quite a few new bars and clubs, had some pretty insane stories after only a few nights! Oh, and another fun fact about Uni at Newcastle... they have a Quidditch team? Yeah, like Harry Potter Quidditch. We got a free meal and concert at the on-campus bar one of the evenings and a few of us Americans actually played the Uni's Quidditch team. It's actually embarrassing, because we murdered them. I didn't sign up for Quidditch, but I signed up for a bunch of sick clubs like the Goonion where they hook you up with deals on boxed wine, you go on wine tours and stuff. I signed up for info on playing rugby and their version of hockey, which is not on ice and played quite differently. I signed up for a bunch of bar/club VIP memberships, and a few outdoor clubs.
Fun fact: Australians are much much more casual in just about everything they do. Advertising is so much more informal, they'll throw slang into printed advertisements for banks, schools...pretty much anything. I saw a billboard making fun of guys who wear speedos referencing "budgie smugglers". Budgies are birds, and speedos are often referred to as budgie smugglers. Make the connection. People don't really worry about political correctness at all here, and everyone gives each other shit here. States make fun of their neighboring states a ton, and in very harsh ways haha. Australians can just take jokes better.