University of Newcastle

It has now been about two weeks since I arrived at the University of Newcastle.

My first impression was that the campus was HUGE, but very beautiful. It is full of paths that are surrounded by trees and bushes. Our room is pretty awesome too; Kathryn and I have our own kitchen and bathroom. We have a bunch of shelves, and a really large desk. Yet, we needed to go to the store to buy sheets, food, and other supplies. After sleeping on sheetless beds for one night, we got up the next morning and had to figure out how to get to Jesmond (or Jeszo as the locals call it), the shopping center about 10 minutes away. We asked friends who went to the store the night before how to take the bus. The bus stop is about 2 minutes from our dorm so we walked there and waited about 20 minutes for the bus to come. We didn't have the bus schedule (luckily we do now) and we went sure what side of the street to stand on. A day of lucky guesses, we got to the shopping center quickly. Jesmond is like a normal mall, except instead of large department stores, there is the Big W (aka Walmart) on one end and a Woolworths (a supermarket) on the other end. We decided to go grocery shopping first. Kathryn and I walked up and down every aisle to make sure that we would not forget to buy anything. After about 2 hours, Kathryn and I were checking out. By that time, we did not have enough arms to carry all our bags, so we opted to go to the Big W the next day and try to manage to take the bus home, each carrying 10 bags full of food. We looked like the stereotypical stupid Americans walking back to our dorm at a turtle's pace with looks on our faces that our arms were going to fall off. To make it worse, the bags were braking and our food was spilling all over the ground. =/ Anyways, we decided to take a few extra helpers with us the next day. To make a long story short, we again looked like fools on the bus after shopping at the Big W, each carrying 3 huge buckets to put our clothes in, as our closets came with no drawer space. On Monday, Orientation week started. UoN (University of Newcastle) had many planned events for the international students, such as a commencement ceremony, bbq, and live bands at Bar on the Hill (the bar on campus). In the dorms (or colleges as they are called here) the RAs planned a themed party every night. We had a country party (we were Irish), a beach party, a toga party, a disco party, and a grafetti party. We also obtained our student cards, learned how to check our email, set up a bank account, bought new phones, and signed up for classes. I must thank about 20 million people in helping us with this process, as I would have been completely lost without them. A bunch of our new friends drove us around, answered a billion of our questions, and helped us get to where we needed to be. As a side note, everyone is EXTREMELY nice here. Unlike in the US, they are happy to drive you somewhere you need to be, without expecting anything in return. =) Throughout the week, I was able to go on a beach tour and also on Saturday I went on a Dolphin cruise and saw about 50 dolphins! =) Overall, Orientation week at UoN was a blast. I was able to get everything done, and had a lot of fun and meet a lot of really cool people in the process. =)