Week Two

It's weird to think that we've only been here for two weeks. Part of that might be that we haven't been super busy these past two weeks, so the days haven't really rushed past. Also, Tommy More is really similar to Notre Dame. Australia, and this college in particular, have a really sporty, masculine, hard drinking, Catholic atmosphere. The dorm has also been organizing a lot of events to welcome us, which reminds me a lot of Notre Dame. On Monday we had the speed dating and Tuesday we had a movie night with Old School and Anchorman.

On Wednesday we went to a concert by a band called Gyroscope, which was supposed to be the BIGGEST thing going on in Australia right now. The band itself was okay, not my taste exactly, but it was really fun to be at an Australian concert. I mean, not that an Australian concert is really that different from an American concert, but it still seemed like an important part of the culture to experience. Halfway through the concert, my friend John and I went out to go buy a kebab, which is just the Australian equivalent of a gyro, and we saw the opening band at the kebab place. Then, on our way back we just walked up to the backstage door and chatted with the second opening band for a bit. Australia has made me a lot more outgoing, I guess.

Friday night the student government organized a little Flip Cup tournament to try to make the Americans feel more at home. We all came, but it turned out that surprisingly few of the Americans had ever played more than maybe one or two games of Flip Cup before. Well, maybe not that surprising since this is an exchange for engineers and science majors. Luckily it's not a very complicated game and everyone caught on pretty quickly.

Last night St. Thomas More College had its first of three formal dinners. Everyone was really dressed up--girls in semi-formal dresses, guys in suits. The theme was Christmas in August, so they served Christmas-y food, like turkey with cranberry sauce, baked ham, sweet potatoes, and we had Christmas Pudding for dessert. The room was decorated in red and green and all the places had a Christmas Cracker on them. However, my very favorite part was the spiced red wine. Not because I am becoming an alcoholic, but because in my childhood I read a lot of fantasy novels and the various protagonists of them all at one point or another enjoyed a piping hot mug of spiced mead or wine. After a few glasses I felt like whipping back my cape and charging after dark wizards or something. It was awesome. The night went sort of downhill from the dragon slaying since everyone wanted to go out afterwards. We ended up walking forever to wait in line for half an hour to get into a sketch club playing bad music. I didn't even get a kebab, which is usually the best part of going out to sketchy clubs. But the formal dinner was fun.

I'm thinking about doing a half marathon at the end of August. There's a group of other Notre Dame students doing it and I think there's also a UWA team. We'll see--I'm going to ramp up my running schedule for about two weeks and if I can handle 10 miles by about one week before the race, maybe I'll sign up. I like having goals, and it's so easy to run outside here. There are tons of trails through Kings Park which is right behind our dorm, and in front we have the Swan River with a long trail along it.

My Australian accent is improving--I practiced a lot last night. So far I have all the easy words down, like "bettah", "yeah", "guhl" (girl), but I'm having a lot of trouble doing a convincing "no". It's weird--like they have something big stuck in their mouths and I always look like a moron when I try it. Luckily I have a single, so I can practice a lot w/o getting too embarrassed.

Shoot! No pictures! I need to work on that. I'll try to have pictures for my next post.

SIGNING OUT!