Arvo (good afternoon, pronounce like avo in avocado)

At the 'Bush Dance'

In McGregor Dining Hall

measuring our heights on Georgie's door!

I have just finished O Week and school starts on Monday! On the last day we had a lesson in Aussie slang. They attempted to teach us some, but saying I’m as ‘mad as a cut snake’ or his ‘kangaroos loose in the top paddock’ doesn’t quiet sound as good in an American accent. O Week was fun, but pretty low key because it was only for international students. On the last night we all got together and played Uno in the common room (who would have thought that Uno was such a worldly game?) and compared cultures.  For example, I found out that the Queen Elizabeth owns every single swan that lives in England, and that apparently most Europeans believe that a swan could kill a person if it really wanted to. (We had many intelligent discussions about things such as swans for the rest of the night, it was hilarious). On Saturday we went to downtown Toowoomba for the first time. Toowoomba is the second largest inland city in Oz, with Canberra, the capital, being the first. Toowoomba's population is only around 100,000. Needless to say, most Australians live by the coast. The town itself is nice, a couple shopping malls and lots of parks everywhere, but it is definitely not like downtown Brissie. Because none of us came here with enough jackets, we all bought USQ hoodies from the school. Unfortunately, there was only one style of hoodie, black with a bright yellow eagle on the back. If it wasn’t easy to spot us already, now we have become a gang of black sweatshirts, the international students. Saturday night we all went to a party at one of the Danes house with a few of the Aussies that returned from holiday early. It was pretty far from campus and my map went walkabout, so finding our way home was an adventure as well. The next night we had a "Bush Dance." I was reminded more of a Hoe Down than I was of an aboriginal tribal dance around a fire pit, which is what I might have been expecting. Wishful thinking :) But I won a free hat and had heaps of fun twirling around with my friends, making total fools of ourselves. I did manage to pull a muscle in my calf and have been gimping around campus for the past couple days. I was about to attribute this embarrassment to my lack of athleticism, but my friend Linn remarked that I had "put the most soul into my dancing." I might go with her perspective instead. Class starts soon, and I am getting excited!!

Birds of Paradise at USQ