So as week three of officially living down under wraps up I have yet again come to some notice some very important points: 1) Uni (college) here is amazing. 2) Inventive drinking games will exist in any culture and 3) if any stranger asks, I am now from Canada.
First things first, of course the only reason I'm here... school! ha! I really did try to make a valiant effort to attend most of my classes the first week of school but let's be honest, everyone knows that the first week of school, regardless of culture, is syllabus week in which attendance is optional at best. For the classes I did attend, I was pleasantly surprised not to see a single T.A. and I don't have a class larger than 100! I also have a lab that has a whopping 7 kids in it.. the only time you would see that at the U of I is if the T.A.s go on strike and/or Unofficial. I was slightly discouraged to see that despite the fact that I'm taking mainly health science classes while I'm here, everyone and their mom dresses up to come to school. Girls and guys alike. I look even more like a bum than usual.. so depressing. But oh well, I guess I won't take it personally that the guys here probably spend more time on their wardrobe than I do.. it just makes them that much cuter ;) I was initially pretty scared of my courseload while I'm here but it turns out that I have a rocking schedule (4 day weekends!), my professor for Bioenergetics is absolutely amazing, the class that will fill my 400 level Kines requirement at home is IDENTICAL to a class I just took at the U of I last semester so I already know all the material and the prof rocks, my Anthro Psych class is actually pretty interesting, and I'll let ya know about my other class.. I may or may not have accidentally missed it.. 2 weeks in a row.. oh well, I'm trying to play the international card as long as possible :)
Now for the real reason I'm here, the people! These past few weeks have definitely been a great mix of friends and family. I have made some amazing friends from all over the place, with a dominant force coming from the UK. A lot of us are commuters to school however and chose to do random housing options all over the place so generally when we go out its safe to assume that we won't be making it home and that we honestly don't know where we're staying. This leads to a lot of floor sleeping and a lot of walk-of-shaming it home in the same clothes from the night before but ultimately some great great memories, however blurry they might be :) The drinking games that result from a room full of international students compiling all the rules is absolutely phenomenal. Last night was the Geeks and Freaks pub crawl which was absolutely amazing. After Maria, Jos, Will, John, and I went exploring the local Salvo (Salvation Army) we went all out which made for some interesting looks when we all arrived separately by bus and train to meet at the pub. I also had the opportunity to go to a tupperware party the night before with my amazing host mum, Catherine, and have an organic soaps and hygienics party tomorrow morning fully equipped with tea and scones. I think it's fair to say I have accrued a nice balance of uni friends as well as the 40+ crowd :)
Now, last but not least. For all travel intensive purposes, I am Canadian. I rely on the bus and train practically everyday for travel so that makes for quite the commute and quite the increased incident rate to talk to people. Generally I LOVE talking to random people and gaining lots of tid bits of info and really just love the company. However, it never fails, as soon as someone starts talking to me they instantly want to know when I'm from. Naturally, I say Chicago because who the hell knows where Champaign is? The next 5-10 minutes are almost guaranteed to be filled with the first question of "how do you like it here so far" followed by something along the lines of "so you guys are pretty fucked up over there, eh?". One guy I met on the bus carried on for about 5 minutes telling me how ignorant Americans are, it's our fault we're so broke and thought we were strong enough to go through 2 wars within a 10 year period, we're ruthless for denying people chemo due to lack of health insurance, and our work force is treated like shit based on our low minimum wage and lack of holidays. After this five minute period of tearing down my homeland, he proceeded to ask me out to dinner sometime.. naturally I wrote down a random 10 digit number and flipped him the bird while exiting the bus. Unfortunately, convos such as these happen on a quite frequently. As soon as my accent gives away that I'm American, a comment regarding Bush's idiocracy, our extreme debt, or a question asking what I think about Obama is soon to follow. I don't like talking about Obama in the states, and I def don't like talking about him here. For some reason, people assume that I was the one that decided to drive the nation into debt and I single handedly elected Obama and advised him to go against all his empty promises. I have found that the best way to prevent situations such as these is to wear head phones at all times (unless a cute Aussie wanders my way) or to simply ask them how they feel about the Carbon Tax that's about to imposed here. My next game plan is to claim Canadian heritage and hope for the best. It is most certainly not the case that everyone here is like that. For the most part everyone here has been so welcoming, so utterly amazing words can't describe. But of course, every now and then you get stuck to someone on the bus that wants to inform you how they'll never fly domestically in the US due to a documentary they saw here about how all US pilots make $12,000 so surely can't be trusted with our safety.
But that's my rant of the day.. So far the time here has been absolutely amazing and I can't to see whats in store :)
No comments:
Post a Comment