Orientation Week

I moved into my room at Union Residential College a couple days ago after hauling all my stuff from the hostel through the city to the ferry to the University of Queensland. Then I had to find Union College, which was a bit of a trek around campus as well. But I finally arrived and got moved in and have been pretty busy with activities for the college, as well as for international students. At one welcome meeting, a guy gave us a talk about how not all Australians are like Crocodile Dundee, and that contrary to stereotypes, he did not kill his breakfast this morning. I thought it was funny that later on at dinner I sat with these two Australian guys, and they were talking about going spear fishing and killing a 5 foot ray, and then barbecuing it, along with other stories of eel and shark fishing. So maybe there is something to these stereotypes of killing and eating strange animals...

Earlier that day, I asked if anyone ever swims or rafts in the Brisbane River that goes through the city, and I found out that it is full of bull sharks. Apparently these sharks will go after you and swimming is not recommended. However, the guys I was talking with at dinner say that it is the best place to wakeboard, and that you only have to worry about the sharks when you are waiting to get up out of the water. Crazy people.

The people I have met here have been really cool so far, all the Australians are a very friendly and outgoing group of people. It's strange going around and hearing their accent everywhere, and they tell me I have a funny accent. We have been doing a bunch of welcome week/orientation activities like bowling, ice skating (it was crazy, they rink actually stopped in the middle of the public session to play red rover on the ice... I think that would lead to a lot of lawsuits in America), and going to a water park. They make us wear these red 'Union College' shirts at all of these events, we look like clones. We also had a formal dinner last night, which was cool. The food is really good at the cafeteria here normally, but they cooked us salmon and other good stuff that was pretty impressive for dorm food. We also had a BBQ for lunch today and they cooked the best hamburger I think I ever had. They do not mess around with the BBQ'ing.

The international kids in my college are from Canada the US, Sweden, Malaysia, New Zealand/England, Hong Kong and a some other places. At the international orientation, they mentioned every country that had students coming to UQ, and I would say that most every part of the globe was represented, even North Korea and Zimbabwe and other places. They are all interested in traveling around, so hopefully we will organize some trips around the country pretty soon.



The pictures are of the city cat ferry, a bridge on the Brisbane River, and a random shot of Union College in red shirts at a BBQ.