Union Ball and Recovery

This past weekend was the Union Ball, our formal event for the year. It's funny how they call these things 'balls' here, it has a goofy sound to it, similar to the 'swim carnival,' instead of 'swim meet'. They just sound so festive! Anyways, it was a ton of fun, much better than I had expected it to be. I borrowed a dress from my friend Laura and my friend Amy messed with my hair and makeup and they were pretty excited about it because I am usually pretty lazy about stuff like that. The venue was good, it was a golf course a ways off the river. We got 5 drink tickets each, but some people definitely scored many more drinks. They had a pretty lax bar set up, and the servers soon learned that you couldn't just fill up glasses of beer on the bar and turn your back. The boys were pretty quick to grab glasses and take off. My friend Gretchen thought she could be sneaky and get some wine bottles sitting behind the bar, so she grabbed 3 and ran off, sad to find out that she had taken them straight from the recycling crate and that they were all empty. I thought it was pretty amusing. Anyways, other than people stealing drinks, dinner was good and my table was fun (mostly friends from my floor plus a few others). Everyone looked really good and there was a dancefloor too, Tom and I got up and did the soulja boy dance when that song came on, always good times. So very American.

Tom and I also went and talked to Jill's husband (Jill is the head of college that nobody likes), who was playing solitaire by himself at a table. We thought, wow, how bored is this guy? Tom offered to play 500 with him, but he was like, no. That's ok. He was a bit cold and serious. We talked to him a bit and found out he is a migration official for the government and his job is to choose who gets to come and live here from overseas. I was like oh hey, awesome, I'm migrating here! Tell me the secrets! We were joking earlier on the bus that I should get randomly married to Rob or someone else to get a green card because my friends here don't want me to go home. He took me quite seriously though, and asked what I was studying. I said business, and he was quiet for some seconds. I said, yeah you don't want me do you? You just want doctors! He just looked straight at me and said, yeah, I didn't want to say it, but you should either do that or engineering or learn a trade. So I guess I shall take up carpentry if this is to happen. I read an article in the paper today about a woman that was trying to encourage more females to enter the plumbing profession. There have been only 10 woman plumbers in Queensland in the last 10 years! So yeah, their tradie shortage is real, I could be a plumber in Australia...

The rest of the time at the golf course was cool, they had a fire dancer performance with tribal drumming, it was really neat. They had fire hula hoops and fireballs on strings they swung around and they would swallow the fire. They also had lighter fluid on the drum heads and the drums would be on fire while the guys were beating them. There was also a fireworks show on the river that night because of the River Festival, and we got to see all of that. It was sweet. Some people also got too drunk and kicked out, this one girl threw up over the balcony right next to a security guard, it was classy for sure. We had buses that took us out to a bar afterwards called the Caxton Street Hotel, and it was an okay place, but some really funny stuff went on there. This one fresher girl was being stupid and called my friend Laura a lesbian, and an argument started up about it. Laura was like no! I get this short haircut and everyone is making stupid stereotypes! The best part about it was that this security guard comes up to her where she was sitting on the stairs. We thought he was going to tell us off for something, but he just leans over and very seriously says, "you have to get up now, there are no muff divers allowed on these stairs, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." It was awesome, so many security guards are so serious and pissed off all the time, it's nice to talk to one that will joke around. Laura also got tired a bit later on in the night and decided that the logical decision would be to go sleep in the toilets for an hour. We were wondering where she went, and when I went to go wash my hands later on, she came out of one of the stalls and was like hey! I just had a great nap. Totally ridiculous. We danced and hung out til pretty late and then caught a ride home with these guys that had been at the River Festival, was very nice of them to drive us home. We then hung out in the 'fatbox' vending machine room talking for a long time until the Union security guard told us to shut up and go to sleep. Was a great night, although some people went a little overboard and were pretty sick by the end of it. I heard some stories of people sleeping the whole night in the shower, not so fun.

The next day after the balls here are traditionally known as 'Recovery'. While one might think that recovery would include sleeping or having a relatively quiet day, it is quite the opposite. It usually is held at a bar, but apparently our social coordinator could not find a single place that would have us, something about last year's Recovery not ending well and us being black listed for these daytime events across the city. I'm not sure what happened, but they guys at my college fight almost every time we go out at night, so it was probably something like that. Anyways, we all went outside on the oval and hung out there all day. It was awesome, people dressed up crazy and played soccer and frizbee or just hung out on couches we dragged out there. There was a lot of rude picture drawing on each other with sharpies. Mom you will be happy to know that some people tried to tag people with vaginas as well as penises. The penises were definitely more prevalent though. My favorite might have been the full facial hair and sideburns that we gave my friend Emily. It was just a really fun day, everyone was outside and hanging out in this huge group. We should have huge hangout days like that every week, it's way better than being at a bar too. The day finished off when I went to go play water polo. I jumped in the pool and my team was like, why is there a giant penis drawn on your back...? I was like umm why isn't there a giant penis drawn on your back, hmm? It was a bit embarrassing, but hey these things happen sometimes. Anyways, that was my ball experience, a bit different from the fairy tale image conjured up by the word 'ball', but it was for sure the best formal event I have been to. Sorry if some of these stories suck/are possibly offensive, some of them you probably had to be there for them to be funny, but I thought it was a great couple days all in all.

Pictures are: bus ride over, some of my table, Laura and I posing with random car outside the bar, recovery photos of hanging out and tagging people. That is not my foot on the bottom by the way...