Random Musings

G’day to everyone! I’ve been quite tired as of late, and lacking all motivation for school. I know it sounds horrible, I feel pretty bad about it. It just feels like there is so much else going on in my life that I should be focusing on and it’s hard to try and experience everything while still working hard. But maybe sometimes your focus should change, I don’t know, I’ve never been so horrible in school! Anyway, that’s why I’m writing this right now instead of something else! We’ve been trying to plan trips for the rest of the time we’re here, it’s difficult to get things finalized and such. There is so much I want to see that I won’t have the time or money for. I guess that just means I’ll have to come back a few more times in my life! We have plans for Sydney in a couple weeks, and then New Zealand at the end still needs to get planned. I can’t believe how fast time is disappearing now, it’s insane. I’m starting to question have I made this all I can, have I done what I’ve come to do, are there things I regret about how I’ve been while here, all those types of questions. I think it’s all been good for the most part though, there are times I think I should be more like this or that. I think that’s one of the lessons I’m learning though, I am who I am, whether it’s how I’m “supposed” to be or not, if that makes any sense. I do know who I am after all, and I’m not going to do any turn around no matter what people think. Well, okay, so what can I write about this time. I guess I’ll go back like it’s the beginning and go over some basics about my life in Australia, I’m not sure I ever did that.

So I’m at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria. I live on campus in a ressie called Evatt with 11 Aussies and my RA is in charge of two of our units, so 24 people total. My unit is super nice and I have one of the best rooms because I get one of the only walk in closets on res! It’s nice to have the privacy of my own room, but still live with others. Res has about 500 people I think, and there are a bunch of other international students here. I’m not sure, but I think there are close to 100 total, but not all are on res. The Uni only has about 6000 students, so it’s much smaller than home, but it’s quite nice. I always seem to see somebody I know, even though I don’t feel like I know tons of people. We’re in a huge drought right now, about a decade long depending on who you talk to. Since it’s turned to Autumn we’ve gotten quite a bit more rain, but still nothing to solve all the problems. Although, there is grass growing now and not just dirt, we actually have some green!! I love Geelong, I think there are about 240,000 in the town, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Uni is on the outskirts of town, about a 15 drive straight into the city. I ride the bus to get there, it takes about 40 minutes that way, but it’s a nice ride I guess through the neighborhoods. We go in town to do some shopping or walk around the waterfront, to go to the train station to go to Melbourne, and to go out at night. It’s very clean for a downtown from what I’m used to, and everyone is friendly. The waterfront area is beautiful and there are always plenty of people out enjoying a nice day. Campus is actually quite large in land size which is nice. There are about 6 lakes total, and a million birds. It’s crazy, even the birds sound different here, seriously. Some of them sound like they are dying, or they are going to kill you, and they’re all over the place. The past few days I’ve been very annoyed with the birds if you can’t tell, they will not shut up. I’m not even kidding, they are making noises every few seconds, all day long! There are also a bunch of rabbits, and thus a bunch of rabbit holes for you to fall in when you’re walking around at night. The trees are kind of strange, they all shed their bark and twigs always fall off, so those are everywhere on the ground as well, it’s dangerous to walk around barefoot! The aussies all walk around with no shoes all the time though, Mom would fit in nicely! Classes are pretty small and laid back. I still haven’t figured out how hard or easy it is here. I don’t think I’m too fond of their whole education system though, maybe it’s just because it’s totally different than what I’m used to. I don’t feel like I’m learning as much because we aren’t tested over anything, or made to use what we’re learning in any way really, until the final exam. I don’t like that kind of pressure and lack of structure almost. It’s very open ended and up to you. I can’t make up my mind about it all still! I go to lunch at caf or eat a sandwich here, and I get 3 dinners a week at caf Mon-Thurs. We go right at 6 every night pretty much. It’s pretty good really, I definitely get enough fruits and veggies which is wonderful. I think next to all you people, the food is what I miss most from home. I like the food here, but if we start talking about food from home, both home cooking and restaurants, I realize how much I want all that! I think I’ll gain 30 pounds when I get home just from eating everything I’ve missed. Being away sort of shows you what you really hold dear to you! First it’s all you people, and my animals, and the food. All my junk that I have, doesn’t really get missed that often, it’s just there. Kinda strange. I’m very lucky to usually get to talk to somebody on AIM, Skype, or the phone everyday, if not more than one person. That’s been nice, but not too much to keep me from enjoying time here. At night we usually just hang out and sit around talking or watching TV, sometimes doing homework or planning trips and such. I haven’t found anyone to love playing Phase 10, the only game I brought. Going out in Geelong is fun, although I don’t do it as often as most do. It’s expensive because we have to take taxis in and back since the busses stop running at about 9. I don’t like having to dress up either, I don’t mind it mostly, but knowing you have to just to get in. Sometimes I just want to go out and have a good time in jeans and a t-shirt! They dress up more than us on an every day basis as well, just not so many t-shirts at all. I don’t understand all their fashions, but I’m probably quite ugly looking to most of them, so whatever. Every once in awhile we cook a meal for a bunch of us and that’s always a good time. I’m trying to think of little every day things. I keep all of my food and dishes in my room and just my cold stuff in the community fridge. Sometimes things get stolen if you leave it out, they call it ressie shopping. “Ressie shopping is theft” as the signs on the fridge say, but it always happens in the middle of the night so nobody gets caught and there’s not much they can do about it. We have to take our “cutlery” down to caf every night (not silverware, that’s the nice stuff). There are quite a few stray cats that live around here and come out at night, they aren’t too keen on people, but they’re not mean or anything. I have one laundry machine and dryer in my actual unit, but I have to pay $1 for the dryer. I just hung my clothes at first, but now it’s chilly and takes so long to dry. The other units have free laundry, but they all have to go to a separate room somewhere, so ours is nice. The only cleaning I ever do is having to wash my dishes (there are no dishwashers) and taking out my trash downstairs, oh and vacuuming my room I suppose. They don’t have Lysol wipes, they only have disinfectant spray, but it’s not for the air either, you can only spray it on a surface. So I try to use that often, Amanda thinks I’m crazy for this back home! We have two toilets, two sinks, and two showers for the 8 of us upstairs and I’ve never had a problem, unless the maid is in there cleaning. She comes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and she’s pretty nice. We have one big fridge, and one big freezer next to it, so plenty of room for everyone’s stuff. There is a toaster, a microwave, 8 burners on a gas stove, and an oven, it’s fan forced or something whatever that means. We don’t have one in our unit, but we’re supposed to have a “skank bin” for dirty dishes, apparently that’s the original name for it and it’s where the term skank came from. Interesting. That’s all I’m coming up with for the moment.

Not a whole lot has happened between break and now besides Tasmania. For my Australia Today class we went to an Aboriginal Culture Centre in Geelong one day and that was pretty interesting. It was different than what we learned when we were at Uluru which was probably the most interesting part. The culture is one as a whole, but each area of the country is quite different in little ways. Let’s see, I also finished the 6th Harry Potter, which was very, very exciting. I loved it, I can’t wait for the fifth movie and the last book to come out!! Oh, me and some of the boys (Marc, Donald, Brandon and Jeff) went into Melbourne for the comedy festival one night, that was a lot of fun. It’s funny, even in Australia I seem to just be one of the guys, I don’t understand. I love it, but it makes me think, what makes me so different that I can’t be a girl that guys long for, I’m just like one of them. Anyway, it was a great time, a bit of an adventure with the train station losing power and Marc missing it and getting stuck in the rain, and all of us walking back and forth about 10 times. It was a bad idea for me to wear my heels that night. It was a fun train ride home, too, for me at least as I was my giddy loopy self and they were all so tired! They had family day here one weekend, so we got a nice lunch out of that. One of my housemates seems to be obsessed with America and things they have that aren’t here, particularly Elvis and our kind of cowboys. Her newest love is beavers, she wants me to send her one. She’s a crazy one I tell you. One night last week we all went down to caf together and Jess, Brandon, Donald and I went back to Brandon’s unit to talk about something. Jess had to leave after a little while, but Donald and I stayed. And we didn’t leave until after midnight! It was insane, but one of those really great nights you know. We just stood there in the kitchen, eventually sat down, and kept talking and talking about anything. We talked about our houses back home, our apartments at school, different things about Manhattan since we all go to K-State, things about school here and other things here. We talked about friends and people from back home and dealing with stuff. It was just really good, people investing time into each other, I like that. It gives you a chance to really get to know each other better than just sitting around talking about the day and watching TV. Anyway, it was crazy and great how that happened. Since then I’ve spent a whole bunch of time working on our Finance group project that we turned into today, that sure felt good. I’m so sick of finance it’s ridiculous, and I didn’t even do as much as a couple of the guys. Yucky homework. I have another group project with a presentation tomorrow and a big essay part due next week, yikes. That pretty much brings me up to date. Except for Sunday.

Sunday I went into Melbourne for the day! It was sort of just decided the night before. I went to see Hayley Vogt!! I haven’t seen her since sophomore year of high school so it was pretty crazy to see her! Especially since we meet up in Australia when we go to uni just three hours away from each other back home! Crazy stuff. It was a lot of fun though. It was really great to see someone I’ve known for more than just the past few months!! She was there with a couple of her friends. We just went to the Australia Centre for Moving Image, it was alright. Then we got some lunch at Lord of the Fries (what a great name!) because they were told they had to go there, it is pretty delicious! Hayley and I also went over and got a slice of pizza at Pepperoni’s a good little place with $1.50 slices! Then we walked around a bit and decided to get on the free tram to head to Queen Victoria Market. I hadn’t actually been there yet so that was pretty cool. We just walked around it for a little bit, so I will definitely have to go back there one weekend and spend about the whole day shopping!! I love markets, they are quite awesome. Then, they wanted to go back to some chocolate place they saw so we jumped on the free tram again, but it was getting close to time for me to catch my 4pm train so I could get the last bus from town to uni back in Geelong. So, I stayed on the tram to head back around to Southern Cross Station. I got off at Spencer St. about 5 to 4. Yeah. So I ran up the hill, but had to wait to cross two streets. So I got across the street and sprinted to find the train, quickly saw it was on platform 2 North. Crap!! North! That is way down the way, so I sprinted as fast as my little legs would take me, pumping my arms as hard as I could. Let me tell you, I think I definitely set some sort of world record. People were stopping and pointing, yelling out wow look at that girl run! It was a pretty big deal, they were clapping and cheering and everything. It could have been one of those slow motion scenes with inspirational music playing in the background in some cheesy movie, you know what I’m talking about. So, yeah, I made the train in time. I sat down and we left, about a minute late I think because they were waiting on me and this other kid and two old people. I was breathing pretty hard for a bit though, I’ve never run so fast in my life! I was in flip flops, too, those suckers are hard to sprint in. It sort of reminded me of Paris! Except my feet didn’t hurt so much after. It gets better too. So, I get back to Geelong at 5 til 5pm. The last bus from the city is at 5:02. It’s a little ways from the bus station. So I got of the train, tired from a long day and the world record sprint, and I ran once again to get to the bus station in time. Well, I got a block away where I had to wait to cross the street, and saw the bus a block ahead, pulling around the corner. Crap again! I missed it. There was another stop up the hill, but I knew I wouldn’t make that, so I claimed defeat. Sure enough, I saw it turning that corner when I was still a couple blocks away. So, I knew I had to do the dreadful thing and call a taxi. I didn’t want to pay that kind of money just to get myself home. So I decided to walk a couple blocks to save a few bucks. Then I got to thinking, well I really need groceries and I was going to go in the morning but why not save myself the trip, I have no reason to hurry home, might as well enjoy missing the bus. (Like we should’ve done in Paris!) So I though yeah I’ll just walk to the Cole’s supermarket down the road. Well, I’ve only come in on the bus, so my perception was a little off. It’s NOT just down the hill and across the bridge. It was much, MUCH further than that! I was already tired too, and my legs had done more running than they had in quite some time. But after more than 30 minutes I got there. It was getting dark and some of the walk there probably wasn’t the best spot to be, but it was on the main road and I was fine so whatever. I got my few groceries I so desperately needed and called a taxi. I waited 25 minutes and it hadn’t come, so I called again and sure enough one came within a few minutes. The taxis here aren’t always reliable, that’s for sure. For some reason, it didn’t cost me much less than it does from all the way in town, I don’t know what kind of setting he had to charge more, but I didn’t see anything faulty so I couldn’t call him out on anything. It made me mad though because I had to pay so much just to get home. I was exhausted after that! I went over to Loretta’s and Jared was cooking tea (dinner in case you’ve forgotten) of gnocchi. So we ate that and watched hours of TV, Grey’s Anatomy and What About Brian. It was spectacular! So yeah, that was my fun filled fabulous Sunday! Look for me on the news, the record breaking sprint in Melbourne, Victoria by a Kansas woman in thongs.

Now I have lots of school and homework to look forward to! And Sydney and many more fun nights and unexpected adventures. It’s all good here. It’s crazy though, a very different experience and there are many times I’m not sure I fully understand what I’m feeling or thinking. Maybe it’s just because I’m just one of those people who thinks way too much and spends a lot of time pondering, but I think it is just the experience. You’re up and down and up again. I guess the good thing is it pretty much always ends up being more positive in the end, even if it’s simply for having had the experience, and growing and learning from it. I think people are pretty incredible. I’m trying to live so people think I am amazing, and happy and good.

Yeah. So that’s all I’ve got for the moment I think. I know, it’s still kind of a lot, jeez Alissa can’t you just cut it down a bit! I’m wordy, what are you going to do. I like sharing things with you! Okay, now I’ll stop. After the quotes for this time. And after I tell you to smile please. OH, and after I yell at you to PLEASE leave a comment, hi Alissa I read your blog bye, (insert your name). Thanks. And now, fabulous quotes:

“Be humble, be big in mind and soul, be kindly; you will like yourself that way and so will other people.” Norman Vincent Peale

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” Marie Curie

Love, Alissa