I woke up this morning, at 6am (haha this is a usual thing…sleeping in for me is about 7am due to the time change) and decided to take an early bus to school to meet some friends for early morning coffee and Skype sessions. Due to the fact we don’t get Internet at our home stays, and there are not free wifi places here (other than McDonalds, aka Maccers), we have to be on campus to get any sort of mediocre Internet connection. This is something we are ALL going to have to get used to, and not going to lie, kind of sucks. Coming to a major city I anticipated Sydney to be a lot like the United States, but to be honest, it is behind the US (technology wise) 5 or 10 years. Seriously, why can they not have wifi EVERYWHERE!? It is making blogging, facebooking, emailing, skyping, and even google research extremely difficult. But, this was only the start to my 21st birthday!
Rushing out to stand at the bus stop, I saw cars driving by with their windshield wipers on and thought that was odd considering it wasn’t even raining. Not even joking, one minute later was a torrential downpour! Haha because I carry a thousand things with me everywhere I was digging for my umbrella, but before I could get to it I was already drenched. Honestly, I have “realised” I have to give up EVER looking good here. By the time I walk a marathon to school, I am pouring sweat, the humidity makes my hair frizz and I’m so greasy, others don’t have to use a mirror to see their reflection! Haha welcome to my life in Sydney! So after an hour travel to school we went to a coffee shop right down the road hoping to Skype. I “realised” there was no Internet, typical. So I decided to get a coffee instead. That’s when I “realised” you can’t even order a coffee here. All the drinks are called something weird such as a “short black” and a “flat white,” so I had to spend a half an hour just asking what the whole menu was! Then I tried to enjoy an éclair for breakfast. Literally the first bite I took, all the cream fell into my lap, on my white dress I might add! What a perfect start to my day!!
I thought the day would only get better, because after all, this was a monumental birthday! Haha I’m not quite sure you could call it “better,” I guess more like “memorable.” We were finally able to Skype for our first time when all the kids in our student union started yelling and freaking out! I look down and there were 3 cockroaches running towards us and my bags were open on the floor! Panicking, I made Kristin jump up to step on them, but all it did was make them seize on the floor! Haha so nasty!
But, what made my day most memorable was this was my first day of classes! Kris and I are taking a Design Studio so we are trying to find class and the password we have to unlock the door didn’t work so we were banging on the door 15 minutes before someone heard! What a way to start off our first class of the semester. We have to walk in as the teacher is talking, and sit in the front row, literally next to the teacher. So awkward. Then the students proceeded to tell me I have a “whiney” accent, which made me oh so happy. Late, sweaty, and whiney. Perfect first impression! But, just wait, the day got even better. We learned basically the highest grade teachers give out is the equivalent to a “C” in the US. There goes my GPA. And then we were bombarded with information for 3 hours trying to learn what paper sizes they use in Australia and the rest of class was spent trying to figure out what in the world they were talking about! It honestly was like they were speaking Chinese…they might as well have been because I wouldn’t know any more than I know now. As each minute passed, I felt dumber and dumber. They would call on me to answer questions (because in Australia, their first week of classes, you actually have to work) and I had no idea what was even going on so they probably thought I was a retard. I didn’t even know what a “service station” was, so I said a gas station to clarify, and they were still confused because they call it petrol here. Haha can this get any more confusing. Well actually, it does. So for our projects in the class we will be making promotional packaging and brochures. I asked if I can type how we do in America, but that was shot down with “this is our home territory, so you do it our way.” (The teacher telling me that was from Cali, FYI! Lol how dumb.) So for all of you who have no idea what I am talking about, welcome to my world! I found out they write in Old English here and spell words like color with a “u” and realize with an “s.” I don’t even know what words you do that to, so basically I am just praying to pass haha forget anything else! So, my first class in Australia I spent having heart palpitations.
Luckily, Kristin’s host family made my day a lot more special. I went to their house for dinner and they had the house decorated with “21” stuff all over. They made the BIGGEST meal even and even had homemade personal banana cakes with a “21” candle. It was so sweet and I am so glad I got to spend it with a family that tried to make it feel like home!
After dinner, we went to meet up with some friends at Majors Bay for some gelato (we are celebrating my birthday Friday night) and when we were walking in an alley way (sketchy, I know) we saw rats running in front of us and we all started screaming!! Then, cockroaches covered the ground and we were wearing sandals! We were so terrified we started to book it, and over the fence 2 pit bulls started barking like they were going to kill us! Needless to say, I never have run so fast in my entire life, and for the record, this is not exaggerated!! (for once lol.)
But, this is turning into a novel, so I will end it as this was the most memorable 21st birthday anyone could ever have! I never expected to come to Australia and it feel so foreign, but what I have “realised” is Australia is a lot more different from the US than I had thought. One thing that is the same, is it still was my 21st birthday and will be a day I will never forget!!
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