Settling In

Dear readers,

I’m terribly sorry that I haven’t blogged for almost a week. I’ve had quite the busy weekend what with celebrating Andrew’s birthday whilst also settling in at school, and if that didn’t take away all my blogging time, I don’t have internet in my room at school anyways. I am currently writing this as a Word document and will hopefully have my internet set up in the next few hours… I suppose if you’re reading this, it means I’m currently connected in my room right?

Moving back in after spending a week in Kapunda was quite comical. Andrew and I, weighed down with shoes, coats, and blankets realized after walking from the car to the automatic sliding doors to the dormitory that on the weekends they don’t open automatically; one must first scan their student cards (I assume this is just a precaution to keep out unwanted visitors). However, guess who didn’t have her student card because she hadn’t enrolled in her classes until earlier this week and then couldn’t because she came back to campus on a weekend? Yeah, me.  So there we were, waiting for some other kind Hall resident to swipe their student card so that the magic doors would open and let us in.

I had possibly the worst night’s sleep of my life last night! Okay maybe not the absolute worst… But I kept waking up every few hours and tossing and turning and all that jazz. My sheets are awful; they are the kind that cling to your legs and every time you move, they move too. And the fitted sheet seems to be a good six inches too big all the way around. I intend to go buy some nicer sheets later this week.

However, for the first time since I arrive down here, I was warm last night. I have a space heater in my room that is kind of like those heat dish things, whereas it doesn’t actually blow out hot air, but rather just heats up a metal plate. I prefer this way as it’s less intrusive and smells a lot better… I also slept with not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR blankets on top of me last night and I was totally cozy.

Also, I’m completely confused about the entire bathroom situation here. Andrew and I have been here at the Hall quite a bit recently and never have I seen anyone use the bathroom or the showers. And just now, at approximately 8:15 in the morning, I went in to use the bathroom, and it was empty. I peeked in the shower and it was bone dry. Oh yes, that reminds me… There’s one shower, one toilet, and two sinks for at least the six girls on my side of the bathroom and there’s another door leading to the bathroom. I am convinced that the one bathroom I’ve seen is simply not enough and there’s somewhere else that everyone is doing there morningly and nightly washing. I’ll keep you all posted on whether I find it or not.

Anywho, my first class isn’t until 2:00 today, as my first Monday class (which is at noon) doesn’t start until next week. This is due to the fact that my first class is a tutorial where they go over what you learned in the lecture, and you can’t have a tutorial without having a lecture first. This morning I’m going to go to the library and get my student card so that I can actually get into my dormitory by myself…

It’s raining today. I’m going to wear my new rain boots.

This week’s word of the day is rain boots, actually. Here, they’re called gumboots. Huh. Not sure if that refers to their purpose or the material of which they are made.

Loooooove,

Shannon

UPDATE: 8:52 am

I just went to the bathroom to wash my face… Still no apparent activity. Shower completely dry. Didn’t see anyone go in or come out. More updates to come. 

Pre-Uni Adventures

Hey how ya goin??

It's been just shy of a week, and I still have not adjusted to the cold... BUT I have figured out a way to escape it! Sit on the couch in front of the fire with your boyfriend :) it gets so cozy with a fuzzy blankie and sometimes you can even get Daisy the corgi to sit on your lap :)

The best adventures thus far have been on the motorbike and quad out in the paddocks. Some are full of trees and rocks, like obstacle courses, and others are just massive fields of grass and we can go through them at hyperspeed! Sometimes we can even find some sheep and herd them about and look at all the adorable newborn lambs :) AWW.

I'm starting to get settled. I have my bank account open now so I can spend all the money my parents gave me (just kidding Mom and Dad) and the only thing left is to get my phone set up to use here. Once I get that taken care of, I'll be fully settled in.

I've also got exciting news! Remember how, when asked, I told people that I'd be doing a Bachelor of Arts with psychology for a semester since Education didn't take mid-year students? Well, when I went into the BA office to ask which classes I should take, they told me that Education is taking mid-year students!! So I went into the international admissions office and asked for a course change application and BAM. If I get in I'll become a double major in Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education. Now I'm just waiting to hear from admissions to see if I got in :) yay for saving a semester of tuition!!

For now, my classes are pretty cool: American pop culture, Australian history, creative writing, and psychology. I have Fridays off (Andrew does too) and have no classes before noon on any days :) I really am excited for classes to start. I decided that if I get into the education department (at which point I'll have to drop two of my current classes so that I can add two education classes) I'm going to drop psych and pop culture. I was looking at the list of important topics for primary (elementary) education and surprisingly psych is not on it. And I think it's important that I learn some history of Australia along with taking an English class.

I also decided (along with a suggestion from Andrew) that I end each blog from now on with one or a few slang terms or things that have different names that I've picked up on while I'm here.

Today's word is "timetable." A timetable is a schedule (usually for classes and such). For example, you wouldn't ask somebody what their class schedule is, but rather what their timetable is. Oh, and here, schedule isn't pronounced "SKEDULE" but rather "SHEDULE." The people here talk funny...

Ta-ta for now!

Cheers,
Shannon

I'M HERE :)

HI EVERYONE!

I'm here in Australia! My flight was terrible, I didn't sleep much and I felt sick the entire time. One good thing about my flight was the adorable baby boy sitting next to me with his mommy and daddy. He had blonde curly hair and GORGEOUS blue eyes and was only about a year old and just learning how to walk. He was so well-behaved; he barely cried throughout the flight. When he did it was only a few times. Once during takeoff and once in the middle of the flight. Every time he would cry, the only way to make him stop was for his daddy to hold him really tight and rock him back and forth. At one point, his mommy was singing to him too.

I miss when I was little and that was the only way to calm me down too. My parents would wrap me up tight in a blanket so that I couldn't flail hysterically and they would take turns holding me and rocking me until I sobbed my little self to sleep. Sometimes, my daddy even sang to me. Yesterday, while I was sad and feeling rotten on my flight over here, that was all I wanted. For my mommy and daddy to hold me tight and sing me to sleep. But I had to figure out how to relax myself, so I got some gingerale, wrapped up tight in my blankie, and listened to some classical music until I fell asleep.

I'm feeling much better now. When I arrived in Adelaide, my boy was there right as I got off of the plane to greet me :) he gave me a huge hug, and told me how much he's missed me, and helped me get my luggage from the carousel. He also asked how I was feeling, and told me to never ever keep things bottled up inside when I was feeling sad, because he would always be there to comfort me. He's the best boyfriend ever.

As we drove to school and walked around there, it was clear nothing had changed. We were still the same goofy pair, constantly making each other smile and laugh, and it seemed as if we hadn't been thousands of miles apart for almost 2 years, with occasional visits in between. Needless to say, I love him so much and I'm so glad to be here with him :)

Except that it's SO BLOODY COLD HERE! I slept last night in sweats and a sweatshirt AND alpaca wool socks and a heating blanket and I was warm... but naturally the second I got up today I was freezing again... But Andrew made me a nice breakfast and warmed me up. It's clear that he's going to take good care of me over the next few months.

Anyways, Andrew and I are gonna go move all my stuff into my dorm room today. I'll post some pictures of it later once I'm settled in.

Bye for now :)
Love, Shannon

PS. I miss everyone at home so much and I can't wait to see you all in December.

Tick, tick, tick...

I'm sitting here looking at the countdown widget on my computer. It displays days, hours, minutes, and seconds. I can't get over the fact that the seconds go tick tick tick and don't slow down. There's no way to pause the time passing by.

It seems like this weekend has passed incredibly quickly. I feel like only yesterday we took Lucas to the airport and I began to prepare for the big recital weekend. I don't know what I was expecting; would the ground fall out from underneath me once I had danced on stage for the last time with CAPA? Would life even continue after that? But, here I am. And this weekend has seemed somewhat anti-climactic; it's over as quickly as it started. And that's that. I'll never get back the years I spent as a CAPA student, although I do wish I could re-do lots of parts and give 10-year-old me some advice about pirouettes and general work ethics. But that's not possible; the only thing to do is to keep moving forward.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I'll be going into a completely new phase of life in a few days, and all I can do is take the advice that I would give to Little Me and apply it to my life now. I'm sure in ten years, I'll want to come back to this moment and give myself some advice, but right now, it's up to me to guess blindly at what that advice is. This is growing up...

Lucky Me :)

I'm so lucky to have been given such wonderful friends to surround me throughout my years of school. I wish I could post on here the name of every single friend that I'll miss but there are so many of you that I wouldn't even know where to begin. To my long-time friends that I might not be as close with now, I know we'll continue to keep in touch forever, even if there may be long gaps between conversations. To my slightly newer friends that I met freshman year, I'll never forget you guys and how much of an impact you have made on the past four years. And to my brand new friends that have made the past 3 months the best EVER, I'm gonna miss you guys so much. It breaks my heart that we've gotten such a short time to really be all together, but sometimes the strongest bonds are made in the shortest amounts of time. Paris was literally one of the best weeks of my life, and this summer (as short as it has been for me) has been an unforgettable one.

I am gonna miss all my friends so much, but thank god for modern technology so that we can Skype and iChat and ooVoo and Facebook video chat (so cool) every day. You're all amazing people and I can't wait to hear everyone's amazing stories when we all reconnect in December, hopefully for another night just like tonight. :)

I love you guys. There are exactly 146 days until I can see you all again :)

Push and Pull

Blogging, blogging, blogging. This is a pretty new activity for me. I'm so used to having to make my status updates "short, sweet, and to the point." Not here though!

Here, I can tell everybody (or nobody, depending on who even reads this...) exactly what is going on in my life, without annoying Facebook friends and spamming everybody's News Feed. Nor do I have to worry about collecting everybody's e-mail address and making sure I don't leave anyone out. I'm beginning to like this better already...

I can't believe there are only nine days until I move. This thought blows my mind; it seems like only last week when I told Andrew that I applied to Flinders. I did it on a whim. I realized that I had to take life by the horns (or fangs, maybe tentacles or claws?) and when you're young it's the perfect chance to see the world. I've always fantasized about going somewhere amazing, somewhere completely new for college, but never did I dream that I would literally be going to the other side of the earth.

But, here I am, preparing for the biggest adventure of my life.

My mom always told me, when dealing with the stresses and pains and angst of being an adolescent: "The worst that could happen is it kills you and eats you." And I would respond "And that's not going to happen." It always comforted me that the worst thing that was going to happen couldn't really happen at all. However, after learning some disturbing statistics about the amount of deadly and poisonous creatures on that continent, I'm starting to realize that the worst thing that could happen, really could happen.

But that's only the animals. I doubt my roommate or professors will kill me and eat me, and I will make it out of this semester alive... Unless the spiders get to me.

I haven't even begun packing... I have no idea where to begin. I look around my room at the piles of fresh (and not so fresh...) laundry that I unloaded from my drawers last week. I thought it would be smart to somehow start ahead of time... Except at this point, I'm living out of three large laundry baskets. I know deep down that there's no way I'll be able to bring every item of clothing I own, because there's just SO much of it. I also realize that yes, it's 85 degrees here in sunny southern California, but in Adelaide it's the middle of winter. And so I unpack my favorite summer dresses and sandals, and set them aside for my parents to ship to me in a few months. The heat here also makes it hard for me to choose my favorite sweaters and hoodies, since none of them sound the least bit appealing right now. I had the same problem last summer when I packed for my 3-week trip to Adelaide. The climate change just makes packing completely impossible!

And packing. Isn't packing just a metaphor for how I must mentally also prepare? I have to take with me the very important things, like how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, how to sort my laundry and to remember to hang up my bath towel so that it doesn't get musty. But I also have realized that I'm parting with some very important things, like my parents. My family. My best friends. My own bathroom... And somehow I will learn to make do without these things. I'll long for them and miss them terribly, but somehow I will learn independence and what it means to be really, truly, on my own.

Okay, maybe not THAT alone. Let's be honest, Andrew's family is the next best thing to mine. It's not like everyone around me will be speaking a foreign language (except for that weird "How ya goin'?" thing and the fact that a "mate" is not somebody that you... nevermind). It will be nice to have my best friend (and sweetheart) just a short walk from my dorm. Andrew's mom is an amazing cook, which is comforting, as I'm sure that a few weeks into the semester the one thing I'll want more than anything is a home-cooked meal. Andrew's dad is a doctor, and it's reassuring (especially to my mom) to think that I'll have top-notch medical care when I'm down undah. Andrew's siblings are starting to become like my siblings, and I'm confident that in a few months, his home will be my home-away-from-home. I even love his dogs.

There's no doubt that this decision, this adventure, is going to change my life. Who knows, maybe when I come home this winter, I'll have a sweet accent. For now, I have to enjoy the next week at home and soak up as much sun as I can before I get down to Adelaide to freeze my butt off.

Cheers,
Shannon