I have now been in Melbourne for an entire month and, like usual, it feels like so much longer. Normally when four weeks feels like a year it's a bad thing (i.e. the Princeton grind), but this is not one of those cases. I'm still having a blast, but I'm ridiculously busy trying to make the most out of this opportunity and do as many new or interesting things as possible and still somehow be a student (wait, what?).
I love this university. This community is so vibrant and active. There are so many clubs doing so many activities and trips and, most importantly, giving out free food. The other day I was walking through the student union and there just so happened to be a rock concert going on--at lunch time on a Tuesday! People are everywhere, which makes walking around a bit like snowboarding in the trees, except they're moving in seemingly random directions and it's 75 degrees so there's no snow. (The glades are my favorite trails, though.)
Anyways, week 2 of the semester is almost over, and work is piling up. Papers have already been assigned, which is good and bad: good because they're not due until mid-semester and that gives me plenty of time to prepare, but bad because I know I won't write them until the last minute and that just gives me more time to worry about them. I'm behind my reading. I need to start actually acting like I'm at school. Meh, there's time for that later. This week has been a scramble also because I'm trying to figure out my summer internship situation which is turning out to be a lot more confusing than I expected. This week I also started looking for a part-time job. The search is motivated mostly by the hole in my pocket that's rapidly draining my bank account. More on these things later...
The internship and job searches, and school/life in general have been complicated a bit by the fact that I ran out of internet. You might be wondering how that is possible, since it makes no sense and doesn't happen in the US, so let me explain. With most internet plans in Australia, they set a limit on how much data you can use per month. My plan gives me 10GB on-peak and 10GB off-peak, which is more than enough for me to follow all my TV shows on the internet, watch youtube, etc. With a few days left in the billing period, and more than half of my quota unused, I figured I might as well download a bunch of stuff to use up the rest. So I did. Too much--I hit my limit. What they do when you hit the limit is "shape" your internet, which is a fancy way of saying they make it incredibly slow. So I've spent the last few days waiting hours to load 30-second youtube clips and, more importantly, trying to view webpages that I need for school and traveling. It resets tomorrow, though, so I'll be up an running then. Learned my lesson...
I had my first practical class for my earth sciences class yesterday. We looked at a bunch of rocks and meteorites and tried to figure out what type they were and how/where they formed. It was interesting, but the way it was set up was so basic it felt like middle-school science class. I guess that's what I get for enrolling in a first-year subject. It will probably get harder, though.
Last night I went with a few other kids to a Purim party in St. Kilda, which was a tremendous amount of fun. It was exactly what you would expect from a college costume party. The theme was uperhero/villain , which basically meant I turned a t-shirt into a cape and wore my underwear on the outside. I made a belt from a cardboard wine box and called myself "Goon Man." (I spent a considerable amount of time washing that sharpied phrase from my arm this morning.) Us college kids really take any opportunity we can get to dress up. Anyway it was cool to hang out with so many Jews from Unimelb and other Melbourne universities, hear some megilah and participate in the general shenanigans. It's safe to say there were some drunk people there. (That's a mitzvah, right?) So, to sum up, a bit of a shit show but definitely an all-around good time. They even gave us mishloach manot (remember what I said about the free food).
Tomorrow I'm leaving for my weekend trip to the Great Ocean Road (google map that, people). Four of us are renting a car to tour the beaches and see the sights. I'm anticipating a large quantity of beauty. Pictures will be taken.
Finally, tonight MUSEX is doing a laneway bar crawl. Melbourne is like an ant farm in that a huge amount of the culture and night life is tucked away in a vast network of laneways (alleys), and you can keep discovering new things. I'm not sure if I'm going to go because I don't want to drink, but I do want to see the laneways, so that's still up in the air. Maybe I'll just tag along for a bit.
Long post--thanks for reading. Stay tuned for Great Ocean Road photos.
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