Blast of a week (Silvia)

I won’t lie. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about O-week. Anticipating and feeling amused, perhaps, but not thrilled to bits. I’m not the type of person who screams “YAY!” when there is an opportunity to make friends. Usually, I’d just stand back and observe proceedings until someone either cracks a joke with me or I get the itching feeling to make a comment regarding the stupidity of some random in the room who spills their drink or stacks it.

So I didn’t have much of a reason to be ridiculously happy about meeting up with my host group, aside from the fact that I’d be out of the house and there’d be M&Ms and Skittles, courtesy of our host, Sarah. A little note here, Sarah’s a gorgeous third year with a bright and bubbly personality who gets along with everyone she meets. She doesn’t mind questions, even silly ones and goes out of her way to show us specific buildings and hold ridiculously heavy textbooks for us. Sarah’s funny and friendly and yes, I’m gushing, but that’s seriously how awesome she is. Sarah, I hope you’re reading this and realising how awesome of a person and a host you are 😀 Claps to you!

But my group was slightly awkward. I didn’t really feel a click with anyone, aside from my friend Bez… because I’ve known her since high school. The group was a little big and I didn’t get much of a chance to have a conversation above a superficial “Hey, what subjects are you doing?”
It might have been my imagination, but I sensed a divde between the males and females of the group. Not so much a divide as a Grand Canyon the Second. I observed and while I saw most of the girls interacting with each other and the guys interacting with each other, I only saw one girl and one guy talking.
Bez and I split up from the group after lunch (I’m trying to make us sound cool, but we really just lost the rest of the group).

Today, Friday, was much better. Only six people turned up for the re-hosting and we all chatted about the textbooks and diaries (Michelle needed one and we took one from the Arts Building, which looks very much like a castle. Sarah joked it was like Hogwarts and I quipped, rather lamely, “Maybe Tom Riddle will write back!”), Voldemort, How I Met Your Mother and slap-bets. Conversation flowed and I felt extremely comfortable with the company. There was Sarah, Bez, Michelle, Terri, Hugo, Liam and me. A nice, small group with similar interests- namely, uni.

Of course it did not last, the boys left early. However, Sarah did take us around the club stalls to nab some freebies. A special mention to the Lipton iced tea and Commonwealth Bank, haha! And congratulations to Sarah for getting the hoops over the stick and winning a prize 😉
We all joined a few clubs too, that was heaps of fun 😀 For some reason, having friends with you while wandering in crowded places makes it so much better. I was wandering around by myself on Thursday and nothing appealed to me at all. Yet today, I joined:
1. Australiasian Association (extra ice-cream and Krispy Kremes… so spoilt. And the members are super duper friendly, bonus right there)
2. Vietnamese Student Society (I’m not Viet… but I was swayed by the enthusiastic members and convinced by my Vietnamese friends. And the members were also extremely friendly)
3. Oxfam (of course you should help when you can)
4. Animal Protection (don’t think that’s what the club was called. But yeah, if you can, then you should)
5. Climate Change (same goes, I got a cute badge ^^)
Quite a lot for unsociable little me. And I thought I’d tip over the edge when Sarah had to leave.
“Leave?” Our eyes widened and for a second, our hearts skipped a beat. “Really?”
Yes, really. We were alone in the middle of nowhere, being jostled by a dozen different people and frightened by aggressive stall-holders. It felt like we were a litter of wolf pups left by Mama Wolf to fend for ourselves.
Well, somehow we managed though we lost Terri D;

All in all, O-week could have gone smoother. But damn, because it didn’t, because I tried to navigate without a map, because I participated in ridiculous activities such as running with an elastic band attached between me and a jumping castle wall, because I sat on a ‘pony’ and tried to whack Bez off with a giant sausage (I ended up hanging on the very tip… then she hit me again and I flew off), because I have a weird goat ringtone and because I made new friends, I had one awesome start of my three year degree and I can only expect it to get better.

Can’t wait to see my host group again, I know I’ll have loads of fun 🙂

~Silvia