Sickness, Greek Gods and Camp, oh my! (Monique)

Hi!

So I said I’d try to post once every two weeks, but then winter term started, and as everyone knows, in winter everyone becomes an infectious disease machine. I literally have not had one lecture or class go by, without someone sneezing or coughing (admittedly most of the time it was me 😛 one history lecture it was so bad I had to leave the room!). And of course, this meant I caught it too. This was one of my more worse colds, I now know that they mean by hacking lung cough, I literally felt like my lungs had detached themselves and were trying to climb up my esophagus and out of my mouth to escape and run away to join the circus. So to say my first few weeks back at uni haven’t been that pleasant is an understatement.  I don’t know how many times I wished to be back at home sleeping. But I’m better now so yay 😀

How is everyone settling in to their new classes? I’m finding I enjoy it more now I feel more confident, not to say I do feel confident, I mean I am still quite insecure when it comes to uni, but at least I have one semester under my belt, I’ve had exams, essays and have some sense of where things are at uni, plus my timetable is so much better. One tutorial though was so confusing to find! It was in the John Medley building, and I’ve had classes before, but this one was on the 6^th floor. So I went into the elevator and it only goes up to floor five, so I went up and looked, didn’t find anything, so I went across to the other tower and the same thing happened. Finally I realized you have to climb the stairs to get there. I felt so embarrassed but also annoyed! Why would the elevator only go to floor five????

I also really enjoy my lectures, right now in Ancient Greece and Rome, we are learning about the Greek gods and Heroes and reading Homer’s Odyssey. I really love this topic, the Disney movie Hercules is one of my favorites. Fun fact, did you know Hercules is the only character in the movie not to have a Greek name? Hercules is his Roman name, Herakles is Greek 😀  Also, Aphrodite, the goddess of Love? She was born from her brother Kronos, cutting of her father’s (Heaven) genitals and throwing them into the sea 🙂

Since not much else has happened in these three weeks, I hope you don’t mind if I talk about what I did a couple of weeks before the semester started. I was lucky enough to be a host at Uni Experience, and event organized for year 10, 11 and 12 students all over Australia and internationally, to experience life at not only Melbourne uni, but uni in general. People came from everywhere, SA, NT and even Malaysia. It was a two day event that I really enjoyed. We stayed at Queens college dorm rooms, which are pretty amazing, one part of it looks like the turret of a castle  😀  This was really cool for me, since I’ll probably never have the opportunity to actually live in a dorm room.

My day started off by arriving at the college and meeting all the other hosts, everyone else was amazingly nice, I knew one person already, from a previous event, and we were the only two first years! Everyone else had done something like this before, and was really good about giving advice. Then kids started to arrive and we helped them get settled into their rooms. Then lunch was served and we got to meet our group of kids! There was about 10-12 in each group with two hosts. I was the green team’s host, along with Johnson, a really nice enthusiastic second year bio med student. We got to know everyone and learned their names.  That day we had an amazing race around the uni, with different questions and events to participate in. Johnson led our group while I manned one of the events, I had to sing which was mortifying but it was really fun despite the rain. Our group came in 3^rd which I was really proud of, and then we all had crepes! It was my first one, I had coconut and nutella and oh my gosh it was delicious!! Then the kid’s had some lectures, and then after dinner we had a trivia night! There were music rounds as well as the traditional questions. I’m so glad my table and I knew so much useless knowledge  😀 Like who wrote Peter Pan and what the biggest brand in Australia is. One person even knew the full name for the TARDIS. We came in second place and had so much fun 🙂

The next day after breakfast the kids had some more lectures, but this time they could choose which ones they wanted to attend, they were about different courses. Then we had pizza and they said their goodbyes and left. Even though I only knew them for two days, I felt a little like a mother, with empty nest syndrome 😛  I had so much fun, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to not only meet great people but have some amazing experiences and learn some valuable leadership skills.

And last but not least did you guys attend the lunch?? I did!!! But I didn’t see you guys, I mean maybe I did but I didn’t realize it was you. If only we had name tags!!! But I did meet some other wonderful people and a second year blogger 😀

Anyway, here’s to hopefully posting more and to keeping my lungs!

Bye!!!