The rest of this week was fairly uneventful, and I haven't been taking many pictures so I'm sorry about that. Will try to take more this coming week.
Wednesday was Market Day, which is the day that all the clubs and groups come out to try to get you to sign up. I was interested in a few of them, but was surprised that there's a membership fee for most of them. Though it was only $4-5, I hadn't been expecting that and didn't bring any money, so I only signed up for groups that were free :-) It was kind of a zoo trying to look at all of the groups, I got pretty frustrated and gave up early. Simon was smart, he didn't come with me! I did manage to talk to most of the groups that I was genuinely interested in though, which was good.
After that Simon and I explored our first suburb, Belconnen, which is sort of over Black Mountain on the other side. It's kind of industrial and not that exciting, but we were in search of a barber and KMart. The barber was booked solid for the day, but we did find a Vinnies (charity shop) and a Salvation Army, so I got a few more things there for the apartment. Then we went to KMart, which doesn't sell non-perishable food (I thought it did), so we came home with a bunch of toilet paper, so much that hopefully we won't have to buy it again the whole time we're here!
I also called the Canadian Embassy here to sign up for any events etc that they had going on. Turns out they don't do anything really, just for Canada Day and Victoria Day. We were going to drive over there, so its a good thing we didn't!
Thursday we got up early to get groceries before taking the car back. We went back to Belconnen on the suggestion from someone in our building, too bad we didn't know a day earlier! I ended up getting enough stuff to stock the cupboards and the fridge, including about 10 cans of chick peas, because the idea of having to haul a bunch of stuff back in the middle of winter didn't really appeal to me. So I think I'm set with most stuff for now.
Thursday was a nice day, pretty hot out. Simon went to take his resume to a few places, and I tried to fix my bike, which turned out to have a leak on the back tire. Boo!
Friday I had my orientation for the Graduate Studies in International Affairs Department. It wasn't so easy to meet people at that point, many people had already done a semester together in Oslo, Norway as part of the Peace and Conflict Studies degree, so they already knew each other. Most of the semester 1 professors were there so they introduced their classes, and each of them sounded really interesting. I kind of want to take all of the courses, but will only be taking 3, since that's what I'm required to do :-)
We had to introduce ourselves as well, as there were only 80ish students in this Department starting this year. People are from all over the place, which is really cool. Most of the Australians in the program are taking it part-time as part of their professional development, which means they're also working full time. Some were from Canberra but most were from all over Oz.
In the afternoon I had signed up for a graduate BBQ, which ended up not being a BBQ at all but rather an organized meeting sort of thing for Grad students. Quite a few of the people from the GSIA morning orientation were there, which was great because I actually had an opportunity to speak with a lot of them, and follow up on things that sounded interesting about their introductions. There is 1 other Canadian in my group, born in Ottawa, but he's also from all over the place according to his bio, so I can't tell how he identifies most strongly. All of the GSIA admin thought I was the only Canadian, which is kinda cool.
After the meeting I was heading out to grab my bike from having the tire fixed, when I looked over and saw someone that I have been to 2 previous schools with on 2 different continents. Talk about crazy! So we exchanged numbers and I had to head off to grab my bike. Then at 6 Simon and I met up with the friends we'd met the weekend before, and hung out with them for the night at a few different places around civic.
On Friday I also made a random but strategic purchase, of a stationary bike. It was inexpensive as it was second hand, so we got that set up on the balcony on Saturday morning. Then I did laundry and went on the bike for a bit.
Saturday afternoon we got a call from the ASW friend and she was heading with some friends to a river picnic area for the afternoon, so Simon and I went too. It ended up pouring rain so we played frisbee soaking wet. It was a lot of fun. We were there for a few hours, then went back to the apartment building of one of the friends to go in the hot tub, which didn't end up working so we hung out for a few hours and dried off instead.
So now it's Sunday and I'm trying to watch the haka finals on maoritelevision.com, but the internet connection here is terrible so it's cutting in and out. Boo! The weather looks like it can't decide if it wants to rain again or be sunny. I think Simon and I are going to go for a bike ride down by the lake, then I'm not sure what is going to happen. I'll probably read more of my stuff for school since I'm starting to get nervous about how much everyone will have read for the first day. Keener, indeed.
Ok, more pictures to come soon, promise! Wish us luck on week 1!
No comments:
Post a Comment