O-Week

Back in Sydney, this past week was O-Week (Orientation Week) for exchange students. But before any of the actual orientation activities got under way, I finally found a place to live! It’s located just a block from Coogee Beach and I can see the ocean from the balcony of the house. The house is quite big and I actually share the house with nine other people and as skeptical as I was about how that might work out, it’s actually been really good. I’ve already spent some good time with the Australian couple in the house, Maya and Shannon, they are fun to talk to and we have a lot in common. Shannon is big into sports and Maya really likes animals and neither of them seems to be real big partiers or drink enormous amounts of beer like a lot of people I’ve met. So we get along real well. Also sharing the house are four Brazilians, one German, one Scot, and the girl I’m currently sharing a room with, Nicky, is from England. She moves out next week though and I’ll be getting a new roommate. But I’m just glad to finally have a place to live and I really think I scored on this place, because it’s a nice house located in a real nice area, close to the beach, with wonderful housemates and is very affordable. Can’t ask for much more than that.

So, on to the events of O-Week. The first day was pretty much a wash, aside from meeting a few people. We went through a bunch of boring administrative stuff for the first three hours and then got some free food before taking a campus tour. Khalid, my Aussie Mate, couldn’t make it, so I was sort of a nomad, just tagging along with other groups for the campus tour, which was more of a scavenger hunt. Basically, I already knew most of the places we went to see and after that there really wasn’t much more guidance and so everyone sort of just dispersed.

The second day provided much more excitement, especially in my case. The morning began with the usual administrative mumbo jumbo, but after the first hour and a half we got a short break and as I was walking back into the theatre where the program was being held, a guy walks up to me, shakes my hand and introduces himself. Dave is his name and he tells me that he needs a volunteer and would like me to do be that guy. I asked Dave what I would be doing and he just said that it wouldn’t be anything real difficult, but I would get a free surf lesson if I helped him out. So I agreed, seemed like a great deal for me. Dave is a surf instructor, if you didn’t catch that already, and he was doing a presentation to all the exchange students about the basics of surfing. My first assignment was to go in the bathroom, put on a wetsuit and then put my clothes back on over the wetsuit and go sit in the crowd with the rest of the students and wait to be called down. After two tries of getting the wetsuit on, because the first time I put it on backwards (doh!), I was finally ready and went through a few quick lessons from Dave about some basics of surfing that I was going to have to demonstrate for everyone and how exactly the presentation was going to go. After that I was ready to go and headed back into the theatre.

Dave’s presentation was the last portion of the morning’s activities, so I got awfully hot sitting in the theatre with the wetsuit and my clothes on. When it was finally time for the surfing presentation, Dave asked the crowd how many of them came to Sydney hoping to learn how to surf. Lots of hands went up, but I shouted out, “Oh yeah, right here, definitely!” Everyone sort of started chuckling, thinking that I was just being silly, but Dave then asked me to come on down to the front and help them out. So, as I was running down the stairs looking super excited to be chosen, I began to strip off my clothes, revealing the wetsuit, and I was ready to surf! Then Dave and his partner, Brenda, pretty much just began to abuse me with sunscreen, zinc, a hat and some crazy sunglasses and then I went through all the demonstrations flawlessly. Everyone seemed to really get a kick out of the whole skit and I kept thinking back to my days in Young Life when I did that stuff every week. Good times! But anyway, as you can imagine, for the rest of the week, I got people coming up to me saying, “Hey, you’re the surf guy!” Most of them assumed that I had surfed before since I was so flawless with my execution during the presentation, so they were pretty shocked when I said I hadn’t.

The next day, there was no more administrative stuff to do, so we just went on a trip to Bundeena and the Royal National Park. It was quite a trip actually getting there. I had to walk a bit, take a bus, walk a bit more, take another bus, take a train, then a ferry, then walk some more and I was finally there. It was pretty amazing, though, because it was a really remote area, but yet we were so close to Sydney. We got to see a lot of aboriginal rock engravings and some wildlife, but nothing real exciting. It basically ended up being a long bush walk when we were finished. We probably walked about four kilometers (2.5 miles) in the sand, with the sun beating down on us, because there weren’t any real large trees or anything to give us some shade.

A few days later, I went with my good German friend, Dominik, on a ferry ride across the bay to the other side of the harbor and it was the same crazy feeling. It was like we were in a forest far from much of anything, but then you just turn around and there was the huge city right there. It’s really cool for a city to have those places where you can really get away from everything, but not have to travel very far at all. When we got back to the harbor, we got some good laughs watching a street performer do a number of tricks, the final one standing on a bike 22 feet in the air and juggling a knife, an apple and a flaming torch, while also taking bites out of the apple as he juggled. It was a good laugh though when he would just make random comments about people just walking by.

Anyway, the weather is beautiful here as usual. Sorry to everyone back home in the snow, but the beach is wonderful and I’m definitely not sad about missing that winter weather back home! :)