Status update

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't posted a blog recently, things have been pretty busy down here, but in a good way. Everyday there is something different going on and there are new people to meet. I've spent a lot of time learning about different events, both on and off campus, and trying to take part in as many as I can.

The picture that I have posted here is the front of my house from the street. There isn't much to see, I know, but it's actually a decent house on the inside. My address is 18 Fifth Ave, St. Lucia, QLD 4067, Australia in case anyone wants to Google Map it or something. If you do that, you can also see what the other houses in the neighborhood look like. The big fence in the front is there to keep people out of the pool just on the other side. Seems odd since the pool never gets cleaned and nobody wants to swim in it anyways.

Last week Tuesday, my roommate Charles invited me to go bowling with his friends and it turned out to be a great decision. Virtually everyone there (9 people) was also French and absolutely terrible at bowling. They had done the same thing last week and knew what types of scores to expect, so they asked me how good I was. I hadn't bowled in 2 years, so I didn't think that I would be so good. Well, the first game I bowled a 111, the next highest was around 90, and the average was probably 60. Already, the French were heckling me and telling me that I'm a terrible liar, etc. In the second game, I bowled a 169 almost entirely by accident. Meanwhile, I watched gutterball after gutterball. I would have felt bad for laughing, but everyone was enjoying themselves. That game, my Charles bowled a 38. In the end, all the French people just assumed that all Americans are great bowlers and I made a few more friends.

Now that I've finished my third week of classes, I'm beginning to form a routine of sorts. I go running whenever I get a chance and there is still light out, which is suprisingly rare. It gets dark around 6 pm here, so I've only gone about six times so far. I also try to go a different route each time to see more of the neighborhoods, so it actually serves two functions. One thing I noticed on all of my runs is that it smells like food everywhere. Bacon, chicken, BBQ sauce, cucumber, pasta are some that I can identify. It's strange, yet soothing at the same time.

My roommates are all very nice and we get along quite well. I have had similar experiences with everyone in the house so it's easy for me to have conversations with them, with the exception of Leandro the Indonesian guy. We talk about variety of things; from TV shows, to US colleges, to evolution, to medicine, to engineering. Mostly, though, we swap stories about our"lessor" Alice and the animals that she has running around. Occasionally I will see them on campus, which a nice relief from the sea of unfamiliar faces that I'm accustomed to.

Even though things are busy now, they will continue to get busier. The projects and homework assignments are starting to kick in and so are some of the plans that I had made. This Saturday, I'll take part in the 4's volleyball tournament put on the UQ Beach Volleyball club. Then on Sunday, I signed up to go to a lunch/rugby game with QUEST. The weekend after next is the beginning of our Spring Break. I'll be spending the entire week in Cairns and partaking in a 3-day/2-night scuba liveaboard. I haven't planned for the rest of the days, but I have a feeling it will be filled with sightseeing/hiking, swimming, and possibly whitewater rafting!