It's raining men....hallelujah

No it's not really raining men. But I do seem to have heard that song a few too many times in the short time that I've been here. Perhaps it's enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Or perhaps I unwittingly wandered into a certain part of town.

It is however raining rain at the moment. Well, it is threatening to quite a lot but then not delivering. Not that I'm complaining about that, as I am now a bmx bandit.

I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to know that my cold seems to be very slowly going away ("they're going to the old mill!""no we're not""well let's go to the old mill anyway and get some cider").

Preethi and I finally chose which nation to join. We pored over the booklet we were given, tossing up the pros and cons of each one, and finally settled on SNerikes Nation. After going to the Freshman Reception on Monday however, it seems that we made a terrible, terrible mistake. It started off quite nicely, in our 'buddy''s room, meeting some other new students and having a drink or two. We then moved on to the main university building where we had to listen to some speeches about the nation and its history.

We started to get a little concerned when we saw the other international students that had also joined SNerikes. Now we haven't been here for that long, and haven't gone out that much, but we have come across a few people that we find so amusing/annoying/unfriendly that we have created our own codenames for them. Some examples are 'granny pearls', 'greek goddess', and 'puss in boots'. There are also some others that just stuck in my mind because they were doing things like constantly chewing gum through a whole speach, or being loud and obnoxious. Needless to say, the bulk of these pillars of society had also joined SNerikes. Alarm bells also started to ring when people would ask us why we joined the nation and we would say 'oh because of the free movie nights and the invited speakers on thursdays' and everyone else seemed to say it was because of the awesome parties.

After the speeches we moved on to the nation building where we were given small glasses of the most vile drink I have ever had the misfortune of drinking. It had an aftertaste reminiscent of liquid panadol. It was some sort of schnapps, apparently the worst kind there is as we later found out. After milling around for an eternity we were told to find a partner as we had to enter the dining hall in pairs. Preethi and I decided to form a pair but a very small man approached Preethi and asked to be her partner. We told him we planned to be each other's partner but he quickly told us that it wasn't allowed. So Preethi walked in with her Austrian and I walked in with a Swedish girl. Apparently the ratio of girls to boys is 6:4 here so boys find themselves being invited to gasques a-plenty!

By this stage we were starving, as we had to meet at 3.30pm and the activities so far had taken a few hours. Expecting a nice Swedish meal, we were very disappointed with the small bowls of soup that had gone cold, and hard bread. Deciphering the menu, we discovered that that was the meal, apart from pancakes for dessert. I was still pretty sick so I decided I'd had enough and Preethi was kind enough to escort me home. Strangely enough I started to feel much better after we had left.

Well we've realised that SNerikes is clearly not our scene. However, it's not the end of the world as we can still get free admission at all the other nations before 9pm. Plus we can still go to the movie nights and invited speakers, and I doubt that granny pearls will be there! Plus as Tim put it, the crappy night gave me something to write about. Preethi and I thought it was quite amazing how we could have chosen such an inappropriate nation but oh well! These things happen!

Ooh I'm famous! I just wrote an email to Trevor Chappell at the ABC (which I'm listening to at the moment) as he asked for people overseas to write in with song requests. About 5 minutes after I sent the email he read it out and will play my song soon! I'll overlook the fact that he referred to me as a 'he'. I requested 'the sounds of then' by gangajang :)

I've been trying to make mental notes of the little things that are different here. For instance, the public toilets at uni are all self-contained little rooms. That is, each toilet has its own basin and mirror and even cup dispenser so that you can have a drink of water if you like. Actually, speaking of water, you have to be careful with the water fountains they have at uni. The one in the foyer of my department has two taps, one which is still water and one which is carbonated water. Unfortunately I realised this too late. I won't be making that mistake again.

We are having a crayfish party here tonight! In fact, I have to go make a comical hat for it....didn't realise how late it was!

Until next time..

Conor