Weekend and thoughts

Hey Everyone!

Today is the first day of school. I didn't have access to the internet last night so I couldn't figure out when my classes were today. I only managed to find my classes this morning at 8 am and it turns out that I had a class from 8am so I was already late. I live 15 to 20 minutes away from the uni (you can't say school because that means high school, and university is too long to say) so I had to run and I finally found my class at 8h30 am. I met 2 guys in the hallways that were also trying to find that same class. It's a class of about 150 students, only about 10 of which are girls!!! Shit... sausage fest... It's Mechanics of Solids 3, which is equivalent to Deformables I think, so maybe some of you will be able to help me out if i have problems haha! well no, it would be kind of hard to ask you questions from this far away...

I keep thinking that since summer just ended here that i'm actually starting a new school year and when people ask me for example in what grade is my sister, i tend to say that she's starting her 2nd year, but that's not true at all. It's just confusing.

I went to Narrabeen Lakes last weekend. It's a trip organized by the international student services. It was really fun. We were about 115 people and really that's just too much because I didn't know at least half of the people there. We had nametags on the whole weekend, and usually I'm really good at names, but the name tag thing made it very lazy and I didn't really try at all. I made a couple of friends so that's good. There was another Karen from Canada!! hehe That place is kind of like a camp you go to when you're a kid. I haven't actually been to camp but I know that's what it is. It's got sports fields (we played soccer, volleyball and touch rugby) and a pool (but we didnt go) and a lake (we went kayaking), had a campfire (made "dampers" which are a kind of sweet bread on a stick), played boardgames (that was fun) had a party on the first night etc. We had a couple of presentations about random australia stuff (aboriginal culture, job search, aussie lingo, etc) but they tried making group activities, which made it easier to sit through. We were like little kids that just wanted to go out and play. The bedrooms were bunks and there were cockroaches everywhere. Australia is mostly populated with cockroaches (called cockies for short).

Australians are so lazy because words are always shortened. Also there is a whole new set of expressions so weird.
Arvo = afternoon
sarvo = this afternoon
sanger= sandwiches
sunnies = sunglasses
surfie = surfer
cossie = bathing costume
Chrissy = Christmas
grog = booze
doonbag = box wine
cark it = die (croak)
dub someone in = tell on someone
g'day = hello
tada = bye
ta = thanks
thongs = flip flops

and more