Orientation commenced today. We were finally able to step onto the campus as enrolled students at University of Sydney. All exchange students showed up at the steps of the Great Hall where we were getting a beat down from the sun before we all packed into this historic building that resembled an old church. Like any other orientation there were many presenters that can get boring after awhile. However that was not the case here; we got much advice to fall in love...with an Australian and bring them back home, be flexible, and just get involved. Over 30 countries at represented this semester at University of Sydney this semester with America and Brazel being the highest represented surprisingly. From there we were told we were going to have Morning Tea, which turned out to not be so much in the morning, or tea for that matter. Our next orientation session got pushed back an hour so we had time to finally go get a prepaid cell phon, or so we had hoped. We thought a company called Vodaphone would be the best option and since there was a store on campus, thats where we headed. Once again, we were assisted with an oriental person that barely understood our situation, because of this he tried getting up to set up a bank account for a prepaid phone. We knew this couldn't be the case..because its just a dang prepaid phone! We headed to the mall where we ran into more trouble and disappointing news. Apparently in Australia you need a passport to buy a prepaid phone, and a passport is something we did not have with us. We were able to finally finalize which phone company would be the best option for us and headed into our last orientation session of the day. One of the presentors this time was a spokeperson for the Extreme Adventures crew (the same company that we took the Blue Mountains trip with) advertising their Spring Break trip. This trip is almost $1800 dollars and includes snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, bungee jumping, cruises, meals and accomondation AND they decided to give one free trip away! Everyone in the audience was to stand up and put their hands on their head for heads or hands on their bums for tails and a staff member would flip a coin. Riley lost out on the second round, but Lauren lasted until there were only 8 people left! With her heart beating so fast she forgot to look around to see what other people had chosen and chose tails like 6 other remaining people. Of course it was heads, but what bothers me is he wasn't even that excited!
With orientation done for the day, and like the hero that Riley is he volunteered himself to walk all the way back to the hostel (45 minutes one way) and retrieve my passport. Lauren stayed at the university to continue the search for apartments. Finally able to get a phone we headed to the mall again, but with 6 universities around this mall and thousands of international students the phones were basically all sold out! We had to again go to 4 different stores to find a cheap 40 dollar phone. In the process we ran into 2 America girls from our school and helped them get a phone just like ours. The phone salesman that activated our phone was actually very interested in us Americans and one of the first things he asked was "Obama or Romney?" We then continued to talk about the presidential debates and how he thought that Obama tore Romney apart. We were all surprised to hear him talk about US politics with such knowledge. In all the excitement of finally getting phones me and another girl accidently switched sim cards in our phones which we thought had changed our numbers around, but we quickly got it sorted out! With no time to waste it was time to get a move on calling people and arranging inspections.
A-Ten-Hut! Inspection Time!
Our first stop was a place looking for one girl. We walked onto a semi-secluded walkway with bamboo and elephant ear plants draping over the walkway. Stepping into the apartment we were confronted by a shirtless guy from Boston. We felt like we were getting interrogated by him considering all the questions he asked, where we were from; why we were here; did we talk to the tenant already? He softened up quickly once he found out we were American since he wanted more Americans in the apartment and took it upon himself to show us around. The place was pretty spacious, the empty bed was in a room with only one other person which was nice. The people were also welcoming. Not completely sold we moved on to the next location which was a little closer to campus but also more expensive. The tenant was a guy from Italy who was moving to get closer to his work location. The apartment was placed in a nice quadrant with shops all around the bottom floor. He led us into an apartment that gave us an instant heat wave from the kitchen being right at the door. The place was a step up with one bed available in a guy room with 2 other people. The highlight on the apartment was the top story, open pool on the roof on the complex overlooking the entire city of Sydney. Talk about gorgeous! The people were a little older and not as friendly, so we were at a crossroads. With it getting dark, and us getting hungry we decided to stop at a restaurant we had seen advertised. What were called Bondi Burgers were actually just chicken sandwiches, such a let down, but good nonetheless. It was the first time we had eaten meat in a long time; pasta just wasn't cutting it that night. We tried to call a few more tenants on the way home but with no luck we called it a day. Once we arrived back the hostel we dropped everything, grabbed our laptops and heading out to McDonalds to get free wifi and get our blog on. Unfortunately, McDonald's was not cooperating that night, forcing us to get a soft serve cone and head home.
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