Monday was an important day as we were told by all our guides and organisers. It was the day that we officially became a part of the system. We were registered and we EXISTED! Also exciting was getting our student cards which play a bigger role here than our ones at home do. Here they are in a case on a lanyard around our necks. We need to show them to enter the campus, get on the shuttle bus to the next campus and to enter the libraries. Particularly strange to us is the role they play in recording our attendance. Around the campus are dotted boxes on the wall, we are supposed to scan our cards at these boxes every so often to prove we are on campus. No one can give us a definitive answer but a few times a week seems to be enough. I feel micro chipped.
Claire and I got the other UWS students together that afternoon to organise Australia day celebrations with them and we all went down to ASDA (Coles, but with clothes and other extra things) to buy our supplies together. We managed to buy a 3 course meal for 7 people for just £28. We are so good at this budget shopping thing.
So I started Tuesday fairly early because I was excited for our day of cooking. I was in the kitchen in my pj’s making ANZAC biscuits when the cleaning lady came and I think she found it amusing. The day was quickly made more exciting by the discovery that our oven didn’t work. It is a gas oven which only seems to have one temperature, very low. So when the biscuits didn’t cook after 40 mins we had to look at other options. Luckily 2 of our friends who were around live in the same area as us and so one of them took the biscuits back to his whilst the rest of us continued preparing the roast at ours. Ben already knew his oven worked as he had made us lamingtons! I was impressed.
Our main course was 2 half lamb roasts, coated with honey, mustard and rosemary and surrounded in their roasting dishes by potatoes, carrots, onion and pumpkin. They were ferried to Shannon’s house whilst the rest of us ate the ANZAC biscuits. J The next few hours involved us running back and forward to different houses to check on the various ovens containing our food.
When the final result was brought to us, steaming in the cold air we were all grinning and laughing because we had been working on this meal for hours and were all very proud of ourselves. Kevin was appointed the patriarch and sliced our meat and everything was dealt out including the real gravy that Nicole whipped up somehow. We even had dessert of Pavlova and lemon meringue, it was amazing and we were so full after it all. Oh and of course Claire had decorated the house. We had a flag, beach towel, little Koalas around our necks and tattoos on our faces. My Dad’s comment when I greeted him on Skype adorned with all my paraphernalia was to groan and tell me how he worried about all the rampant patriotism that goes on on this day.
That night we shared our festive cheer with our other international friends down at the Uni bar, the Elle house; drinks were had amid cheers of ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi!’ (Mostly in an American accent).
The next day we already had planned out. I had been dreaming of coming to the Museum of Natural History since before we left for England. I don’t know how many of you were watching their documentary on ABC but I had been and was excited to see everything that it had promised to me. Joining me on this journey of discovery were Claire and John (from Oklahoma). It was a day of discovery right from the start when we found that John had never been on a train before and so we delighted in his excitement of this first experience. Our train came in to Kings Cross station where we had to change lines. We alighted at platform 9 (!!!!!) right next to 10 (!!!!!) but I tried not to be too excited as I’m not sure my companions would have understood it. The Piccadilly line took us to Knightsbridge (I love how so many names are the same as Australian ones) and we made our way to the museum, stumbling across Harrods as we went.
The museum loomed. Huge and imposing, a mix of different architecture. The front is elaborate and a mix of red and grey brick, with arches, huge windows, turrets and parapets. The others laughed at me as I started skipping with excitement. What can I say about the exhibits? They were fun, educational, and awe inspiring. And Claire and John loved them too! Enough of my gushing, you will just have to visit for yourself J. We left some of the museum for another day but once we were outside we were straight away pulled into the neighbouring Victoria & Albert Museum. Its exhibitions were those of renaissance Europe; art, sculptures, clothing etc. We were running out of time when we came across two amazing rooms full of huge stone sculptures and parts of buildings. We just stared and assured each other that we would visit again to properly check it out.
Then started a rather long adventure. We waited for a bus to Kings Cross, which once it came, took forever to get there because of peak hour traffic. Then we couldn’t find the hostel. Once we did and checked in, we found that our friends were not just down the street like we expected, they were across town. So we caught the train back to where we had come from and arrived outside the walkabout pub to find a line, the likes of which I have not seen before. When one of the girls told us that in half an hour she had moved 5 meters we made a definite decision not to join it. Instead we headed to the Irish pub next door to celebrate Australia day. It turns out more than half their clientele that night were Aussies who couldn’t be bothered to line up, and soon after our burgers arrived our friends joined us and we had a right little party going on. Randomly, the table next to us had a girl from UWS Penrith on it, just on her summer holiday, small world. It was a great night and was rounded off by the usual drunken entertainment of doing acrobatics on the train.
Claire and I woke feeling fresh and decided that the day was a walking one. We just headed out with no real plan other than to stop where we were interested, and that is how we ended up in a HUMUNGUS stationary store, a clothes shop, a museum with an exhibition on drugs through the ages, in a quiet residential area with ‘Oliver’ like housing and finally at the bus stop at Marble Arch. We came home wreaked from all our walking and promised that the next day would be a quiet one.
Our home day was great. We did a lot of catching up, it turned out that although I had not gone to any classes yet, I did already have homework that I would have never discovered if I had not logged on to the uni website. We did discover that the freshers fair was on down at the forum and went along to check it out. It was basically a display of all the societies that they have. The membership fee is pretty good so we are thinking of joining a few, swing dancing in particular. J
That evening I walked down to the Galleria to watch ‘Black Swan’. On the walk down I noticed a few things. An obvious one is that the stars aren’t the same here. But I hadn’t expected it to hit me like it did. Even if like me you know very little about the stars, I can still pick out the obvious ones. Orion’s belt, the Southern Cross and I can pick out Venus when she is out and even though I don’t know the other stars they are familiar. Here nothing is familiar and it is unsettling. The other thing I noticed is that when walking with my ipod in, English people look like anyone else. What I mean to say is, when you can hear their accent it sets them apart (and maybe makes you imagine that however they look, it is ‘English’) but when you can hear anything they could as well be Australian. Well it was a revelation for me.
I came back from my cultured night at the theatre, to find Claire with our American friends playing flip cup in a bib. (She didn’t want the red wine ruining her top, it was too late). We didn’t stay too long though as most of them were going on to the Forum for Friday night flirt. This happens every Friday and it is always themed. Students here must have wardrobes full to bursting with costumes as they all get into it and it is a different theme every Friday.
Today was our third trip into London this week. We had big plans for today, Claire had mapped and timetabled it all out (like an OCD crazy person <3 ) but it all fell apart when the bus driver told us that he didn’t have room for the 12 of us on the bus. That is how we discovered that the train does group discounts, bringing the price down from £16 to £7 (transport is crazy expensive here). Our aim was to visit London Tower but after we had bought our discount tickets from the information centre (what a find!) and found lunch and found the right train it was getting late. And then when that train had track works and we had to get a bus that never turned up after half and hour of waiting, we gave up on it, thankful that our tickets were valid for 7 days. So where did we go instead? The Museum of Natural History of course. J I got to introduce it to a few more people and see a few more rooms, but really the lesson for today was that travelling with a large group is not easy. Claire and I intend to get to the tower on Tuesday so we will see how that goes.
General news is that it is getting colder here, below freezing (just) and snow is expected soon enough. We are celebrating when we see a shadow because it means the sun is out! We are in the process of offering cooking lessons to our American friends who are used to living in Fraternities where they are fed. Some are starting to panic that they have nothing to eat. We have several trips booked with the university in the future weeks to Windsor castle and Cambridge. Our classes are starting on Monday and I’m interested to see how much the homework disrupts our leisure time but so far we are finding very easy to just duck across to someone else’s house for some entertainment. Although it has been decided that we need a game so that we can have games nights, so far all we have is Twister.
What a long post! Hope you all enjoyed your Australia day as much as we did, and a Happy 18th Birthday to Daniel!
Love, Gemma.
