O-Week!

We finally arrived in Brisbane! We got all our luggage and boarded the bus one last time for an hour-long drive to the Gold Coast. Once we got to the Griffith University Village we were immediately greeted by some of the staff members and given our room numbers. I found out that I was living with Sari, who was also one of my roommates in Cairns, and a few other friends I met in Cairns were in the same block as us. Sari and I got to our apartment and met our other 3 roommates Laura (an Australian), Ben, and Ian (2 Canadians). It felt good to unpack my suitcases and start getting settled in to longer-term accommodation. We each have our own bedroom, 2 bathrooms to share, and living room and kitchen. The entire floor is cement, so I’ve come to terms with the fact that the bottom of my feet will never be clean. I love the location of our apartment. From our balcony, we have a good view of the basketball court, pool area, and BBQ area, so we can always tell what’s going on.


Part of the Village!




               

The kitchen



The living room--we need to decorate      



That night, we had an orientation meeting for the village to learn a little more about the place and things we needed to do. Things were starting to feel a little overwhelming with enrolling, ID cards, having to go to the store, figuring out the bus system, and a few other things to do. However, we decided not to worry about it until the next day, and all the roommates went to Surfer’s Paradise. It was a fun way for all of us to get to know one another, and so far it seemed like we would all get along great!




The Roommates! Me, Ben, Sari, Laura, and Ian

The next day Laura, Sari, and I got our bus passes and student IDs, and took a bus to do some shopping for food, fans, and a few other things for the apartment. Everything was more expensive than back home, but we found out that Kmart was just like our Walmart, which was very helpful to discover. After that we took a stroll through campus to get ourselves a little more familiar with all the buildings. Everything was starting to fall in place and I could tell that I was going to love it here.

Soon was the start of Orientation Week (O-Week) at the Village. It was a week of lots of different activities for all the residents living at the Village. We had Village Olympics, where each apartment block competed against eachother, our block got 2^nd place! There were also lots of live band performances, buses to Surfer’s Paradise, a Las Vegas Night, buses to the beach, a Mexican Night, a beach party, outdoor movies, Aboriginal Australian workshops, and lots of free barbeques!!! The entire O-Week experience was awesome and it was an easy way to meet lots of people. The Village contains about half Australian students and the other half international students, so I’m meeting people from all different parts of the world!
Like UW-La Crosse, GUV (Griffith University Village) is very active. There are always people around that are willing to go shoot some hoops, hangout by the pool, kick a soccer ball around, or play some rugby.





Limbo contest!



Some of the blocks battling








Day at the beach!