Introduction to the University

Starting off the morning quite well, here is my "American moment of the day;"

            Having got up at an unholy hour this morning because I couldn’t sleep, I decided to turn my computer on and work on my blog of the previous days activities.  I do my thing and go to turn my computer off when I notice that the battery is pretty run down. Alright, I thought, so I go to plug my computer in using one of the numerous outlet converters I had brought and to my dismay saw no change in my computer; no light telling me it was charging, no icon saying it was plugged in.  So I naturally thought maybe the outlet was bad.  Turned out not to be the case and I eventually resigned myself to the idea that I would simply have to go into town to an electronics store and find a different computer charger.  When Blessing got up she offered to let me see if her charger worked, which it didn’t, and I suddenly stopped with a sudden dawning of knowledge. I removed her charger from the computer and plugged my own in. I then reached up to the little button right next to the power plug, flipping it on.  Evidentially you need to turn on all the outlets here before you use them as a sort of power saving tool.  Yeah, I felt super smart after that one!

            After that lovely little initiation into the mountain load of new things I'm sure I will be learning :), I went out and cooked myself breakfast before heading out with the rest of the house to traverse the lawn and walk across to the church for the 10:15 service.  I really liked it and I am excited to see where the sermons will go this term in talking about Revelations.  

            After church I got to have a good chat with a number of my housemates about the differences between Aussie and American universities and how the education system differs.  They call Majors "Courses" and when they apply for university they apply for the course, not for the university itself.  Their universities are only a 3 year long program instead of 4 because a lot of the "baccore" classes that American students take their first year at university Aussie students take during their senior year of high school. 

Getting the tour around campus

            They offered to show me and another gal around campus as they were headed there anyways to put up some flyers and we happily agreed.  It really is gorgeous, oh my goodness!  Quite open, very green, at least for now, and all the buildings are all labeled with their number and major subject focus instead of a building name. We must have spent about an hour walking about campus and getting a sense of where things were before we headed to the far end of campus to check out an apparently very new grocery store that had just been put in.  They said we would just "pop in for a look" and no twenty minutes later we were all walking out with a bag or two of groceries. I guess that saves me another trip to the grocery store that I had been planning!

Some interesting sculptures courtesy of the art department that shoot mist, evidently to help keep the students cool.  All I was thinking was "Isn't it humid enough?"

            4:00 was to be our scheduled "Lodgee Meeting Time" and we got the brief run down of our expectations, rules and the like while living at the lodge.  Afterwards we all had dinner together, provided by Dot who runs the lodge.  The sky started to darken and thunder and we started getting a little bit of rain which was evidently very unusually for this time of the year.  Apparently the rain is usually done and gone by the end of January.  After dinner we all headed back across the lawn to church for the evening service and it was funny to have us all huddling under umbrellas for the jaunt across the lawn and there were even some comments of how cold it was.  Shoot, it felt like a rainy and warm summer day in Oregon to me!

We also went on a short walk about the river walkway and park. Definitely making my way back there some time...

             I can truly say that I loved the evening service. The first service was very up beat and out going but I found this service even more so and much more geared towards youth and young adult as well. Afterwards I got to meet a couple more university students. One gal in particular who is from South Africa I learned is in a field of study very similar to mine! We exchanged phone numbers and decided to try and catch up with each other on Tuesday since we both have the same course introduction orientation time.  Starting to make some good connections!

My favorite song from church this morning