It's O (orientation) week! We had an official welcome ceremony at 10am. I was going to get the free breakfast offered by a local radio station before hand but I didn't get out of bed soon enough so I just headed to the ceremony. It was pretty interesting. It is the University's 10th anniversary this year; they have had the fasted growing enrolment of an Australian uni ever. The Vice Chancellor said that the first year they were open they had just over 500 students enrol, after this year they will be up to just under 5,000...that's crazy! They had someone of the Aboriginal culture play a welcome ballad on the didgeridoo; it was really cool, it was amazing how many different sounds he could make come out of it. They had a student that will be graduating in April give a welcome speech. She talked about how she studied abroad in Cleveland and that everyone instantly loved her because she was Australian, funny but so true. The welcome session lasted until 11 and then we had to go to the International Student welcome. I saw Brooke and Andrea (from MSUM) along the way, they live in Varsity Apartments across the street so this was the first time I had seen them since we moved in. This welcome was alright but it was 2 hours long so I was getting pretty restless and hungry by the end. During our welcome, the security guard warned us to stay away from the kangaroos, especially the big bucks during mating season because I guess they can get rather mean, but he forgot to mention when mating season is. They had a free BBQ and a beer garden (not free) on campus so Brooke, Andrea and I ate at that (just the burger) and they introduced me to two of their German friends. I signed up to play softball with the student guild; I'm pretty excited about that. If you got a tattoo from the ANZ bank, you got a coupon for a free ice cream cone. I figured why not but it was the really cheap ice cream from a trailer that you would buy at a fair and it sort of tasted like whip cream. The cones look similar but theirs are orange and they 'V' at the bottom like a waffle cone. After I ate lunch I had to go to the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty Induction Session. It was pretty boring because they basically repeated everything I heard at the International Welcome. We broke up into small groups at the end with a current student in the arts and social sciences area so we could ask questions. I found out how to get my books so that was rather helpful. I stayed for tea (cookies and juice) after and talked to my group leader about the politics class I was taking. When I was done with that, I ran into Beth and Andy and we went to get our photo taken for our Uni I.D. taken. We only had to wait a few minutes and we got our I.D. Mine is really bad, I wasn't even looking when she took the picture! We then had to get our passports back because they made a copy of them. After Beth got her books we went back to UniCentral and my roomies and I and a few of the boys' friends hung out for awhile before we went down to the BBQ and no, not all Aussies call it a Barbie. It was a free BBQ sponsored by UniCentral. It was an awesome party. There were people everywhere and I met a lot of people. I ended up hanging out with some random people and they were a lot of fun. One of the guys is Irish and is very entertaining. They had a DJ and everything so I went and danced with some people for a while. The DJ ended at 11 or 12 but the party wasn't over yet. I hung out with Martin, Sara (Germans), Shane and Nate (Kiwis) and a few other random people for a while. Sara is a lot of fun. She went to school in Brainerd for a year when she was 16 and she knew where Melrose is! She is from Hamburg and thought it was awesome that I had been to Germany. When Sara and Martin were talking in German I understood a lot of words but by the time my brain processed it I missed too much of what was said and usually just got confused but they are going to both help me with my German and I'm really excited. It was about 2:30 when I got back to my room but it was a really awesome night and I got to meet a lot of people that live in UniCentral.