Well, You Asked For It!!!

A Real, True Update!

I know guys, exciting, huh?

WARNING: an extremely long post. I got pretty detailed, at my fans’ request, and this post covers multiple days of shenanigans, so I hope you have some time on your hands and a comfy chair. Or I would recommend breaking it into pieces. But it is enthralling! You might not be able to tear yourself away! Haha. Enjoy. And good luck!

So where shall I start? Wednesday. Wednesday I had that presentation for Australian Art. My first assignment in Australia! All the rest of the time here, I have just been reading or talking about what I’ve read.

I was the third person to do a presentation this semester. The first guy was supposed to be like the guinea pig/example for the rest of us to follow, but that didn’t work out at all. He was this extremely old man that volunteered to do the first presentation because none of us “kids” wanted to go first so he decided out of the kindness of his heart to show us all how it’s done!!!! Not.

His was SO. BORING. Ughhh, I think I almost fell asleep! It was 25 minutes long, first of all, and he wasn’t really explaining anything. We are supposed to address the topic that we are covering in our paper, you know, like with an argument or at least explanation of a question or something.

* Cute Boy Side Note: I just walked into the hallway to get a cup of water, and my adorable gay neighbor Andy Cam was out there talking to Mr. Stud Muffin Tom whose room I went to the first night I was here before the big Formal Dinner. Eeeeeeeeh Tom is so cute!!!!! But I have gotten to know his girlfriend, and I really like her. Wouldn’t want to get between them, they are too cute together. Still, he’s very nice to look at. ;) *

Back to my post: so Mr. Old Man, who actually looks like what I would picture for the history of magic teacher at Hogwarts who is actually a ghost (what’s his name again? Margot, I turn to you! Haha), ranted on and on about one painting after another. He didn’t give any explanation of the question he was supposed to address, it just seemed like he wanted to blow us away by how many unnecessary dates he remembered. It was just like, “this big old landscape painting was made in 1856 by this one old painter. Look at the big mountains!” And then he would go onto his opinion of the artist, or this one time he saw the painting in some random gallery up in Queensland or something.

So yeah, a good example for me to follow for my presentation. Not.

I had no idea what to say! But then I talked to the professor, who is extremely nice and actually said, “oh yes, wasn’t [Mr. Old Man… I don’t know his name]’s memory so good? Golly, how does he remember all those dates?” talking about him in the nicest way possible. But she explained that she does want us to present an argument, and we don’t need to go through 20 slides like he did, we can leave it at 3 or 4, if we want.

So to prepare for my presentation, I actually made a bit of an outline, like I would for a paper, with an introduction, a little historical context, and main body about the actual works. It worked out pretty well. It ended up being about 14 minutes long, which is perfect, not too short or long, and I think I covered everything I wanted to. I talked about 3 paintings made around 1890 that are really famous here in Australia and why they have become national icons. It was actually really interesting to me. It’s interesting that Australia, and America for that matter, can choose what they want to represent them, because they each claimed the land for themselves and are both relatively new nations, so they can choose just one aspect to represent their people, even if it’s not that true. Like the Australians chose to use “bushmen” meaning rugged country men who shear sheep or work in mining shafts, even though 90% of the population had no contact with “the bush” and lived in cities. Funny ol’ world. I guess that’s why our idea of the outback and Crocodile Dundee come in when we think of Australia.

Alright next topic.

Earlier that morning, I was supposed to go to the National Gallery of Victoria (the NGV) instead of my contemporary art lecture because that’s where we were going to have class, or something. So, I had only ever been to the “NGV” at Federation Square, which is down Swanston Street. I had never heard of an NGV anywhere else, and I thought the lecturer said it was at “Fed Square”. Now, looking back on it, maybe he had said, “past Fed Square” or “down from Fed Square”? I will never know. Because I went to the wrong NGV.

Ooooops.

It actually ended up making my morning pretty terrible. I showed up to the place at Fed Square right on time, at 9:55 because we were supposed to meet at 10, and no one was there. Actually, the gallery wasn’t open until 10, which I thought was sort of funny. So I hung around, looking for people who looked like students, or the lecturer, or any tutors. I could find none. There were school groups there, but they all looked like elementary school kids. I put my jacket at the coat check, because I didn’t want to carry it around, and I figured I would walk up to the fifth floor, because that’s where we were supposed to be.

Guess what? No fifth floor. This place was only 3 floors.

So that’s when I actually knew I was in the wrong place. And I could have sworn I heard the lecturer say “NGV at Fed Square.” I was so upset. I didn’t actually know anyone in the class, I had no one to call because I only have like, 3 people’s numbers total, none of which are of people I know from a class.

So I walked back down, angry and upset, with my whole morning out of whack now that my plan for the day completely came to a halt, so I got a mocha in my bad mood and hopped back on the tram to go back to school. I didn’t know where the really NGV was, so I couldn’t just find my way there. And I would have been super late.
And I had my presentation to do in an hour and a half. I was totally not in the zone.
But I remember thinking on the tram, I’m not going to let this get me down, yes, I can have a bad day, but it’s not that bad, and I just have to read down my paper for my presentation, and then the rest of my day is cake. I’ll just have to email my tutor that I got lost.

I got back to Queens, flopped down on my bed and emailed my tutor. And then I quickly had lunch and went to my presentation. And it went pretty well, though the rest of the day I was kind of in a bad mood.

I got an email back from my tutor that day, and he said, and quote:

There is a tutorial at the NGV (the International one on St. Kilda rd, about 400 metres south of Fed Square) tomorrow at 10am. We will meet outside of the 'mousehole' entrance - which is on the North Wall of the building, facing the Victorian Arts Centre. If you're late, we'll be up on the 5th floor. Can you perhaps make this tutorial?

… he didn’t say anything about the lecture. ??? and I thought tutorials were cancelled because if the field trip lecture! That’s what the lecturer said. So I also looked in my reader for the class, and it said “seminars” were cancelled, and “seminar” is another word for “tutorial.” Now, I did not want to go to this tutorial. Yes, 10 am is better than 9 am, which would be the usual time, but there was a Queens function Wednesday night for a fundraiser for the play they’re putting on, and I wanted to go to that, not go to bed early so I can wake up to go to the museum that I’ve never been to and don’t know where it is.

So at first I emailed back that I could come if he needed me to, not mentioning the lecture anymore because he didn’t seem to care about that at all. But then I thought, I expected there to be no tutorial tomorrow, and I want to go to this thing tonight, so no, I am not going to go to this nonexistent tutorial that isn’t supposed to happen. So I emailed back that I had forgotten that I made an appointment in the morning, thinking there was no tutorial because that’s what the reader said, so I can’t make it to the thing at the gallery. My bad!

Really, I was having such a crappy day, I just wanted to chill out that night and not worry about trying to find my way to a gallery the next morning, alone, never having been there before, so I didn’t even care that I had already emailed him that I could go. I just changed my plans/mind.

That night I went to the Queens function. It was at a bar, Dan O’Connell’s, which is where Queeners go a lot. It was for the play Inheritance, which is a play done by just Queens people, which is kind of cool. But even there, I didn’t have that great of a time. I didn’t want to pay for drinks, because they are really expensive at bars, and just had no energy to take to people and make friends because of the wreck that was my morning. But I’m glad I did that instead of going to bed early to wake up and find the NGV. I was not in the mood.

Onto Thursday! (I hope this is detailed enough for you, Mom!!! Hee hee!)

Thursday was AWESOME. Mostly because of Thursday night.

Thursday during the day was alright, I went to my Australia and America tutorial, there’s a new cute guy in it, so that makes it a little more interesting, and then I went to my Aboriginal Writing tutorial, which was also okay because half of it we just watched this video about an author. Then that night was 3rd North corri-crawl.

3rd North corri-crawl, you ask? What is that, you ask? I will tell you.

3rd North is the 3rd floor of the North section of Queens. It’s the corridor that Olivia lives on. So I know I a lot of people on 3rd North, because I am there all the time hanging out with Olivia. Corri-crawl is short for corridor crawl. Kind of like pub-crawl, I guess, but only within your corridor. This is a party that happens only once a year, not a semester, so, for my corridor, I missed out on the corri-crawl because it was last semester. But, luckily, at the last minute, I got invited to the 3rd North corri-crawl!

HOOOOOOORAY IT WAS THE BEST PARTY EVERRRRR!!!!!

But really, it was crazy fun.

So that afternoon, Olivia asked me to come up and help her make her costume. See these things are themed, of course, because Australians don’t have Halloween and they make up for it by having all their parties as costume parties. 3rd North’s theme was Haunted House, so Olivia decided to be a zombie (my suggestion. Good one, eh Anna??? :D) so I went up to help her cut up her clothes and get dirt all over them so it looked like she crawled out of the earth or something like that.

While we were doing that, other 3rd North people were “decorating” the hallway. (I wouldn’t call it decorating. When I decorate, I go ALL. OUT. If the theme’s gonna be haunted house, my house would be actually haunted. Really, I am not one to let my decorations look half-assed. I’m a studio art major, for crimeny’s sake!) By decorating, I mean the boys were covering the lights with black paper so it was pretty dark, and construction paper was lying on the floor waiting to be made into stuff to put on walls. Oh, how sad it was.
So they asked me to help! And I was like YESSSSSSSSSSS because I love decorating, especially for Halloween-style shindigs, so I started drawing bats on black paper so the other girls could cut them out and put them on the walls or hang them from the ceiling. Looked pretty good. I mean, if I had been running this thing, it would have been AWESOME and TERRIFYING but generally it looked alright. You know the decorations would have been torn apart by the end of the night anyway, so I guess it was good we didn’t put too much effort in.

So then the decorating was coming to an end, and I was walking down the hallway, and Sam May, one of the girls on the floor who is extremely nice and also super pretty (Tom’s girlfriend, I know, I know. Perfect couple status. Siggghhh. Good thing they’re really nice) said, “well, why don’t you come by tonight for a drink? At least a drink.” And I didn’t want to intrude or anything, because it seems like corri-crawl is sort of a corridor bonding thing, I didn’t want to insert myself into it just because I’m good friends with Olivia. But she said I totally have her permission to come up for the night and that I was totally welcome. And so that morphed into Olivia asking to see if I was coming, and then Trina, another girl, and then a couple more people when I was helping someone with her skeleton makeup. Haha.

(that was hilarious by the way, putting on her skeleton makeup. I don’t think people in general who paint their face to look like a skeleton actually look like a skeleton at all, but I was the resident artist so she asked me to do it. Heh heh heh. I’ll post a picture. I tried my best hee hee.)

So, I decided to go! And you know what, I think it was totally okay that I went. I am pretty good friends now with a lot of people of 3rd North, not just Olivia, so I was very welcome. You know, I just didn’t want it to seem like I was hanging around while they were getting ready so that they would invite me. I guess I was kind of hoping, but I had already totally prepared myself for a night in, watching movies, and then hearing about the night the next day from Olivia. But everyone was inviting, so I went along with it.

Which means THINK OF A COSTUME NOW GO!!! Pant pant pant.
I ran up to my room, with Olivia to help me out, and all I could think of from things that were in my closet was a costume for the dumb blonde girl at the beginning of the horror movie that gets killed either first, or after the black guy. So we went with it, pushing it to cheerleader. I wore a little blue skirt and blue tee shirt with sneakers (everything matched, of course), put my hair in pigtails, and taped a sign for “South High Pep Squad” to my shirt, with “Captain” on my back. And then we ran back up to 3rd North to paint on a bloody slash mark on my throat where I was killed, I guess.

Then PAAARRTTYYYY!!!!

It was awesome and hilarious.

We played games, like 21 and Never Have I Ever. Actually, Olivia and I had to explain the rules for 21, that was a new one for the Aussies. Actually, it was new to Americans too, when I was with some, I had to explain the rules to all of them. Hmm. Look at me, bringing some knowledge. ;)

Now, my mom wanted a detailed account of the evening, sooooo there are some adult themes in this explanation (as in drinking and lots of people running around in their underwear). Just a warning. :/

I figure I should explain the game rules to the older folks reading these posts, I’m not sure if drinking games were invented back in your day. Just kidding! But actually really, I don’t know… ;)
So 21 is a game where you sit in a circle and you count in a clockwise direction up to 21. Whoever gets 21 gets to make a rule for a number, so instead of saying the number, you have to do whatever the rule is. So if the rule is for 7, you have to run down the hallway and clap and run back, it would go “…5, 6, * number seven runs down the hallway and claps *, 8, 9…” like that. And if you forget to do the rule, you drink.
People last night were bending the rules a bit, picking on one guy named Akhila and saying, “whenever we get to 8, Akhila drinks” so Akhila ended up having to drink more than everyone else. Not in the traditional rules, but hey, who cares about tradition?? It was fun anyway.
Never Have I Ever is more straightforward. You just go around the circle with everyone saying something they have never done. Or that they have done, but in that case, they would also have to drink. Everyone who has done it has to drink. But you start the sentence with “never have I ever…” etc. It can be anything, like gone skiing or been to New York, but last night it was mostly about … more taboo things, if you get my drift. I didn’t have to drink much (Ha! That’s how experienced I am…) but it was a really comfortable situation anyway. Whenever someone drank on something really crazy, we would always have to hear the story, and everyone felt comfortable telling the story with just the people around them. And nothing left the hallway, if you know what I mean. Which means if I told any of the stories on here, it would be a breach of contract and God would smite me! Not really, but you wouldn’t want anyone spreading stuff around Queens. It’s a gossipy bunch here.

So once games were over, there was just a lot of dancing and drinking and playing around. Let’s see if I can remember all the costumes. There were 2 mummies (whose wrappings were EVERYWHERE by the end of the night), a zombie (Olivia), a werewolf, little dead riding hood, a skeleton, the puppet thing from Saw (never seen the movie, but I recognized the puppet thing), Frankenstein, the grim reaper, the chainsaw massacre guy, hannibal lector, a devil, chucky, and one guy, the cute one named Matt, just wore a long black cloak and put this light in his mouth that made his mouth look like a flashlight. I didn’t really get it… but it was funny when he was standing in the back of pictures with just his mouth open so there was this weird light, haha. I can’t remember any more costumes… oh, there was a guy who made it look like he was stabbed by a foam seahorse! Yeah, I didn’t get that either.

So the night went on, we did jager bombs at one point, which I had never had before. They are actually really tasty! I don’t like jagermeister, because it tastes like black licorice, but with red bull it’s very yummy. I don’t like red bull on it’s own either… hmm. It also seems like a bad idea to mix an energy drink with alcohol, but we only did the one. Actually, funny story, just as we had finished that, and my side of the hallway finished all theirs first (victory!!!) the Vice Master came up to check on us.

Ruh-roh…

The Vice Master is the guy I interviewed with to come here, and he sort of runs the school. He checks up on every corri-crawl, to make sure it’s not out of hand, and people from other corridors aren’t supposed to be there… a.k.a. me…
So, I walked down the hallway, away from the Vice Master, to go find Olivia, who was currently kissing one of the guys who lives in 3rd North, Will. Haha, we’ll get to that later. But I was like, “hey guys, the Vice Master is here, did you know?” and they were like “OH MY GOD you’re not supposed to be here! Go hide in the closet! Did he see you?!” so they pushed me into Will’s room, where they were hanging out, while I was thinking, what? Is this like bad? What's going ’on? Are we in trouble? And then someone was like, “oh calm down, don’t put her in the closet, the Vice Master won’t do anything, he’s just here to check up.” So I just stayed in the room until he left, just in case, and we went back to partying.

After a little while though, I hadn’t seen Olivia in a while, and I was a little worried, because her key was still in her door, and if she had gone outside, she would be locked out. You see, I thought she might have gone outside because, like I said earlier, I saw her kiss Will, not very secretively, and then I heard Alyssa, a girl I don’t know but who is Will’s best friend, was crying because of it. I thought, oh no, here comes the drama of the night. So I thought Olivia had got caught up in all that, possibly yelled at, and ran outside to get away in a dramatic huff. But, it turned out to not be dramatic at all, I later found out.

At the time, I was worried because I didn’t know where she was, so Chris, another guy who’s really nice who was dressed as Hannibal Lector (LOL), and I walked out down to the place where you can get snacks from vending machines, because knowing Olivia, I can see her wanting a snack in the middle of the night. But we couldn’t find her! So we went to her room to wait, propped her door open and sat there for a little while.

Ryan (who everyone called Juddie) came in to hang out too, and then the boys decided Olivia was probably hooking up with Akhila, because we hadn’t seen Akhila in a while either. (that would have been bad. Not that Akhila was a bad guy, he was just sort of… a horny polecat, to use a phrase used by a friend’s dad a long time ago.) Juddie seemed okay with this, because it turns out, after hooking up with Akhila, girls end up in a long term relationship with someone else. Juddie thought it could be his turn, haha!
But then Olivia came back.

Turns out she had been waiting with Sam May for the pizza guy to come, so they were downstairs. Psch, no dramatic story around that. Olivia is not a very dramatic person, so I wasn’t expecting it really, I just know there’s usually a dramatic moment at every party where someone cries and someone else is called a bitch, and they guy is usually at fault, but he just uses some man excuse, like “I thought we were going to be casual!” or something dimwitted like that. But no, turns out no drama. :)

And the party went on with great speed. Really. Like at one point I checked what time it was and it was 11:30, and I thought, oh, the night is young, and then suddenly it was 4 am.

The rest of the night involved a kiddie pool, a “nuddy run”, and lots of people in their underwear. Lemme lay it out for ya.

First, I went to the bathroom, down the hall, past the door where we covered the windows so we could make 3rd North extra dark and creepy, and as I was coming out of the bathroom, suddenly everyone was there and all the guys were taking their clothes off. And I mean ALL their clothes. Now this is called a “nuddy run,” I think. “Nuddy” as in nude, as in naked. And I was like OHHH GEEZ AVERT EYES AVERT EYES!!! I didn’t know these guys that well, if you know what I mean!!! And then they all pranced downstairs like a bunch of happy schoolboys and I think went to run around the North building naked. I’m not sure if they went all around the grounds, because we had a bit of an incident last week with a corri-crawl with these two naked guys who barged into a sleeping girl’s room. (It resulted in the girl leaving, which was very sad for Queens, I guess, because they had this big meeting with us about it. That wasn’t the only thing that made her leave, though, she just wasn’t having a good time here. It’s really too bad.) So I don’t think they ran all over the campus, like they traditionally would, but they ran at least downstairs.

Later, I was in the hallway, doing who knows what, hangin’ out with my homies, the usual, (the ones who weren’t running around naked, I guess), and then all these girls run in, in just their undies and start dancing on the dance floor. Oh, and any guys that were there too. Meaning, everyone was in their underwear. I actually felt strange having clothes on, so I was like, “Olivia, should I take these off?” and of course she was like “YEAAAHH!!” and she helped me out of them like a good friend.

Yeah, never done THAT before. Seriously. In all my twenties years, I have never been in just my undies in a public setting, even in college. Well, unless my girlfriends were in the room while I was changing. So don’t go thinking I do this a lot!!! Because I certainly don’t. Haha. But really, the awesome party setting called for it, so I had to go with the flow.

It was totally fun and comfortable, nothing creepy. (I can just sense my protective aunts thinking, oh my poor, sweet, innocent niece! Anything could happen in that situation! But don’t worry, everyone here is extremely kind, the opposite of creepy, and knows what boundaries are.)

So yeah, those were the main parts of my night! Later, when it was about 4:30 am, I figured I should go to bed (though I had no sense of time at that point, with no clock to check) and Olivia gave me a shirt (because I couldn’t find mine… heh heh) and I walked back to my room fully-clothed and reminiscing on my super satisfying night.

Two words: good times.

At one point in the night (I didn’t know where to put this because I can’t remember when exactly it happened) I was getting pretty much hit on by this guy, Dan. (Ahhh, that brings me back to first grade, when I used to like my neighbor, Daniel, and everyone would sing “Daniel and Danielle, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G” Not my favorite song anymore...) Dan was, of course, drunk, so I don’t think he would have acted that way otherwise, especially since he has a girlfriend, as I brought up to him that night a-HEM, but he was rubbing my back and standing pretty close and at one time leaned in for a kiss (that’s when the “oh, remember you have a girlfriend you really like?” thing happened… :/) and of course, I ignored his advances because I wouldn’t do that to my fellow womankind. I was very tempted though, I’ll be honest, because he’s cute and Australian and really funny and nice. But everyone here is funny and nice, that really doesn’t make him anything special haha. Later, right before I was leaving, he tried the rubbing-back, arm-around-me move again, and I thwarted his advances yet again! Haha! Try to stop me!

And the rest of my weekend, I have been trying to write a paper and plan what to do for when my mom gets here and RECUPERATE from Thursday night. Gosh, it was crazy. And I stayed up soooooooo late. (I skyped my friend Drew when I got back to my room, randomly. Haha it was hilarious, though!)

Seriously, though, I haven’t gone out since. And I’m not going out tonight, Sunday night, when lot of Queens people go out, supposedly. I really need to just get my strength back and make sure I’m not getting a cold, haha. Vitamin C, here I come!

And now I am simply in a state of “I love life. I love people! I love EVERYONE! EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL!!” Like I just walked down the hallway from Olivia’s room after watching an episode of Veronica Mars, and all the people in the hallway were just like “Hey! What’s goin’ on? Wanna join?” etc etc really nice, friendly things, as usual. I just love PEOPLE. GAH. Life is beautiful.

And now, after writing almost 9 full pages, single-spaced on Word, I am going to post this and go to bed. I hope you guys don’t have lives right now, because it will take have taken you for-ev-er to read this. Hope you had fun! You asked for it. Haha. I love and miss everyone and hope everyone’s lives are awesome and fun, even if you aren’t going to parties where everyone ends up in their underwear! Xoxoxo! Goodnight!