Lesson Learned: There Are Crazy People Everywhere

Well today I thought I was planning on just hanging out at the flat and cleaning my room. Like vacuuming the floor and doing laundry but none of that got done. Instead, I was asked to go down to the shops at Hay Street downtown and of course I couldn’t say no! So to say the least my room is still dirty and my laundry is still not clean J but I really enjoyed downtown. It was a little different than what I expected.

            I have come to understand why most countries think Americans are just stupid or a pain because honestly in another country it’s really easy to make a fool of yourself. I swear people can tell I’m an American even before I open my mouth. But I don’t completely understand how because (even as my Chinese roommate put it!) I look like everyone else here. So I have no idea. Maybe it’s just my mannerisms or the way I dress?

You should see the way some people dress here. I don’t know if it’s just because we were downtown but a lot of people here dress really weird. I mean I see a lot of people in downtowns of other big cities dressed really weird too but I mean some I was like wtf? First, there are gothic people here. I’ve seen plenty. There are people that like custom dress up. I saw a girl in like a pin-up outfit and a guy in a wheelchair riding around with multicolored clothing on and a bright blue wig. I usually don’t see costumes downtown. But I shouldn’t say everyone dresses weird because there were definitely people dressed normal. Those people just stick out in my head. Let’s just say Australia has it’s share of crazy people too haha. When we were taking the train to downtown there was a lady who was VERY interesting. She started talking to herself and she had this red dot in the middle of her forehead, like the Indian people have a jewel, and it was the same color as her lipstick. Yea interesting people.

Here their Gyro’s are called Kebob’s. I had no idea before people started telling me about them. I got one today though and I don’t know if it’s just that these ones weren’t that good but you can’t beat the ones in Greece. They had the best gyro’s anywhere. I guess they are called Kebob’s other places though because my friends knew exactly what they were.

Here a sauce called Sweet Chili Sauce is very popular here. They serve it right along with ketchup and it’s very good. It’s pretty spicy but I like it even better than ketchup. I’m going to be looking for that in America. OMG and they have McDonald’s here and KFC of course like I said before but no Burger King. Instead they have something called Hungry Jack’s which looks exactly like Burger King but just a different name. And there is Subway, which I didn’t expect for some reason. But these places are just as popular here as they are in the US.

Here I have heard people cuss like crazy too. I think it’s not looked down upon as much as it is in America. People just throw the F word around like any other word. It kinda makes me laugh.

Oh and thank god for my friends, without them I would probably still be lost on buses or trains because I would have had such a hard time navigating where I was going in the beginning. The buses here don’t let you know what the next stop is going to be. And they don’t stop if you don’t push the button to request the stop. Sooo you really have to know where you are going and even what stop you need. But like when you get close to a bus stop there aren’t even signs saying which one it is. There is just numbers and they aren’t like huge or anything. And to get the bus to stop and pick you up you have to “hail it” or also known as, waving to stop it. 

Right next to the river downtown they had this cool building that kind of looked like a football. And a ferris wheel. OMG and I saw a dolphin in the river! Not up close or anything it was out in the distance but I didn’t expect a dolphin so close to shore.

Oh and the reason we had to go all the way downtown to shop is because nothing around campus is open on Sundays. Not at all. My friend, Molly, even said that in certain areas nothing is allowed to be open on Sunday’s without like a special reason. Which is crazy because in the States that’s the day you get stuff done! That or you relax. Well here, you are forced to relax and do nothing basically. I was happy to go downtown though because we stopped in a cool souvenir store and I got an Australian Flag that I’m going to hang up in my room J Oh and about the stores closing it’s really funny because I think they are forcing college students to like starve because no only in the grocery store not open Sunday’s, it closes at 5 on Saturday’s. And it’s the only one close to campus. So if you don’t have food by 5 o’clock Saturday you aren’t going to have any until Monday. I mean there are some places to eat open but not many and eating out is expensive. But the last hour the grocery store is open they discount everything so I’m going to start going grocery shopping then ;)

Oh and the funniest thing happen today. My roommate Laura thinks I know all the answers to everything. I mean anytime she has a problem, even though I'm as new as she is, she thinks i will definitely now the answer and asks me EVERYTHING. I don't mind it but even for the smallest things like today she came to my room and asked me how she gets a receipt for purchasing her books online. I was trying to explain to her that after she puts in her information and pays for it one should come up on the screen and she can just print it out. Well I don't think she understood because she just stood there and stared at me like "No how do I put it so this girl can understand what i want" so I don't think that's the answer she was looking for. So I told her to let me look at it and I get to her computer and she hasn't even put any of her information in at all. It was asking for all of her information and credit card number and everything still. So I told her to type it all in and that the next page she will just need to print out and I still don't think she understood. She didn't have a printer yet so I told her to just leave it up on the screen and she could print it out later after she gets her printer later in the day. I have no idea if she eventually got her receipt. But i mean she didn't even enter her information so I don't understand how she thinks she should have a receipt? And the funny thing about this story? She's an accounting major. Yup. Wonderful.  

Classes start tomorrow. We will see how that goes. I haven’t heard anything from my teachers yet about anything class related but my friend Sara has. They have even changed two of her class times to completely different times and days lol. Which is weird because I’m sure some students got screwed over on that one. Wish me luck with classes!