Cricks is Tote Awes

Well, my mother and I just said goodbye. So now I am officially alone in Australia. And let me tell you, ANU has set up quite a calendar of events for orientation week starting tomorrow to keep me occupied. They like to call it O-Week. They like abbreviations. In fact they love abbreviations. I think I might fit in here. For example, they don’t say afternoon all the time, they’ll say ‘avo’. I can hang with that, all avo.
Today my mother and I spent a good few hours watching cricket, England vs. Australia. We tried to figure out the rules by ourselves, but got nowhere. So after some internet research, we actually understood, and I dare say, enjoyed the game. It truly is a gentleman’s game. You cannot argue with the ump, use any profanity, and if you even throw the ball down in disgust or disappointment, you can be suspended from the game, and maybe even the whole year. Australia doesn’t look like they are going to beat England. They have to get 228 runs before 6 of the Australians get out. Not impossible, but they way these Aussies are playing, I’m not sure… and as I say that Australia just scored 4.
Anyway, let’s get back to the O-Week events. They have a BBQ everyday at lunch for free, a toga party, a bar crawl (or a coffee crawl if you’d rather attend that), a foam party, and last but not least, an hour of speed dating. That is on Wednesday, valentine’s day. I haven’t decided if I’m going, haha, but maybe if I have my own bar crawl before hand, I’ll stagger on in there.
My mother and I have many questions to ask Australians, but don’t know how to ask without making fools of ourselves, and at this moment I can’t think of 1, but I’ll start to write them down and maybe y’all can help answer them. By the way, I met an ‘RA’ here today who asked where I was from and when I replied USA… then Texas, he goes ‘oh the south! The resident manager’s daughter spent a year abroad at the Univ. of Texas… or was it Arkansas. Where is Arkansas?’ we replied saying it was a state Northeast of Texas. And his reply was ‘oh really?? Arkansas isn’t a part of Texas? I didn’t know Arkansas was a state.” So now I don’t feel so dumb that I didn’t know how many states Australia had.
Dude, cricket is pretty hardcore, I’m a fan; except the fact that games can last days. I think this one is going on about 9 hours. But in other sports, Australia seems to be a big fan of women’s sports. I’ve seen multiple women’s b-ball games and the women’s Queensland golf tournament on my 5 functioning channels, and no men playing except cricket.
Last night, during the commercial breaks for Jumanji, my mother and I tuned in to the Common Room station and watched a boy watch tv. He seemed lonely, my mother dared me to go talk to him, but I refused. I wanted to see how Robin Williams was going to get out of the quicksand floor.
So back to how expensive it is here. A foot long subway sandwich is over 8 dollars, a coke in a vending machine is 2.80, a margarita pizza is 13, a dictionary is 45. apparently it is because Canberra is “so far” from the ocean, everything arrives here by trucks. Stupid expensive trucks.
Well, I’m off to watch more cricket and head to bed, I have a free BBQ to get to tomorrow.
Love and hugs!