Greetings!

How are you all? I am VERY VERY VERY that I have been so slack SORRY (no, I'm not doing a Rachel Price so don't even think it - when people knock on my front door I can be bothered to answer it!) about telling you all what I have been up to! So much as been happening with being in a new city, new university and new college that it has taken all of my effort just to keep up with myself. Plus, I wanted to make sure I had some good stories before I went to the effort of sharing the love across the country! Anyhow, this is me in a nutshell (`Help - Let me out' as Alex Wells would say!) and all the new stuff I have been up to! You will notice I haven't changed much - everything is dot pointed, in bold and normal and of course, in Comic Sans - but enjoy it minus the serifs okay?

1. Melbourne is the city of the obscurely placed pole. Yes, over the last 3 weeks I have been walking or catching trams everywhere and this has highlighted to me that there are, indeed, an obscene amount of poles, about waist high, dotted sporadically around the place. We even have them at College! The winner of Obscurely Placed Pole of the Month in my opinion has be some of the ones at Uni. The ones at Uni tend to be in lines of five across roads where you are not meant to drive - except that usually the middle pole of the five is not padlocked to the ground like the others but is mechanical! Yes! If a delivery driver needs to drop something off, he radios for permission and a button is pressed and the middle pole sinks into the ground and disappears, allowing him room to drive through and then after he has gone through the pole reappears from in the ground and all is well again.
2. Melbourne is the city of trams to everywhere. Except that I haven't been everywhere because I get tram-sick. Need I say more?
3. Melbourne is the home of Lentil As Anything. Lentil As Anything is the restaurant where I went for lunch today and it is so cool. It's really hippie and alternative, and there are no fixed prices - you pay what you think your meal is worth. Cool huh? The food is all vegetarian and it is good!
4. O'Week = Limited sleep. Okay, so I already knew this one and you all could have guessed. Here is O'Week in a nutshell - there was the `Opening Ceremony' in which we got to be completely intimidated by our O'Week Legends (all dressed in suits and dark glasses, performing a long serious routine involving drinking port and crossing their legs simultaneously at intervals), we got woken up all the time by our `fresher' song - Best Of Me by The Starting Line - we had lots of `turns' (which is like a party not some kind of illness) including a Transvestite Turn, got tricked into a small space by the idea of pizzas and instead got drenched with water, went on a morning `run' around the uni (and again fell for the small space and the water trick but this time under the pretence of a photo!), we played quad games like the broom game til we fell over, learnt some chants to yell at the other Colleges, used our chants as freshers competed in an intercollegiate competition where they had to carry a banana in their teeth whilst wheelbarrow racing, skull a carton of milk and eat some weetbix, find a marble in a pool of baked beans and then race through a jumping castle carrying the banana, milk carton, marble and a football to victory, do some `city orienteering' which included walking through Myers in a big long line saying that we are `hunting wabbits', go on a cultural tour of Carlton (nearby suburb) which is code for a pub crawl, having a fake fresher exam which had about 5 real questions about the College and about 20 questions on O'Week related jokes and we had to answer all of these with the O'Week leaders dancing on the tables to Eagle Rock spraying us with shaving cream, water, flour, and eggs, a beach day with heaps of swimming and games at Torquay, the Tweddle Dunny Pack which involves stuffing heaps of people into a cubicle in the bathroom and again showering them with water and finally the closing ceremony where we all received a Certificate and t-shirt for our efforts! (Takes a breath) It was a big week and we went on retreat to Rutherford Park near Daylesford for the weekend to recover. I spent most of my time playing volleyball, sleeping and playing cards so it wasn't too bad but it was good to get back to College and meet the seniors and have some real sleep.
5. It's all about location, location, location. Yes, my room is a well-located shoebox. I'm on the second floor (only up one flight of stairs!) of North Building with a mixture of freshers, senior students, Americans and God living in the chapel at the end. It's just a nice distance from the dining room, the computer room, Ellen (my friend from home)'s room, the labs (where all the parties are), the slab (just that, a concrete slab but a prime meeting place) and my window looks into the quad with grass and gardens, instead of the front lawn and getting all the busy traffic noise. Nice, very nice.
6. Primary Education - the course for people who just never want to grow up. Yes, my course is challenging - I spent my last two-hour science practical blowing bubbles to see what technique should be used to blow the optimal bubble. (For those of you who want to know, you coat the desk with detergent and blow with a straw or use a cookie cutter and blow really gently from a distance into the air!) I also spent another making a scale model of the Solar System out of metre rulers and balloons. I have spent my last Maths lectures and practicals playing with Maths toys - MAB blocks, Unifix cubes, counting frames, flash cards and number expanders - you name it, we got to play with it and explain it! Then of course there is Drama - two hours of playing dress-up, make believe and games from school. I have learn about bug-catchers, the first day at school, relived Cat and Mouse and am about to write a 15-minute lesson on the life of biscuits - samples included. Bliss!
7. The Willie Quick Club's newest elected members. Yes, I have used my acrostic poem powers of persuasion to get elected into the Willie Quick Club - a cultural sort of arrangement named after the founder of Queens. Myself, along with two other freshers, Joffa and Marc-James (the first guy I have ever met with a hyphenated, rather exotic sounding name), were elected by the club that runs heaps of events throughout the year, including Creative Arts competitions, debates, pub crawls, dinners, guest speakers and other things of that nature.
8. M.A.D.S is the Music and Drama Society, which I was also elected a member of - very exciting because there were lots of applicants and they only take two people (Myself and Twiggy who is pretty funny - when she was asked about drunk people she replied "I don't seduce them, I take advantage of them!") and I was sure that I was going to miss out on that one! We haven't had a meeting or anything yet so I don't really know what is going on there but I'm pretty hyped up in be in some shows and stuff because it has been a while!
9. On the other half - those who can't find things in the refrigerator. No, before you ask, I haven't found a replacement for Nathan, and no, I haven't even come close. I guess the saying is true - once you go black you most definitely cannot go back - and so I feel that I am destined to be alone for quite some time to come, simply because there are limited supplies of black around here and I'm not sure how to go about things anymore. Don't get me wrong, there is definitely some potential around here, I just don't think I'm ready to test the waters just yet.
10. And you can reach me at:
My posting stuff address is Queen's College, College Crescent, PARKVILLE 3052 and my e-mailing stuff address is best left at spontaneous_jane@hotmail.com although it can also be s.harris2@ugrad.unimelb.edu.au but that is a tad lengthy and my phone number is (03) 9349 0577 and if I'm not home leave a message and I'll get back to you and if you call me on my mobile 0417 150 784 please make sure you don't have it on `Private Number' because then I can't ring you back because it just tells me (no number) has called and that is pretty useless!

Missing you all (and I would love some visitors hint hint!)

Love
Sal