Flood Week

I'm in Australia as a member of a Colgate "study group," which means that there are seventeen Colgate students here and one Colgate professor.  We were all allowed to choose between two residential colleges, and I chose to live in Weerona, with just three other Colgate kids: Richard, Bianca, and Ryan.  This, I think, was a fantastic decision.  Apparently Weerona, of all the residential colleges, is known for sponsoring great events and getting people to really know each other.

We arrived a bit over a week before classes started so we could have a lot of time for orientation activities first.  This included the boring listen-to-safety-talks-and-tour-campus day at the university, but for us at Weerona it also included a full week of organized fun to get to know the other people in our college.  Apparently this week is referred to as flood week for the creative reason that one year there was a flood during this week.

Sunday started flood week with an early-morning trip to see the sunrise at a point overlooking the city.
It was COLD waiting for it to rise, but well worth the wait!  To our right, the beautiful lights of Wollongong began to dim as the sun rose to our left, with a truly spectacular display. 

Later that same day we took the train out to Kiama, which is a quaint little seaside town about an hour away by train.  Incidentally, the train system here is fantastic.  We spent a lot of time wandering around the rocks and tide pools, watched some very large pelicans who were much more interested in the fisherman than they were in taking pictures with us, and enjoyed a large blowhole right below the lighthouse.  The afternoon was spent with a lifeguard who gave us a highly entertaining talk about surf safety.  On warning us about the blue-ringed octopus, one of the world's most venomous animals, that frequents tidepools in the area:  "If you get an octopus on your hand, you might want to brush it off.  Just... brush it off." 

All of the new residents at Weerona were split into teams for the week, and we competed against each other in various ice-breaker activities that ranged from pretty standard to pretty off-the-wall.  One of the more off-the-wall days was spent running all over the city as part of the "amazing race," which led us through a variety of tasks - finding a large stick to carry around with us the whole day,digging in the sand until we could locate a tennis ball, tying ourselves together to walk to McDonald's, finding three items at Woolworth's that added up to precisely $3.12 (this was easier than it would have been in the US, because here all tax is included in the price of an item), getting a recipe from a local resident, collecting thirty coasters, etc.  The goal was to complete everything as quickly as possible.  I was on the red team, and we ended up winning.  It was all silliness, of course, but definitely a good way to get to know other people in the college. 


The rest of the week continued with lots of different activities.  One day we had a girls' day including yoga and lunch in town (the guys' version of this organized activity was to hang out at the beach and do nothing).  Friday included an "arts fest," which is basically just a talent show, which was a lot of fun (I wasn't planning to play, because I only brought my piano dulcimer with me, which I'm not particularly good with yet.  But following heavy peer-pressure I gave in and set her up, played a rendition of Für Elise with more mistakes than I'd like to admit, and everyone loved it).  We also had an African drumming workshop that was fantastic, and various evening events where "returners" were included so we could get to know them. Ultimately our team ended up winning the whole week, with almost twice as many points as any of the other teams. 

So that is flood-week-in-brief, which brings us up until about Saturday before classes started.