Long days of classes are back again.
Had a rather long and tiring seeming day yesterday. Twas the first of my 2 long days full of 5-6hrs of classes…and like all good (or in this case bad) long days of classes it meant I had to wake up bright and early (in this case 7:20am) to get there.
Despite my waking up and getting to the busstop on time, somehow the bus seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to reach the city and so I ended up 15 mins late for my first lecture. Not drastic I know…but there weren’t enough chairs in the table (a table and chairs kind of lecture) so then some other girl and I had to make a lot of long clattering noises as we got chairs (unfortunately heavy wheely chairs) from another room and dragged them in.
Following that I had a 2hr break but I only needed to kill one hr of it before a lunch date with xinwen and aileen so I decided to stay in the uni and just loiter around. Eventually the hour passed and so I went to have sushi with the girls. Or did i? alas turns out due to timetable errors or sth. They both had classes on during that hour so we had to reschedule. So …another long boring hour of waiting until my next class!
My next class was Chinese and it was entirely just introductions so nothing really special to note. Directly after was 2hrs of Russian, again not enough tables and chairs as they seem to have really screwed up with almost every one of our Russian classrooms in that regard. Im talking people literally sitting on chairs stuck in the doorway of the classroom! Anyways we started reading and writing aka. Trying our best to decipher the alphabets; printed and handwrititen, capital and lower case, ‘cause yes, they’re different you know! And we’re not allowed to write the printed version, we’re only allowed to write handwritten, but we have to be able to read either. Its very confusing at this point in time, to say the least!
After that I ran as quick as I could across the campus to my asian traditions lecture which clashed with the previous hr I’d been in Russian, hence I was basically turning up 45-60mins late! So naturally the plan was to open the door to the theater very quietly, slip in, grab the nearest seat and very inconspicuously get out a notebook and pen. Part A went alright, I opened the door without too much ado, but there were NO NEARBY SEATS!
By this stage most people in the hall had noticed me, so I was like ‘meh I shall walk across the front and over to the other side where there are some seats’, which I did, rather embarrassed of course. The lecturer was busy writing on a board at the time so I thought I’d more or less succeeded unnoticed, ‘cept he turned around just as I was about half-way through crossing the front. He decided to bring further attention to me by exclaiming ‘wooahh! You’re late!!’ in disbelief. I hastily sat down and tried my best to sink into the chair, but got distracted staring at the powerpoint of the subject which appeared NOT TO BE the right one for my class!! It was all about something to do with Australian practices!
At this point I was like, what if my class already finished and this is some other random class? I was contemplating fleeing with my tail between my legs (figuratively, you and I both know I don’t have a tail of any sort) . luckily I guess, the slide changed and I saw that it was indeed the class I was meant to be in, they were just randomly talking about some abstract things. About 15 rather uninformative minutes later the class was over and I fled!
The bus home was rather uncomfortable ‘cause I got a headache but wasn’t really in a position where I could open a window easily. And alas no one else on the bus seemed to want a window open ‘cause none of them were open. I got home, tired and hot of course. Probably added another pink tinge to my very slight layers of sunburn that are developing each day too. Must moisturise!
Mum and dad were working late so I had to prepare some dinner for the family and then various other things caused me to be rather late to bed, which in itself is not unusual.
Anyways, today was a much looked forward to day, because it was of course starting at exactly the same time, a nice 7:20am start, the bus was likewise slow and late hence why next week I must unfortunately catch a bus ½ an hour earlier (means waking up before 7am!!), the only real difference in class timetable between yesterday and today being that today I had an extra hr of class! Seeing as yesterday’s seemed to be going so well I was of course looking forward to a second dose of it all. But today was surprisingly better.looking back on the events im not really sure why actually, ‘cause today sounds kind of awful! I can say I didn’t really grasp a lot of the Russian we did, my Chinese class was almost torturously slow and quite boring, I bludged my way through a tute for the traditions subject I hadn’t read the readings for, and worst of all my last 3 hrs of class were tucked away in the ridiculous location of Bouverie Street!
Bouverie Street is the most ridiculous location in the world. Id checked it on a map, and new it was somewhere around Lincoln square. Damned if that helped me. Luckily the 15min break between after class changeover was to my advantage and I’d been let out of class 10mins early too, so the fact that I walked around in the sun for 25mins before I eventually managed to track down the place was not so much of a concern. Finding the classroom itself was also a challenge, but a little more easily solved.
However! Turns out despite no notifications, emails or lms announcements our tute was obviously not on. Myself and 3 other girls all turned up, introduced ourselves and then figured we’d go and have a coffee somewhere for the next 45mins before our final 2 hr lecture for the same subject. So yep, if u’re looking for a clever way to make friends with your classmates I highly recommend turning up to a cancelled tute and then making a coffee date of it! We basically got to know a whole lot of random stuff about each of our summer holidays, past, plans, future etc.
And then of course we went to class. And here I believe is where the whole day turned really good and worthwhile. The lecture was really unexpectedly good! It’s a geography/ social study based subject on china and I really wasn’t sure what it’d be like. But the teacher is a hilliarious! Chinese guy about 40 or sth and he’s really funny. He kind of speaks a bit chingrishy but its mainly just his accent, anyway his style and his topics are either really good or really funny. Sometimes he kind of forgot the point he was trying to say so he’d just go ‘...ANYWAY!!’ and turn topic. But either way, the stuff he talked about and what we’ll be looking at in the course seems both entertaining, informative or interesting. I wish I could describe it better but I think it’s one of those things u’ve got to see. Like he was just emphasizing how he has all these stories t tell us from inside china so he gives examples about timeperiods talking about how the generation just older than him were the red guards, but ‘cause he was in primary school he only got to hold a little red flag on a stick and march around. As he talks he kind of re-enacts, so yes, its kind of amusing.
And he just talked about everything and nothing all at once! somehow he started talking about all the different ‘animal names’ associated with prostitutes and telling us that taxi drivers in china can tell us stories all about it and it was really funny for everyone because no one really knew what he was going on about. I at least could understand some of the relation ‘cause I’ve studied the language and so know that the word for chicken and prostitute are fairly alike.
And then he spent about 15mins promoting this other field trip in china subject that he teachers in the mid year break and how he just wants to go and buy more little mao badges in some market there!
Everyone left the theater having laughed heartily at least 10 times in the 2 hrs. so yes, it’s a pleasantly good way to finish up my classes for the week.
One of the girls who’d come to the tute/ coffee and lecture lives in doncaster too, so we ended up commuting together and it was really cool to have a huge long conversation again. Her relatives practically all live in china and she’d just been visiting them in the last few months so we had lots to talk about. And, (cathy may be interested in this), she does swingdancing on thursday lunchtimes with the uni! They go to some place near the commonwealth bank on bourke/Elizabeth and have swing dance lessons, and in the evening its like social dancing or something. Anyway it sounds all very crazy and exciting.
And now I am home, alone, and tired. And putting-off my bits and pieces of h/w to be done by classes next week. And yes, once again I feel hot and incredibly thirsty, so…
I am off to drink some green tea….
Despite my waking up and getting to the busstop on time, somehow the bus seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to reach the city and so I ended up 15 mins late for my first lecture. Not drastic I know…but there weren’t enough chairs in the table (a table and chairs kind of lecture) so then some other girl and I had to make a lot of long clattering noises as we got chairs (unfortunately heavy wheely chairs) from another room and dragged them in.
Following that I had a 2hr break but I only needed to kill one hr of it before a lunch date with xinwen and aileen so I decided to stay in the uni and just loiter around. Eventually the hour passed and so I went to have sushi with the girls. Or did i? alas turns out due to timetable errors or sth. They both had classes on during that hour so we had to reschedule. So …another long boring hour of waiting until my next class!
My next class was Chinese and it was entirely just introductions so nothing really special to note. Directly after was 2hrs of Russian, again not enough tables and chairs as they seem to have really screwed up with almost every one of our Russian classrooms in that regard. Im talking people literally sitting on chairs stuck in the doorway of the classroom! Anyways we started reading and writing aka. Trying our best to decipher the alphabets; printed and handwrititen, capital and lower case, ‘cause yes, they’re different you know! And we’re not allowed to write the printed version, we’re only allowed to write handwritten, but we have to be able to read either. Its very confusing at this point in time, to say the least!
After that I ran as quick as I could across the campus to my asian traditions lecture which clashed with the previous hr I’d been in Russian, hence I was basically turning up 45-60mins late! So naturally the plan was to open the door to the theater very quietly, slip in, grab the nearest seat and very inconspicuously get out a notebook and pen. Part A went alright, I opened the door without too much ado, but there were NO NEARBY SEATS!
By this stage most people in the hall had noticed me, so I was like ‘meh I shall walk across the front and over to the other side where there are some seats’, which I did, rather embarrassed of course. The lecturer was busy writing on a board at the time so I thought I’d more or less succeeded unnoticed, ‘cept he turned around just as I was about half-way through crossing the front. He decided to bring further attention to me by exclaiming ‘wooahh! You’re late!!’ in disbelief. I hastily sat down and tried my best to sink into the chair, but got distracted staring at the powerpoint of the subject which appeared NOT TO BE the right one for my class!! It was all about something to do with Australian practices!
At this point I was like, what if my class already finished and this is some other random class? I was contemplating fleeing with my tail between my legs (figuratively, you and I both know I don’t have a tail of any sort) . luckily I guess, the slide changed and I saw that it was indeed the class I was meant to be in, they were just randomly talking about some abstract things. About 15 rather uninformative minutes later the class was over and I fled!
The bus home was rather uncomfortable ‘cause I got a headache but wasn’t really in a position where I could open a window easily. And alas no one else on the bus seemed to want a window open ‘cause none of them were open. I got home, tired and hot of course. Probably added another pink tinge to my very slight layers of sunburn that are developing each day too. Must moisturise!
Mum and dad were working late so I had to prepare some dinner for the family and then various other things caused me to be rather late to bed, which in itself is not unusual.
Anyways, today was a much looked forward to day, because it was of course starting at exactly the same time, a nice 7:20am start, the bus was likewise slow and late hence why next week I must unfortunately catch a bus ½ an hour earlier (means waking up before 7am!!), the only real difference in class timetable between yesterday and today being that today I had an extra hr of class! Seeing as yesterday’s seemed to be going so well I was of course looking forward to a second dose of it all. But today was surprisingly better.looking back on the events im not really sure why actually, ‘cause today sounds kind of awful! I can say I didn’t really grasp a lot of the Russian we did, my Chinese class was almost torturously slow and quite boring, I bludged my way through a tute for the traditions subject I hadn’t read the readings for, and worst of all my last 3 hrs of class were tucked away in the ridiculous location of Bouverie Street!
Bouverie Street is the most ridiculous location in the world. Id checked it on a map, and new it was somewhere around Lincoln square. Damned if that helped me. Luckily the 15min break between after class changeover was to my advantage and I’d been let out of class 10mins early too, so the fact that I walked around in the sun for 25mins before I eventually managed to track down the place was not so much of a concern. Finding the classroom itself was also a challenge, but a little more easily solved.
However! Turns out despite no notifications, emails or lms announcements our tute was obviously not on. Myself and 3 other girls all turned up, introduced ourselves and then figured we’d go and have a coffee somewhere for the next 45mins before our final 2 hr lecture for the same subject. So yep, if u’re looking for a clever way to make friends with your classmates I highly recommend turning up to a cancelled tute and then making a coffee date of it! We basically got to know a whole lot of random stuff about each of our summer holidays, past, plans, future etc.
And then of course we went to class. And here I believe is where the whole day turned really good and worthwhile. The lecture was really unexpectedly good! It’s a geography/ social study based subject on china and I really wasn’t sure what it’d be like. But the teacher is a hilliarious! Chinese guy about 40 or sth and he’s really funny. He kind of speaks a bit chingrishy but its mainly just his accent, anyway his style and his topics are either really good or really funny. Sometimes he kind of forgot the point he was trying to say so he’d just go ‘...ANYWAY!!’ and turn topic. But either way, the stuff he talked about and what we’ll be looking at in the course seems both entertaining, informative or interesting. I wish I could describe it better but I think it’s one of those things u’ve got to see. Like he was just emphasizing how he has all these stories t tell us from inside china so he gives examples about timeperiods talking about how the generation just older than him were the red guards, but ‘cause he was in primary school he only got to hold a little red flag on a stick and march around. As he talks he kind of re-enacts, so yes, its kind of amusing.
And he just talked about everything and nothing all at once! somehow he started talking about all the different ‘animal names’ associated with prostitutes and telling us that taxi drivers in china can tell us stories all about it and it was really funny for everyone because no one really knew what he was going on about. I at least could understand some of the relation ‘cause I’ve studied the language and so know that the word for chicken and prostitute are fairly alike.
And then he spent about 15mins promoting this other field trip in china subject that he teachers in the mid year break and how he just wants to go and buy more little mao badges in some market there!
Everyone left the theater having laughed heartily at least 10 times in the 2 hrs. so yes, it’s a pleasantly good way to finish up my classes for the week.
One of the girls who’d come to the tute/ coffee and lecture lives in doncaster too, so we ended up commuting together and it was really cool to have a huge long conversation again. Her relatives practically all live in china and she’d just been visiting them in the last few months so we had lots to talk about. And, (cathy may be interested in this), she does swingdancing on thursday lunchtimes with the uni! They go to some place near the commonwealth bank on bourke/Elizabeth and have swing dance lessons, and in the evening its like social dancing or something. Anyway it sounds all very crazy and exciting.
And now I am home, alone, and tired. And putting-off my bits and pieces of h/w to be done by classes next week. And yes, once again I feel hot and incredibly thirsty, so…
I am off to drink some green tea….
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