Blog 4

July 18th

This past week I spent my days in an orientation program known as the Melbourne Welcome from the Uni. For four days, nearly all of the students studying abroad were jammed into two of the residential colleges and offered various activities throughout the day, as well as group ‘outings’ at night. As some pictures below show, we took a(nother) tour of downtown and ended the first full day’s activites with a trip to the Eureka Tower, the southern hemispheres tallest building. Another day took us to the Melbourne zoo, which might have been more depressing than the average zoo as the animals paced their boundaries with a hint of insanity. Kind of reminded me of Egan pregame in the locker room, although he always gets let out the cage to ravage some unexpecting victim.

Over the course of this week, it has really been a pleasure to meet students from all over the world: Canada, Mexico, England, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. Hearing all of their diferent accents has also been incredible, though difficult at times. Two nights ago in a bar I rebelled on Australian night by wearing my Dutch soccer jersey (since I own no Australian gear) and quickly found myself talking to a group of Dutch students who saw the KNVB logo, which they quickly taught me how to pronounce. They proceeded to teach me much more about Netherlands, from which I partly hail from, than I had ever heard before in the matter of a few minutes.

Europeans think its hilarious how most Americans dance. Since, after all, grinding is not dancing. They point and laugh. Glad at Bowdoin we have a few more moves, it pays off.

Here's some more eye candy

The mighty wombat...