Houses, fire alarms, and eels

Hey everyone!!
Whew- I can't believe I've only been here less than a week. So much has been going on! Every day gets easier and more fun. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that I have a place to live!!! So excited about that. After spending two days searching and visiting places like crazy, here I am! And honestly, 2 days was fast. Some people spent more than a week looking. It's a house with other international students in Enmore, one of the suburbs of Sydney. But its not a suburb like you think of in the US- or at least what I think of. It's a pretty safe part of town, about 25 minute walk to campus (which is close), around the corner from a bus stop, and near a main road with restaurants, stores, etc. A lot of students live in the Newtown(the next suburb)/Enmore area. I have my own bedroom which is awesome, and there are 5 other students in the house- 2 Americans (guy and girl), 2 Spanish (guy and girl), and one Portuguese guy. I've only met the American girl, but she's really nice, so I'm excited about it. I move in tomorrow (Wednesday). Here's my address:

14 Cavendish St.
Enmore, NSW 2042

So please feel free to write me! It may take me a bit, but I'll write you back. It's such a relief to have a place and not still having to search during orientation (today and yesterday) or school starting. This week (the past two days, anyway) have been orientation for international students. It has been great, because I've met a ton of people from all over the world. The first couple days I would meet people, and they'd be friendly, but then I wouldn't necessarily see them again. So now I'm starting to see the same people regularly. There's even a guy from Carolina! I didn't know that there was going to be anyone else from UNC here, but apparently there is. We've been reminiscing on how much we miss Carolina, especially when we found out you can't walk on their beautiful grassy quad (which they call the Quadrangle) during the semester.  :)  I also got my class schedule (or timetable, as they call it here). They appear to schedule classes all over the place, with no rhyme or reason. I have some classes 4 days a week and some only 2, and they aren't usually at the same time from one day to the next. I have no classes on Friday (without even trying to do that), which I'm REALLY excited about, and only 2 on Tuesday or Thursday. However, their computer system just spits out a schedule for you and doesn't care if you double book yourself, or (in my case), you just get classes that meet at the same time. I have two classes at the same time one day, so I'll change one of them, no big deal. So hopefully, I'm taking an Aboriginal history class, Australian literature class, Australian theater and film class, and a psychology class (see, I am actually taking classes in my major).

Ready for some more random stories/things I've noticed?
In International House, my room key is shaped pretty much like a dog tag (you know, the ones that military guys wear).  We have one key for the building, and another for our room. But it turns out that my room key will also get me into everyone else's room too. I figured this out because I lost count going up the stairs and went to my room on the wrong floor at one point.  :) 

Apparently there are eels in the pond in the park at school (like the arboretum, but less trees). Tomorrow some of us are going to feed the ducks, and I want to see them. It's very possible that the guys who told me that were just messing with me. We'll see.

The weather here is ridiculously nice. It gets cold at night (around 50's I think), but during the day it's pretty much 70's all the time. It's so great. I've heard that it gets cold again in August, but we'll see. Also, those estimations could be off because everything is in Celsius here and I haven't adjusted to that yet.  :) 

The second night I was here, the fire alarm went off. It was around midnight, and my jetlagged self had already been asleep for a while at this point, so it took me a bit to figure out what was going on. I had the sense to put on shoes and a jacket, but only when I got outside did it occur to me to put sweatpants over my shorts. With the aforementioned weather, it was a cold half hour while they figured out what happened. (Someone used a fire extinguisher. Just for kicks, I guess.)

I forgot to say in the last email that my flight here (LA to Sydney) was probably 75% college students studying abroad. That was funny- I wouldn't have thought that would happen.

You also have to pay for internet by the bandwidth here, all across Australia. That means I haven't even bothered with uploading photos to facebook yet (although I haven't taken many).  That also means that while using the on-campus wireless, you have to pay to use services like Skype and instant messenger. So I will hopefully be back on skype when I'm in my house, which has internet.

The Australian government passed a law a couple years ago saying that if a student wasn't definitely going to use it, a university couldn't make them pay for it in school fees. That means a lot of things are extra money, like the gym and student union.

Also, an update on the nickname thing. For those of you who hadn't heard my plan, I was going to start introducing myself as Ace while I'm over here. It's a nickname I got at work, and I like nicknames, so I thought it would be fun to have a group of people that know me as that. But it turns out that it's hard to remember to introduce myself as something else.  :)  I've told a couple people about it, but always after the fact. I got a couple people calling me that last night, but it is yet to be determined if it actually sticks. Haha.
Tonight I'm going with a group from International House to see Harry Potter on the biggest IMAX screen in the world. We actually have tickets after a failed attempt last night. Then, on Thursday, I'm going on a two day trip with a bunch of other international students. We're doing roughly a million things in that time: some kind of nature preserve/zoo, whale watching, 3 wineries, giant sand dunes (sandboarding anyone? I'm pumped!), staying at this cool little port city, and some other stuff too. Well, that's about all I've got for now. Thanks to all of you who emailed me! I will reply even if it takes me a couple days. The emails are amazing- they make me feel connected to everything back home.
Love from down under,
Emma