Gasping.

Hello! Yes I am still alive and haven't disappeared into oblivion although I have felt like that has been the case for the last few weeks. I have been in such a flurry of packing/moving/o-weeking/organising stuff that I haven't been able to find the time to update my blog! Ok I lied, I could have done it the other night, buuuut we had a season 4 Gossip Girl marathon instead. Because I have so much to say and it's all going to come tumbling out in horribly mumbled and ugly sentences, (see?!) I will list the most significant events of the past weeks in a few dot points.

1. Moved to Townsville. Massive change in so many ways. The direction and focus of my life has been completely shifted in the last few weeks. I am surrounded by all these new people, places and things to do and I'm going crazy just trying to take it all in. I'm staying at St Mark's College on campus, which is fun but can also be a bit rowdy. The wing I am in is co-ed, so I have not yet managed to escape from living with smelly boys :P. It's amazing how close you get to people when you live with them. I have known everyone for just over a week and already I feel so comfortable around them and we are starting to have this big college family. It's great! The food is good, people complain about it but really it's just basic meals. 
2. Started classes. For anyone who doesn't know, I'm studying Med, with 220 other first year students. I thought that I knew a fair bit about the course before I moved here, but as I am learning more about it, I am loving it more and more. It's like no other course in Australia, we get clinical experience from our first year- our first few weeks!-which is something that other uni students from other places don't get until they're in their third of fourth years. We do clinical placements and hands on work alongside learning all the theory, and there is a hospital for us to train at literally adjacent to the uni. We have all these brand new facilities and 24 hour study labs which we have key card access to. I don't know why I would want to get up and study at 3am, but I know that the option is there if i choose to take it! Yesterday we had our first class in the anatomy lab which is amazing. We painted the bones and muscles on various body parts, got introduced to what we will be studying this year, and we even got to experience what we are in for with real dead people's limbs. How morbid is that? But it was creepy-cool. 
3. Joined a million clubs. There are sooo many clubs that you can get involved with and I pretty much signed up for everything except for the army. There are so many volunteer opportunities in the local community working with disadvantaged kids, people with all kinds of ailments and diseases, and also heaps of international volunteer organisations. I am about to apply for a 2 week placement every year for 4 years in a town in remote Australia. We had a lecture on it today and I would absolutely love to have the opportunity to do something like that. 
4. Partied our way through O-week. We had jelly wrestling, 4am wake up calls for exercises in the mud, a toga party, nights at the uni club (across the road :S), cricket matches, competitions, slip and slide, ice skating, lawn bowls, and last night a hollywood themed pub crawl. I went as Luna Lovegood- though she isn't very 'hollywood' you pretty much just had to be in a costume of some kind to qualify. I managed to dress in my own clothes and pass it off as a costume which was super handy. 

Ok so I have to go because I joined the gym at uni (which is incredible, btw) and we are going to a class tonight before water polo. What? Yes. I said water polo. Undeterred by the fact that I can barely swim and that I have little to no hand eye co ordination, I thought that I would give it a shot anyway. If I don't do it now, I don't think I ever will. So wish me luck, and I will let you know how everything goes; hopefully in a bit more depth next time. Hope you are having an amazing February!