O Week

From February 23-27, UNSW has “O Week”, or Orientation Week where all the clubs and organizations set up stalls around campus and try and give you a bunch of free stuff to entice you to join their club. During this week we also had some mandatory exchange orientation sessions, as well as unofficial exchange excursions throughout Sydney.

Monday we decided to be super keen and go check out all the stalls around campus to see what clubs there are. We were mainly interested in finding out about the rowing, but it seems as though they aren’t as intense as home. We signed up to be on the email list, but don’t think we’re going to be able to get on the water for another couple weeks, and even then, things seem a little bit confusing! We are quite anxious to get on the water, especially after seeing the crews down the Yarra River in Melbourne this past week. Needless to say we walked away having given our emails to way too many clubs, and a bag full of brochures and information which we quickly threw out.

The main University Mall full of all the clubs stalls

Tuesday was the start of our mandatory exchange orientation which was supposed to start at 9, but ended up being around 9:45. We all gathered in one of the lecture halls to learn about life in Sydney, our health care, courses and various other seemingly useless things we had already read from the several packages we received. After they provided a BBQ lunch for us and then there was supposed to be a scavenger hunt. Team Canada, as we are known, opted out of the scavenger hunt for a day at the beach. It was finally nice and sunny and our previous experiences with beaches had been full of clouds. One of our aussie friends kindly drove us to Curl Curl, a beach North of Sydney and we relaxed there for the day.

Curl Curl Beach

On lifeguarded beaches in Australia you are supposed to swim between the red and yellow flags. When we first went out, we were in between the flags but decided that we wanted to experience some of the really big waves so went to go swim in them. Despite being able to swim and most of us having been a lifeguard at some point, the waves were a little big and the current was a little strong. We were being tossed around, losing bathing suit pieces left, right and centre and finally got whistled in by a lifeguard to come and swim between the flags. Apparently he could tell we were stupid foreigners and didn’t want to have to come save us!

The red and white flags you are supposed to swim between

The waves we wanted to take on

Wednesday morning was another boring morning of mandatory orientation but in the afternoon they had planned another excursion to “The Rocks”, a part of downtown Sydney right at the waterfront. The mission was to do a pub crawl starting around 1 in the afternoon. We decided that was a little bit too early for us to start drinking so we toured around the area. This is where we had our first up close experience with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Needless to say the cameras were out in full force and we were amazed! After walking around for awhile, we stopped for a nice lunch and some gelato and then joined up with the rest of the pub crawl group. The evening ended off at the Opera Bar, the bar between the water and the Opera house.

Harbour Bridge

First sight of the Opera House!

The views from the Opera Bar at night are amazing