First day of school

I guess the first thing I can say about the first few lessons of school was that it was absolutely terrifying. The desks are set up examination style, all facing the front and unadjoined. No one spoke to each other, just sat and waited for the teacher. When the teacher came in, they knew a lot of the students so there was general conversation, inside jokes and complete confusion from me. There's about 12-50 people in each of the classes and most classes require class paticipation as part of your grade, so when they started talking about American history and their governmental policies, I guess it's a bit intense when they look at you for an answer or opinion and you just respond with the most blank expression possible. But once the teacher's heard my accent they realised and didn't ask me anymore questions about American history.

Overall, now that we've had a week to settle into classes, I'm really loving them. The teachers are really nice and rather quirky, a lot of the students are more friendly now that they know I'm from Australia (it's like a super power here, you say your from Australia and then everyone wants to be your friend), and the work is quite easy to adjust to, although sometimes I still stare blankly at the lecturer.

Other than school, I think I should mention the weather... I should've researched a bit about the weather conditions here because it was interesting to find out that Wilmington has a hurricane season and good ol' hurricane Bill was sitting off the coast. Luckily hurricane Bill has passed without coming to shore but now there's rumours of a tropical storm said to hit Wilmington on the weekend, so it might be an interesting weekend. While hurricane Bill was hanging around last weekend, me and some of the other international students went down to the beach to check out the swell. We got about 5 minutes time in the water before we started to get trashed and when we got out, the beach patrol was announcing all swimmers out of the water, so it's been a pretty eventful week seeing all these new happenings.

Last thursday, my friend Chelsea took me out to the clubs. That's whats great about the clubbing area here is that although I'm underage, the clubs allow 18+ but mark your hands so that you can't purchase alcohol. It's really good because, by doing it this way, I don't get excluded from my friends and can still have a good night out.

Anyway, I think that's about it now that I've caught up on everything.

Cheers.