A strange turn of events

July 29, 2011

In between my lectures I went to an ATM on campus to see if my latest idea for withdrawing money would work. I wanted to kiss the money when it came out of the machine I was so thrilled. To add to my excitement, I received an e-mail notifying me that I had mail to pick up. However, after I went to Rotary’s office and looked with no success, the woman behind the desk confirmed that I didn’t have anything addressed to me, so I left empty handed.

While I was sitting at the table in the kitchen eating the potato salad I made for myself, one of the guys on my floor, Tarun, walked in and told me that the student who died Wednesday night was his best friend. He said this was the first time he’d been back to the dorm since then and he didn’t sleep at all until last night because he was so distraught. Then he and another med student started discussing what they thought happened to his friend using terminology that made little sense to me, which was fine because I was already overwhelmed.

We passed this flowering tree on our walk.

Shortly after I returned to my room, the woman from behind the desk in the Rotary office knocked on my door and told me proudly that she had solved the mail mystery: I needed to go to the International Student Centre to pick it up because I never changed my address (oops). I thanked her and told Stephanie I wanted to stop by on our walk around campus. As I was leaving to meet her, Tarun hadn’t moved from the couch so I made him promise he'd let me know if he needed anything.

I was recognised immediately at the International Student Centre. The upside of this was that I didn’t have to go all the way back to my dorm for my student ID card to get my mail, which was my tax file number allowing me to apply for jobs! The downside of this was that I got dragged into the head honcho’s office where she grilled me about every thought in my head, including the death of Tarun’s friend which she apparently knew nothing about because upon hearing this she promptly called three different people to tell them that "something terrible has happened." After she hung up she asked me if Tarun was an international student, and even though I said I didn’t know she decided that he was and she knew him and told me to tell him he had an appointment to see her Monday. When I was finally released it was closing time, 45 minutes had passed, and poor Stephanie was still waiting for me in the lobby. She told me she thought I’d never come out, and I could only assure her that I didn’t think I ever would either.

Lesson 5

>Pronunciation: I say uhl-oo-min-um; Aussies say el-uh-min-ee-um

>Vocabulary: I say diaper; Aussies say nappie