Day 20: Meet-Ups

No A.M. today. Why? Cause I was supposed to conference call with a potential advising professor for Ohio State! After a long time of trying to set up a date (made more difficult by me being on another continent) we had finally settled on Thursday 8pm EST which mean Friday at noon for me. I adequately prepared myself for the skype call by reading his 5 or so most recent papers, his online blog, the lab page he maintains, reading up on his current graduate students, Ohio State, the program in general, and rereading my Ohio application (yes, I needed to brush up on myself). hahaa. I was nervous, but prepared, but nervous. Before I left LA I had one phone call with a potential professor and that had gone smoothly, but really with these things you don't know what they're going to throw at you - if they're going to ask you for your 2 year plan, your best case scenario research topic, your goals 10 years from now, or what your favorite ninja turtle is. You never know!! And they have ALL the power... Well, most of the power, they want you to like them too I think. After some stress of being unable to find him on skype I finally was able to connect and as it turns out he was putting his kid to sleep which resulted in a bit of a later sign-on than expected. The call went really well though. I liked him a lot and he mentioned he thought I could be a good fit in his lab which was exciting. But, only time will tell what happens. I'm just glad everything went smoothly and I didn't make a crazy fool of myself by saying something stupid, or making a weird face into the camera. haha.

After the call I spent some time unwinding in my apartment and surfing the web for possible groups to join in Sydney. I've been loving it thus far, and surprisingly am not very lonely, but I figured I should find some groups and meet some people *before* I start to feel that way. ahhaa. I actually really lucked out and found an awesome site that has a bunch of different groups that do meet-ups. The groups range from anything, business, social, environmental, new in town, artsy, workout, ect and you can basically join a group that interests you and people in that group organize meet-ups. I joined a couple social, a couple outdoorsy, and an environmental one and actually saw that the girls group I joined was having a drinks outing that night. So, I clicked the "I'm attending" button and got ready for the night. The outing was actually really cool. The bar, which was luckily literally 1/2 block from my apartment, was really cool. It was called Oscars and the vibe was really chill. There were a bunch of couches and I found the group sitting on a circle of them. There were 9 girls that were attending and I got to chat and meet them all. They were really great and it was just a fun girls night out. There were people that were foreigners like me, a few that had lived in Sydney their whole life, and a few that landed somewhere in between that spectrum. I'm pretty sure I was the youngest there, and the ladies ranged in age probably from about 25-50. I ordered an Oscar Rascal, which was basically a raspberry vodka drink that was to die for (crushed raspberries and everything). We sat and talked for about 2 hours and then a few of the girls ducked out for the night and the rest of us went to grab a late dinner at the harbor. The six of us went to an awesome Italian place right on the harbor and I ordered some yummy 4-cheese gnocchi. We ate and talked for probably another solid hour or two and decided it was time to head home. As a mini-group we decided that we'd go clubbing together next Friday, which should be fun and we all exchanged numbers and such to plan the outing. I also talked to two of the girls about doing a beach day which will probably happen within the next couple weeks.

A couple things I learned from the night:
*Circular Quay is pronounced Circular Key
*Cairns is pronounces Cannes, like the film festival - they kind of do wierd things with adding and dropping r's as they please
*I've begun to say "yeah" like a true Aussie
*I'm sure I noticed before, but I've never written it: no pennies in Australian currency, they don't exist)
*US medical insurance SUCKS compared to the Aussie universal health care, and most Aussies are dumbfounded by how complicated ours is
*The Netherlands are a MUST visit sometime in my lifetime
*No tax is, once again, crazy baller (no figuring out how much tax and tip to put in on the bill cause there's no tax, and you only really tip if it's crazy awesome service)
*Kissing on one cheek is the general way to say goodbye, not handshakes or hugs.
*Aussie women are seriously hilarious!