The last few days have been very fun. After Monday's intense induction, the pace has calmed considerably and we've just had a few bits and bobs to go to since then. A major part of the fun is everyone's growing aptitude to mock the New York accent. Any noise at all can be turned into some stupid New York drawl. The downside of this is that occasionally your accent randomly changes - I said thanks to a man on the bus the other day in a full on accent.
Anyway... On Tuesday we went for an international students party at a downtown sports bar called Jillian's. It was quite fun, they made us do lots of bonding exercises which varied in degrees of success. For one game, you had to write down 3 interesting facts about yourself on a piece of paper which was put in a bag. Everybody then had to pick a piece out of the bag and find the person who wrote the three facts. The facts on the piece I pulled out were: 1. My blood type is O; 2. I have one brother; 3. I don't like American food. As it could have been absolutely anybody in the room, I gave up and played air hockey. A better exercise was a pub quiz (or trivia as they're known in America) - every team member had to be of a different nationality but we cheated and had two English on our team. We only finished second so I was raging!
After the party fizzled out we went to bar called Professor Barley's which was a stereotypical American bar - dimmed lighting, booths, buffalo head on the wall, lots of clutter, waitress service. It reminded me of the bar in True Blood, although it was a lot smaller. Most of us couldn't drink cos we didn't have ID but it was a fun experience nonetheless.
Me, Alex, Greg and Emma booked a taxi to take us back to the university campus and had another insane taxi journey! When it pulled up, Alex went round to get in the front but there was already a woman sitting there who looked like the crack addicted double of Whoopi Goldberg. The taxi driver proclaimed "Come and get in, we're all friends here" so we all basically sat on top of each other as he proceeded to explain that Albany's taxi system runs on zones and not meters so it's in their interest to pick up multiple passengers. He also explained that most taxi drivers are "assholes" but that he wasn't.
Yesterday, we had a fun trip to Walmart, It has absolutely everything that you could want! So we managed to get loads of stuff that we needed for our rooms. When you wanted to go up or downstairs, you put your trolley on a conveyor belt while you went down the escalator! I found this amazing, even though it's probably pretty standard in America. At night, we went to the mall to get American phones. The phone system is ridiculously overcomplicated - you can pay daily, top up monthly or get a contract, but if you get a contract you have to give a $500 deposit if you don't have a social security number so we went with topping up monthly. We chose an option where you pay $15 a month for unlimited texts and then you pay for your calls. As I said, very complicated!!!!! The big plus point was that we got to buy lovely retro phones. I chose a Samsung SGH-t239 which is a very basic slidy phone, but it's very nice anyway!
Today we played basketball, which was a nice experience despite the fact that I'm absolutely shit at it! Then we had to go the candlelighting ceremony that officially signifies the beginning of the new academic year. Lots of academics spoke about how today is the beginning of the rest of our lives and other silly cliches, then we all lit candles and watched some fireworks. There's a weird chant where someone shouts "UAlbany" then everyone shouts "You know" back - no one seemed to understand why. There was a 'party' afterwards which consisted of some loud music and glowsticks but absolutely nothing else, in other words, IT WAS WACK!
The dining room in our halls opened last night and my suspicions that I'll have put on twenty stone by the time that I return to England have been more or less confirmed. There's Subway-style wraps and Domino's-style pizza at every mealtime and pancakes and waffles for breakfast - it's very nice but you can feel yourself getting fat as you eat it!
Tomorrow morning, we're going to Walmart again as me and Emma have decided to start playing tennis and the local sports superstore "Dick's Sporting Goods" (no joke) is a bit on the pricey side. Then at night, we're going to our first house party which is all very exciting!!! The fact that I legally can't drink makes me want to drink so desperately and tomorrow my wish will finally be granted!!!!
See ya soon!
(P.S. I hate ranch!)
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