No Snow Today

So like the title says, no snow today. But wwwaaaaayyyyy better quality of computers today because we're in the computer lab on the campus.
Not much news. I felt like I was in grade 1 again though because this arvo at the end of class we spent an hour doing arts and crafts with a video on in the background with nursery rhymes. Earlier in the class I fell asleep. I wasn't feeling well and after I google earth where I'll be living and call my host family then I'm off to bed because I haven't been feeling that good today. I swear, if all the food in the country is like what I'm being served at this place then I will come back a stick. Except for the bagels at breakfast. I ate one and a half today with cream cheese, not smothered on though, but I knew it was probably going to be the only meal of the day I enjoyed. Lunch was hot dogs and some grilled cheese sandwich thing which made me sick.
Tonight we had "International Sing A Long" night, us Aussie girls sung 'Give Me A Home Amoung The Gum Trees' except we could only remember the first verse.
Tomorrow is another full on day in class which is why I need to get lots of rest to avoid another nap. It's pretty boring though because it goes so slow so everyone an keep up because they aren't fluent in English. A few people are, like my new Estonian friend, she has really good English.
Anyway, gotta cut this mega short cause someone is waiting for me so we can walk back to Molloy Hall together, my friend.
Take Care

Update

It is so cold here right now!!! We are expecting snow here tomorrow, which I'm tipping we will get as the day has got colder and colder.
So I got a pretty decent sleep last night, being Australian we get here first so I got the first pick out of the beds which means I got a decent mattress. I woke up at 4am and worked out it was 8pm there, which meant my tummy was ready for dinner, except it wasn't dinner time!
The showers at the school are pretty dodgy, I'm hoping my hair will hold out til I get to Chicago as it will take forever to wash it because the water comes out as a dribble. And there is no privacy. So I had the verylast shower night, knowing I'd be the only one in the bathroom so I could do nudey runs (mentally scaring info I know) in my thongs (flip flops) around the showers which I turned on to find the warmest water with the best spray of water, which wasn't good and it was a lukewarm shower. Horribly freezing but nice to clean myself after hours in the plane.
Today for breakfast I had bagels and cream cheese, how American!!! Then we ventured out the school and went to some shops down ther street. The American's we spoke to were nice. We were lucky not to be run down but a car as we kept looking in the wrong direction for traffic! It's so weird to see the same cars we have in Aus but with the steering wheel on the wrong side. I bought a coke (slightly different taste), a fudge brownie and a lighter for all of $4.32. I was almost bowled over by the cheapness of it! And we went to a discount store, which I would expect to be ran by Asians, like over there, but a nice American man ran it and he told us how his son had been living in Sydney for the past 8 months and looked it over there. Anwyay, they seriously do celebrate EVERY single holiday as he had stuff in there for Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Pat's and Easter. I'm talking ornaments and decorations and all kinds of things. It was weird!
People have been arriving all day from different countires, a lot of them are from Brazil at the moment but I met a girl from Estonia just before, she has pretty good English. It's hard with the girls from South America as they have very limited and basic English. It's a bit hard because I keep thinking like a CanTeen member on camp, trying to ensure everyone is included but majoity of them have their own big groups and are nice but don't want to integrate much with us girls, maybe it's because we are fluent English and they know very little. It's hard. There's a nice girl from Estonia and Argentina so that's interesting.
Tonight we are having pizza for dinner and there should be a lot more people arrive. Tomorrow we start classes and it will be pretty full on for the next few days. I'm not going to call home now til I get to Chicago as I spoke to mum before and whilst I didn't get upset she got pretty upset which was hard because there was nothing I could say to make it better.
Where I'm staying is a St. Johns College campus in Oakdale and is apprently hardly ever used anymore except for a few gradute classes once in a while. And it looks like it as the place is fairly run down. It would have been beautiful when it was in full operation as things wouldn't have over grown or become dangerous. The steps are white granite and there are great big wooden columns which have the paint flaking off them and there is like a courtyard thing attached to the main building which is all closed off as it probably isn't stable up there any more cause the steps are dodgy and the ground is uneven and god knows what else. I'll take photos.
Well I should go now, I might go watch more TV. They have so many channels but so many crap shows. I'm looking forward to dinner as I'm starving!
Take Care.

their taps turn in the opposite direction!

i'm here. finally. very emotional. almost missed connecting flight. completely exhausted. and peope here just stick stickers on their cars, like not the bumper bit, but the painted part! how weird is that? the flight over wasn't too long, just bad food and i couldn't sleep. no matte rhow relaxed i tried to make myself it just didn't work. so the flight to new york had 150 empty seats so us girls all moved to empty rows where we could lay and sleep. thank god for that. it is so worth the sore neck i have now just to get a few hours sleep. it's 9pm here now in new york which is expecting snow on tuesday - yippee yippee!!!! bit nippy, but very comfortable inside. the school is alright, it's pretty standard, nothing overly exciting about it. tonight for dinner we had "take out" from wendy's, which over here is not ice cream, but a hamburger fast food place. i can't wait to drink "gallons" of water. my mouth is feeling so dry and sore. pretty out of it at the moment thanks to sore eyes and exhaustion. tomorrow night there will be 97 au pairs here. the brazilians are arriving at 3am. tomorrow is a free day so i'll just bum around, probably try to walk around the campus and stretch myself out.
i hope all is well back there. thanks for coming to the airport jo, i really appreciated it. now i just need to wait for my kelly personality to kick in and all shall be good.

Can you be a little more unprepared???

In 24 hours I'll be on a plane, in a week I'll be setting up house (room) in another country and in a year I'll either be staying for another year or getting ready to pack up and travel and head home. But the previous 24 hours have been the most unorganised in a while. I forgot my osteo appointment last night and didn't set the alarm, so when I woke up this morning and start the day off with f this and s that, actually it was simply f then s then f again. So, moving on, I packed my bag before, I had too much luggage. So I ended up having to go and buy another suitcase (lucky I'm allowed 2 peices of luggage that weight 32kgs each). I'm so disappointed that I had to take more luggage. And I'm more disappointed about being unorganised. And I'm further disappointed that my alone time is down to nothing. It's all about me. Actually, I'm feeling like I did when I got the visa, it's so freaking hard that I can't be bothered with it. And then the other Kelly goes, uh, excuse me, but that is lazy of you and you'd never get anywhere without hard work. I'm just a little over it. That's all. Maybe a little daunted. I'm now questioning why I couldn't have just gone on a little holiday to the damn country, rather than insisting on living in it.
I need to pay a parking fine for Telisa. I also need to make the computer go faster because I need to put more music on it. That is an impossible. Anyway, gotta go. Next time I write it will be in America. Finally. I can't wait for the plane ride, I might be able to sleep for a good half of it.

Meet The Family

So I get an email from Pat(the mum/mom) the other day telling me that over the Christmas and New Year period her husband Greg (the dad) lost his job, and as of the weekend had moved out to seek help for a problem he was having (I've witheld that info from you). How hard would that be for a woman to tell that to an almost stranger who could suddenly leave her in the lurch? So anyway, Emma (the current au pair) emails me, telling me not to worry and freak out (in case I was, I wasn't) and says that the kids (Alexandra (f), 10 y.o, Matthew (m), 6 y.o and Emily (f), 1 y.o) are fine with this development and don't really notice anything has changed since Greg wasn't around much anyway, plus the tension between Pat and Greg has obviously diminshed because he's moved out. Mind blowing really and I don't think I've ever met people like this before so no doubt my year will be interesting. Anyway, I'm still excited, waiting for my tickets to come.
I got boots yesterday to wear in the cold and snow and water, all very fancy. One less thing to worry about!

Flight Info!!

I received my flight info!!! I got it yesterday actually and was completely ecstatic!
So, I fly out at 12:20pm on Jan 29 then arrive in LA for a little stop over at 7:30am Jan 29 (US time) then I fly to NY at 8:50am Jan 29 and arrive there at like 5 or something, I'm a little hazy on that piece of info, but I think that's right because I thought that's perfect because by the time I go through customs and then all the other au pairs then we get to where we're staying then it will be dinner time and after dinner it will be bed time!!! So I am hoping to reduce jetlag to the minimum i.e. have none (I wish).
Anyway, that's all. I checked up on my visa to ensure I'd encounter no troubles at customs due to not having a hyphen inbetween Kelly and Ann but apparently the American Consulate don't have it within their "capacity". So it's all go at the moment!!