blah.

so i'm in quite a blah mood at the moment. been a long three days, and i need sleep tho i haven't exactly been sleep deprived. i need a yum cha session. and a baking session. and an evening at the park. and many other things. but yeah, blah mood. for now. it'll pass.

where did i stop? oh right the last i posted i was at my foster parents' place... seems like so long ago! but it's only been three days. anyway... i moved on campus thursday morning - woke up early to re-pack, then my foster mother and i headed for the u of o. checked in, and then i had to lug my heavy, heavy suitcase up two flights of stairs (thankfully only two! it could've been worse.) and when i got to my room i found my roommate already in it... her name's yayoi, and she's from japan. she's nice, but can't really understand or speak english so communication's a bit of a problem. but we're getting by... india was good practice =) spent most of my morning making my room liveable. i quite like it, small and cramped tho it may be. put up 20 or so pictures that i developed back home, and i LOVE them. it's nice to have familiar faces smiling back at you =) only problem i have with my room at the moment is that the cupboard (or closet, as they call it here. they stare blankly at me when i say cupboard) door won't shut properly. thing is, we were given an inventory to check off when we checked in, stating what was or wasn't in good condition so that when we checked out they'd know what we did or didn't damage. the closet door worked fine when i checked it! then after i put in all my stuff it wouldn't catch. just my luck right >.< haven't gotten it fixed yet, tho i've already reported it. i'm just praying really hard that i won't have to pay anything! i didn't do anything, promise.

after settling down i had my first (of many) orientation sessions. we were split into groups, had to introduce ourselves, had a campus tour, all that jazz. the people in my group were pretty quiet, so i didn't really get to know many of them on the first day. also, a lot of them weren't really able to converse in english as well, so that made it even more difficult. we had a welcome dinner that night (which they charged us for!), and there they did this thing where they read out a list of countries and when your country was called you had to stand up and everyone clapped for you. was actually pretty cool that there were people from so many different countries - some i didn't even know existed! also surprising was the number of japanese, korean and taiwanese students that were there... and i found out that in addition to this malaysian girl i already knew, that was another malaysian guy on campus too! he's from taylors, majoring in business, took this year off to travel round europe alone, and he thinks my roommate's hot. so he's hitting on her. but he's quite a fun person la.. nice to have someone to say lah with and to use manglish with. but he's also annoying, as most guys are (har har.).. i think he has all these pent up malaysian swear words and phrases that he can't use with anyone else cos they don't understand so he takes it out on me. as in he swears at me. for no reason! but he's nice enough. when he's not ignoring me and hitting on my room mate. which is quite amusing la actually, so i don't really have any complaints. and no, i'm not jealous in the least that he thinks she's hotter than i am and that he's hitting on her and not me. i suits me just fine. =)

the second day of orientation (friday), we had a whole series of talks about random, not very interesting stuff... nothing really worth mentioning. except that they gave us chocolate-coated strawberries at the last one =P i had some issues (that haven't been resolved) with my uoregon email address, which means i don't have access to a lot of things, but i won't bore you with that one. um... went to the library to use the computers there for a bit, and the library is way cooler than any library i've been to in malaysia, hands down. it's actually quiet, for one, and the range of resources and services available is really quite amazing (lol a girl walking by my window just went "like, what the fuck did you say to me motherfucker?" what if i start speaking american soon? scary thought.) kay anyway, as i was saying... yeah library. they even allow you to borrow laptops for a certain period of time, and they have all these nice cushy chairs and rooms that can be used for study groups. cool right? or am i just a nerd. oh and i used this call card that i got a while ago to call back to malaysia... it's such a sucky card that i'll never use again! i paid $5 for it, and i was supposed to get 67 minutes. but i got 30 minutes, tops, out of it. i need to get skype! everyone else get skype too so we can talk for free =D

today was quite an eventful day... started off really early cos we were supposed to meet for breakfast at eight, then we had to take this english placement test, even if we did toefl and sats and took english courses in college! but anyway, i got another nice call while getting ready =), had this huge blueberry muffin for breakfast, and took the writing "test" where i had to write an essay. we had three topics to choose from : the first one was about whether living on campus was better than getting your own place, second one i cannot remember, and the third one was about what you would like to change about your country - this's the one i chose. only had 30 minutes to write, so i couldn't write much but i think i got my point across about our education system. joon (the malaysian guy) chose to write about political indifference, of all things. i mean, it's a pretty cool topic, but it's a pretty deep one and having only half an hour to think and write about it isn't much... but i was saying that even if he had to take extra english classes it probably won't be too bad, cos my roommate's probably gonna be there too! =P oh but the crappy thing is i might be required to take enlish writing classes even if i pass the test! and that sucks cos i was already forced to take english classes in help which i thought were a waste of time and now for some reason uo won't accept those credits and are forcing me to take more classes! waste of time and money. hopefully i wriggle my way out of it somehow la =)

then.. i wanted to go check out the rec center where they have a gym and basketball courts and stuff, but in the end i decided to get my laptop instead! so i now FINALLY have my pretty white macbook with a nice cover and the original microsoft office... but i don't know how to use mac! it's so frustrating. really. and i'm kicking myself for getting a mac just cos of all the confusion i caused myself but hopefully i'll find someone nice and patient enough to explain everything to me so i won't have to kick myself harder >.< but i'm sure once i get thru this transition phase it'll be pretty good la... at least i hope so. the bright side to it all is that i'm online now! in my room! that's a pretty shiny bright side. but i still have a long way to go la... need to install my webcam, figure out how to get all my stuff out of my external hard drive cos apparently i can't open it since i copied it from my documents under xp... so i need to open it on windows and change ownership and then maybe hopefully possibly i can get my info. or some nonsense like that. frus la. i'm seriously such a tech noob. =(

so after tinkering around with my laptop and stressing myself for a few hours it was time to go for my very first football game! it was quite a long walk to the stadium, and it was a pretty hot day, but i think it was worth it =) i wore my new "oregon ducks" tshirt that i got as a free gift from the bank (have i mentioned that the uo mascot is a duck, more specifically donald duck?), so i fit right in with the rest of the green and yellow crowd (uo colors). the stadium was HUGE! and the atmosphere was amazing... seriously, it's too bad we don't have inter-collegiate games of that magnitude here in malaysia. the amount of support and loyalty oregonians had for "the ducks", as we're called was simply superb. i don't know how many people were in the stadium exactly, but literally thousands and thousands. and they cheered and cheered and booed the opposition and cheered some more... it was packed! and not just with students, but with adults and kids and old people as well. i had to stand throughout the game cos the people in front of me wouldn't sit down! and it wasn't a short period of time okay - they have four quarters (doh.), each 15 minutes long, but they keep stopping play and huddling and doing goodness knows what that the whole thing took about 4 hours! lol and it was really confusing because me and the other girls i was with had to figure the game out as it went on, so most of the time we had no idea what was going on or why people were cheering! but now i have an idea, vague tho it may be, of how it works la. football/soccer is way easier to understand. and it's shorter. so for now american football is still second. =P

oh and they had the whole marching band and cheerleaders and team mascot thing as well, so that was pretty cool. the marching band was huge! they had like a whole orchestra.. and they sounded really good. especially when they played the star-spangled banner... and the crowd sang it with passion and patriotism, not how malaysians (myself included) sing the negaraku. cheerleaders were in their short skirts and had their pom poms, but they could do quite a lot of pyramid and flipping and tossing stuff. the mascot couldn't be out on the field cos it was being punished for fighting with the opposing team's mascot at the last game (twice.), so the duck had to watch from a box. i also had an american hot dog! with the ketchup and onions and pickles... not too bad =) all in all a great experience.

then we walked home and they had this party thing for the international students, but i was really tired and not in the mood for socializing so i hung around for a bit, had some chocolate and then i came back to my room. and here i am now, rambling away again =) kay i've talked enough. another long day tomorrow so i should be heading off to bed real soon.. you know what, i think i might actually be homesick.