I'm here!!!

I MADE IT!!!

Wowzas this past week and a bit has been soooo hectic but also so amazing! I’ve got so much to share! Buckle up because this is a long read (but worth it!). I’ll start from where the last post/video left off from…

Saturday 17 August

Friday night with my friends was so lovely but I somehow ended up staying out until 12/1-ish, but of course I was still able to spring out of bed at 5:30am. I still had a little bit of packing to finish and I had to rearrange my bags to make them more evenly weighted. I finished getting ready, said bye to Tom and Laura (and cried lol) and then headed off to see Mum one last time. I dropped my car with her and had a last goodbye, and then cried again in the car over a cute little card Mum had written for me. Getting into the airport only took an hour from Langwarrin which was awesome so we still managed to get there around 8:30am. Getting from the car to the terminal was made a little difficult by the fact that I had 3 suitcases, a camera bag and a handbag, but amen for trolleys.

Virgin made me do some super confusing self-check-in machine thing and I also had a border protection (or something like that) lady come up and grill me about where I was going and why. Then I had to load my bags onto a conveyer belt, and one of them was too heavy (lol) so I just had to take a portable speaker out and they were good to go. I then ran into CJ and her family, we headed over to the departure gate to get our photos taken, said our goodbyes, and headed through to security.

CJ and I were lucky enough to be picked out for a random bomb test, which has never happened to me before. I had to open up all my bags for them to be checked. Security and all that was fine and we got through with no issues. We picked up some Hungry Jacks for breakfast, sat down in a side departure lounge and then moved into our correct gate when they opened it up and checked everyone’s passport and ticket. It was at this point that I was keeping a keen eye out for any attendants with scales because I knew that my carry on suitcase + camera bag would 100% be more than 7kg, but thankfully we managed to get onto the plane without any hassles.

The flight went a lot quicker than I expected, especially considering I only had a few naps here and there, none of which were solid or long. It felt more like 8 hours than 14. The food was pretty decent, having roast chicken, pizza, yogurt, pancakes, and packets of chips. We had heaps of leg room, and the entertainment (tv etc.) was okay.

We finally arrived at LAX right as the exhaustion started hitting. Thankfully customs was super quick thanks to a sweet Asian-American guard who grabbed CJ and I and opened up a desk to put us through and chat to us. We grabbed our bags, headed out through the arrivals gate, and made our way down to our next terminal.

The heat hit us luck a truck, but luckily we only had to walk for a little bit. We found a seat in the terminal and hung out there for about an hour and a half. We discovered that our Australian Netflix accounts gave us access to the American one so we had fun exploring that, and I even started watching some Grey’s Anatomy (I’ve always loved this show but there’s nowhere safe or legal to access it in Australia, so I’ll definitely be bingeing it while I’m over here). Our gate finally opened so we checked our bags in and headed through security where we had to take our shoes off – a new security experience for me. We then did some more waiting in the departure lounge (our total layover time in LA was 6 hours) and even had an American woman sit right next to us, watch me talk to Mum on FaceTime and make comments about how I looked just like her, and then chatted to us about her travel plans and Australia until it was time to board. Our plane was already delayed, but after boarding and the plane finally taking off, we were delayed a lot, which was concerning since our stopover in Dallas was only 45 minutes.

The 3 hour flight went so quick compared to our Melbourne to LA one, also because we finally got to nap. However, landing and taxying to the gate took forever and we and some others ended up having to run to the Sky Rail and then run to our next gate. The flight was due to depart at 9pm, and we got to the gate at 8:55pm. They told us they’d already closed the gate and wouldn’t let us on. It was the shit cherry on top of an exhausting day, and I started panicking because I didn’t think there were any other flights to Memphis that night. Luckily there was another one at 10:30pm, so they transferred us onto that one and we got to do some more waiting. We picked up some McDonalds and crashed in the lounge.

The flight from Dallas to Memphis finally took off at 11pm, and almost everyone got an entire row to themselves since there were only about 40 people on the flight. This 1.5 flight went quick and we got to see some pretty views of the city lights over Dallas and Memphis and we departed and arrived.

After arriving in Memphis, we grabbed our bags and headed outside to wait for our hotel’s shuttle bus. We finally checked in at the hotel at around 2am and then crashed.

Sunday 18 August

After 6 hours of sleep, we woke up at about 8am, got ready, packed up all of our stuff, and headed to breakfast. It was buffet style but pretty pathetic. I had a fried egg that was filled with cheese and some toast that tasted weird. We checked out and jumped into the airport shuttle. Our driver was a super cool African-American dude who was super chatty. We got to the airport and went into the baggage claim where we found one of our Ole Miss advisors waiting for us. She gave us an orientation folder and guided us to the bus. Shortly after CJ and I got on, two German girls came and sat with us and we ended up chatting to them the whole way to Oxford (1.5-ish hours). Their names are Vera and Bea (pronounced as Bee, short for Rebecca) and they’re both so lovely. We got to campus (I tried not to squeal driving in!), grabbed our luggage and headed towards our dorm.

(my dorm building is the last one shown)

I dropped one of my suitcases and tripped over it so I made a great first impression. After grabbing my bed and bath pack and checking in, I headed to my room. CJ had already found out on the bus that Vera was her roomie, but I didn’t even know the name of mine yet. But as I was walking down the hall towards my room, I heard an Australian accent ask CJ “who’s Emily?” and CJ replied, “the Aussie girl with the fringe”. I came around the corner and said that it was me, and discovered that I’d scored an Aussie roommate! Her name is Georgia, she’s from the Sunshine Coast (Queensland), she’s 20 and studies Accounting. We got to our room, chose our beds and closets, and started unpacking our stuff and getting to know each other. Here’s a little clip I took of what our room looks like pre-moving in:

I’ll post another one soon when our room is fully set up.

We took a break and met up with CJ and Vera and we walked to a fountain on campus to sit down and eat some food. It was so beautiful!

(Georgia is in yellow, CJ in red)

We then decided to give ourselves a little campus tour, which ended up going 2 hours (much longer than we expected). It didn’t really help us get our bearings at all, we just wanted to have a look around. Georgia was on a mission to find a lake that she’d seen on the map, which we eventually found after 30 minutes because of CJ’s bad navigation skills. After all that effort, it was a pathetic man-made pond the same colour as the Yarra River in Melbourne.

We went back to our rooms and got ready to head into town for some dinner.

(Me, Georgia, CJ, Vera)

We (Georgia, CJ, Vera and I) decided to try out Chili’s, which is a southwestern-style restaurant. I ordered a burger, and it was here that I had my first experience of the all-you-can-drink soft drink policy that most restaurants have. Basically, you order, say, a coke with dinner, and every time your server sees that your drink is getting low, they bring you another one free of charge. And another one. And another one. By the end of dinner, I’d finished nearly 3 massive schooners of coke. Probably explains why I felt sick the rest of the night.

After dinner, we walked over to Walmart, where we spent nearly 2 and a half hours. We were so exhausted by the end of it, because we definitely didn’t plan on spending that long there. It’s a supercentre, so it’s basically the size of a Costco and is a combination of a Coles/Woolies, a Bunnings and a Kmart. Plus there’s a gun section. We walked out with so many bags of stuff, but it was good because at least we’d bought a lot of the dorm essentials we needed like cutlery, toilet paper, food etc. and a lot of it we were going to share between the 4 of us and our 2 rooms so it worked out as not being that expensive. We caught an Uber home, dumped all the stuff in CJ and Vera’s room, and crashed into bed.

Monday 19 August

We woke up pretty early this morning because today was going to be a day full of orientation activities. We met in a lecture hall at 9am where we were given a complimentary breakfast of way-too-sweet scones and fruit. The lecture finally started at 10 and went until 11:30, where they just discussed basic information regarding our exchange like activities, etiquette, emergency contacts, insurance etc.

The advisors then took us for a lunch at one of the dining facilities, so I got to have some sushi. This dining facility – Rebel Market – is the one closest to my dorm and will probably be the one I eat at most often. (For those who don’t know, I’ve paid for a meal plan that allows me to eat at the 3 on-campus dining facilities as many times a day as I want. They’re cafeteria style, so I simply walk in, go to any of the food stations, and grab as much food as I want).

After this, we walked right over to the other side of campus to spend 4 hours in another lecture theatre, this time with the degree-seeking international students (those who are at Ole Miss to complete an entire degree, rather than for a semester or year like me). We did some icebreaker activities and I met a girl from Uzbekistan. I never thought I’d meet someone from there, so that was pretty cool. We then listened to several hours of different faculty talking about different things we needed to know: club sports and the gym facilities, the Hotty Toddy chant, the health centre and services, Oxford PD, and a bunch of other student services. Finally after 4 hours of being spoken at, we were led outside to a pizza truck for free, freshly made pizza. We gorged, and then grabbed more to take back to the room for later.

We just spent the rest of the night watching Netflix with our new mate Al (short for Alastair) from England.

Tuesday 20 August

We started the morning off with a campus tour from an upperclassman. He showed us the main buildings on campus and gave us a general overview of a bunch of things. This helped me get my bearings a bit more because he explained things really well. Here are a couple of snaps I got:

(How beautiful is the morning!)

(The Lyceum - the oldest building on campus, now used as an administration building)

(Inside the Lyceum)

(A sorority house)

(One of the observatories on campus)

(Tour group photo in front of the Walk of Champions at the Grove)

We went to Walmart again, and when we got back, we headed off on another little adventure to another side of campus to set up a PO Box at the campus post office (if anyone would like the details of my PO Box, shoot me a message).

We then ventured over to another side of campus for a free taco night that one of the international departments was hosting. They were delicious, and thankfully not spicy (because we all know I can barely even do a mild lemon and herb). We met some Japanese girls and also a girl from Ireland (Ciara – pronounced Kiera) and Susanna from Scotland.

We ventured back to the dorm to get ready for drinks at another international student’s apartment. About 12 of us shared 3 Ubers there, because the apartment block was off-campus. We had a few drinks, got to meet some other international students, and ended up going outside and hanging out at a BBQ area. Shortly after it started pouring rain, and given that the shelter over the BBQ area had gaps in it, we all decided to give up trying to stay dry and just danced in the rain to some Latin music. We then tried to play a dancing game but given we were all a little tipsy it didn’t work out.

We headed home and went to bed.

Wednesday 21 August

I had to wake up at a reasonable time this morning because I had my Tuberculosis testing (the state of Mississippi requires all students to submit to TB testing before they can enrol in classes). All it involved was a chest x-ray and taking some blood. I was done in half an hour.

I then headed to the gym to meet the rest of my friends, and when they were finished, we headed to the bike shop. It’s only $30 to hire a bike for the semester – how cheap! So we chose our bikes, signed the forms, paid the fee, and went for a little ride around campus!

We went to Walmart AGAIN – the 3rd time in 4 days.

We got back in time to quickly get ready for an event an international club was hosting, where they walked us to The Square – the colloquial name for the Oxford Historic District – and then let us roam free and find somewhere to have dinner. I’d spent most of the walk chatting to Oscar (from Sweden), as well as Al and Vera, so the 4 of us went to dinner together. We went to a southern-style diner called Ajax and I tried Catfish for dinner. It was actually really delicious! Vera had a squash casserole, which meant that it had toasted marshmallows on top. This was too weird for me to try. We talked about heaps of stuff over dinner, from why we chose Ole Miss to our country’s national sports, travel experiences and so on.

After dinner, someone heard that some other international students (my friends) were at a bar/club called Levee, so we went and met them there. They didn’t misread my ID so they knew I was under 21 (they let 18+ in but you can only drink if you’re 21+ and have a wristband on. They stamp your hand if you’re underage), but I managed to get drinks anyway. We danced the night away, and headed home around 10.

(Ciara, Vera and I)

CJ and Georgia had been drinking since 5 (it was basically their dinner) so when we got back to the dorms, Georgia threw up in our sink and CJ was curled over the toilet bowl for a little bit. CJ and Vera ended up crashing on our floor, so we had a sleepover.

Thursday 22 August

I woke up feeling fine this morning because I hadn’t had a whole lot to drink last night, since I’d been bloated from the unlimited coke I’d consumed at dinner before going to Levee.

I didn’t spend the morning doing much, but at 2pm I had my first academic advising appointment for my criminology units. I rode over to the building, and was in and out in 10 minutes. The advisor simply enrolled us in the classes we’d requested from her department, printed the schedules, and sent us on our way. With a bit of time to kill, I took a longer ride to my next appointment, and then sat outside the building soaking up the sun. Again, the next appointment was super simple as the journalism unit I requested was available. The advisor enrolled me in it, printed the schedule, and I was done for the day.

When I got back to my dorm, I’d noticed that the last class I wanted to enrol in – the negotiation business class – had just opened up a spot in a better time slot, so I jumped online and figured out how to enrol in it. It was so simple and I don’t know why I can’t have done all the enrolling myself months ago.

Later on, we went to an info session with Oxford PD that just outlined some services they offer and numbers we can use to contact them. They then put on a free gelato get-together at the international building.

At around 6:45pm, we jumped on our bikes and rode to the other side of campus to the soccer field to watch the soccer team’s first game of the season. It was a fun experience even though I’m not a huge fan of soccer, and the Ole Miss team won 2-0.

As with most nights, we finished up the day with some Netflix.

Friday 23 August

I slept in pretty late this morning, and spent it chilling in my room. Vera came in at about 11:30 and I helped her set up her meal plan, and we then headed to one of the dining facilities to see if our meal plans had activated. Hers hadn’t yet, so we went and found another food court that isn’t included in the meal plan. We ate at Which Wich, a sandwich bar like Subway but less customisable, more expensive and just overall not as good. It tasted fine, but I just prefer good old Subway (they have several here in Oxford). After this we ended up catching the bus into Walmart as Vera hadn’t gone for a few days, and yet again we rolled out with a full trolley (whoops). What started out as a quick trip for some lunch turned into a 5 hour adventure and we eventually got back around 4:30pm.

There was a line dancing activity scheduled for 5:30pm, so we got a little dolled up for that. Unfortunately after waiting at the event for 5 minutes for them to rock up, we got emailed that it was cancelled due to incoming bad weather. Given that we’d gone to the effort of wearing dresses and putting a bit of makeup on, 4 of us girls (Georgia, Vera, Ciara and I) decided to head into the Square to grab some dinner.

Just after we’d hopped off the bus and were heading to a place Ciara knew, it started pouring down and we got completely drenched. The place we went to was called South Depot Taco Shop and it was basically a build-your-own burrito, taco or Mexican bowl place. It was amazing and we ended up having a great time giggling about stupid things (we were a bit overtired).

We caught the bus back to campus and were in the dorm common room watching Netflix by 8pm.

Saturday 24 August

Today was Memphis excursion day! We were on the buses by 8:30am, and while we were waiting, I facetimed Spaldo, Connor and Luke who were all hanging out (as it was Saturday night for them).

We got into Memphis around 10:30am, and the first stop was the National Civil Rights Museum. I hadn’t realised that this museum was constructed around and within the Lorraine Motel, the place where Martin Luther King Jnr. was assassinated. This sent chills down my spine, as I’ve always had a little bit of a fascination with him. There was a wreath placed on the balcony where he was standing when he was shot.

The museum had 25 exhibitions in a flow-through setup, including a short film on black slavery and a monologue from an ancestor of slaves. The museum was really eye opening as I’ve never really been educated on American history, let alone African American slavery history.

(Statue of Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to give her seat to a white person)

(Sitting on the bus (or more likely a replica of it) that Rosa Parks was on the day she made history)

We then exited and went to a secondary part of the museum across the road which was entirely dedicated to MLK Jnr. I found this part the most fascinating:

After we were finished, we met a guy outside whose father protested in the marches that MLK Jnr. participated in. We then grabbed a few snaps:

(Back row: Susanna, CJ, Al)

(Front row: Me, Vera, Georgia, Ciara)

We jumped back on the buses and started driving towards our next stop. Driving through the Memphis inner-city/CBD was weird – it wasn’t busy at all, and it was quite dark and run down. We joked that maybe there was a tornado warning we didn’t know about and that’s why there was no one around.

It turned out that our next destination – Wolfchase Galleria (a large shopping mall) – was about 30 minutes east of the inner city. Upon getting there we grabbed some food, and the cashiers at Chick-fil-A loved my accent and chatted to me a bunch and even rushed my food for me. We spent the next few hours browsing the shops; however we couldn’t find decent exercise clothes anywhere, which was the main thing we wanted to find. Overall the mall was quite underwhelming and I left with nothing.

After the mall we went around the corner to an international grocery shop, however we were again left disappointed that there were no iconic Australian snacks, and most of the food was Asian.

We the embarked on the 1 and a half our drive back to Oxford, driving through Germantown which was super pretty. On the bus ride home we got to watch the first college football game of the season – Florida vs. Miami.

By the time we’d got back to Oxford, we’d all decided that we wanted to go out since we couldn’t spend our first Saturday night just sitting around. We got dressed up, had a couple of pre drinks, and headed back to Levee again. This time they misread my ID and actually believed I was 21, so I got a wristband and was able to drink. The group of us spent the night dancing, taking lots of pics, meeting a bunch of new people. I even sung happy birthday twice in the bathroom to some random girls and was added on snapchat by so many people that I barely recall meeting.

Al decided that we should walk home from the Square, which was a bit of a task considering the state of some of us. Here are some funny bits of our adventures home:

(We tried to take a self-timer pic at the Walk of Champions)

We talked to so many different groups of people, all of which thought it was awesome that we were internationals. When we got back in the dorm, we somehow ended up on one of the higher levels in a common room chatting to some freshmen girls. I also remember facetiming a bunch of people throughout the night. Sorry to those who had to endure that. I then somehow ended up in bed at around 3am, and that was the night done.

Sunday 25 August

We woke up a bit dusty this morning and at 10:30am – a bit later than usual. We weren’t too bad, but we were suffering from that drowsiness/exhaustion you get after a big night. We went and had breakfast in the communal kitchen where everyone else already was, and exchanged funny stories, photos and videos from last night. We then finally got onto doing some washing, which we’d been meaning to do for several days now but things just kept popping up. It only costs $1.50 per load or per use of the dryer, so that’s not too bad. After all of that was done, we went back to our rooms and hung everything up. Georgia and I didn’t want to have to buy a clothes rack/dryer and we were too scared to put our clothes in the dryers, so we ended up hanging our stuff up to dry on our beds and in our wardrobes. It actually worked out pretty well.

We spent the rest of the morning chilling out until we had a make-up meeting with our wing’s CA (Community Assistant – the upper-class student who lives on our wing and helps us with any issues/provides support) since we missed the one yesterday while we were in Memphis. It was a pretty boring get-to-know-each-other and listening to her read the dorm rules (which we either already knew or are common sense).

At 6pm, Georgia and I went to sorority orientation, which was held in the old basketball stadium (which is huge). There were apparently about 1000 girls in there, all hoping to join a sorority this semester. It was basically an overwhelming overview of the whole ‘rushing’ process and how we have to stay on our best behaviour at all times. It was intense. We then broke up into smaller groups to meet our recruitment counsellors. Everyone thought it was so cool that I was Australian. I didn’t really know what was going on compared to everyone else, considering pretty much all the other girls were legacies (their mums, aunts, or other female family members were members of sororities). Georgia and I met back up after the whole thing, and we weren’t sure whether we still wanted to do this given that there are so many commitments and we don’t want it to take away from other experiences we want to have here.

We met a bunch of our other friends in one of the dining halls and had our first dinner using our meal plans. All that was really left on offer were cheeseburgers and fries (since it was nearly time for the dining hall to close).

We spent the rest of the night in one of the common rooms watching Netflix, sorting out our timetables and checking out the syllabuses for our classes. Georgia was texting her recruitment advisor and found that sorority membership will probably cost around $3000!!! This is ridiculous and a bit of a deterrent for getting involved in it all. We need to talk to someone to see if this would apply to us, so I’ll keep you updated about whether we end up going through with it all. Other than that, we went to bed around 11:30 to get some sleep for our first day of classes tomorrow!

Here's just another little video of campus so you can all see how beautiful it is!

If you managed to get through this super lengthy post, congrats! I didn’t really think that I would have so much to write when I initially planned on doing weekly posts, so I might start posting more frequently so that the posts aren’t as huge. Also, I should write them as soon as I can, because I left all of this until today so recalling some details has been a little hard (we all know I’m the queen of procrastination). But anyway, I’ll post again soon and let you all know how my first week of classes went. Wish me luck!

- Emily xx