I'm heeeeeere.

Okay.
So here's today.

Woke up lateish. Had brekkie.
Went to Walgreens to get some last minut stuff like frizz stopping hair gel stuff (woo free anti-frizz hairspray attached).

Got to the welcome pavillion. I waited patiently tll 12 - athough also waiting for the boys (Michael and 'Gray') to arrive via taxi - only to find out that could have gone in pior.

Anyway so then I had to show ID and a form. They then handed me my room key (room 3109 - top floor.) and welcome info. I'll read that massive booklet later....
After a while there were about 30 people in the pavillion. They then proceeded to show us this video whereby the peoples mouths and the sound were out of sync. It was slightly disturbing and hard to watch!

Then I was shown my apartment.
First impressions were like..... omg. Ths place is old and crumbling and scary. :/

I then went into the apartment. One of my 3 other flatmates was there. She was nice, but the place was a litle messy. The fridge was chocca (so much for grocery shopping and cheaper bulk buying..?

Since I was the newbie I got the worst of everything. My bed creaks and is in the hottest area

Good thing is (even though they are lovely people) they all will be moved out by August 6. So I can re-arrange things and have more room! Woo! I really want to grab a non squeaky bed for one thing.

I had some things I wanted to wash, so I went to buy the $5 laundry card. After I found the place I then had to pay for the washin and the drying. ...and the card ate more than it was meant to! (bad card!)

It took about 1.5 hurs to wash and dry that one load. After the wash though I was like wait. Why did I put these in the washing machine folded up? Blonde moment. Oh well. Next time...

Then I met the boys at one of the apartments (2 are roomies, lucky! ..but it's great that some of us have phones already, its a lot easier to co-ordinate) and when we'd sown each other our living conditions we proceeded to get the Walmart bus. We thought it was at a time it wasn't, so sat in the heat swealtering for longer than was really comfortable. However, eventually the bus turned up. It's only about a 5min drive to Walmart from Vista but the bus stopped sooo much. It took 45mins!

Walmart is largen disorienting. I have been to a few before, but I never know my way around. Needless to say it took forever to find stuff.
I was pretty impressed that I only spent $97 though. I've heard of much worse!

I managed to get pretty healthy food. I was trying to look at all the labels, excpet the boys were so fast and grabbed stuff that I couldn't look for as long as I wanted.

oh and my trip was made a litle more stressful since the free chocolate we were given that I put in my bag...yeah it melted everrrrywhere. Not so fun. Chocolate iPod, anyone?

We ended upsharing a taxi back (split it cost $3 each) because otherwise we would have to have waited 30mins with our groceries for the bus, and with the 45min return ride, we weren't so keen.

The taxi dropped us off with everything at the entrance because of security. So we had to take turns guarding bags whilst taking things to our apartments.

After unpacking in our apartments Michael arrived at my apartment to tell me there was a bunch of aussies and Nzers downstairs. I follwed him and low and behold, there were about 20 of us. It was like 9pm by this time, but the group wanted to go to this restaurant called Lone Star (not quite like the version in NZ).
Since we were such a big goup we had to wait a while before we could be accommodated, but it was nice to catch up with some of them. That and the food was pretty nice too.
I think some of them hadn't experienced american portion sizing before... They'll learn fast though, that's for sure.

I got back and got to meet my other 2 apartment buddies. They are all from Asia (I forget where) but seem to be nice. :)

Anyway, it's past midnight so I'd better grab some sleep. No doubt tomorrow I'll have lots to do.
Thank goodness we get tomorrow off!

xx