What a place. Don't really know where to begin! Flew in from Vancouver on Tuesday the 16th of August to be picked up by one of my bosses Betsy. She is really lovely and took me on a driven tour around the city of El Paso and around the HUGE campus. To walk from one end to the other its a good 20 minute walk, add 38 degree heat to that and you want to die a little bit. Betsy dropped me off at my apartment to have a lovely reunion with Nicole which consisted of us jumping up and down screaming "I can't believe we're finally here" and just acting all round hysterical. This continued when I saw our sweet apartment, with a really big lounge, great kitchen and bathroom and my own dorm room. The excitement escalated when Nicole introduced me to things like our cutlery, our fridge, our bedding etc etc. Its the little things that really made it.

That night we met up with the other Aussies from Vic Uni, John (aka Papa Smurf/the Mayor), Vikki and Blake and had a great catch up at a local bar Cincinatti, which revolved around us all being in disbelief that we had actually, finally, unbelievably made it to El Paso. The overage ones out of us consumed a few beers, and the underage, a few cokes.

The following day I had my first work orientation day with the Career Centre folk. All of the directors of the Career Centre were there, along with the other PCA's (Peer Career Advisors - I'm a PCA for the College of Education) that I will be working with throughout the semester. One of the PCA's Victoria was a UTEP student that came to VU in second semester last year on the same study/work exchange, and it turns out we actually had a lecture together last year too! Small world. Everyone was overwhelmingly nice and welcoming. I definitely need a crash course in Spanish, practically all of them are Mexican/Hispanic and ALL of them speak Spainsh. I've started to pick up a few words here and there, and a few of the PCA's are trying to teach me some words, but I'm not all together convinced that they are politically correct or that they're not swear words. So I'm a bit reluctant to try them out as yet. The orientation day was basically just a way to get to know everyone, do some teamwork exercises, and talk about goals for the academic year and in particular the Fall semester. The main responsibilites that I'll be dealing with on a daily basis is creating and reviewing resumes, helping students set up their Job Mine account (its an online job database showcasing jobs both on and off campus that students can apply for), showing students how to conduct job searches and giving students the basic rundown of what the Career Centre can do for them. Another main part of my job will be to give presentations to classes on various different topics. There are 12 presentations in total but I'll probably only be certified in about 6 due to time restraints.The four main presentations that we give are called Career Centre Orientation (rundown on what we do in the Career Centre), Resume/Cover Letter, Job interview tips, and How to Navigate a Career fair. They are all about 45 Powerpoint slides long and take approximately 50 minutes to present. I have training once a week in which one of the other PCA's present the workshop to me, then I have another week to learn it off by heart before I have to present it to a panel of PCA's and my supervisor. Following that a few days later, I give the presentation to the directors of the Career Centre in order to be properly certified to conduct the workshops with students SOLO. Sounds like a lot of work, which it is. At a few points I've found it quite daunting and felt as though I've taken on this fifth subject with all the memorising I have to do! But I just have to take it one presentation at a time, and hopefully the rest will come easier once I begin to understand more about the way UTEP works and higher education in general.

Classes were also quite a shock, the workload here compared to VU is probably triple!!! Partiularly the readings, one of my literature subjects requires me to read 40 novels throughout the semester!!! My subjects are Childrens Literature, American Fiction Literature, History of the US to 1865 and a Special Education subject. But they are all really interesting subjects and all of my professors are eccentric and intruiging to listen to, and boy do they love an Australian accent. I can see this working in my favour when it comes to homework excuses haha! And really, the reality is that (believe it or not) I am here to study, and I'll certainly be doing a lot of it.

The weekends here have been great fun. They have, of course, entailed lots of drinking with my Aussie crew, other international students and work friends. There are few great bars downtown which we've checked out, as well as some bars near our housing at UTEP. On the second weekend here, my aussie crew, Nicole, John, Vikki and I did two days of roadtripping throughout New Mexico. On the first day we went to a place called Las Cruces which had brilliant food/art markets. We also went to a place called Mesilla and had the best Mexican food of my life at a restaurant called El Comodore. From there we drove to a place called Elephants Butte, which is a lake in the middle of a desert where I had a little swim and it was soooo nice. I should also mention that I drove this whole day, and LOVED it. Luckily John was able to direct me and saved me from driving into oncoming traffic a few times. But its actually really easy to get the hang of, the only real problem is that the indicator and the windscreen wipers are located on the opposite sides. So far John and I are in a competition for amount of times we accidently turn on the wipers instead of indicate, and its currently drawn at 2 all. By the end of this semester I WILL WIN.
That night, Nicole, Vikki and I wrote ourselves off at a bar downtown, and lucky John had to put up with three hungover passangers on our roadtrip the next day. I thought I was bad, until Nicole (now aptly nicknamed Chuck-E-Cheese) threw up for about 4 hours in the back seat, next to me. Oh the fun times. That day we drove to Roswell, which is definitely missable. No aliens, what a bummer, and not quite kitschy enough for our liking. Hangover probably didnt help. But hey at least now we can tick Roswell off the list of places we've been.

This past weekend was the first football match of the season. On Friday night there was an event at the campus called Minerpalooza, which was basically an over the top welcoming for the footballers to kick off the season. Must say the cheerleaders were the highlight, I definitely felt as though I was in some American TV series/movie. After that we got a scenic tour of El Paso at with my friend Alonso from work, and he drove us up some of the surrounding mountains to get a great view of El Paso/Juarez. He then took us to look at the border... tempted to go across. Maybe towards the end of semester. But it is seriously dangerous as we keep being reminded. Its so strange to think that El Paso, the second safest city in the US, is located literally a stones throw away from the most dangerous city in the world. I can see Juarez from about 10 different points on campus! Crazy.
Saturday saw the first football game, and we joined the whole tailgating tradition of drinking and eating before the game. The game itself is hella boring, so much stop start. I prefer AFL any day (Carn the Blues this weekend!!!) but it was a great atmosphere with the cheerleaders, marching band and sea of orange and blue (UTEPs colours).

El Paso has won me over with its unique scenery, loveliest people I've ever met, food to die for, and campus life. I'm so happy to be spending another 3 months here, and still feel so lucky every day. Love xxxx