I will most likely survive.

I ended up staying up cleaning my room til 0200 and then sleeping with the lights on so as to see any others there might be. I finally fell asleep at around 0300 and when poor Steffen called at 0550 to wake me up I spoke very curtly with him before grabbing another 20 minutes of fitful sleep. Anyways, I went to work exhausted and without breakfast – not a good start. We had to go out to Concord Hospital today to attend our “graduation ceremony”, so Jeanet, Mette and I met at 1100 in the pouring rain and caught a bus. Almost two hours later we finally got to the hospital and found our conference room. We were on time, but everybody else was late, so we waited a while before the coordinators showed up. The whole arrangement has been a mess and the coordination/communication has been horrendous – the coordinator only sends emails to some people, she calls only some people, and she sprang this thing on us like three weeks ago after all of us had already made plans to travel. None of us really like her and luckily enough nobody has had any issues so severe that we needed to use her for anything, but today went bad. I think what happened is that we’ve been here for eight weeks and not once have we met with an advisor to discuss how things are going, or if we like our departments, or if we have anything to talk about. So when they asked today, they got a massive dose of criticism from everybody because we’ve basically been sitting on it for eight weeks. It all came out today, much to our relief of course, but to their irritation. I think it’s only natural that their defences go up and instead of it being a constructive conversation, it turns in to a who-does-what-better discussion where you end up trying to prove everybody else wrong. We realize it might have been harsh, but when they ask us what we didn’t like we’ll tell them. When nine girls in nine different departments all feel the same way, something’s up. Anyway, the conversation didn’t go anywhere and we all ended up in a very awkward silence because some of the girls’ Nursing Unit Managers showed up and that conversation came to an abrupt halt. But the good news is that we got our portfolios signed and we got our papers signed and technically I’m all done here now! Whew! Just three short days next week and I’m really done – I can take three more days… Tonight is going to be a low-key kind of night. Pizza and probably some bad tv-movie – it’s too cold to go outside anyways. This is not what I signed up for! It better be better weather up in Cairns next week – otherwise I want my money back and for all travel books to be re-written with the truth. Oh yeah, Sister Bush came by today to warn me of crocodiles up north, ai ai ai. I feel like I’m probably so tired here in Australia because my sympathetic nervous system is constantly activated – my body is in total survival mode all day. I have to scan the ground for massive insects, not that they would kill me, but I just hate them. And this isn’t even just outside, there are cockroaches in our house, on the sidewalks, in restaurants, even in my department’s bathrooms! Then you have to watch out overhead for spiderwebs, and not because getting spiderwebs in your hair is obnoxious, but because the spiders here have enough venom to kill dozens of men with one bite. And now I’ll have to watch out for crocodiles – my adrenal medulla must be nearing exhaustion.