Uni Begins

5am in the morning, the birds were still rousing themselves from sleep and the Sun was just about to peek from the East horizon. Monday morning, the most intolerable morning for almost everyone, except for those rare optimists who seem to like giving themselves false hope. It was Monday! Enough said!
Except, it wasn't just ANY Monday...it was the beginning of a new semester of a new year of University Life. My first lecture of the day was going to be at 8am, and I was just brimming with enthusiasm.
5am sharp, I was out of bed singing one of those lardy da songs and breathing in the cold morning air. It was a moment of complete euphoria, and I had this crazy urge to share my joy and happiness with the world. I threw open the windows and a rainbow streamed across the sky in welcome. The birds sung a wonderful little hymn and a tiny blue rice bird flitted in and landed on my finger.
....
Okay, maybe it didn't happen like that. I woke up to my sisters squabbling over bathroom hogging and the smell of burnt sausages wafted from the kitchen. After a few minutes of vainly trying to get the arguing banshees to be quiet, I thought better of wasting my time and got up to part take in the bathroom hogging. The shower smacked some alertness into me and then the feeling of Euphoria hit. The enthusiasm about finally starting a journalism course, maybe meet new people and well, basically, just the thought of an escape from the house was enough fuel for the morning. I moved around with this hidden smile of pleasure (everyone else was having a bad morning, so any sign of happiness from me would have upset the balance of nature), rechecked my timetable, lecture time and location and everything I needed in my bag. I was all set!

I arrived about an hour early or maybe, an hour and a half early. I had a quick memory flashback of how it was on my first day of University last year, standing right where I was at the moment by the bus booth. The University had seemed to loom over me like one of those monsters out of Goosebumps (Goosebumps was scary!!) ready to devour my soul and replace me with a zombie changeling to return home to my unsuspecting family and steal my internet....The thought was so horrifying. My imagination only seemed to feed my pessimism, and I swear it seemed like as soon as I entered the Uni compound, every student turned to stare at me with a blank zombie look of people who'd just been replaced by changelings, and had their net stolen from them.
How I survived that first year is still a mystery.
Needless to say, they weren't able to turn me into one of them, and I remain a free soul wandering among zombies, fighting for their freedom and the redemption of that lost society.
Anyway, back to the present. The University didn't look as threatening or felt as overwhelming this time. It just looked like a recreational center people go to, to sit in posh constructed fales (samoan house. google it) and lounge around in parks for a nice round of talanoa (chatting) sessions. There were other insignificant buildings spread around in a random arrangement in between. It was this in-between recreation sessions where you're suppose to listen to someone else talk and memorize every word till they ask you again on paper at the end of the year. It's a very complicated zombifying experience. I actually enjoy them sometimes. That's probably not normal.

One thing was for certain. As soon as I walked in, there were zombie students perched along the verandah of one of the buildings just doing that blank stare they had done last year. Hmm. I thought I'd imagined it.
Somehow, my eyes and memory began to bugger up and sputter out into giving me the wrong room number and location. I kept circling the building a few times, until my common sense popped back in and I rechecked the location and room number to find that I was in the wrong place after all.
It took me a while to find the room, after stalking a few students who seemed to know where they were going and hearing the word "Journalism" erupt between the other gibberish they were spouting. I thought for a second they were taking me to my doom and this was all some conspiracy set up to zombify me.
I followed them to a building with narrow winding steps leading down into some sort of dark corridor, keeping an eye out for any alien invasion or someone looking to kidnap them self a free soul. 
As it turned out, our lecture theater was something....well...as described  by our lecturer, "a dungeon of folly". For me, it was right out of those thrillers where someone is kidnapped and thrown into this abandoned room, or cell of some sort with random pieces of wiring and electrical debris sticking out of the concrete. The lights didn't work and the windows were pieces of wood nailed into the gaps in the walls.
It was exciting!

Our lecturer was a Canadian man, maybe in his 40's or 50's, I couldn't tell. He was a good humoured man, and I began to wonder how someone like him could end up in this kidnapping cell. Poor guy. He was stuck here with the zombies and the rare few of us, free souls.
I could tell already, I'd enjoy his class but he was going to make us eat dirt and break sweat in this subtle form of training to pass the course.

He went through a brief...(well no, not brief, we probably know his life story by now), history of himself, before encouraging us to do so.
I was the one who disrupted the silence with a loud sneeze and the Professor was kind enough to say "Bless you", before explaining the Jewish belief that when someone sneezes, the devil could steal their soul unless there is a blessing at the same time.
I didn't even know him, but he bothered to save my soul. I was indebted to him forever.

He even knew my uncle! That's another story.

At the end of the lecture, we were given assignments to interview a fellow classmate and write up an article on them. I haven't started on that yet but I got the girl beside me to be my partner. She seemed nice. I was going to ask her where she lived, her e-mail, her address and how she felt growing up where ever she grew up in.
I can't wait!

That was how my first lecture unfolded and I'm enthused about the tutorial coming up on Friday. As for tomorrow, I've been condemned to a visit to the dentist to investigate the wisdom tooth that declared war on my jaw last week. That is a battle I'm definitely going to win and until then, I shall be holding back the quiver of glee at the prospect of another day at Uni.