I'm living where??

I finally made it to Townsville after 20 or so grueling hours spent on airplanes. There were at least 15 of us that were waiting for transport to JCU, so they brought a bus that pulled a trailer for all of our luggage. Most everybody seemed nice, except for one huge piece of work that kept talking about how she’s from the S.D. (San Diego) and just acting like she was hot stuff. She was only interested in talking to the grad student that is here, she is obviously too cool to socialize with other undergrads.
Today I finally met the woman who I’ve been emailing back and forth about my room, Mary-Ann. She recognized who I was at once and personally showed me to my room. She also called me a few times once she had left me  to make sure I was settling in okay. Bad news is that I feel like my building was previously used as a concentration camp and my room is sketchy as all hell, the walls are covered with residue from tape and sticky hooks from previous residents, and smells like chemicals and ripe feet. I was expecting my room to come with (based on what the internet said about University Hall) a pillow, bedspread, mattress cover, tv, bug screens and working electricity. I have none of these things and my window, which is basically a bunch of panes of glass set like shutters, doesn’t seal tightly (and aren’t screened) so all those dangerous spiders can crawl right up into my room. Excellent. There is so much space between the glass panes, in fact, that I came back to my room to find that I had gotten a gecko as a new roommate. The other university hall building is a lot nicer, has brick walls, classier balconies, legit carpeting, and doesn’t feel like a prison cell. Oh well. I think my adventure for tomorrow will be to hop on the bus to the kmart to find out how I can spend as little money as possible to make this room smell better and look a little more homey.
In other news, the campus is BEAUTIFUL. There are a lot of huge rainforest type trees and palm trees and all sorts of other cool plants. We also have a lot of interesting wildlife. So far I’ve only seen some crazy birds, but word on the street is that wombats and kangaroos are the equivalent of deer and they are on campus enough that they warned us not to feed them.
I’ve also started making some new friends. I met the guy who was in charge of water polo and it turns out he is an R.A. and will be living on the floor below me. They practice three times a week, but that won’t start up for another week or so. I’ve also been hanging out with a group of kids from Oregon. They are all really nice and the two guys, Grant and Cameron, are both scuba certified so I’ve found buddies to go diving with!! The two girls, Aleks and Lisa, currently are temporarily housed in the nicer building of University Hall so we’ve been eating meals together. Unfortunately, I will have to find buddies to eat with because they will either be moving off campus or into the housing of one of the different colleges on campus after tomorrow when their temp housing expires. I’m not so sure that you can eat at the other college dining halls, but will be investigating further soon. If so, hopefully the other food is better because the food I ate last night sucked so hardcore. It was kind of like mom’s stroganoff, but instead of being delicious it was just overly heavy, the meat was tough, and it just tasted like crap.
Also, could somebody tell me how the toilets work over here?! There are two buttons for flushing and I’m not sure which one I’m supposed to press…