Final hours

One more night of sleeping and I will finally be able to pick up Pedro from the airport!

I have been (not so) secretly counting down for this day to arrive and I can't believe that day has finally arrived.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday my life has been pretty ordinary. Just soaking up some sun while trying to study for all of my four exams in one go so I won't have to study when Pedro is here. On Thursday I went to Burwood again to tutor, but it turns out the woman had misunderstood me and didn't expect me that day. Ten minutes later I was on my way home again: I had to come back on Sunday.

Friday I had my first exam and it went pretty well. I went to Bondi straight after to meet up with some friends and walk to Tamarama beach to take a loot at 'Sculptures by the sea'. We first ended up in a cute little cafe/bookstore in one. Clear blue skies plus statues of giant sunglasses and chickens made for an interesting shorewalk. When I got home I found my housemates preparing for one of our last housedinners. After a delicious Mexican meal we went by the pub that is literally around the corner called cricketers. When that closed we continued to the Ivy. It is one of the big names in Sydney and enormous it is. I found it a bit pretentious, but nevertheless we had an amazing night.

Three hours of sleep later it was time to get up already and drag my tired ass to the Rocks for pancakes with some friends. The pancakes were the most amazing breakfast after such a long night. We continued to the beach and I had a nap in the sun. In this period I apparently missed lifeguard action involving ambulances, but oh well, just a regular day at the beach.

Today I went to the beach again, when I got back I went to go tutor for the last time. Arriving back to the house I found my housemates who had already eaten their share of the lovely Colombian dish Arepaz and chatted away.

Just now I had my first ever skype conversation with my dad, who happened to be at my mum's. It was like seeing a little child who has discovered a secret candy store. 'You can really see me? What am I wearing then?'

Now it's time to go to bed to make time pass even faster.

Melbourne

It's been a while since I wrote something once again, but this time not because I forgot or because I'm lazy. Somebody tripped over the internetwire Friday evening when Lisianne and I were still in Melbourne and only today did somebody come to fix it. Once again I realize how totally hooked I am on internet. Good for studying, you'd say, but not if 90% of your material is online. Anyways, let me start at the beginning.

Last week Monday I was woken up by my phone ringing and to my surprise I landed myself a temporary tutoring job. The regular tutor is on holiday so if I could please come for a month. The mother requesting my help didn't exactly master the English language herself so she didn't really understand that I was not Australian and leaving Sydney in November, so she kept asking me whether I was coming back and where I was going. Before it was time to tutor, I went to check out the Christmas tree at the QVB (still odd, more and more Santas and fake snow popping up while the temperature keeps rising). Lies and I also stopped by and awesome cafe called Coco Cubane. Then it was time to go and I took the train to Burwood and before I knew it I was reading out English words to two Asian kids. Unfortunately I thought they were both boys so when I told the youngest not to tease his brother, the girl quietly sai'd 'I'm not a boy, I'm a girl!' and i felt my face turn red. Two hours later I discovered I was only going to get twenty bucks for two hours which is a horrendous wage especially for Aussie standards. Oh well, at least it's something.

On Tuesday Annelotte was coming over for dinner, since we still had a birthday present to give her. It was the first time she set foot in our Surry Hills House and we had a lovely evening.

The next day Lies and I headed to Coogee beach once again and on Thursday we got up far too early to catch our flight to visit Fab. We stayed at a cute hostel called the Nunnery (a stylish old building with pictures of nuns playing tennis). We met up with Fabien, including facial hair supporting Movember, and met his friends. After a tour around the city centre he had to leave us to study and we went to explore places such as Brunswich street, Federation Square and the Carlton gardens around the Melbourne Musuem with its swings and massive rubix cube. For dinner we joined Fab again and went to get pizza. We ended up playing the guessing game at the pizzaplace (I was Albert Einstein, Popeye proved to be extremely difficult and Chloe had never heard of Sarkozy before). We ended up at the student dorm where they all stayed and played some more games involving wolves and monopoly cards.

The next day we decided to check out St Kilda beach, which left us heavily unimpressed, except for the rows of little bakeries filled with yummy cakes and pastries. We continued to the marvelous Botanical gardens and once again walked too much within one day, especially since we went out with Fab and his fellows to some place called Fasion something something.

The last day we enjoyed the sun in Melbourne we visited some more of Melbourne's countless cafés, chilled in the Fitzroy gardens full of fountains and took the city circle tram to view some more of Melbourne's streets, all with the same names as the ones in Sydney. Unfortunately we discovered upon arrival at the airport that we had a 3.5 hour delay (great, Tigerrr airways) and spend our time playing cards.

On Sunday we had no Internet but the weather was good so I sat outside studying from the only 10% of my material that is not online. In the evening we ate pasta with a lot of people in the house and planned our final house dinners, because sadly our time together in South Dowling is almost over.

Yesterday I went to Coco Cubano again, not only for their delicious frappe, but also so I could make us of their internet and download all my studymaterial. I had to tutor again in the evening and the lousy pay was compensated by the complement received for my teaching (not that it's hard to teach two small children, but it does take a massive amount of patience). While the tropical rain hit I tried to make my way to Siobhan's Mad Hatter birthday party and the delicious chocolate cake made up for my soaked appearance.

Now it's time for me to stop procrastinating. Lots of Love from Sydney

Scary canary and mad hatters for Halloween

Last assignments handed in , last classes over. Only four exams to go and the academic part of this exchange is definitely over.


Exactly for this reason an end of semester drink was organised at the Scary Canary. Free food and a drink would be awaiting us. It was a typical backpackers bar and when we arrived there was hardly any one there yet (which meant we got a lot more than one free drinks). What they had was Thai buckets: a cocktail in a little plastic bucket which made me feel like finding myself a little shovel and going to the beach and built sandcastles. After we had enough to eat and we finished our drinks we quickly hurried on to World bar for the Indie night.


On Friday I went to uni for the graduation of a friend of mine. We sat in the grass outside and I painted faces in preparation for the Halloween/Dia de los Muertos party that nights. We continued to Manning for a fundraiser Karaoke for Indonesia. I ended up singing Teenage Dirtbay with Jess, while all our friends did interpretive dance behind us. In the end the two hosts sang Celine Dion's heart will go on because they promised to if we raised enough money.

At the party I painted my face and transformed into a dead little girl and danced the night away with spiderladies, Death himself and other ghouls.

The next day we had a Halloween BBQ at Coogee and for that afternoon we changed our costume idea quite a lot of times. First we were going to dress up as grapes and raspberry, but we couldn't find pink and purple balloons. Then we were going to dress up as two dead dolls, but it was too hot to put on all that facepaint. In the end we went as little miss rockstar, ant and our housemate Jenny went as a bee. We decided to cath some sun before the BBQ started. While we were there 'Marry Me' was written in the sky by an airplane. Just when the plane finished writing all attention was drawn to the see as the alarm went of to indicate that there had been a shark spotted in the water. Everybody rushed out and we stared and stared, but no sharkfin was to be spotted.

The BBQ was a lot of fun and people were giving us strange looks while we were dressed as bloody doctors, nerds, ghouls, She-devil, hippies and more. When all food was eaten we continued to a houseparty where people were playing flip-cup enthusiastically.

I had another party to go to, which was the Blue Door party where everybody had to wear crazy hats. Lieke and I took the bus and she kept on her bright red wig while I exchanged my Rockstar outfit for a gipsylook with a scarf in my hair. An entire range of crazy headwear was indeed on display.

Yesterday meant catching up with sleep, chilling in the park and Harm, Lieke and Lisianne created the biggest stack of pancakes you will ever see, since it needed to feed nine people of the house.

Halloween is over and I am sure some people will still have difficulty getting the fake blood stains of their skin. It was a wonderful weekend indeed.

Out of this world

After a single hour of class I went to Coogee beach last week with Lieke and Lisianne. I truly felt like I was on holiday while I was swimming in the clear blue sea and enjoying the sun on an almost deserted beach (it was a Thursday after all).

That evening we went to the Noodle markets in Hyde Park where an enormous crowd was enjoying food from different stands in the open air. While enjoying our Thai we watched the Chinese dragon dance and the lights in the trees sway. Afterwards we went for a stroll through the city.

On Friday I had to put in some effort towards finishing my last load of assignments (and mostly sat outside in the garden enjoying the sun). On Saturday I went to Tamarama beach with Lies and Frances. We took the inflatable crocodile they bought on springbreak for a swim.

In the afternoon it seemed as if doom rolled through the skies and we hid from the tropical storm in a café. Joost had to move his birthday inside and after some BBQing I went back to get changed for a Space Odyssey party at a friends house. Australians are definitely keen on dress up parties and the costumes were absolutely spaced out (and the girl on the left of me gives you a proper idea of Aussie girl's dress sense).

The next day was the defintion of a lazy Sunday, as I slept through my alarm and skipped my morning all together. In the evening we had a delicious vegetarion dinner with the house. Monday I had two group meetings. One of my teammates asked me if I had gotten a fake tan so I guess I have gotten a decent colour (although why she thought it was fake I don't know, I still associate a fake tan with oompaloompa's).

Yesterday I spend most day outside, but to my regret I could not join Lies and Lieke to the beach as I had to give a presentation later in the afternoon. That all went great and today I fininished the last group assignment after another day of class. Tomorrow I have my final hour of class. After that it is time to put together some creative Halloween outfits! Positively scary and legendary berry. Don't worry, picture evidence will follow soon.

All colours of the rainbow

The BBQ was amazing and it turned into an amusing houseparty which left me wondering whether the neighbours were deaf. The people at UNSW are an absolutely entertaining bunch and I'm glad Lies and I go to two different uni's as it results in twice as many people and social events to attend.

Our lazy Sunday was spend once again in Centennial Park armed with the paper and food. We listened to a concert of strange birds (including the one that has a seriously contagious laugh).

Monday morning was still like weekend and since Lisianne had some cancelled classes we enjoyed our 'garden' and ended up skyping instead of anything near productive. After making sure the people in Mexico were still alive and Tim is still the King of Kingston, we both had to head to uni. I have a meeting for my group project in which we have to present our communications strategy for our own creation of Fair Cups: Fairtrade café's (What mark is your coffee leaving?).

the On tuesday I had another massive gap and I decided to discover Newtown, the funky neighbourhood around Sydney uni. After discovering the cutest teashop and a whole arrangment of bodyart stores I headed back to class and then straight to the supermarket. Once again we would meet with a bunch of people in 'the house with the blue door' to celebrate Sarah's birthday. It was a rainbowparty, so everything from food to clothing had to be colourful. My pastasalad was positively green and wrapped in Brazilian fabric I went on my way. Effort had certainly been made and we had a colourful night with once again a table full of delicious foods and me wishing I had a bigger stomach. After dinner the guitar appeared and we spend the evening chatting and singing.

After another full day of class in the garden I came to realize that after one hour of class tomorrow I just have one more week left. A semester of classes have rushed past. I have so much more I want to do but I feel I'm running out of time. Tomorrow and the other days of the weekend can pretty much be summed up by the word beach and I am relieved that the pressure of deadlines is almost over. Somewhere in my head I have this little voice telling me though, that I am going to miss wondering around Eastern Avenue, passing by the Quad (whether it deserves the term Hogwartsbuidling is still being debated) and all the student activists.

Cupcakes and pubs

Now for what happened besides my cockroachhunting:

Wednesday after class I hung around at Manning to listen to a jazzband, which turned out to be pretty amazing and I danced a bit in my business outfit ( I finally had to present my Facebook campaign).

Thursday has been the hottest day up to date with 29 degrees (which is very hot considering the lack of ozone layer, which makes the sun a lot stronger). Unfortunately I only got to enjoy it during lunch as my ethics group decided that that day was a perfect time to finish our poster on chocolate slavery. Luckily we finished it now and I went straight to a friend's house after. We ate a delicious pastasalad with quite some people I hadn't seen in a while. We continued to Manning bar to the final of theatre sports. It was packed and some of the things happening were amasing and sometimes even funny, but somehow most of it we were watching with one eyebrow raised. It might be because we aren't Australians, but I think mostly because improvisation can be a very specific kind of humour, one we don't find funny to be more precise. When the winner was announced (the French army was beaten by a team whos name was lost on us) we strolled to the other uni bar to the 'Retrosexual party for guys and their friends'. The only thing retro were the hippy costumes worn by some of the more colourful figures, but the music was far from retro, every third song being from lady Gaga. After sitting outside for half an hour we decided to walk back home.

Friday we went to the Australian Museum and I was amazed by the beauty of all the minerals and got shivers when looking at all the insects walking around on Australian soil (some things should only be seen dead behind glass and never spotted in your tent). Another surprise was that many years back something that looks like a koala the size of an elephant stomped around. We made a skeleton bike and found out about all the things that could kill us while here and then decided it was time to go get dinner. In the evening I went on the revue pubcrawl where all revues from medicine to science and engineering met again to hop eight Sydney bars. After discussing the peace corps, scrubs(the actual thing, not the show), tea with a bloke called Paddy and sang karaoke I returned home.

Today Lisianne and I visited our favourite cupcakery and we are now preparing to go to a birthdayBBQ. After drinking Chai in our little garden we came to the conclusion: despite some tiny critters we are happy to have been able to call Sydney our home.

Creepy Critters

I can't properly explain why, but somehow something that is about 1/1000th my size can make me jump on my chair wielding a cup and a coathanger as weapons. In the last two days I've had a family of cockroaches crawling on my walls since they apparently decided to move into my room. This wouldn't be so bad if they wouldn't suddenly vanish when I start to chase them, knowing that they are still around somewhere when I go to bed.





A visit to the Australian Museum taught me these filthy things have been on this earth for 400 million years and I think its very plausible that when we get into total nuclear warfare, cockraches will rule the world as the only survivors. The last couple of days it has been hot and humid weather and as a result we have seen a record number of roaches run around the streets and those things are fast. When sitting outside a bar a girl decided to jump on one, catapulting half of it towards our table. Proof of their almost indestructable nature became visible when that half started moving again. When I got home at night I skyped with my mum and made her deaf when I was caught off-guard when one of them decided to target my feet. A larger one decided to practice its wallclimbing skills and when Lisianne came back from her October fest we spend an hour trying to find out where they were and decided there had to be two serpate ones crawling around my curtains and desk because they were different sizes. We caught the smaller one and threw it in the trashcan (we don't step on them in the fear of spreading eggs). Yesterday night when I got back from a pubcrawl I found another two that ran for it as soon as I switched on the light and decided that I had had enough. I stuffed the cracks full of cardboard and paper, but preventing them from getting in also meant I had two in my room that couldn't get out. Once again I caught the smaller one.... Today we got little black boxes that will hopefully solve the problem. By now I like to think I stopped screaming but still, those damn crawlies look a lot cuter in wall-e.