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.

Beaches and procrastination

Every student knows that tendency, when they are supposed to do something academic, they find tons of other things to do. Since springbreak was a blissful holiday away from all things coming with a deadline, I now have a load of groupwork, presentations, articles to read etc. so naturally I am now writing this blog.

After being away it was nice again to have dinner with all the people in the house and I realize that once I'm back I will miss coming back to such a full house. On Tuesday we celebrated Ruben' s 24th birthday picknickstyle on the floor, because there was not enough space on the couches. When he went off with his friends to go out, we stayed chatting with the remaining housemates. On wednesday I took of in my businessdress, but since our team didn't get a turn to present I will have to dress up again coming Wednesday.

Thursday after class Lisianne and I decided to check out the big shopping centre in Bondi Junction, which is known to be so huge you get lost (since the both of us seem to lack the intuition to find the right direction this is not too hard though). In the evening we went to the Worldbar in Kings Cross where they have Indie night. I fell in love with the place where dentistlamps light up the dozens of teapots on the walls in which they serve cocktails and the jeans on the wall. Not to mention hearing Kings of Leon and Franz Ferdinand while going out.




On Friday we had another birthday from Justine and we had been given the task to all bring food. Therefore we went to the house of some other friends to bake pancakes because we lack proper pans while they were making quiche, salad and other jummy things we weren't allowed to eat yet. With rumbling stomachs we hurried to our house and spend the night eating delicousness in her garden. In the end there were chocholate muffings, apple pie and cranberry crumble all made by Justine and it was a pitty we all had to stop eating because our bellies were practically exploding from our foodbabies. We played hilarious games involving the imitations of whales and the most hilarious bunny I have ever seen thanks to Nano. We ended up literally running home in the middle of the night.

The next morning we woke up early so we could go to Manly, but it was cloudier than expected so instead another day of procrastination began. Luckily yesterday the weather was amazing and we took the beautiful ferry trip to the beach up North. The strong current and big number of surfers prevented us from taking a dip in the water, but nonetheless we enjoyed the sun on our skin and picknicked on the beach.


Now all my postcards have been written, this blog updated and I'm running out of excuses and my communications presentation is giving me an evil eye...
Lets look up snorkling trips at the great barrier reef!

Back to reality

And here I am ten days later back at uni, trying to get myself to work on my PR campaign for Facebook (instead I am 'doing research' on Facebook).


My holiday with the promising tag springbreak ended up not completely as expected, but I still had a blast. With Lisa and Karina I took a train to Brisbane, where we arrived at 6.30 in the morning. After dropping our bags at the hostel we decided to explore the city. Queensland calls itself the sunshine state, but ironically it was very warm, but most certainly cloudy there while I am pretty sure we left sunshine in Sydney. The city was still asleep but even later in the afternoon there were not that many people around. I concluded Brisbane, despite its pretty parks and buildings, felt like a city without a soul. We walked around the Brisbane river, saw the story bridge, went to the museum (to discover that every Australian artist went to Paris at some point in their lives), walked some more along the river and Brisbane's CBD. As someone who lists ' sleeping in' as a hobby I all of a sudden discovered that a day had a lot of hours and in one day we walked through the entire of Brisbane. After a quick bite at the hostel we went for a drink at the groove train in Brisbane's squire and discovered that Brisbane is a lot prettier by night. On the squire stood the festival terrain where the last events of the Brisbane festival were taking place. We were almost falling asleep after such a long day but we waited for the Dj event to start and I'm glad we did. The DJ was amazing but more astonishing was the inside of the festival tent which felt like I walked into a circus.


The next day we went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and to my delight it was actually sunny. Iguanas and bush turkeys randomly rand around in the park I saw countless of koalas, although my favourite was the kindergarten with mummies and their joey's (koalababies). In another part of the park we could feed kangaroos in the large open area where they just hopped around. I also fed an emu, but these big birds are quite scary to feed in comparions to the sweet skippies. After a Sunday Roast at the pub we went to stroll next to the river again with some ice cream and decided that the story bridge did look nice lit up at night and maybe wasn't just a cheap knock off of the Harbour Bridge.


The next morning my alarm went at 4.45 because we thought the only bus to Surfer's Paradise was at 7. This turned out not to be true, but it did mean we were already enjoying the beach and clear blue skies at eight in the morning. Don't let the name fool you, Sufer's paradise is a beach that seems under continuous construction with skyscrapers looming over you. Still, sandy beaches and a nice swim in the sea are hard to spoil (even though I managed to burn my eyelids (!) and looked as if wearing pink eyeshadow for the rest of the week. That night we went out to Vanity, which meant waitresses in lingerie, but also the coolest bathroom I have ever seen. Lollies, perfume bottles, gold and chandeliers everywhere. I also surprisingly met some friends who I thought wouldn't arrive till later and met the brother in law of a friend of mine back in Rotterdam. Something about the world is small?

After just a day in Surfer's we moved on to Byron Bay which can best be described as hippy town. May Karma be with you, peace out and safe the environment can be read everywhere and apparently they forced out MacDonalds out of their town.The beach is amazing, but we were only able to enjoy it the second day we were there. At the beach I spotted a whale in the distance and at that moment I felt truly on holiday.In the afternoon I went surfing for the first time and I surprisingly turned out to be a decent surfer. I was able to stand up most of the time and there was even a dolphin swimming close to us. Byron Bay's nightlife is not the greatest with just a few bars, most of them the wet t-shirt competition kind (I swear, you'd think some of those blokes have never seen boobs before). The third day it sadly was cloudy again so we just strolled around the shop, met some other friends in the supermarket and had dinner together. We ended up building our own party in an almost deserted bar with quite some people we met in the hostel. We went surfing a second time with some higher waves this time. I had a blast once more and felt I found a sport a quite enjoyed, with a typical instructor with long blonde hair yelling 'Feel the wave Holland!'. In the afternoon we walked to the famous lighthouse and stood at the most easterly point of Australia and saw a lot of whales. With the wind in my hair staring over the enormous ocean with grey fins bobbing up and down I felt genuinly on top of the world.

Unfortunately that was about it as we ended with a massive anti-climax. The day and a half we were to spend in Coffs Harbour I can only say I saw my first James Bond. We only had rain and the only thing I saw of the banana worshipping town is the big banana when we rode by it in the bus and the cafe we ate chocolate cake to cheer ourselves up.

In the end it was not the sunshine filled break I had hoped for but I still enjoyed my first trip outside of Sydney. I still can't wait for the day I can go to Bondi in bikini, which should come soon. Of course there are a lot of good days but the weather behaves a bit like a moody teenager. Sometimes you feel as if you are in the Bahamas while the next day I feel as if I'm back in the Netherlands. Three months have passed in a blur and Springbreak is oficially over. Four weeks of class left and still so much to discover!

At last

As I sit here tired from a day's school after a night of cocktails and girly chatter I happily realize that I now have holidays. Tomorrow I will board the train to Brisbane what will hopefully be the start of days filled with beaches, surfing, strolling around and relaxing. Four different places, five different hostels, I can't wait to explore what lies beyond the boundaries of Sydney.

When holiday is near you discover that you desperately need a break so the last couple of days I have been a bit pissed off with uni work and longing for today. Besides that I enjoyed myself immensely.


Saturday I went to the Brazilian festival at Darling Harbour, which honestly was a bit of a disappointment. All in all it was just a couple of stalls with Brazilian food and some music, but I had fun nonetheless. I went with housemates and saw some other friends and watched Sambadancing while eating pastel. Once again I was horrified by the eating of little chickenhearts and felt a twang of nostalgia as I saw all the cans of Guarana around me. I realized I am already looking forward to go back to Brazil.

The next Sunday I went to Centennial park with Lisianne and in the evening I went to a restaurant with my housemates to eat five dollar steak and chicken and surprisingly the food was amazing.





Monday and Tuesday was mostly filled with trying to conquer my assignments, ending up just hanging around with people on campus. The last couple of days campus has been swarming with coloured shirts convincing you to vote for them for the studentcouncil election. Entertaining names as BOOM, PUNCH and ACTIVATE kept harassing you all the way to the poling booth. As I have some friends in BOOM I walked around with a sticker claiming : I tick ticked BOOM which saved me from some aspiring student politicions. Tuesday was also the first day our American housemate Chris cooked for us, which was delicious, but I guess it had to be as he just graduated as a cheff.

Yesterday I went to a a house of two friends in Leichhardt for a girly night full of cocktails, brownies and girly talk. I crashed on the surprisingly comfortable couch and now I am trying to convince myself to finish my PR assignment, for which I have to give a presentation right after I come back. *sigh* I much prefer imagining myself on that beach already.

Jazz, waves and breakfast at Tifanny's

This Wednesday I had to linger after class as I had signed up for participating in a research study, neccesary to obtain a percentage in my grade (it's not for a bonus as it is at Erasmus). In the end I spend an hour (!) instead of the half hour it was supposed to take on a survey of 33 (!!) pages. The first page was the same question, but then askes with different answering scales or option.

I left the room completely cranky, but the clouds around my head quickly dissapeared as I got to Manning bar where there was a Jazz evening. Some friends of mine and other students were playing on stage while I was enjoying a free drink with some other friends. Afterwards I headed home to cook with Lisianne.

That evening I also started booking my trip with Pedro for when he arrives in November. We will go camping in Airlie beach close to the Whitsunday Islands and the great barrier reef, then we will head to Brisbane to catch the bus to Noosa. Then we will head to Melbourne to go camping again in Hobart, Tasmania. I am really looking forward to it and I can't wait to be in that little tent next to the blueest of seas.

Thursday I went to Paddy's market with Lisianne to go shopping. It basically is a big hall full of stalls and you sometimes wonder whether you made a mistake and walked down the same lane again, because half the stores sell the same souvenirs. I did find a nice hat so I can prevent a lovely red line forming on the top of my head. They also sell a lot of veggies and fruits for very low prices and while we were looking around we were entertained by a marketlady shouting 'Lady Gaga' and 'Ella Ella umbereeeeellaaaaa'.

After eating dinner with the four of us with our just bought veggies I went to watch the last revue of the season: Cadavatar, the medicine revue. As a friend perfectly summarized, the revue showcased all possible talent except comedy. The dances were amazing full off stunts which wouldn't be misplaced on a gymnastics competition. I do believe that to be a medstudent hear they ask you two things 1: can you do a backflip? 2: Please lift up your shirt. Half of the show was filled with barechested medstudents and girls in lingerie. The puns towards avatar were amusing and this revue actually had a story, but I didn't really have to laugh about any of the sketches. I didn't mind though, watching people summersault over each other is quite entertaining.

Today I walked from Bondi to Coogee beach with Lisianne and we couldn't have picked a better day. The sun was shining and the waves were enormous. It took us three hours because of all the stops and it made me realize how impressive this country actually is.
I just came back from a friend's place where we watched breakfast at Tiffany's. Now it's time for bed and I have moon river stuck in my head.

Sexy Hippo

That Saturday I went to a 21st birthday of an Australian friend from the revue. The theme was cartoons and she literally was the belle of the ball, beast included. It was amazing to see how much effort actually gets put into a dress-up party. I saw buzz lightyears and Woody's, Little red riding hoods, Ariels, Smurfs,Snowwhites and a lot of powerpuffgirls. I was dressed as Alice in Wonderland, but not exactly a spectaclar version as I only have limited resources for dressing up here. It was a lot of fun with dancing some of the revue again and listening to speeches, which is a custom for major birthdays here.


Sunday I spend the entire day picknicking in the park with Lisianne and on Monday I just did some homework (meaning browsing the internet to find lovely places to go to in November) and read a book in the garden.

On Tuesday it was raining as if I was home so I spend my five hours in between working on a advertising schedule for Hungry Jacks so mostly cursing the computer for refusing to save data and the people who gave the assignment as they nicely mentioned percentage targets, just not in which of the four different categories they wanted to achieve that target. When I got home I almost immediately left again to go to a Thai restaurant for a birthday, where we ended up discussing the fact that a Hippo was Harms favourite animal and I learned how to say sexy Hippo in Japanese and Swedish. Afterwards we went tot The Establishment where they were playing Salsa music. It is a lot chique than Cantinero, but still the atmosphere made me feel like I was back in Lappa, Rio de Janeiro. Trying to teach Harm some moves was a lot of fun and I feel like a kid in a candystore when I see how spectacular some people can dance.

The cutest teddybear

Oh dear, I have neglected my blog again. I needed my mum to remind me I hadn't written anything in a while.

The truth is, I also haven't done that much in the last week. I spent Monday and Sunday studying, running errands and making assignments. Sunday we had another fun dinner with the house (French Laura cooked this time)and Monday I had dinner with the people that were planning to go to the great barrier reef for springbreak.
Tuesday was a long day of class after which I went home to have dinner with the rest of the people in the house before I would go back to the uni, but this time for the coolest kind of party: A silent disco.


I had been to one before during a liberation festival in Rotterdam. I already loved it then and this one was even so much cooler. Two dj's were competing to have as many headphonewearing dancers switched to their channel. The wonderful thing is that you can decide how loud you want the music, which music you want to listen to or just take of the headphones when you want to talk to someone. You see people dancing to different rhythms and you would quickly change the channel when people started shouting because of an awesome song that came on. The finale of the party was everyone that was left in one big slow motion cancan line on the tunes of 'New York'.

Wednesday and Thursday were filled with more classes, reading an amazing book outside in the sun and writing a news release for a mark on a made up company with Hugh Jackman as a spokesperson (later a Norwegian girl I also have another class with was shocked when I told her he was an actor, she had no clue who he was and had just thought he was a member of the made up company HabbaDabbaDo).



Friday I started with a groupmeeting and then continued to a birthdaybreakfast in a chocolate cafe. One chocolate frappe and an amazing but oh so filling brownie later, we went to Manly beach. The ferry ride between the bridge and the operahouse was once again amazing. Unfortunately the weather wasn't very good and it even started raining a bit (it is not always sunny here) but Alexandre the birthdaygirl was determined to go swimming. I went home for dinner and actually we had a party from our French housemate who had her birthday on Wednesday (other alternatives were going out with Alexandra or the sciencerevue) but we ended up just talking, too lazy to go anywhere. In the end some friends dropped by as they lost interest in the bars in Oxford street.

When they left around two I went to my room to skype with Pedro. In Australian time it was our first anniversary and I was looking forward to see him and unpack the parcel that had been burning a hole in my bag since I picked it up from the post office that morning. One year has flown by while so much has happened. As far as I'm concerned there will be many more years, but now I do have the cutest Teddy to hug while I wait for him to arrive in Sydney.

Banana worshipping

On Saturday I went to Lisa's house to plan our Springbreak. Together with her and Karina (both German) I will go backpacking along the gold coast of Australia. We will go by train from Sydney to Brisbane during the night. We will arive at six in the morning on Saturday the 25th of September. We will stay there for two days and then hop onto the greyhound bus to Surfer's Paradise. After one night there we will go to Byron Bay to surf and chill on the beach some more. I am quite excited, since every Australian I talk to tells me to go to Byron Bay. After four days in Byron Bay we will go for two days to Coff's Harbour, where apparently they have a massive banana. Four places, five different hostels, one big eastpack I for some reason used as a freshman and heaps of fun. I can't wait.

With my laptop in the garden soaking up sunlight watching little lizzards shoot by, studying doesn't feel so bad, but still I can't wait to pack my bags and discover what lies outside the boundaries of this city.

Compliment please

Friday I headed to uni on my classless day because of the night markets organised because of the Verge festival. 'Tent with some stalls' would have been a better description as we arrived to the disapointing sight. Together with some people from our house and some others we met there we started our tour which was likely to last all of ten minutes.

On stall was just signing in to get a goody back, so I now am a hat, a keychain and several free entrance tickets for parties richer. Very surprising was the stall with Poffertjes (this description was accompanied with Dutch mini-pancakes, otherwise nobody would understand what they would be eating). When we arrived at the end there was a guy dressed in a jacket that would have made him fit to conduct a circus who was bartering. He had a cigarette and half a subway cookie to offer, so Jenny gave him a massage for the cookie and Harm gave his free hat for the cigarette. The guy statred out with a paperclip, I wonder what he ended up with in the end. The coolest was the girl who gave away compliments on pieces of paper with a red painted heart. She exchanged them for hugs and now I have a little note saying 'you looked like a fairy coming from the woods'. We started talking and in the she wanted to know how to say I love you in Dutch. I wrote the sentence in a couple of languages and the girl proclaimed she would write Ik hou van jou on the next Dutch person she would give a compliment to, not really expecting she would meet one. About 30 seconds later a woman raised her eyebrows in surprise when she saw the note and asked how she got it, since she was Dutch. Naturally complimentgirl couldn't believe her luck.


We spend some time up in the tent where they were playing live music and where you could play Mario Kart, which was also decorated by a mona lisa made out of rubix cubes. We also watched some firedancing and then decided to go cook at Sunniva's house, a Norwegian girl. We found the Dutch section in the supermarket and to our amusement they were selling everything from stroopwafels to double salty liquorice, proffertjesmix and red cabbage with apple.


With some delicious scones for desert in our stomach, we walked to Surry Hills to the house of some friends who just moved. We wanted to go out, but it seemed our other friends were in Bondi, which we thought was too far. Instead we ended up drinking tea and eating cookies when all of a sudden it was 2am and it was time to walk home.