Showtime!

This week has been hectic, tiring but also exciting. Yesterday I had my first revue show and it went great! The theatre was pretty filled and they laughed a lot during the show. Even though I am not exactly shy on a stage, I was pretty nervous whether my sketches were actually funny. When the final number was over I had adrenaline pumping through my veins. I was however a tiny bit sad when I realized I had nobody in the audience I knew to ask how it went and what they thought. Luckily they do film it, so I will bring the dvd of the show back home to show everybody (probably should warn my grandma there is a nude sketch in it).


Due to the show I have been very busy. I had rehearsals on Thursday, the entire weekend, Monday and Tuesday. It has been a lot of fun but also very tiring.
The one day I had of was Friday and I used that beautiful sunny day to go to Watsons Bay with Lisianne. We spent our time walking over the cliffs and staring at mohawkpidgeons. When looking over the sea I felt at ease and happy to be where I am now. I miss Pedro a lot, but I know he will be here soon and then I can show him the sceneries myself.



Now I have to finish my PR assignment before I head back to the theatre to prepare myself for another show. This time Lisianne, Harm and Lieke are coming to watch and I hope I will make them laugh their asses off.

I don't mind this winter

That Saturday we went to Coogee beach for a picknick and I must say, I did not mind one bit being stuck in 'winter'. Twenty degrees, clear blue skies and the ocean at my feet, what more can a girl want?
Popcorn, chips, cookies, cheese, French bread and six girls meant one fun afternoon. Unfortunately Lisianne got a small present from a seagull, but other than that it was pretty perfect.


At eight in the evening we met again in Bondi Junction to find a sushi place. Lisianen and I had the same plate and it was amazing. Although I did develop a theory as to why most Asians are so small, eating rice with those sticks is hard!After the dinner we went to Bondi Beach to go to a house party. Arriving with seven girls, we literally brought half the party. Needless the say we left quite early as I have never had such a boring houseparty.

The next day was another rehearsal and I am now officially a nazi Goldilocks. A typical Sunday house dinner was awaiting me when I got home.
Monday was a day of taking care of things. Called the Emirates Amstedam office for a change, which was actually in England, and apparently I have been caling to Bombay when I call the Australian number. I am one call removed from finally getting a new ticket (that is, if they recieved the message in Bombay). In the evening I had another rehearsal.

Yesterday I had my first presentation, which went fine. In the evening I went to Inception with Lisianne and we really liked the movie. Our trip back was an entire adventure on its own though. The film finished at midnight and it turned out that we had just missed our bus and the next one didn't go until another hour. We decided to walk home while we once again sang songs and told stories (something about leprechauns). When we almost arrived home, we noticed bird making weids sounds (which is not unusual in Australia). When the 'bird' left the tree however, it turned out to be a massive bat! The trees ahead of us were filled with the huge mini-batmans and of course that is the time that Lisianne remembers reading something about Colombian kids who got killed by bats.
Luckily we made it home without vampirebites.

Parties and cockroaches

After rehearsal I went to the Landsdowne, where some of my friends just had dinner.
We would all go to the Snowball winter party at Manning bar (at our Uni), but before that we would stop by at a house close to the party. On our way we happily drank from the 'Pink Sparkle Pop' we found at the bottle shop,the strawberry wine us three girls liked and Harm hated.

The party was great and we stayed there until three, which is very late for Australian standards. Today I didn't really do anything, I had to catch up with some sleep and mostly just postponed doing my assignments. We did decide that tomorrow was not a good time to go to the Blue mountains, as it will be cloud and quite cold, while in the city it will be twenty degrees and sunny. Therefore the new plan is picknicking at the beach.

I also ate kangaroo for the first time today, which is very tasty. After I finally got myself to start my work and send it around, some motion caught my eye.
There it was, cockroach number 2, only this time very much alive and not squashed underneath Lisianne's sock. I wish I could say I didn't flinch, but I screamed like a girl and jumped up unto my chair just in case. I stared at it and I was not very scared anymore, but I didn't know what to do, as I had nothing I could catch the bug with. Harm came to the rescue and caught the thing in a cup. It is now an inhabitant of the recycables bin. He had some fun by making Lisianne scream when he said it was still in the cup. Lisianne and I then argued which one had been bigger. I still think the ones in Brazil are bigger, but I now keep all my food in the fridge and dread the summer days a bit, as they say that is when you will see them a lot more. Great.

busy bee

Monday was not a very interesting day as it mostly involved reading for classes. In the evening I had a fun rehearsal (I am pretty much being typecast, as I am the only one that can pull of a decent German accent and seeing the title is industrious basterds, there are quite some). I had a nice dinner with Lisianne and spend the evening skyping. Tuesday I had classes with five hours in between, which involved more homework and some chatting with other exchange students. For communication I have a very cool group with whom I have to think of a marketing communication strategy. We decided to make one for fairtrade cafe's.

Wednesday I laughed my ass of in class. My prof in ethics in management asked us to think about personal ethical issues. When he walked past the guy behind me he said 'I don't know why, but somehow I have the feeling you are thinking of unprotected sex'. He also told me when I started sneezing *sneeze 1* Bless you *sneeze 2* Stop it! During PR our group decided to design our PR plan for Facebook. That evening I ate at a Thai restaurant with a group of the revue, since afterwards I went to see my first revue: The Wizard of Arts, the arts revue.
It contained sketches 'Twilight in four minutes' and a different version of Lady Gaga's telephone, based on the story of Jane Eyre. It was fun to watch, but I secretly think ours can be better.

That night I skyped with Pedro and he will book his ticket to Sydney soon! I decided to postpone my ticket by a week, but today that proved to be more frustrating than I thought. Nothing can be found on the internet, so I called. The operator put me on hold to find out if it would cost me money to change my ticket, when all of a sudden my phone quit because I had no more credit (I was under the impression that when I started callin, I still had twelve dollars left).
Frustrated since my new simcard also didn't have a lot of credit and I failed at getting more online, I got some skypecredit. After being put on hold and repeating my story, I was put on hold again for twenty minutes. After that time she told me she couldn't find whether or not I had to pay a fare, so nwo I still don't have a new ticket and I have to call back tomorrow *sigh*

In the coming days I will have to finish up a lot of assignments (one per course) and since the revue is on the 25th, I will be having more and more rehearsals. The coming two weeks will be very busy, but hopefuly also hilarious and great. I still found some time to plan a trip, as Saturday we will go with a couple of girls to the Blue Mountains. Now I have to run for rehearsals!!

Early night out

Last Sunday I left an hour earlier from rehearsal to go to North Bondi by bus towards a BBQ A friend of a friend was hosting. When we arrived at 6.30 they had already finished eating and were well on their way of becoming drunk.

That morning some of them had run in the city to surf run (14km run from the middle of the city to Bondi beach) which started at eight in the morning, so they had had a very long day. The bbq was prepared so Lies and I could still make our massive burgers (jokes like: wow, that thing is bigger than your head were frequently made).

At eight in the evening we already made our way to the Beach road bar. We were scared Lisianne wouldn't get in because she forgot her ID, but we snuck past the bouncer to find ourselves in a see of Australians, listening to live music. Some of them had been running in the morning as well and it seems that it is a custom for some to dress up for the run. We spotted a spiderman and Star Wars figures amongst others. The music was great with classics of Bob Marley and others. At ten we decided to call it a day though, as Lies still had an assignment to finish and we had no idea when the last bus back went.

We had a great time but this has by far been my earliest night out ever.

Rolin on a river

Wednesday evening Lisianne and I just had a fun night in and spend our time listening music. We were dancing to Tina Turner, mimicking rolin on a river. Eye of the tiger and other classics also passed bye. When it was time for bed, an unwanted guest stirred things up.

Poor Lisianne stepped on a cockroach while wearing socks. Lots of screams later, she managed to put the dead thing in a plastic baggie. In her fear of it rising from the dead she only opened the outside door and dropped it right on our doorstep instead of in the bin outside. I took it to the bin in the end, while Lisianne was scrubbing the floor in order to prevent cockroachbabies crawling over the carpet in the future. Naturally when retelling the story, the cockroach has grown an inch in size.

The next day, besides having a pr lecture, I got fed up with the Sydney busses. The one that had to take me was ten minutes early, which I only caught by accident since I was already done and decided to go sit in the sun at the busstop. The next one would have arrived fourty minutes later. On the way back I also had to wait half an hour for it to show up. In the evening I had another rehearsal and the revue launch party. The Sydney Uni has eleven different revues, including engineering, science and queer, which all performed one sketch. The queer one, for example, had a guy impersonating Susan Boyle. The launch came with free fingerfood and drinks and afterwards we danced and went to two different pubs.

The next day Lisianne and I went shopping. In between all the expensive stores charging eighty bucks for a tanktop, we found a store that was having an end of season sale with already cheap clothes. Since most Australians do not have a need for a springcoat, except for these two months, they were very cheap and so were the other things like sweaters. Since we will return to Dutch weather, we most certainly will find proper uses for our purchases. That evening we had a party in Kings Cross which was a fancier place then usual we figured, so we dressed up a bit. When we arrived there a notice indeed stated that there was a dresscode (the only thing I remember was 'NO thongs'). Once inside watching people, it seemed as if this code only applied to women. The guys were all wearing sneakers and the girls high heels and skimpy dresses on the verge of hookerfashion (also in the line of the biggest trend here: wearing leggings as jeans). At some point we decided we had enough and went back sining rolin on a river while walking and spend an hour drinking tea.

The following day we explored the mysterious racks of vintage clothes on the Surry Hills market. If sequined onsies are your things, you should definitely move to Surry Hills. The rest of the day we picknicked in the park and we were joined by the most adorable puppies that came looking for food. I even got licked in the face by the most adorable little happy thing. When it got too cold outside we went back in and I decided to clean my room. The vacuum here makes you feel like a ghostbuster and if you add the sound it makes, it seems as if you are wearing a jetpack and about to shoot into space.

We had an invitation to go out for dinner in the centre, but we were cold and decided to just stay in and watched a movie of a zebra wanting to be a race horse. Tomorrow I will have rehearsals and try to find my way to Bondi for a bbq with the Sundaybusschedule. Oh how the Dutch person yearns for her bike.

Carebears

Monday evening I had another rehearsal, which mainly consisted of reading sketches out loud and brainstorming about what else we could do. Basically, I now have the task to write a sketch on carebears who have changed their name to darebears. That night it stormed immensely, which caused my lights to flicker, loss of internetconnection and no power on the top floors.

They day after I had to go to class at nine (pff)to eleven, followed by a five hour break before a tuturial from four to five. After the first lecture I decided to get some postcards, as I was planning to have one lying on my grandmothers doormat when she came back from Canada. Naturally, I am far too late and she has already arrived back home. I had lunch with Sabine and Sarah and went to study a bit in the library. During the tutorial we did some kind of speeddating in order to form groups. It was quite funny and I ended up with four other girls, of which three Australians. We had to think of a groupname, and the one girl with black hair named us BlondeBut1. Afterwards I had dinner with Sabine and we went to trivianight. We arrived far too late, but it didn't really seem like fun anyways. Nobody seemed to be enthusiastic, so we left after a couple of questions to a houseparty in Glebe. There Sunniva and I realized that in parties like that, you could tell anything and people would believe you. From that moment on we were Polina and Irina Petrovska from Russia. A fun evening later Harm and I walked home and I skyped with Pedro to wish him a good trip, as he is in the plane to Rio as we speak.

All of that combined made it quite hard to get out of bed this morning for my longest and most tiring day: six hours of class without any breaks. They don't even have the fifteen minute break we have, so I am also late for other classes since I have to run from building to building. Luckily the classes were interesting, but unfortunately I also have to start with a lot of assignments. During the PR tutorial we had no speeddating, I just formed a group with the people next to me and we need to have a proposal by next week. Lots to read, lots to write, so tonight will just be a cosy night in. So now I will just think hard about carebears...

Toxic goon

I never thought so many people could fit into our house. Seventy people confirmed on the facebook event, meaning it can go two ways: either half doesn't show up and it's still a reasonable number or a lot more show up due to friends bringing friend etc.

We expected that half-way throught the night we would have to kick everybody out to Oxford street to continue there because the house would be too full. In the end however, I think we actually managed to host those seventy people in our living room and the corridors (it was a near impossible task to get to the kitchen though).

It was a success and I had a blast. Meeting even more new people and chatting with the ones you already knew. Lisiane and I had read that it was typically Australian to mix lemonade with goon, so we decided to try it out. We took lemonade and lime juice and with that last one we invented toxic goon. What we ended up with was as green as liquid flubber and dangerous since you onle tasted the lime juice. It was also prefered above Ana's 'apple juice' tequila. We didn't go out afterwards as everyone fit inside the house. What I also once again noticed is that in Australia people begin early, but also end early. By twelve people were leaving, not to go out, but to go to bed. Still,by the time we were chilling in the living room aftwerwards it was four at night. Cleaning was done in no time and nothing had broken (we hid all cups and other breakables). Harm did disappear halfway through the night, as he decided in his drunken mood that he was ready for bed.

The next day I had to get up to go to the revue rehearsal, which was fun but very long (two to seven). Luckily I still had my voice to audition for solos (although that does not mean that my voice has been labeled 'listenable'). When I got back I was very pleased to find everybody else already in the living room ready to eat the delicious wraps Jenny made (Swedish meatballs are promised for next time).

So in the meanwhile no traces of the party remain in the house, but the pictures we browsed through during dinner will keep reminding us of the great night.