A day at home

Today morning I noticed - for some weird reason - I hadn´t spend a day at home since my arrival here. I must have felt a bit exhausted of constantly doing stuff so I decided to stay home for the whole day. It was raining so I didn´t really feel like going outside anyways. I did a bunch of boring stuff: studying, doing laundry, cleaning the common room, watching TV (Ugly Betty is my new favorite show) and eating our weekly flat dinner. Shinae cooked the most delicious sushi! Tim made us M&M-cookies for desert. He had bought this chunk of ready cookie dough that you just have to slice up and put into the oven for 11mins. It´s really handy if you don´t have a lot of time for real cooking.

Hmm...what should I tell about the rest of the past week... I´ve been working on some assignments, trying to catch up with all of my readings, doing sport (That dredmill is killing me :/ I only have to run 3 x 1,5min with some push ups and chins in between, but it´s so fast I feel like dying, the longest seconds I´ve ever experienced) and spending some time outside.

Victoria Park Pool, where Carla and I study every now and then.

Victoria Park

On Friday Carla and I went to a drinks night organized by the UTS Business Council. Members got 4 free drinks! We ended up listening an unofficial board meeting and the council doesn´t seem to be doing too great. Even though there´re thousands of business students at the UTS they´ve only got less than 100 members. We suggested they should improve their marketing, targeting especially first year and international students, and state clear objectives for the council - things we consider self evident - and didn´t even get to the more detailed ideas. No one really knows about the existence of the council, and even if they do they´ve got no idea what kinds of activities they do. So how on earth are they expecting people to join if they don´t tell what kinds of benefits their membership offers?! I think being business students they should know the very basics of marketing. It´s pretty much the same with the Student Association. Students seem to know the UTS Union, that´s a head organization of all societies and clubs and organizes fun things. But the Student Association, that looks after students´ rights and benefits, is unknown. Having being student actives Carla and I have a lot of opinions and after the drinks night we had this whole conversation about how these organizations should be run. Anyways, we´re planning on going to the upcoming drinks nights, as well, to get free drinks and talk to the nice people there.

On Saturday I went to Bondi Beach with Carla, Denise and Till (from Germany). Till had heard of a festival being held there. We expected something pretty big but it was just a small stage with some local (?) bands performing. We had a good time anyways just laying on the beach and swimming. The water is getting colder already: It was only 21c. We left the beach just in time since it started thundering when we got home. Later I went to a see movie with Tim. We watched the The Good German that told about WW2. It was nothing special but a good way to spend a Saturday night anyways. A couple of weeks ago we went to see Letters from Iwo Jima. It was an exceptionally good war movie telling about the Japanese fighting to keep the island of Iwo Jima. It was a realistic movie; soldiers surrending, missing their families, being scared, getting to know each other, leaders fighting over power etc. I liked them actually speaking Japanese even though it was a Hollywood movie.

Bridge celebrations and figure skating

(I´m being multifunctional: While writing this I´m also doing the first step of my do-it-yourself-pedicure. My feet are swimming in a sink of hot water. They´re so gross - blisters and hard skin - because of constantly wearing thongs. I bet you don´t wanna hear any more...)

On Sunday I got up decently early to read my marketing book but almost fell asleep. Fortunately it was the day of Sydney Harbour Bridge 75 Years celebrations so I didn´t have to study for long before Carla and I left to do the bridge walk. We took a train to Milsons Point, which is on the other side of the bridge, and crossed the bridge back to the city with tens of thousands of other people. We agreed the even was succesfully organized: There were no major delays on transportation schedules (or at least we didn´t notice any), people crossing the bridge were guided clearly on both ends and the walk itself went smoothly without unnecessary rushing or crowding. Everyone was given a free neon yellow cap and it looked cool having all the people wearing the same color. There were some helicopters flying over the bridge and the ABC had its stands along the bridge walk, but other than that there wasn´t anything else exciting. After the bridge walk we went to the Museum of Sydney to see a special exhibition of the bridge. They had mostly some old documents, architectual plans and pictures about the different stages of planning and building the bridge. We walked around the other parts of the museum, as well, but it was rather small and not as interesting as some other museums here.

People crossing the Harbour Bridge

Carla and I

(In the case you´re dying to know, I just went through the second phase of my pedicure: Smoothing my feet, and shaping and painting my toenails. Phase three is going to include sedond layer of nailpolish and lotioning.)

I spent Sunday evening watching an ice show at the Canterbury Ice Rink. Fire On Ice, the senior synchronized skating team of Sydney Figure Skating Club, won the Nationals and is going to represent Australia at the Worlds in Canada next week. The ice show was held mostly for them as a pre-competition performance. Taking into account the fact that figure skating doesn´t belong to the popular sports among Australias and their team hasn´t placed well at any of the previous Worlds, their programs were ok. With the constantly changing rules I think it´s great they´ve came up with two senior level programs. I didn´t notice any particular themes for their programs, expect that the free program music was specially made for them. I think the new 16-skater-rule is helping teams not having a lot of skaters to choose from to form a decent team. Also the junior team performed their short program and I have to say many of our juvenile teams in Finland are better! Besides synchro we got to see an ice dancing pair perform two show programs. Despite of being a bit slow they were skating rather well. Also this girl, who trains in Colorado, performed her short program. I don´t know if she can do any triple jumps, but this time she was jumping only douples, and a single axel. Her basic skating and foot work were fine, though, and she had adapted the American style in her skating. It´d be interesting to know if she competes internationally. After the show they provided tons of different kinds of pastries and cakes, and chocolate covered strawberries :P I just stood there by the foods table and kept eating, and also talked briefly to one of the Fire On Ice skaters. It was nice seeing some skating after a long break and I´ll definately go see some more of their shows and competitions during the year. By the way, the Figure Skating World Championships are held in Tokyo this week and I´m so excited about Susanna and Kiira!

Fire On Ice short program

Kuring-Gai National Park

As you can notice, I´m falling a bit behind on my blog postings again. But if you just knew how much undone uni stuff I´ve been putting aside... I should be doing my week 4 readings now but instead I still haven´t gotten started with week 3 :/

On Saturday Carla, Shinae, Moy and I got up rather early in the morning to go to Kuring-Gai National Park. We took a train to Wynyard to catch a bus to Palm Beach. We sat in the bus for over an hour and half before we finally got there! We even managed to miss our stop, so we were dropped off at the final stop, where we had to wait for some 10min to catch the bus coming back to take us to the right stop. At that point I was getting frustrated and had serious doupts of ever making it to the park. But we catched a ferry - after waiting for another 50min - to Bason, where we started our walk. I think we walked some 8-9km altogether. The walk started with a rather deep hill, which was worth climbing since the views were beautiful. We went to see some Aboriginal engravings. It´s not possible to take good pictures of them, but they´re these about 1cm deep gravings on stone, forming a shape: fish, kangaroo, people, bird etc. We saw 2 engravings places before having our pickic lunch (sandwitches and fruit salad) sitting on a stone sheltered by bushes. Our trip back to the ferry was the coolest part of the walk! First we climbed up to this amazing lookout - unfortunately it had already started to rain a bit so our pictures didn´t turn out that great - and then we took this small, deep and rocky path down. It was some real hiking! We were lucky it was low tide when we reached the end of the path so we could walk along the beach shore to the ferry. If it had been high tide we would´ve had to go all the way back up to take another road. It started raining more before we got to the ferry shelter. Fortunately we had good weather and sunshine for the most of the time, though. After taking the ferry back to Palm Beach we sprinted after a bus trying to catch it but it didn´t stop. So we had to wait for 20min, sit in the bus for almost 2hours and take the train before we got back home. Even though we spent a lot of time traveling the walk in the park was worth it! Carla and I are planning on going back there and taking this another walk to see some Aboriginal paintings.

A lizard

Trees ruined by bush fires

A view from the highest lookout

After coming home and taking a shower Tim joined us for a pizza dinner at the Broadway Shopping Centre. We walked past the Chinese restaurant where Ningnign works and she generously gave us a lot of left overs to take home. So now we´ve got our fridges full of free Chinese food :) Pizza was good. I misunderstood the concept of BYO (=bring your own; meaning you can drink your own drinks at a restaurant) and went to buy a bottle of Coke from Coles. Apparently they only let you drink your own wine there so we got some complaints. After finishing our pizzas Tim, Carla and I walked to this pub to have one drink each. I was so proud of myself: Tim couldn´t persuade me to start drinking with him no matter how hard he tried :) I only had one drink of Baileys, milk and coffee (love it!) at home before going to bed.

Italian cake :P

On Thursday I was a good student for a couple of hours in the morning before going to the gym for yoga and fatburner. I´m trying to do yoga every now and then because I don´t have the patience to strech properly by myself. After lunch I went to this Italian part of Sydney with Tim and Carla. It was actually a whole set of Italian restaurants and cafes, and some expensive brand stores. We took our time walking around and checking out cakes at each cafe! We ended up eating the most delicious cakes :P Tim and I bought huge pieces of chocolate cakes and split them so we both got to eat two different kinds of cakes. They were even served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and some cream. After getting stuffed with all those treats we walked along the main street, popped into a computer store to buy me a memory stick (I forgot my old one to the LUT library) and walked to this park. We laid on the grass for a while, looking at aeroplanes flying over us and just talking...

Sydney Italian Forum

Our food :P

Friday wasn´t a special day. I had my Global Strategic Planning lecture in the morning. The professor comes from somewhere Middle East and I like him. He seems really intelligent and he knows a lot about the real international business world. He also seems to care about us students. He even bargained to get a lower price on our readings book that was printed at the UTS Union Shop. After the lecture I turned in an application form to tutor Aboriginal students having problems with their subjects. I really need to get a job if I want to keep traveling, eating out, shopping, partying and just going to places and doing fun stuff. I went to the gym to do my workout and as soon as I got home I had to walk back, to go to a travel agency with Carla and Denise. Carla is joining us for our trip to New Zealand so instead of taking the train there we´re planning on hiring a car. It´d be so convinient just driving to places! What ever we decide I´m sure we´re gonna have the greatest time traveling together :D

Yey!!

I finally got my marketing case done and turned it in yesterday!! It felt good having emailed it to the assistant and knowing nothing more could be done. I went to the gym straight from the library, where I had been finishing it all morning, and did my workout. Later I had my tutorial and lecture for International Marketing. After these first 3 weeks it seems like a pretty easy subject, discussing the basics of marketing from an international point of view. Focusing on Australia and its relations with China, the US and India is interesting, though. Our textbook is called International Marketing: An Asia-Pacific Perspective, which tells quite a bit of the subject outline, as well. We spend a lot of time discussing current topics, like international trade agreements, at our tutorials. We also have to read many articles. So instead of just studying a few year old books we get to know what´s really going on at the moment. Which reminds me of my homework; I gotta find and summarize a cultural article for marketing.

UTS City Campus Tower Building

City Campus. People sit on the grass studying or just hanging out.

Today was my full day at the uni. First I had the Olympic Games lecture in Kuring-Gai. We´re preparing short group presentations. My group´s topic is the security costs at the Olympics. Then I had lunch in Chinatown with Keiji (my new Japanese friend) before my tutorial and lecture for Fundamentals of Corporate Finance. I´ve never taken finance before so most of the stuff is new to me. It´s a freshman subject, though, so the lecturer is treating us like first-year students. He´s interesting and fun and it´s a pleasure listening to his British accent. Right now we´re learning to discount and accumulate cash flows from future to present and back to future... The damn subject made me change my flights to New Zealand :( I had just booked them the day before, and then we got told the day of the mid-semester exam had changed. So I had to reschedule them and pay additional $70. Oh well, I´m a rich student, I don´t mind throwing money out of my pockets.

Kuring-Gai Campus.

I think I should save you from the torture of having to read this (if you´ve even made it this far) and go to bed. Good night mates :)

A great beach day :D

Since the weather forecast had promised hot and sunny weather for today we planned a trip to Manly Beach. It ended up everyone else had something else to do - uni stuff and sports - so it was just Carla and I going. But we had the greatest day outside! We took the ferry to Manly and got a map of the area from a visitor centre. It appears there´re quite a few things to see in Manly, like some scenic walkways and Sydney Harbour National Park. We started walking towards the park and when we stopped to take a look at the map these two guys we ran into asked if we needed any help. We asked about nice things to see in Manly and they promised to take us on a guided tour :) Unfortunately they got a call from work and had to leave, but we got a lift to Shelly Beach and they accompanied us for a quick swim. Shelly Beach is a rather small and sheltered one with small waves, opposite to Manly the other bigger beaches. We spent a couple of hours there sun bathing and studying. Then we walked to the main street to look for lunch. We had seafood rolls at a food court and got gelato (really creamy ice cream) from an Italian place called Gelatissimo. My ice cream was huge :P Then we walked a bit along the shoreline before going to lay on the beach. After another hour of sun bathing we took the ferry back home. It was Tim´s turn to make flat dinner. We´ve agreed on cooking flat dinners every week. Everyone takes a turn cooking a meal for the 6 of us. I started with makaroonilaatikko last Sunday and Tim prepared a delicious nacho meal. Oh, and I also watched my new favorite TV-show, Ugly Betty.

Shelly Beach

Flat 3. From left Adrian, Tim, I, Shinae, Renar and Carla

It´s kinda hard getting motivated with studying :/ After arriving here I had 3 weeks of vacation, which set my mind thinking Sydney means relazing and doing just fun things. It´s hard for me staying inside when the weather is good. Fortunately I can do my readings outside but I gotta spend some time in the library and on the computer, as well. I´m almost done with my marketing case study and I´m determined to finish it tomorrow. Speaking of which, I gotta go to bed so I can get up early...

Never ever have I...

Friday was a good party day :) After my lectures I went to the gym to go through my new workout. I had told Michael (the instructor) I´d meet him there, without thinking my muscles might be tired from having done the workout the day before. Fortunately he told me to take it easy, which I did. But I´ll start some real training this week and set my goal to look fit by the next beach season! Anyways, after coming back from the gym I got ready for our ice bar night. Before starting to play drinking games Denise took a set of pictures of me for her photography project. I´ll post some of them here if they turn out pretty. We had heaps of people at our flat playing drinking games and hanging out! We started with a card game, each card having its own function. When you pulled a king you had to pour little of your drink to a shared cup. The person getting the 4th king had to drink the mix. Yes, I did get it and drank a delicious mix of gin tonic, vodka, pop and sambucca (quite gross liqour) Most people thought I handled it as a lady - or as a Finn, I´d say :P After finishing the pack people were already reasonably drunk and I taucht them a game where you have to bounce a coin to a cup. We finished with the "Never ever have I..."-game, and due to our drunkeness some (!) people got pretty excited with all these sex related statements. When it was time to leave for the ice bar some of us stated they were too drunk to get in, so we decided to postpone the ice bar till another night. At that point Cameron and I started having shots of plain vodka - which reminds me of all the good times drinking with the Student Association people in Lappeenranta :D At the end, it was just Carla, Denise, Andrew, Cameron, Adrian, Tim and I going clubbing. Tim left us to with his other friends and the rest of us walked to Side Bar. The rest of the night was nothing special: hanging out at the Side Bar, taking a cap to Kings Cross to meet Tim at a nacho place, walking around, not finding a place we wanted to go to, getting cold, taking a cap back to Geegal, going to bed in time (3.30am)

Playing a card game at our living room

"Enjoying" my mix drink

A group picture (missing a few people): from left Moy, Adrian, Ningning, Helen, Cameron, I, Carlos, Tim, Shinae, Denise and Andrew

Despite of having being drinking so much the night before I felt good on Saturday morning. I went to Bondi Beach with Tim, Carla and Cameron. Because it was a bit windy and not so warm we walked to Tamarama Beach, which is close to Bondi. I spent most of the time reading for my Olympic Games class; this time the topic was the commercialization of the Games. I think I´ll actually be able to connect the subject to marketing for the most part of it. On our way back to the train station Tim bought the biggest ice cream ever! I spent the rest of the day watching the movie Music and Lyrics (Renar had bought it somewhere. It had been filmed at the cinema.) and writing my marketing case.

Studying...boring

Let me think what I´ve been doing this week... Nothing but studying :/ I think most exciting so far has been this visitor lecturer at our Olympic Games class. He came from the US and travels around the World to collect information of cities having hosted the Games. It was interesting listening to him but the exciting thing was that he was SO hot :P I can´t recall when was the last time I saw such a good looking guy! Anyways, the Olympic Games has turned out be quite an alright subject. (I chose to take it so that I wouldn´t spend too much time studying while I´m here. My logic is to have 3 "real" subjects and one "fun" subject.) It´s being taucht in Kuring-Gai Campus, which is a 30-min drive from the City Campus. UTS provides students a free shuttle bus to get there and back. The Kuring-Gai Campus is so nice! It´s a rather small campus in the middle of a national park so it´s surrounded by beautiful nature. I always get there a bit before the class starts so I´ve got time to sit outside drinking morning coffee. The class discusses the Olympics from different points of views: history, interference with politics (e.g. World Wars, the Cold War, the Great Recession), economics, impact on the hosting cities, media (especially TV), sponsorships, culture etc... I´ve got quite a lot of reading to do at home, though. I´m still wondering if we´re going to do a field trip to the Olympic Park or not.

I´ve been writing my case all day today and it´s a pain in the ass! I´m making alright process but it´s so slow writing in English. I´m hoping to finish it tomorrow so I can enjoy the weekend. I was so happy to get my gym program done today, after sitting home for hours. Michael, the gym instructor, made me a really cool workout! It´s lasts only for half an hour but it´s really intense. It includes a bit of running on the treadmill and muscle exercises (push ups, chins, cleans...) Hopefully I´ll get fit following it :)

Now I gotta start reading for my Global Strategic Planning class, that I´ve got tomorrow morning. They actually expect you to read the course book, articles and some additional stuff during the course. I think it´s going to be easier studying for exams having read the material before hand but it takes up a lot of time. By the way, sorry for my bad English. I´ve been trying to write good, academic English all day so I´m feeling too lazy to care at the moment. Tomorrow we´re gonna play drinking games and go to this ice bar, but more about it later...

Gays and lesbians rule...!

On Friday afternoon Carla and I decided to check out Victoria Park, which is kind of like our backyard (2min walk from Geegal) and found out it´s a really nice park indeed. There´re quite many grass areas there for playing sports and games, a small pond, benches and a swimming pool. We were laying by the pool, getting in there every now and then to cool down and doing some reading for our classes. I think I´ll develop a habit of going to Victoria Park to do uni work so I can enjoy fresh air while I study.

There was a party at the Gumal roof top on Friday night. Tim bought us a bottle of liquor (something cheap, really sweet and Australian - tasted yummy with coffee :P ) and vodka. I´m glad Cameron joined us for the vodka because otherwise we would´ve been wasted. Well, we were anyways ;) This time it was Tim´s turn to make me drink. We started drinking at Geegal and walked to Gumal at around 10pm to spend a couple of hours on the roof top enjoying the beautiful view of night time Sydney. At mightnight (they´re pretty strict about ending parties in time, apparently because of some complaints last year) Tim, Moy, Cameron and I headed to central and ended up going to Star Bar. We had a blast dancing for hours! I can´t remember the last time I´ve danced that much. We had shots of tequila, which is always as exciting as it was the first time I had one when I was 18. Tim was dancing on a small table... At around 3am we walked home, stopping at this bakery for some chocolate pastries on our way, and played some card games in our flat. After Moy and Cameron left Tim and I kept talking till 6am. We were actually agreeing on more things this time.

This is how a girl is treated in Australia :P (Tim, I and Moy)

On Saturday I woke up rather early considering I had gone to bed so late and went to Bondi Beach with a bunch of people from Geegal. The weather was just perfect - sunny and so hot! Unfortunately we could stay only for a couple of hours because the Mardi Gras Parade was on that night. It´s an annual parade of gay and lesbian people and a big thing that as many as half a million people go to see. Most dedicated spectators go there hours earlier to reseve good spots. We didn´t leave until an hour and half before the parade was about to start (the more people you´re going with the more you have to wait for everyone to be ready). Despite of getting there late and standing at a wrong place at first Carla and I managed to get fairly good spots and see most of the parade just fine. It was lots of different groups - political parties, sports teams, work groups (police, firemen), religious groups - walking and showing their best in great costumes. Most groups had also decorated trucks following them and playing music. The parade was definately a thing not to miss!

Beach is an alright place for studying

Rugby team´s truck and motorcycles

A truck sponsored (?) by Ikea

Today I had a nice morning helping Denise with her photography assigment, as a model :) Then we went to a few travel agencies to ask for information about New Zealand and Fiji. I bought my flight tickets to New Zealand, which means I´m going for sure! I and Denise will fly there together on the 10th of April but I´ll have to come back a few days earlier to do a mid semester exam. It really sucks but the exam counts 30% of the grade so I can´t miss it. I also did to a body pump class. I wonder why I´m using considerably less weights here than I did in Finland even though the class is almost exactly the same, following the Les Mills concept. The only possible explonations I can come up with are that it´s either too hot (and humid) there or that we do a lot more singles. From one thing to another, I´m not doing well with my marketing case. I just noticed I´m not using the preferred kinds of references - journals and magazines instead of old books - and I´ve got too little theory. Well, I´ll keep writing it, trying to keep in mind one failure (meaning one low grade) isn´t going to completely ruin my studies.

P.S I´ve added a few pictures to some of my older posts from February.

Back 2 school

It´s Sunday and I´ve got the first week of lectures and tutorials behind. I don´t think I´ve linked my university here yet, so if you´re interested in finding out more about it go to www.uts.edu.au There´re so many international students here! 30% of business students don´t speak English as their first language and some of the lecturers aren´t native speakers, either. It´s going to be interesting working with people coming from so many different countries - just like it´s going to be in the real working environment, as well. So far I´m grouped mostly with Australians for team projects, though, which I think is fine. At the moment I´ve got a good feeling about all of my subjects. It´s going to be a lot more reading than I´m used to, though. I even bought my course books from the student association´s second hand bookstore. They´re pretty expensive (over $100 each) as new but I didn´t pay close to that much. So, we gotta read one or more chapters from the book and some additional articles for every lecture. I´ve also got individual and group assingments for all of my subjects.

I really like the library here! I just spent a couple of hours there today searching for references for my International Marketing case study. There´re heaps of books for marketing, including just any specific topics, and many databases for journals, too. I´ve got a feeling I´m going to improve my information searching skills during this year. There´s no way I can go through everything that looks promising! Besides, our cases and projects are limited to be quite a lot shorter than those at LUT, which means we gotta be more consice and really stick to the main points. My marketing case is due in a week and it counts 20% of the grade. I´ve done hardly any writing yet so I gotta spend a lot of time inside working on it this week, no matter how nice the weather is going to be :/

Besides going to lectures and tutorials I haven´t done much this past week. Just going to the beach, spending some time outside, watching movies, running and going to a few fitness classes. I had a consultation for my gym program on Thursday and the instructor used this informative scale to find out various kinds of things about me. For example, almost 43kg of me is muscle and 2,3kg bones, I´m 60% hydrated and I consume a bit over 1300KCal a day. I´ve got another meeting with him and that´s when he´s really gonna test me and make the workout program.

Royal National Park

Saturday was a good day of outdoor sports! We woke up rather early to catch a train to the Roayl National Park. It took us almost an hour to get there and there were no signs to the park from the train station. So we crossed a highway (scary!) and walked on the side of it till we found a path going to the right direction. It wasn´t the right one, though, since we discovered we were trapped by a fence. After walking back to the highway we found the right path easily and followed it to the visitor centre. It was a lot of steep steps going down and some nice views, as well. We had decided to rent bikes and sticked to the plan even though the amount of bicycle paths was a lot smaller than we had assumed when looking at the map. They told us not to ride on main roads with cars because it´s too dangerous. So we did a 10 km long Lady Carrington Drive along Hacking River. We would´ve prefered doing a loop instead of riding back and forth, but we got to see some nice views anyways. Especially trees having suffered a bit during bush fires but being still alive and growing were interesting to see. It took us almost 4 hours to drive the 20 km and have several breaks for eating, taking pictures and just hanging out. Our bikes were good and confortable mountain bikes. After returning to the bike rental we had to walk aroung 3-4km back to the train station. Instead of climbing the stairs we decided to walk along a car road, which ended up being a smart decision because it started thundering. I guess it´s common here it can be thundering and lightning right above you but it´s not raining. We were both lucky and unlucky getting back to the train station. Lucky because it didn´t start raining a lot until we reached the station. Unlucky because we missed the train by 2 minutes and had to wait for half an hour for the next one. When we finally got to the train it was hard trying to stay awake.



Rainforest

Me and big trees

Since it was Silja´s last night here she wanted to buy me a nice dinner, and I decided to get us some dessert :) It was raining and when we got the Redfern (the closest train station to Geegal) and we found out there were some railway constructions going on and most trains were substituted by busses. So after taking a train to Central Station we had to take a bus to Circular Quay. We found a nice restaurant there and sat upstairs facing the harbour, overlooking the ferry station. I had a delicions meal with marinated prawns and rice! I just really enjoy eating at nice restaurants. After our main courses we wanted to get some Kogenhagen Ice Cream but the kiosk had been closed a couple of minutes before we got there. So we went to this Italian restaurant and probably drove the waiter nuts ordering the cheapest possible gelato they had. It tasted good, though, had we got to sit on a nice table outside eating it. Since the weather wasn´t that great we decided to head home and go to bed.


We had planned to go see the Dragonboat Race of Chinese New Year on Sunday morning but since we had had such a long day on Saturday we just slept in and had a lazy morning before Silja had to leave to catch her flight. I took her to Redfern. Carla and I had thought of going to see the dragonboats but we decided not to because it was raining. I went for a run instead. I found Centennial Park alright but couldn´t find my way back home :/ I guess it wasn´t too bad after all running for a bit longer. (I went running there today, too, and got lost again on my way back. But I blame the people I asked for help because they kept telling me to go the wrong way.) It felt kind of weird not having Silja here anymore. Because we had been doing so much all the time I had felt like a tourist in Sydney, as well. In a way I had this empty feeling that you have when something that you´ve been looking forward to has just ended. But at the same time I was a little tired and felt like starting to do normal things: studying, seeing my flatmates etc... So all in all I´m happy I got some major sightseeing done before the start of the semester.


Yey! I´ve finally written everything about THE tourist week :D Once I write about my first week of lectures I´ll have catched up with this blog. But now I gotta go to bed, so I´ll do it tomorrow...

"Useful" information

Friday was a kind of mid day for us because I had compulsory uni sessions. First I had to go to a Housing Information session and spend 2 hours listing to some things I never could´ve figured out by myself: keep common areas tidy, don´t make too much noise, be considerate towards your flatmates, take part in activities etc... The best part of the session were the cookies they gave us at the end of it. Then Carla and I went to do an IT @ UTS session, where he told us how to activate our email account (which we had done before arriving) and how to print out documents (the only useful thing). When he started talking about the library we decided to leave. I also attended the Business Faculty welcome. They had some of the faculty staff presenting themselves, a few speeches of how great the faculty is and a fun professor throwing candy to us. The faculty has been recently awarded internationally for its good quality of teaching and research.

After I was done with uni things I met Silja and we went to Geegal together to prepare some dinner. Then we went to Darling Harbour with Carla and Denise to have a few drinks. It was nice and relaxing just sitting there at the cafes/clubs and talking about everything.

Darling Harbour at night

Carla, I and Denise