NZ: Pristine landscapes

Friday 20.4: We woke up early to get some free breakfast, and I ate a huge bowl of cereal (my favorite breakfast here). Then we just walked around Queenstown looking for souvenirs for our families, friends and ourselves. I found Jake the Sheep - a cute pen case that looks like a sheep :) I also bought delicious ice cream from a place that makes their woffles themselves. We left Queenstown at around noon to drive to Te Anua, where we did some more souvenir shopping. I also found a bakery selling rye bread, but unfortunately they had ran out of it. We spent the evening watching the movie Autumn in New York at the hostel. They had a special room with seatings for watching TV and movies.

One more beautiful view

Our car, Denise and Mister Toiletpaper roll

A weindy road (most roads in NZ are like this)

Saturday 21.4: It was our earliest morning: We woke up at 5am to drive to Milford Sound for a river cruise. There were some cool lookouts along the drive; like Mirror Lake, which reflects the picture of the mountains in the water. It was especially beautiful in the dawn. Our cruise lasted for 2 hours and the boat was the smallest one of all the cruise lines. It was a good boat, though, and we were offered free coffee and tea. We spent most of the cruise time standing outside on the front deck, which was the best place to see the landscape. It was rather cold so my new beanie and mittens came in good use :) The boat cruised in the middle of really high, straight mountain walls, the highest of them being 1.6km! We also saw a waterfall, snow on top of the mountains and a seal (that went back to the water before Carla and Denise got their cameras out). We were again really lucky with the weather: It rains almost every day in Milford Sound but that day the sky was clear! The landscape was so pristine and impressive. After our cruise ended I bought a photograph that had been taken where we had been cruising. It´s safely packed and I won´t put it onto the wall until back in Finland.

Mirror Lake

Milford Sound on the cruise

A high waterfall

MSF

We drove to see Chasm, a waterfall that has shaped soft rock to form these cool holes. Then we drove for an hour to this walk that was supposed to be 45min-long (here people tend to measure distances as how long time it takes to walk/drive them). It took us only 15min to complete the loop, which was a bit of a dissappointment. It was nothing special anyways. We spent the rest of the day driving and got to Mount Cook when it was dark already. Mount Cook is the highest mountain, and also a little village next to it is called Mount Cook. There was no vacancy at the YHA hostel (that would´ve had a sauna) so we drove to this another place. The building was all dark and we became a bit suspicious. But we knocked the door of a private house next to it and got rooms from the building, which was a cabin of some alpine club. It was similar to our scout cabins: a huge common room with cooking facilities, a fireplace, tables and benches, and a computer with internet (which we don´t have in our scout cabins, of course). There were only 4 other people, who were all older than us. We decided to sleep in the common room instead of bedrooms, and carried matrises there. I made fire to the fireplace and kept adding wood to it during the night, as well. Despite of having the fire it was pretty cold. It was a different place from hostels, though, and I enjoyed sleeping there.

Chasm

Mount Cook

ZN: Skydiving!!

Thursday 19.4: I had always considered activities such as skydiving and bengi jumping as waste of money, because you´re paying enourmous sums for an experience lasting only for a few minutes. But as Carla began to plan her skydiving on Tuesday evening I began to feel temted to do it, too. I had heard from many people that New Zealand is one of the best places in the world to go skydiving, mostly because of the beautiful views. So I ended up signing up for skydiving in Wanaka for Thursday at 11am :) We slept in (till 8am) and since Denise had alrady gone skydiving in the US she decided to go hiking instead. In the morning Carla and I walked around Wanaka, which is another nice little town surrounded my mountains. We did a little bit shopping. New Zealand has definately cheaper prices for clothes and food than Australia! Soon it was time to drive to the airport for our adventure...

In Wanaka

The weather was perfect for skydiving! The sky was clear, the sun was shining and there was hardly any wind. First we were shown a short instruction video that emphasized on remembering to smile to the cameras and advertised their overpriced photographing offerings. I decided not to take any of them. Carla had an extra person jumping with her and filming the jump, and her DVD is cool to watch! We had to sign some forms about being aware of the danger of getting injured or being killed if something goes wrong. I tried not to pay too much attention to those texts. Since we had decided to jump from the highest altitude - 4575m - we were also informed about the possibility of starting hyperventilating in such high altitude. We needn´t wait long before we were given our suits, hats and gloves. We were introduced to our tandem jumpers - mine was this cool guy from the States - who helped us to get into our harnesses. Then we were taken to a small plane, where we had four jumpers with their tandems sitting tightly on the floor. This all happened so quicky I hadn´t time to get nervous. The flight up to 15 000ft took around 15-20min and we saw some beautiful views over Mount Cook, the longest river of New Zealand (forgot its name) etc. Our tandem jumpers told us about the scenery. I thought I would´ve been nervous on the plane, but I was just mostly excited. I was told some instructions for the jump, and especially reminded to look at the horizon instead of down for some better views of the surrounding mountains. Then I was told we´d jump in one minute, which felt like a long one! Finally Carla and her tandem jumped, and as I saw them flying off the plane I really realized I was just about to do the same! Before jumping we sat for a while on the edge of the door and smiled to a camera attached to the plane wing. The jump was amazing :D During the first seconds we span around in the air and dropped really fast, followed by a 60sec freefall. The moment I jumped I changed my mind about it and was really glad I had decided to do it. The freefall was really extreme and exciting, followed by relaxed flying after the parasuit opened. We were floating in the air, enjoying the landscape, and he let me pull the parasuit handels to turn and go up and down. I felt like wanting to stay up there for a longest time, but of course we had to land, sitting on the ground. Carla had landed just before me and we got in together and took some pictures of us in our suits. Then we sat outside for a while talking to this UK guy and waiting for Carla´s DVD to get ready.

Our plane

Happy after my skydive

We met Denise back at our hostel, and drove to Queenstown. After checking in to a nice hostel we walked around the town centre, which was bigger and had more shops than the other towns (exluding Christchurch that is the biggest town in the South Island). I liked Queenstown. We had lunch at a cafe where you could also use the internet for free. After walking back to the hostel I decided to go to use their spa, which was outside. It was nice sitting there alone in the warm water, surrounded by darkness and shadows of the surrounding mountains. It was a good and relaxing moment for me after the excitement of skydiving :)

NZ: Greenstone and Ice

Tuesday 17.4: In the morning we went shopping for jade (greenstone) at a store next to our hostel. Indigenous New Zealanders have traditionally traded if for food and clothes, and you aren´t supposed to buy it for yourself but give it as present. I bought a necklace to my Anna-sister. The greenstones are shaped differently and each shape has its own meaning. I chose Anna´s necklace from a group that´s supposed to bring streght, peace and good luck when traveling overseas. From the store we walked to this beach to look for greenstone in nature. It was almost raining and we couldn´t find any good pieces - they were all too grey. Then we discovered the wonders of souvenier shops - and from that on Carla and Denise wanted to go to so many of them :) They were all selling pretty much the same stuff: all kinds of general souvenirs, warm clothing made of New Zealand whool, kiwi lotion and honey. I bought a red New Zealand beanie and red whool mittens that I actually needed in the cold weather. At around noon we left for Franz Josef where we checked out a few hostels. I wanted to go to a hostel that advertised having a sauna, but when I asked about it later in the evening I was told it was broken :( We had a relazed day: Denise and Carla played board games, I did laundry, Carla and I cooked pasta for dinner and we looked at brochures for activities.

Wednesday 18.4: We woke up rather early in the morning to take part in a guided glacier walk at the Franz Josef Glacier. When we got to the tour office we were given our equipment: boots, spikes, pants, a raincoat, beanie and mittens. Some of them were a bit big for us. After a 10min-long bus ride we arrived at the glacier and walked for some 40min before reaching the ice. We attached the spikes to our boots and were given some instructions about walking on the ice. Two groups were formed: We joined the one of 9 people moving a bit faster than the other group having more people. The walk began with climbing up ice steps, which was pretty easy. Then we got to this "ice field" and crossed it. It didn´t take long getting to the harder parts of the walk: We went through narrow ice corridors, holes and an ice slide. It was essential paying attention and taking right steps. We were given ice axes that were supposed to help us balancing but I thought they were just cool looking :) The higher we got the more impressive the glacier was! The ice was so clean and blue (the blue color is caused by its high density).

A warning sign of all the dangers at the glacier

Franz Josef Glacier

Ice climbers

The glacier keeps changing all the time (this glacier is growing, unlike most of the other glaciers in the world), which makes every tour different. Some old paths can be used, but most of the time our guide walked ahead of us making the path. Every now and then he dissapeared for some time to check for good routes. We got stucked to a rather narrow corridor for a while and ended up having our lunch break down there while our guide prepared our way out. It was so cold there with wet mittens and not moving! It was our highest point, which I think was around 450m above sea level. The distance we walked on the 150m-thick ice was just 2,8km, even though it felt longer. Coming down the glacier was easier and quicker. We found two ice caves on our way back.

An ice corridor

In an ice cave

After our glacier tour we started our journey to Wanaka, which ended up being rather exciting. We decided gas was too expensive in Franz Josef, so since we saw a sign saying "120km to next gas station" we decided to wait and drive there. But after driving that 120km we saw no gas stations, and ended up driving another 60km the gas tank signal showing empty. It was dark and pretty late, and mostly nothing but the road surrounded by fields. We were getting quite nervous about running out of gas and being left there in the middle of nowhere. Denise was driving and tried to save gas by switching it to no gear whenever we went downhill. We were so happy finally finding a small gas station attached to a restaurant! So everything turned out just well, and we drove to Wanaka.

NZ:Kayaking and Nike Beach

Sunday 15.4: We spent a sunny and warm day in Abel Tasman National Park. We had booked a kayaking & walking trip, and were picked up from our hostel. It didn´t take long to drive to the beach from where our kayaking trip began. Carla and I paired up in one kayak while Denise shared a kayak with our guide, Steve. First we were told some information and tips for kayaking, and we did a short exercise of what to do if we fall. These kayaks were more advanced than the ones we had in Singapore: They had covers to protect kayakers from getting wet, storage space and the person sitting in back had pedals to change direction. I sat in the back and it took me a while to learn to use the pedals - Carla would tell me to take left, take right, take left and so we zigzaged :) We learned to paddle in synchro and I got the hang of the pedals by the time we had our first break at a nice beach. Steve offered us delicious blueberry muffins, cookies and fruit. And Carla was teaching Denise ballroom dancing...

Denise and I wearing our kayaking gear

Carla and I paddling

Then we had some more paddling to do before we reached our destination. It was nice being on the water on a sunny day, seeing all the beaches. I was wearing a headband, which left this akward tan line on my forehead. Fortunately it´s almost gone now. Anyways, we had sandwitches for lunch, and this girl gave us the rest of her chocolate cake. We were stuffed when we began our walk back to where we began our trip. Denise and Steve had made a bet about who gets there first. So we started walking up this hill at a decent speed and even though we stopped to take pictures at every look out we passed the rest of our group pretty soon. The walk was generally easier than the one we did on Saturday, and offered some beautiful views. Low tide made the shoreline look different from what we had seen earlier from our kayaks. We actually made it to the end point before Steve, who was kayaking back with another group, but I don´t think Denise got anything for prize. After getting back to our car we drove to Takata, where we had dinner at Wholemeal Cafe. In the evening I tried to pick up a movie with little success. I ended up changing it once but the since the second pick was no better we just decided just to go to bed.

Hand picture (we took these in several places)

Low tide

Monday 16.4: We drove to Farewell Spit, which is a really long beach shaped like the Nike logo in the northern part of the South Island. The sky was pretty dark but fortunately it wasn´t raining. We did a walk along the shoreline and saw a big group of black swans (at least I think they were swans). On our way back the weather started brightening and when we drove to this "lighthouse" the sun began shining. They actually advertised having a lighthouse, which in reality was more like a short white pole with a light on top of it. We walked a hill down and another hill up to get there, and even though the lighthouse wasn´t cool the view was worth the walk! From there were drove to Motueka for lunch and then it was my turn to try driving. I had never driven with left sided traffic so it was interesting. I did alright when just driving on the highway (despite of driving a bit too much on the left side) but turning etc was more comlicated. We made it to Hokitika, though, where we spent our night.

Black swans

Farewell Spit

At the "lighthouse lookout"

Another beaufitul view

NZ: Weindy roads and hiking

I arrived back from New Zealand yesterday night. I had great 10 days traveling around the country and I´m looking forward to writing about my experiences. It may take some days to finish the story, though, since I have to do a bunch of uni work I missed while I was gone.

Thursday 12.4: Carla and I flew directly to Christchurch (the biggest town in South Island) which took 3hours. To our suprise and disappointment they didn´t offer anything to eat or drink for free during the flight :( It was almost midnight when we were out of customs and security, and we took a shuttle bus to the hostel where Denise had been staying the last couple of nights. It was so cold outside! It was also pretty cold in our dorm room and I couldn´t fall asleep.

Friday 13.4: Carla had set her cell phone alarm to wake us up at 7am but for some reason it had independently changed its time during the night so that we didn´t wake up until 9am. Denise had already been up for some hours and wondering where we were, and after eating cereal for breakfast we took a bus to the airport. We had booked a rental car online with Ezy Rentals and they picked us up from the airport to their nearby office. After waiting for them to get our car ready we began our road trip and headed to north! The first impression of NZ were weindy roads over mountains, lots of sheep and cows. I hadn´t imagined NZ being so different from Australia, which I was to fully discover the following days. We stopped to have lunch in Kaikura and I ate this very delicious sweet potato called kumara :P (I´ll go to look for them this weekend at Paddy´s Market. Hopefully they import them to Australia.) We spent the night in Picton, where we went out to eat for dinner.

A view from the car

Saturday 14.4: We woke up pretty early to go to buy breakfast from this Dutch bakery next to our hostel. I bought delicious dark rye bread and two sandwitches to eat during our hike at Queen Charlotte Track. We took a boat to Ship Cove, the end point of a long hiking route along the shore of river called Queen Charlotte Sound. Since we couldn´t finish the whole route in just one day we were to be picked up along the way at the end of the day, and we were debating whether to walk only 15km to Furneaux Lodge or try to make it to a further stop, which would´ve been 27km. We aimed to walk the longer distance and started our hike with decent pace. The beginning of the walk was first climbing up some rather steep hills and then going down. We stopped to take lots of pictures at various lookouts. During our hike we crossed someone´s private land and despite of that part the views were beautiful. Denise made friends with this little bird - Justin - that kept following us for quite a long while :) The weather was really good during the whole day: sunny and warm enough to wear just a tank top while walking. I think we slowed down a bit during the easy flat part of our walk, and decided not to try to make it further once we arrived in Furneaux Lodge. That was because they had certain pick-up times and if we hadn´t gotten there in time we would´ve been left behind. So instead we ate our lunch outside and then had coffee at this cafe. After taking a boat back to Picton (and seeing dolphins on the way - pictures didn´t turn out that good) we drove to Motueka, where we spent our next night.

On Queen Charlotte track

Another picture

Denise and I eating lunch

Chocolate <3

We celebrated Easter yesterday. First Tim, Moy, Cameron and I went out to eat. We took a train to St James and walked to Kings Cross. It isn´t hard to imagine why you shouldn´t be walking alone in that area when it´s dark :/ It was interesting seeing new areas, though, since now that I´ve been here for 2months most places I go to have already become familiar to me. We made it safely to this nice restaurant next to the water fountain. It took a while to get our food, but it´s just a good way to grow appetite! My chicken breast salad was delicious :P After dinner we had heaps of dessert waiting at home... I think it was Carla coming up with the idea of hiding Easter eggs. So we all bought chocolate eggs for each other and hid them in the loundry room. Even though the room is so small it took a while to find all of the eggs! Renar had the hardest time finding one being hidden behind the microwave. Then we spent the rest of the night playing Millionare-card game and eating chocolate. I´ve still got a huge bag of chocolate left :D

I´ve got a Finance mid-term exam today, and I should be studying instead of writing my blog. But I just can´t focuse anymore :/ I´ve done a few practice quizes and prepared a cheat sheet (you´re allowed to bring one A4-sized cheat sheet to the exam). Fortunately I´ll have some more time to study tomorrow.

I´m so excited about leaving for New Zealand on Thursday! Denise and Carla have done most of the planning, because... I don´t actually know. Maybe because I´ve been at the uni or at the gym. Anyways, I´ve been shopping a bunch for the trip (the shoes and clothes will be useful also in Tasmania, at Gold Coast and where ever I´ll be traveling :) Yesterday Carla and I went to hiking stores in Town Hall. They had Easter sales and I ended up buying hiking sandals (these really pro ones) and a rain coat. In one of the stores I met the first Finn here so far. I was explaining to Carla how most of my hiking stuff is in Finland and he overheard it and started talking to me in Finnish. He was from Oulu and had gone to Kastelli middle school (my high school). World really is a small place!

Today I´ve been doing nothing but studying, and I went to the gym to get a new program. I didn´t have to do it yet but I´ve got a feeling it´s gonna be a killer! I´m happy I needn´t run anymore, though. I don´t like the treadmill. And the treadmill doesn´t apparently like me. A week ago I decided to be "smart" and minimize my time of running. I stepped onto the sides of the treadmill and increased the speed until it was going really fast. Then I hopped onto the treadmill and fell instantly on my stomach! It took me a while to crowl over and stop the machine. Other people were either looking worried or laughing at me. I guess I must´ve looked really funny lol. My knees are quite messed up, though; bruised and bleeding. Well, I think I should stopping writing this nonsense and get back to studying. Or maybe I´ll have some dinner...

I miss the sauna!

It´s so cold in here :( Now you can really feel its getting winter. Even though I still spent some time in Victoria Park studying and sunbathing in bikinis this week, days in general are getting colder and rainier. The temperature is still around 17C but it feels colder, especially when it gets dark at around 6pm. And I´ve got almost no long sleeve shirts or long pants. Well, another good reason to go shopping ;) But for real, it´s cold in our house. There´s a 2cm-high hole under our outside door and you can feel cold air getting in through windows. Yesterday I made a transition to my warm quilt, which is so royal! When Silja was here we tried to find her a mattress to sleep on in Kmart but they had none, so we bought this king size thick winter quilt instead. It´s funny having a single size bed but a king size quilt. Also, Tim was laughing at me yesterday night wearing my long pyjamas, whool socks (what a great invention they are!) over them and a fleece. When it gets even colder I´ll have to invest on a heater to put in my room. I´ve been telling people here how well our houses in Finland are build and that we´ve actually got central heating to keep us warm enough to wear t-shirts inside during the winter, and they think it´s cool. Most Australians have never experienced proper winter and they have a hard time understanding it can get below -30C in Finland and keep asking how it feels like. The funnist question I´ve been asked so far was about our winter jackets: A girl from my financing class asked how many days it gets to dry them after washing them. (She imagined them being really really thick.)

Anyways, back to stuff that might actually interest someone... Yesterday morning I went to the opening of a new floor at the Broadway Shopping Centre. (It´s our nearby mall where we do our grocery shopping, go to the movies and often shop for clothes, too.) They handed out free big Cadbury chocolate bunnies and mini chocolage eggs. I also got a free Johnson&Johnson goody bag with some flu medicine, lotions, soap etc. The nicest store at the new floor is definately Target. I liked it in the US, too. The other stores are mostly fashion stores, including Forever New where I saw a really pretty winter coat. I didn´t buy anything there but decided to stop by at Rebel Sport on my way to the UTS library. They were having really good Easter sales and since I really needed new sports clothes I bought three tops and a pair of shorts. Then I walked to the library to search for references for my Olympic Games literature review. I´ve never done a literature review before. What we gotta do is find 10 references, review them seperately and write a conclusion of them. The most important part is choosing good references that give you a large picture of the subject from different perspectives. My topic is ambush marketing at the Olympic Games, which seems interesting.

Today I´ve been just working on our International Marketing major project and studying for a Finance mid-term exam. The project is almost identical to the one we did for Corporate Planning (yrsu) last autumn. The only difference is that this time we´re in connection with the company and they might even find our report useful while planning their expansion to international markets. Our company is a small one producing shelves and cases and its intention is to begin exporting to the UK. So far the manager has been helpful providing us with information and answering our questions, but now he refuses to give us any financial information, such as balance sheets and income statements. Since we´re required to come up with a financial plan I´m a bit afraid we´re screwed :(

Easter Show

We began celebrating Easter on Thursday by going to the Easter Show at the Olympic Park. It was me, Tim, Shinae and Cameron going. Shinae had to leave early, though, to catch a bus to Melbourne. Carla and Madeleine (a Dutch girl) joined us later. The show was a lot bigger than I had thought! All the exhibitions, shows, competitions and stands were spread around at the Olympic venues. It was interesting seeing the Olympic Park; I have to go there again on a normal day to take a proper tour. First we walked around to see some stands and I found a place selling those 1m-long licorice strings, that I always used to buy at markets and any events as a kid. I´m so happy they´ve actually got licorice here since it´s my favorite candy (after chocolate, of course) :P We spent quite a while with farm animals: cows, pigs, lamas, sheep, chicken, birds, horses... I even got to milk a cow for the first time in my life. Then we found our way to a fashion show. The models were so tall and skinny and good looking! They were presenting normal autumn clothes, as well as some really glamorous evening gowns, and I actually got a few ideas of what to wear with some of my clothes. Even though the guys didn´t mind watching the show, either, I think they were happy when we got to the wood chopping contest place. There were big men competing in cutting large pieces of wood half. It was amazing how quickly they could do that! After the competition was over we waited for a while for Carla and Madeleine, who didn´t find the stadium but joined us later. We went to look for some more stands and I bought a red Champion sweatshirt at half price. At a Nokia stand Tim persuaded Cameron to join him for a picture which was made to look like a cover of "My Girlfriend" - magazine ;) By that time we all were starving and purchased some over priced nachos and Nando´s chicken burgers. After eating and listening to some band it was logical to go to look for some free dessert: food samples :) We found a whole place of food stands and tasted chips & salsa (I burned my mouth with too spicy salsa, haven´t experienced such pain in ages), cake and candy. From there we headed to the showbag place. Showbags are bags full of goodies and it actually makes a good deal buying them. They had different kinds of bags; toys, chocolage, candy, maganizes, girls etc... I bought a $6-bag full of licorice, while the other girls went for girly bags.

I and Tim on a big slide

Lamas

Wood chopping contest

It had gotten dark already and we decided to go to the amusement park area. I like the athmosphere at amusement parks; people having a good time going on rides, trying to win prizes playing games, eating junk food and just walking around. I went on two rides with Tim and Cameron. Both of them were cool! I hadn´t been on rides for some 5years and was a bit nervous of possibly getting sick, since people seem to get sick easier as they grow older. Fortunately I was just fine, but Tim got sick during our second ride. He had to miss the ferries wheel, where Carla and Madeleine joined us, too. Just as we began our ride they started fireworks! We were lucky to be stopped at the highest point where we could see the fireworks really well. By the way, approximately 10 proposals take place in the ferries wheel each year. It was getting pretty late so we decided to take the train back home. Tim and I watched the movie Little Miss Sunshine, and then we had an interesting conversation about cultural differences, languages, education systems, different religions and about just everything, till 3am.

Fireworks on top of a stadium

Go Geegal!!

The Annual Residents´ Sports Cup was held on Saturday at Sydney Boys High School. It was the three UTS residences - Geegal, Gumal and Bulga - competeting against each other in various different sports and games. Some of the events were basketball, pingpong, soccer, mini marathon, egg carrying, fun relay and limbo. The cup started at 11 but since we had had a late night on Friday we decided to sleep in and catch a bus later. Shinae, Carla, Cameron and I got there after noon, just in time to see soccer games. I didn´t really want to participate a lot - not because of having had hangover (I never do) but because I don´t like playing games - so I just sat on the grass, enjoyed the sunshine and watched the events. I ran the mini marathon and carried a tank as a part of the relay, though. We were given Subway sandwitches and cookies and I ate a way too much of them! Unfortunately Geegal didn´t win many of the events. We had significantly less people than the two other teams, but both the Best Female Athlete and the Best Male Athlete - Denise and Ricky - come from Geegal :) They did extremely well on the limbo, being the last ones left to compete against each other. Ricky was also really spirited as a "Geegal Eagle" - flying around with these green things tied to his arms. So we had a nice day outside, and even decided to walk back home.


Ricky, Denise and the rest of Geegal team competing

On Sunday I worked on some uni stuff. It was Renar´s turn to cook flat dinner. He had been worried about not knowning how to cook, but for no reason: His prawn sauce was so delicious :P He also picked up spicy honey chicken from some take away place, and with rice it made up a tasty dinner. We really have a group of talented cooks living in our flat! After dinner Tim and I went to Darling Harbour for his friend Katie´s farewell party. We were 3hours late, though, so we only got to spend around an hour with them until they decided to leave home. We felt still like doing something so we walked to the Casino. It´s a rather small (compared to the casinos in Las Vegas) complex of a hotel, a casino, some restaurants and a conventional store. We walked around in the casino and Tim spent $20 on rulet. There were lots of Japanese and Chinese tourists there but other than that it was pretty quiet. We bought ice creams and walked back home. It was a nice night: not too cold or windy. We watched a movie, whose name I forgot. (It was something related to labyrints.) It was a Spanish movie and it was nice recognizing some words every now and then even though I´ve only taken Spanish for half a year.

I had my last lectures today before a holiday :) It´s Easter this weekend followed by the Vice-Chancellors´ Week. Since I´ll miss a few lectures and tutorials because of going to New Zealand I won´t have any teaching for over 3weeks! I gotta work a lot on my assingments, though. They aren´t due until late April or May but since I´ll be traveling a lot I need to work on them whenever I´m home. By the way, I got my International Marketing individual case assignment back last week. I got 17/20 which I think is 85%. It´s not the best possible grade but good enough considering it was my first assingment here. Besides, I´m not even aiming to be a good student here: I didn´t come all the way to Australia to study, but to gain new experiences and have fun :D And no matter where you are, I don´t think your life should be only about performing well and achieving goals such as studying and career, but also about finding time to do things you enjoy. I´m not claiming I wouldn´t enjoy being ambitious with my studies, and with my career after graduating, but I don´t want it to be my single life goal. I think Sydney is a good place to refind the other goals...

Harbour Cruise

Tim had asked us to join him at a IT students´ harbour cruise, which we of course wanted to do! After some hassle with getting tickets (Tim had forgotten to buy them and they got sold out. Fortunately Andrew was able to get us some in the last minute) it was me, Carla, Denise, Tim, Andrew and Cameron going. Carla and I met the rest of the gang at the Opera House Wharf. The boat - Blue Moon - was pretty big with two inside floors and a top floor. There were two bars and dance floors. It was just good for 200people. Free wine and beer was included. Since I´m not a big fan of wine I ended up drinking mostly vodka mixed with lemonade, coke or juice (the cheapest drink you can get anywhere). You could get two of those for $5. We were also given pizza, which tasted so good :P The cruise lasted for 4hours and cruised around the Opera House, Luna Park, The Zoo and everything else that´s around there. The views were beautiful! We were pretty much just hanging around, getting drunk and talking. Tim and Cameron came up with a great idea of borrowing Carla´s camera and walking around taking pictures of random people. I´m still suprised they didn´t get hit by anyone... I haven´t seen the pictures yet but I believe there´re some pretty crazy ones of us, too ;)

The beauty girls ;P

I had to think twice before publishing this picture lol

The boat left us in Darling Harbour and we went to the official after-party club. Cameron and I seem to have a thing for tequilas since we had two each. I also drank a few shots of butterscotch and Baileys with Tim. After just having had one of them we started wondering what we might find at an upper floor that was closed. We sneaked to the stairs and ran upstairs. It was just another ordinary bar floor with a big window to a beautiful view over Darling Harbour. We stayed there having these conversations about life goals, leadership and - our all-time favorite topic - relationships. Once this security guy came right behind us but we pretended we didn´t notice him, so I guess he thought we were harmless and didn´t say us anything. The others were getting a bit annoyed at us, though, since they didn´t know where we were. So we sneaked back downstairs - for some reason people were whistling at us - and left for another club to find the rest of us. We danced for a while there before deciding to head to Geegal for some more drinks and food. It was five of us (Denise had had to leave earlier to take drunken Andrew home) and no taxis would accept an extra person. We were debating whether to walk home instead but ended up having two taxis anyways. In Geegal Tim made each of us drinks with vodka and orange juice and we sat in the loundry room talking and eating sandwitches. We had the weirdest drunken discussions ever! We were basically debating whether men check out each other´s penises or not, which lead to other related topics... We ended up going to bed at around 5am.

I´ll post some pictures as soon as possible!

Beauty Days

(Warning: Don´t read unless you´re interested in girly stuff lol)

Carla and I first came up with the idea of having a beauty day over a month ago, when we were walking out of the campus and this girl stopped us. She offered us this "deal": We had to pay her $80 in cash to get an invitation to get our hair done at this new hairdressers. It seemed like a reasonable price so we decided to go for it. It wasn´t after reading the invitation more carefully that we noticed we had to pay additional $60. Naturally, having already paid over half of the price we couldn´t cancel it. (Don´t tell me to read all contracts through before singing anything. I know!) So, since we were going spend that much on our hair we decided to have a proper beauty day with everything else, as well.

On Thursday we started with manicures in Chinatown. This lovely Chinese lady treated us and it felt so nice getting my nails cleaned and cut properly. We both went for the french manicures, which look cool! Then we took a bus to the Pitt Street Mall. Instead of being a mall building it´s a street full of stores. Carla was looking for a dress to wear at the Harbour Cruise the following day. She didn´t find one for the cruise but ended up buying this most beautiful evening gown! When walked into the store we both fell in love with the same dress - a black, long one with a chiffon skirt and sequins - and tried it on. Unfortunately I hadn´t the money to buy it even though it was on sale. We also had coffee, cake and ice cream at this nice indoor street cafe. Usually stores close as early as at 5-6pm here (as well as everything else: museums, cafes etc) but Thursday is late night shopping. It´s only on Pitt Street, though, which we didn´t know and tried to go to the Wynyard Mall, as well. Anyways, I was good saving my money and only bought a brown bag to go with these shoes I got some weeks ago.

Getting my nails done

Indoors shopping street at Pitt Sreet Mall

Our beauty day continued on Friday after lectures and going to the gym. We had booked make-up sessions at the Myers on Thursday. In order to get free make-ups we had to purchase products worth of $35. I needed a new lip pen anyways, so it was a good deal. These ladies worked on our make-ups for almost an hour: They did everything from foundation to lips. I love getting my make-up done by someone else, and it turned out looking good. From Myers we crossed the street to the hairdressers. I´ve never been to such a big and posh hairdressing place! There were over 10 people working there. I´m used to having a same person doing everything but these people were taking any available tasks. So I had different people choosing the color, dying my hair, giving me a scalp massage (which was really enjoyable) and cutting my hair. I went for a single brown color and got my hair cut quite a lot shorter than it used to be. The hairdressers was a really posh place! All the workers and customers were so trendy they almost made me feel like out of place. There were three men hairdressers and you could tell all of them were definately gay. One of them had moved here from Stockholm and we talked a bit in Swedish. They were offering customers champagne and chocolate covered strawberries, but by the time I was asked if I wanted to have anything they had run out of them. I had a nice cappucino, though. After our ultimate hairdresses experience we took some pictures outside the place, at an empty mall, before a security guard came to tell us to leave.