Fraser Island

Keiji and I took part in a 2-day tour in Fraser Island. They also offer self-drive tours for young people and I think I would´ve preferred one of those over our organized tour, but unfortunately we didn´t have time for a longer tour. Ours was good, though, and we saw all the main attractions...

Monday 23.7. A tour bus came to pick us up from our hostel quite early in the morning, and after picking up some more people we drove to the wharf to take a ferry over to Fraser Island. It´s the worlds largest sand island streching for 124kms, built of 600m deep sand, on which everything grows. It has been World Heritage listed since 1992 and they´re actually considering to begin restricting the number of tourists allowed to enter the island, to protect its nature. It definately is a beautiful island with diverse nature: long beaches, pristine lakes and green rainforests. Anyways, after spending half an hour on the ferry we arrived in the island, where our 4WD busses were waiting for us. Our tour bus was full: It was 48 of us altogether. I found a nice seat at the very back of the bus, accompanied by Vicky from London and these three British guys. Keiji sat next to some Asian guy right in front of us. All the driving tracks on the island are pretty narrow and really bumpy! That´s why all vehicles operating there must be 4WD, which is the only way to get around there, besides walking and landing on the beach with small aeroplanes.

Our first stop was at Wanggoolba Greek, where we took a 3km long walk through a sub-tropical rainforest. Our guide explained us about all the different vegetation on the island. It´s amazing how many different plants grow on the sand! The walk was really nice indeed. After finishing it we drove to Eurong Beach Resort for a buffee lunch. It was so many different dishes I can´t remember the last time I had eaten so much! After lunch we drove along the 75km long beach, which is also a highway. The speed limit is 80km/h, and there is actually quite a lot of traffic there with all the tour busses and smaller vehicles. Many people go fishing there, too. Our destination was Maheno Shipwreck, a rustic hull of an old ship. It was built in Ireland as early as 1904 and sailed between Sydney and Auckland (New Zealand) before serving as a hospital ship during WW1. It was purchased by a Japanese steel company in 1935, and they broke it in parts before intending to move it. However, it got broken so badly it couldn´t sail anymore and was left behind. So it ended up staying on Fraser Island, where it´s a tourist attraction nowadays. After taking pictures of the hull we drove to Eli Creek, which is a small river with shallow water. Many people walked in the water, but I was too lazy to take off my hiking boots (no idea why I had decided to wear them on such a warm day).

Rainforest at Wanggoolba Greek

Maheno shipwreck

Then it was time for our last activity; going to Lake Wabby. It was my favorite part of the whole tour! We drove there along the beach highway, and saw a whale swimming in the ocean. To get to the lake we had to walk some 2,5km on a sandy path. The lake was absolutely beautiful: a high sand hill, clear (green) water and green rainforest on the other side. The sun was shining and the lake was very well sheltered from wind. I wish I had been wearing my bikini since I would´ve loved to go swimming. Keiji and I walked up the sand hill to walk on wide sand dunes behind it and take some pictures. I also kept climbing up the hill and running down to the water, which was a lot of fun! Too soon it was time to head back to the bus. We walked back bare feet across Hammerstone Sandblow, which was a nice sandy path.

Lake Wobby

Running on sand dunes

Back at the resort we checked in to our rooms, which were really nice. Keiji and I shared a room with a British couple. After taking showers we had the most delicious buffee dinner with meat, pasta, fish and chicken, and pudding for dessert :P Then we spent the rest of the night at Beach Bar chatting with our room mates, Vicky and another couple from South Africa. They had been traveling a lot around the world and had many interesting stories to tell. Since the most popular animal on the island is dingo, and you´re supposed to run into them all the time (according to all the warning signs that you can find everywhere) I had excepted to actually see some. I was a bit dissappointed I hadn´t, so I convinced the others to come to the dark beach with me for a dingo search before going to bed. Unfortunately we saw none.

Tuesday 24.7. It felt so luxurous waking up in the morning and getting out of bed without feeling cold! After a big English breakfast (bacon, eggs, beans, toast, sausages, fruit etc) we drove to Indian Head, which is a rock formation and one of the islands best lookouts. The weather was once again excellent and we spent an hour just climbing up there and sitting around enjoying the view. It was quite a long drive there, so on our way there we stopped to take some more pictures of the Maheno ship during low tide, and on our way back we took a look at the Coloured Sands. They were basically just rock formations with different coloring. Then it was time to enjoy our last delicious meal, which was barbeque lunch, and we bought ice cream for dessert.

Indian Head

This day was a lot less busy than the previous one. We drove to Lake McKenzie. I thought I wanted to swim so I changed to my bikini, all prepared to enjoy the beach. But when we got there it was pretty windy and the sun kept going away. So I kept my clothes on, and we left for a walk with Keiji and Vicky. We didn´t get far, though, but ended up sitting on the sand a bit further away from all the other people (it was quite a lot of tourists there). We spent the whole time just chatting and enjoying the view. The lake was beautiful indeed with the bluest water and whitest sand ever. Our guide told us the water has such a low hp-level it actually cleans and conditions your hair just as well as any shampoo. And the white sand can be used to clean jewellery, because it´s 98% silicon. Unfortunately I had no jewellery with me so I couldn´t try.

Lake McKenzie

After staying at the lake for almost two hours it was time to end our tour and drive back to the ferry. We got to spend some more time on the bumpy roads. Just as we got back to the bus it started raining. I can´t believe how lucky we were with the weather! The weather forecast had promised cloudy and rain for both Monday and Tuesday, but instead we had sunshine :) It definately made the tour a lot more enjoyable and left me with a really good impression about Fraser Island. So, we took the ferry back to Hervey Bay and we dropped off at our hostel, where we had some dinner and watched one last movie; Remember the Titans.

Relaxing on Fraser Coast

(I´m alive :D I´ve been receiving some messages asking if I´m alright. A 24-year-old Finnish girl was killed in a car accident in Sydney a couple of days ago, which naturally makes people concerned.)

So now to my trip to Fraser Coast...

Thursday 19.7. My flight to Hervey Bay (the town where you fly to when you travel to Fraser Coast) was in the early afternoon. I took an airport shuttle bus to Fraser Roving - backbackers, which is located on Esplanade, the main street right along the 15-km-long beach. I had to wait for Tim and Renee to arrive from their Fraser Island tour, so I crossed the road and went to check out the beach. I spent a few hours just sitting on a wharf enjoying the warm weather and beautiful view. When Tim and Renee arrived I walked to Spar with Tim to buy some snacks before dinner. He had to go back to the hostel to call work, so I took a short walk along the beach before going back, as well. They served all-you-can-eat Mexican food at the hostel every night and we were originally planning on eating it. But since all the tables were located at outside areas and it was pretty cold, we ended up going to this Chinese restaurant instead. After coming back I joined this Irish couple to watch a movie in the TV room. I forget the name of it, but it was a good one anyways.

Friday 20.7. Tim flew back to Sydney in the morning. Renee and I woke up pretty early to catch a lift to the bus station, from where we took a bus to Maryborough. It´s a small historical town 30km from Hervey Bay. First we went to the visitor centre, where this friendly lady gave us a map for a self-guided tour around the town harbour. On our walk to the harbour we saw a fountain and some old, nice looking buildings. We spent some time walking around in Queens Park, which is next to Mary River. It´s a nice park with a railway passing right through it. We found this cafe with a sunny terace and had cappuccinos enjoying the sun and view over the river. Our walk continued to Wharf Street, where all the museums are located. We went to an over-priced small war museum to learn about Australia´s involvement in the World Wars and the Iraq War, together with the UK. There were mostly old uniforms, badges and other small stuff there. Our next stop was Heritage Museum, which was nothing special to be honest. We decided not to go to any more museums but to have lunch at this bar instead. Our table was located outside, in the sun and sheltered from wind. I asked for their healthiest food and got fried fish. It tasted pretty good, though. After lunch it was time for some dessert: We walked to this little idyllic candy store. The lady was friendly and gave us lots of fudge and ice cream samples. I bought some really good Dutch licorice :P We bought ice cream and walked back to the harbour to sit on a wharf and enjoy the sunshine. We ended up laying on the wharf for almost an hour and I actually fell asleep. When I closed my eyes I could easily imagine being in Finland: Feeling the warm, but not hot sun on my face, listening to the sounds of the river, birds and a lawn mover... After relaxing we decided to take the bus back to Hervey Bay and started walking towards the bus stop. On our way there we saw our bus and succesfully sprinted to the bus stop to catch it. In Hervey Bay we walked along the beach for a couple of hours and saw a beautiful sunset. We also saw some birds (cannot recall what they´re called but will attach a picture). After our walk we cooked a simple dinner; pasta and vegetable sauce and watched a movie, Oceans 12. Now we´re all ready to go to the movies to see Oceans 13 :)

Queens Park

Birds (pelicanes?) in sunset

Saturday 21.7. Since we had no special plans for the day we slept in. I had a nice breakfast moment sitting outside by the pool before we left to do some sightseeing. The weather was warm and sunny, just like the previous days. First we walked to Botanical Gardens. I don´t think we quite found the right place, though, because the park area was just a pond surrounded by grass and bushes. I´m used to linking the word Botanical Gardens (they seem to have them almost in every town) to planted flowers and other plants. Anyways, we sat by the pond for a while before heading towards the Urangan Harbour. We stopped by at Woolworths to buy some snacks before finding this big circular wharf made of stone, surrounding boats. We walked around it, took some pictures and sat down for a few minutes. Then we began walking along Esplanade to this really long wharf. It was as long as 686m and was used as a trailway for exporting and importing goods until 1985. It actually used to be even longer. There was a shark museum pretty close to the wharf, and we decided to go in, even though it costed $12. The main attraction was a frozen white shark that had been catched in 1983. It was in a freezer with windows. The other stuff included lots of pictures and newspaper articles about sharks, two videos, some teeth etc... By that time I was getting really hungry, so we didn´t stay there for very long. We walked back to our hostel along the beach. I think we ended up walking at least 15km that day. After lunch we checked out a few souvenir shops and bought some postcards. Then we sat by the beach for a while looking at the sunset before going back to the hostel to cook dinner and watch another movie; Traffic.

A long train wharf

Threatened by shark teeth

Sunday 22.7. Renee flew back to Sydney in the morning, and Keiji arrived at around 10am. We headed straight to a beach cafe to have cappucinos, and then found some beach chairs to just relax in the sunshine. Since Keiji hadn´t seen the long train wharf yet we walked there and back along the beach. The weather was really nice and we walked in the water. After coming back we prepared a grill lunch at the hostel. It was just some vegetables and majonese on top of toasted bread. I gotta admit I´m not really good at grilling, but the food tasted pretty good anyways. After lunch we walked at Esplanade and sat at a small cafe, just chatting and hanging around. When it started getting dark we went back to the hostel to pack our stuff for a Fraser Island tour, cook dinner and (what a suprise) watch a movie. We watched Wimbledon, which was really cute indeed.

Enjoying the sunshine

Escaping the cold

Last week was really cold in Australia. On Tuesday Sydney had its coldest day within the past 21 years! It was just around 3-10C but it felt a lot colder because of the wind. I was unfortunate and temporarily had to work at George Street store on Monday and Tuesday. It´s one of those stores that miss one of the walls, so it was basically like working outside. It was freezing :( I was wearing a winter jacket and mittens, which made some customers wonder if I actually worked there or not... It wasn´t much better at home. Even though I had my heater on all the time it was freezing in my room, as well as in the loundry room. Everyone keeps telling me that coming from Finland I should be used to the cold. What they don´t understand is that we don´t have to freeze ourselves inside because our houses are built properly and have central heating. That´s something I´ve always taken for granted but will really appreciate when I return home!

So, to escape the cold I decided to travel to Fraser Coast in Queensland. It was originally Renee´s idea to go there, and when Tim decided to join her I wanted to go, too. I couldn´t change my work roster within such a short notice to go at the same time with them, though. So they flew there 3 days before me to take part in this self drive Fraser Island tour. I got there Thursday afternoon to meet them for a dinner together. Tim flew back to Sydney the next day and I spent the following 2 days with Renee. She left on Sunday morning, when Keiji arrived and stayed with me until Wednesday morning. (I know, lots of people arriving and leaving at different times!) I had a nice trip altogether, and will write more about it later...

Exam results were released last Wednesday, which was a day of dissappointment for me :( I knew my total grade for the Olympic Games, and I since I had messed up that one group project didn´t expect a good grade for Finance. But I had gotten good marks for International Marketing and Global Strategic Management projects (85-92%) and had had a good feeling after the final exams, too. I had written quite a lot to each question thinking I knew the correct answers. I´ve always done pretty well in writing essay answers at LUT. Apparently they except something totally different here :/ I might contact the lecturers of those two subjects to ask what I did wrong at the exams. So here´s a summary of my final grades:

The Olympic Games: 77% (Distinction)
Fundamentals of Business Finance: 72% (Grade)
International Marketing: 77% (Distinction)
Global Strategic Management: 73% (Grade)

Tim did a lot better in his subjects, which means I lost the bet and will have the honour the take him out to dinner at the Sydney Tower. Being so competitive I naturally feel dissappointed loosing the bet, but I´ve decided to be a good loser and make the most out of our fancy night :) The view from Sydney Tower will be worth seeing, and I´m looking forward to dressing nicely and having a good dinner. Afterwards we´ll go somewhere else (cheaper) for deserts and cocktails. So even though the bet didn´t turn out as I had hoped (=winning) we´ll for sure have a good time :)

The spring semester begins on Monday. I spent quite a lot of time deciding which subjects to take. It´s kinda weird since previously I´ve just simply gone through the Study Guide and chosen what ever subjects have been required or have seemed interesting. This time I really had a hard time picking my subjects and kept changing them till the beginning of this week. I´m all set now. I ended up taking only 3 subjects, because I wanna have time to do other things besides studying and working. I´ve got the Finance System, Economics of the Firm and Chinese 1. Starting to learn Chinese may seem as a weird choise, but it actually makes sense to me. Firstly, China is economically an emerging country providing lots of business and work opportunities in the future. Secondly, being here for half a year and getting to know many Asians has risen my interest towards the Asian culture. Naturally I can´t tell where I´ll be or what I´ll be doing in a few years time, when I finally graduate, but working in Asia for a couple of years doesn´t seem like an impossible option. There´re a lot of job openings for uni graduates in Singapore, Hong Kong and even in Beiging, and living in some totally different country seems exciting!

Anyways, I bet I´ll write more about my future plans and thoughts later on (if you for some reason happen to be interested in knowing them lol)... Now it´s time to get ready for a pub crawl from here to the Rocks :D

Movie and Nicholson Museum

I had a nice day with Kwang today :) We met at 10am to go to see the movie West at a cinema in Newtown. Even though the idea of going to see a movie that early may seem weird, those day shows aren´t actually a bad idea. The movie told about troubled youngsters in West Sydney. It was good seeing an Australian movie, and I even recognized a few of the places. After the movie we went to this cute little cafe and had the most delicious cappucinos! I really like finding new cafes to go to, either to talk with a friend or read a newspaper or magazine on my own. Then we walked through University of Sydney campus to Nicholson Museum. The campus is really nice with beautiful old buildings and large grass areas. It kinda reminds me of campuses in the UK, that I´ve seen in pictures. Sydney Uni is the oldest university in Sydney, and when it was built there weren´t many other buildings around so they had enough space for a nice and large campus. Unlike later when the UTS city campus was built and they had no choice but to make it just a single tall ugly building (they could´ve chosen different material but grey stone, though). The location of the UTS campus is excellent, though!



At the University of Sydney campus


There were lots of prehistoric things at the Nicholson Museum: mummified remains of people and a cat, coffins, vases, statues... Most of them were from Greece, Cyprus, Rome and Egypt, and were as old as 1000 BC. I could recall familiar names such as Popeii and Tutankhamon. I was suprised there actually are that many prehistoric artefacts in Australia! After explorering the museum we both were hungry and decided to look for a nice restaurant in Glebe. We ended up eating cheap but delicious pasta meals at an Italian restaurant. Then I headed home to get ready for gym, and now that I´m home from gym I´m just sitting in my room... I´m planning on spending the night laying in my bed reading a girly maganize :)
Mummies at the Nicholson Museum

Australian Museum

I´m so impressed, I just keep writing my blog... So much text (and so bad English) today. I just got back from the gym, where Michael showed me some new workouts. So cool stuff; I´m gonna have a good time training :) Seriously, I´ve been kinda lazy with training lately :/ I´ve been going to the gym 4 times a week, but not really pushing myself to get any better.

Yesterday I went to the Australian Museum with Renee. Since it´s school holiday this week there were a lot of kids there. First we went to see skeletons. They had naturally a lot of Australian animals, like kangaroos and whales, but also a dinosaurus and some humans. The most interesting section was the Indigenous Australians. It was mostly their artwork and poles, and things used for their ceremonies. We spent quite a lot of time reading the info tables. The British colossianism (that´s not the correct word) really harmed the indigenous tribes that have lived in Australia for as long as 60 000-120 000 years. They were tried to prohibit from passing their culture to next generations by taking children away from their parents and placing them in white families or state institutions. The indigenous people were strictly controlled: where they could live and work, whom they could have relationships with, where they could travel to... They weren´t given equal rights as Australian citizens until in 1969! And even though they´re theoreticly equal now, they still face some trouble. Their culture, beliefs and art are fascinating, though. During the colossianism they were introduced to the Christian religion and they actually managed to merge Christianity to their own Aboriginal religion, which is based strongly on respecting the land surrounding them. From the ground level we climbed to level 2 that was birds and insects, which we didn´t find that interesting. Level 1 was minerals. They´re so colorful and beautiful! Many of them seemed to come from America, but also from India and Europe. It´s too bad I can´t remember a lot from my geography classes at high school, since actually seeing all the minerals would´ve complimented to what I´ve learned. I didn´t know Australia is so vulcanic.

Skeletons - human riding a horse

Pukumani poles - represent dead persons

Colorful minerals

I worked from 5 till 9. We did stock take and had a lot of people working. We had to count and scan every single item in the store! The scanners were annoying. We did a good job, though, and finished an hour earlier than planned. Kwang wanted to go to eat a steak meal to Scruffy Murphys and I joined him to have a cup of coffee. We ended up sitting there and chatting till almost midnight, after which I walked home and had really late dinner.

Goodbyes Part 2 & Giordano fashion

It turned out I don´t have a fixed work schedule, which is cool. I like alternating working morning and evening shifts, and next week I´m even going to work in another store on George Street. So I had Monday off. I spent the early afternoon taking care of some things: sorting out my enrollment for next semester subjects (had to go to the business faculty and language center), printing and putting up announcements about selling my old books, paying next semesters rent (gotta pay it with different credit cards on several days because of withdrawing limits), going to the bank etc... Later in the late afternoon I went to the gym to try out their new yoga/dance fusion class. It was mostly some simple ballet moves, plies and such, and lots of streching. The teacher was good and I enjoyed it :) Last week I had promised Keiji to go to this Korean restaurant with him on Monday evening, before knowing that people were going to Hurricanes for Shinae´s farewell dinner. Fortunately Keiji was happy to change the plans so we all went to Hurricanes together instead. It was 9 of us taking the train and bus to Bondi. Since Hurricanes is a popular restaurant we had to wait for a while before getting a table. It was worth it, though, because the ribs and chips were delicious :P I don´t remember the last time I ate anything that unhealthy, but it tasted so good lol. Bondi beach looked a lot different now that it´s winter. It was dark, cold and windy and everyone was freezing while waiting for the bus. I had thought I wouldn´t really need my new long winter coat until back in Finland but it was so good to have that evening! After coming back home we sat in the lounge room for a while. Since Shinae left early on Tuesday morning we had to say goodbye to her. She had made everyone so cool cards with pictures of the person and her on them :) Our picture was taken when we had just arrived in Sydney, on a ferry coming back from Manly. Tim and Cameron stayed up all night with Shinae and took her to the airport in the morning. I had to go to bed quite early because I worked on Tuesday morning. It´s weird not having Shinae around anymore :/


Martin, Carla, Keiji, Cameron, Carlos, Tim, I, Nign Nign and Shinae

On Tuesday at work Mel (our assistant manager) told me about our Giordano Fashion Show that was held that night in Darling Harbour. I had already made plans with Carla and Martin, but fortunately they understood I wanted to attend the show, so we agreed on postponing "Pancakes in Geegal 2" till Sunday. So after work and going to the gym I met Mel, Kwang and Steven (our new workers) and Craig (our boss) to walk to the show together. It was held upstairs of this club and the view over Darling Harbour was beautiful! The room was reserved for us, and we were given free drinks and some proper snacks (meat, fish, calamari...) I ended up walking from tray to tray, pretending like I was talking to people, but really just eating lol. There were workers from all Giordano stores and everyone seemed nice. The fashion show was about to introduce us the new spring clothes: lots of tunics and long shirts with tights, some cool bags, hoodies... I already have a feeling our new monthly 50%-off coupons will come to good use for me :) I left pretty early to walk home and my mother called me while I was walking so I didn´t even get bored on my way.

Goodbyes Part 1

Looks like I haven´t updated my blog for the past week, meaning I´ve got a lot of writing to do now... Luckily I´ve got a couple of hours before leaving for the gym.

On Thursday last week Shinae asked me to join her to go to the NSW Art Gallery. I had already been there with Carla and Moy in February, but because of having the flu I hadn´t been fully able to enjoy all the artwork. So I had a good time going there again with Shinae. She knows quite a lot about art so she explained me some interesting things, especially about the Asian pieces. My favorite sections were the Chinese&Japanese art and paintings from the 1800th century. After spending a couple of hours at the gallery I took the train to Newtown to meet Carla and Martin for lunch. Martin picked a nice restaurant with delicious lunch specials. After lunch they headed to Bondi Beach and I decided to walk home and take a look at Newtown on my way. It´s basically a quite long street full of restaurants, cafes and shops (lots of second hand book shops). I bought a newspaper and stopped at a nice looking cafe to read it with a cup of cappucino. Later that day I went to Landsdown Hotel with Carla and Martin to meet Madeline and her boyfriend, who was visiting here from Holland. It was their last day in Sydney. It wasn´t time to say goodbye to Madeline yet, though, since after spending a month in Kuala Lumpur with her parents she´s coming back to Sydney for a day. After having a few drinks at Landsdown we decided to move to Broadway Hotel because there was a band playing pretty loudly at Landstown. I left to go home after midnight to go to bed in time.

NSW Art Gallery

A Chinese painting I liked

I, Carla and Martin in Newtown

Since Denise left to go on a cruise with her grandma on Sunday, and to fly to Texas straight from there, we had a farewell party for her on Saturday. Nign Nign had planned to host the party in the common room but everyone ended up staying at our flat after eating sausages that Tim griller for everyone (delicious with smashed potatoes). It was a typical Geegal party: lots of people and alcohol... We played kings, which seems to be our number one choice as a drinking game. Carlos was the unfortunate one to pick the fourth king this time and had to drink a disgusting mix of different alcohols. He ended up being fairly drunk and so funny, taking pictures of Adrian´s big belly, for scientific evidence he said lol. He wasn´t the only drunk person, though, as he, Tim and Cameron finished 4 bottles of vodka and gin. I didn´t feel like drinking so I had just one Baileys coffee, and drank Coke for the rest of the night. Later that night Adrian got really wasted and started misbehaving; stealing other people´s alcohol, throwing up on the floor and wanting to punch other guys. I haven´t written anything about him earlier, but living with him has been quite unpleasant. He´s messy (doesn´t do his dishes and leaves stuff laying around), smells really bad and just doesn´t take other people into consideration. Fortunately he´s moving out next week :D

Our Geegal group

Carlos and scientific evidence lol

I did nothing special during the weekend. Worked both days. On Saturday there was the Chinese Dance and Martial Art Festival at Market City. I went there a couple of hours before work to watch the performances. They looked cool with Chinese decorations, drums, dragons and dancers. Unfortunately I missed most of them because I had to work. It also was time to say goodbye to Denise on Saturday, which was weird. She and Andrew came to hang out with us for a while in the evening. On Sunday we watched Ugly Betty, as usually. Carla and I have had our TV days for the whole semester :) Our set schedule: Mondays Desperate Housewives and Brothers&Sisters, Wednesdays House and Medium and Sundays Ugly Betty. Laying on the couch, eating dinner, drinking tea and snacking TimTams, licorice or fruit salad. Anyways, last Sunday Renee (a new Dutch girl from Carla´s uni in Tilburg, who´s going to live in flat 2 this upcoming semester) joined us to watch the movie The Holiday. It was a cute romantic chick movie with a happy ending :)

Chinese performance

Dance class

It seems like I´ve gotten a regular working schedule: From Friday till Monday at 2-7pm. I like working 4 days straight and then having 3 days off, but I wish I had more morning shifts. It seems like the only smart thing to do before work is going to the gym, which I´ve been doing. Besides, I always work 15-30min overtime because of having to close the store. Oh well, I don´t wanna complain. I´m really glad I got the job and everything is still working out so well :) I´m looking forward to getting my first paycheck this week, too.

So, on Tuesday afternoon I walked to this tower restaurant, Orbit Lounge Bar, at Australia Square near Martins Place, with Denise and Cameron. We met Tim, Carla and Martin (Carla´s boyfriend who is visiting from Holland) there. Because the restaurant isn´t one of the cheapest ones we got just cafes, drinks and deserts. It has a spinning top on the 50th or so floor, overlooking Sydney. We sat there long enough to make a whole round and get a good look all around the city centre. It was a nice place, and the weather wasn´t too cold to walk back home, either.

Yesterday I met Antti Tiilikainen (from LUT) at Circular Quay for coffee. He had spent the past half a year studying in Auckland, New Zealand, and is visiting Australia on his way home. We went to the same Rocks Cafe I had been to with Carla last week. It was nice talking to someone from LUT, and in Finnish, again. We compared our experiences about studying, flatmates, traveling... He recommended going to Fiji with a friend so I think I´ll wait till I find someone having the time, money and interest in traveling there with me. In the meanwhile I´ll travel somewhere closer in Australia.

From the cafe I walked to the Warf to go to a jazz dance lesson at the Sydney Dance Company. I decided to go to a beginner level class because I hadn´t danced for a couple of years. It was over 100 people there! The class itself was fine, with a warm-up, a little bit of technic (pretty easy) and learning a new, rather fast paced coreography. But I didn´t like having all the people there :/ It was quite a lot of waiting in lines and watching others, and instead of having personal contact with people it was anonymous. Nothing compared to our nice little group at Sonja Tammela Dance School, everyone knowing each other, chatting... Of course, it might be different at higher levels, but I don´t think I´m going back there to find out. If I really wanna dance I´ll try to find a smaller dance school with smaller class rooms and more intime athmosphere. Here dance schools don´t seem to have fixed groups working on same coreographies and performing and competing, though. Instead they funtion more like gym group lessons, people just randomly attending any classes. Therefore they need to keep the coreographies rather short and start new ones every couple of weeks. I´d personally prefer having to sing up to be a member of a group, having all the same people and learning longer dance routines. But I guess this is a drawback of living in a big city; people are too busy to make the commitment. I actually missed the UTS gym while I was there. During these past months I´ve gotten to know the place; always say hi to the people working there and some other people, too. It´s always nice going there and seeing familiar faces around you :) So I´m actually looking forward to going there tomorrow before work.

Olympic Park

Since the weather seemed alright on Thursday morning Carla and I decided to visit the Olympic Park. We had already been there at the Easter Show, but we wanted to see how it looked like on a normal day. So we took the train to Homebush and a bus from there to the Olympic Park (saved $2 that way). First we went to the visitor centre to get a map of the area, and then just walked around. I think it would´ve been more interesting if we had done a guided tour so we could´ve actually gotten into the stadiums. Now we just went into this regular looking sportshall where some high schools were having a volleyball tournament and to the lobby of the Aquatic Centre. The most interesting thing were these poles in front of the Telstra Stadium. Each volunteer had his/her name on a pole, and the amount of volunteers had been huge! It´d be so cool being a part of the Olympic movement as a volunteer. Unlike in some other Olympic cities there´re no sports museums in Sydney, which is a shame. Now that I´ve taken the Olympic Games course I´d be interested in knowing some more info and facts about the Sydney Games. Parts of the Olympic Park were under renovation: They´re trying to improve the area so that it´ll better serve local people in terms of housing, sports facilities and employment. Environmental facts are taken into consideration, too, which is good. Since the weather had gotten worse, cold and raining, we had cappucino at a cafe and the walked to the Homebush outlet mall. We hadn´t much time for shopping, so we just walked around and took a look at all the stores. They´ve got some many different stores with lots of discount items! After taking the train home we went to the gym, and then it was time for our movie night. Denise and Till came over and we watched this movie whose name I cannot remember at the moment. Anyways, it lasted for almost 3hours and was a good one :)



The Telstra Stadium



Volunteer poles

On Friday morning Carla and I went to the hairdresser. We had looked around for a cheaper place, but since the prices seemed to be over $100 pretty much everywhere we decided to go back to our old place. It was a lot less crowded this time and we didn´t have to wait. The Russian girl who had picked my color last time actually remembered me and died my hair this time, too. It´s dark brown, and I also got it cut shorter. I really like the cut with lots of layers! Since Carla got highlights it took quite a lot longer for her, so I went to Medibank while waiting for her. On my way there I saw a Jigsaw store and went in. I had admired this beautiful winter coat at Myers before but had decided not to get it because it costed $400. Now they were having mid-year sales and the coats were 40% discount. Luckily they still had my size, and I could do nothing but get the coat :) So now I´ve got a coat to wear when I go back to Finland in the middle of the winter. I had to work that afternoon, but after I got back from work we played Monopoly with Carla, Denise, Till and Andwer. I lost (spent too much money on buying houses and couldn´t afford to visit Till´s hotels) and Carla won, after a long game.