History

Our Thursday morning wasn´t the most efficient one and we didn´t leave Geegal until noon. Silja had been reading someone´s blog who recommended a visit at Vaucluse House so we took a bus there. Since there aren´t that many historical buildings in Sydney it was definately worth spending an hour in the bus. The house was build in 1828 and is one of Australia´s finest mansions. It´s decorated like people of the 19th century were still living there, which made it really interesting. Wealthy families have obviously had comfortable homes already 200 years ago. They also seem to have quite a few family rooms each used at a different time of the day. We walked around in the house and the gardens surrounding it before taking a bus to St Mary´s Cathedral, which is located in the city centre, next to Hyde Park. The cathedral has an impressive roof, beautiful paintings and windows made of colorful glass pictures. It felt a bit weird there´s a tourist shop in a church, but it didn´t seem to bother the people praying there, and neither did all the tourists. Visiting both the house and the cathedral makes you think how much effort people have put into building impressive and beautiful buildings in the old days.

The Vaucluse House dining room

St Mary´s Cathedral

After having lunch and coffee at a food court at some mall we walked to Darling Harbour to visit the Sydney Aquarium. It´s one of the few places that are open late. Most museums, shops, cafes and restaurants at food courts close as early as around 6pm. The aquarium was great! The fish, reefs, seahorses and everything were really beautiful with their bright colors and unique shapes. Some of them even glow in dark making them look kind of unreal. I got to spot Nemo and his friend (from the movie Finding Nemo)! There were also sharks and crocodiles there. The sharks looked scary with their sharp teeth, especially getting to watch them from a tunnel build under the pool. I never knew some fish can grow as big as 180cm! And I don´t mean just sharks, but some pretty ordinary looking fish.

Crocodile with its warning sign :)

Beautiful sealife

Since we weren´t feeling too tired after visiting the museum we decided to take a train to Milsons Point, which is on the other side of the Harbour Brige and cross the bridge. It was a nice walk with a good view over Sydney. It´s hard to explain the feeling being in a big city at night and seeing all the skyscrapers and lights. I guess it has something to do with feeling kind of free but still like being a part of something. I like being surrounded by lots of people and activities (for most of the time) and opportunities to do whatever.

Standing on the Harbour Bridge

Art - fireworks and opera

On Tuesday we started the day with a fatburner class at the fitness centre to burn at least some of the calories we had gained eating the cakes the day before. After the class I was supposed to do some orientation sessions - Skills for Uni Life and Support Services - but I decided I could just as well skip them since I´m already an experienced uni student ;) So Carla, Silja and I took a bus to Circular Quay to see Queen Mary 2 - one of the world´s biggest cruise ships. It was huge and I once again decided that when I´m rich I´m going to go on a cruise on one of those ships! There were tons of people wanting to see the ship and some road was even closed for the occasion. It was said in the newspaper they had even added extra trains and busses that day but despite of that the public transportation was kinda messed up people having to wait for several hours getting home from work etc. I wonder how Sydney could handle a major event since its transportation can´t even come up having a cruise ship in the city.


Queen Mary 2

We left Silja dowtown for some shopping and took a bus - which took forever! - to the UTS to attend a welcome barbeque. There was no program despite of eating there. So we just sat on the grass eating salad, wraps, chicken and vegetables and chatting for around an hour before I met Silja again at the Paddy´s Markets. We headed to Kings Cross to walk around and saw a cool water thing. Other than that it was mostly nice looking pubs and restaurants where I want to go to sometime later. There were fireworks for Queen Mary 2 and another big cruise ship - Queen Elizabeth - at the harbour. We followed people to the harbour at Kings Cross, just to find out the fireworks were shot from Botanical Gardens and we could only see half of them because Queen Mary 2 was covering our sight. But the half we saw was spectacular! The fireworks lasted for 10 minutes and were so big, colorful and beautiful. After they were over I noticed I had just stayed there looking at them my mouth open - looking like an idiot :)

Carlos, someone, Moy, I, Carla and Shinae at the Welcome BBQ

A water fountain at Kings Cross

It was a sunny morning on Wednesday so we decided to head to Bondi Beach. It was Silja, Carla, Shinae, Moy and I going. I suggested dropping by at the UTS since they had a presentation day of all the clubs and societies. We got excited collecting all the free stuff - goodie bags, candy, pens, magazines, drinks etc... I found two associations for business students (I consider myself a business student here because I´m taking only business subjects) and joined one of them. I got the impression it does same kinds of things as guilds do in Finland - a mix of useful and fun events, such as company visits, excursions and parties. They seem to have a lot more religious and political clubs here - for example, I was asked to join a "Stop-the-US-war-In-Iraq"-club. Even though it took us over an hour to walk around the stands it was worth it because when we finally took the train and bus to the beach we were equipped with chips, chocolate, water and energy drinks :) We spent a couple of relaxed hours at the beach. Unfortunately waves weren´t that high so Silja didn´t get to experience how it feels like being thrown all around by them. (That´s what I did when I went to Bondi for the first time.)

Eating at the beach

After getting home from the beach Silja cooked us a delicious dinner of new potatoes with egg and onion sauce. Then we took part in the Cocktail Party for new international students at the UTS. Once again, we were just standing and walking around drinking wine, beer or juice. The dress code for the party was smart casual, which made me wonder why on earth some people showed up wearing t-shirts and thongs. We were wearing nice dresses, also because we went to the Opera House to see Sweeney Todd right from the party. It felt good going to see a musical at THE Sydney Opera House. Not everyone respected the situation, though, wearing just regular clothes that would be fine at the beach but not at the opera :/ Sweeney Todd was a thriller musical telling about a barber returning to London after being overseas for many years. He discovered his wife had dissapeared and his daughter was to be married to an evil judge. His intention was to kill the judge, accompanied by a baking lady. They found out a creative way to make the pie business boom but in the end almost everyone ended up dying because of various reasons. I couldn´t understand half of what they were singing (and neither could this American lady sitting next to me) but I had read the plot before hand so it was easy enough to follow anyways. The singing was really good, and so were the scenes and costumes! We really enjoyed the musical! From the Opera House we found our way to a German pub at the Rocks to join a pub crawl that had been going on for the previous 3 hours. Most people had already left home but we found most of the Geegalians there. We followed them to the final destination and bought a few drinks. We didn´t end up staying long but shared a taxi and got home at a reasonably low price: everyone paying just $3. (I had imagined taxi would be more expensive here.)

Silja and I in front of the Opera House

P.S I´ve been trying to add pictures but the internet connection is working too slowly at the moment. So just read the text and come back later to see some pictures.

Blue Mountains

I have a great week full of activities behind me and now I´m facing the fact that I have to write about everything, which is gonna be tons of work! I´ll start today and keep doing when ever I´ve got time this week... I hope you do read my blog so I´m not wasting my time with all of this writing. So it´d be nice to read some of your comments :) You have to register to write comments but you needn´t create your own blog. Oh well, I´m also writing this for myself so I´ll have a kind of journal of my exchange year. I used to write my personal diary (a traditional notebook) regularly but I haven´t done it properly for the last couple of years now. And anyways I write more about relationships, imporant (?) conversations, my thoughts etc... This is more like a trip journey!

Well, I guess I´d better get started... I had booked a trip to Blue Mountains with OzTravel for Monday. A bus picked us up in front of Geegal at 7:30am and cruised around downtown Sydney for over an hour picking up participants from different hotels. I didn´t mind it since it was a good tour of some areas I hadn´t seen before. Our tour group consisted of 21 people from different countries. Our guide was this man who liked to joke about everything. He did know some interesting real facts, as well, that he kept telling while we were driving. So, when we finally hit the highway we drove to this picknic area close to the mountains to have morning tea. Then we did a quick stop (all of our stops were quick - between 10 and 30 min) to see a kangaroo shaped engrawing some Aborginals had made years before. Our guide also told us about some plants. There are many different kinds of eucalyptus but picky koalas like only a few of them.

Our next stop was finally at the Blue Mountains, at Evans Lookout. We were at the second highest point and the view was amazing! I think pictures tell more than words so I won´t start describing how it looked like. We did this long, exhausting walk of as many as 2000 steps (sarcasm) to see Wentworth waterfall. At this point of the tour Silja and I had already began pretty unsatisfied because we were just taken from one bus stop to another and weren´t given any time to walk around. If we had known the tour consisted mostly of just sitting in the bus we would´ve taken a train there and done our own thing.




Wentworth waterfall

Anyways, after the walk it was time to sit in a train for a little while, which was probably the best part of the tour. We went to see the famous Three Sisters and were told the story behind the name. It was something about a witch doctor having three daughters who he ended up changing to stone so that they wouldn´t get married with these three guys. We took a scenic train to the floor of the canyon and walked a bit in the rainforest before taking a railway back up. The railway was originally built to take up coal from the mines but later it was turned into a transportation for people. It´s the world´s steepest inclined railway of 51 degrees!

The three sisters

We had lunch at the garden village of Leura. Silja and I found a nice market to buy some salad and fruits. The guide had been repeating we should hurry to do everything else so we´d have plenty of time to see kangaroos so I expected to spend some time seeing them. We drove to this park (and on our way there spotted a couple making out in the water in some pond) to see kangaroos. Since it had been half cloudy for the last couple of hours they weren´t too tired but were hopping around, eating and licking themselves to clean up. It was nice getting to see them so close! We were told kangaroo moms can have 3 joeys (baby kangaroos are called joyes, not sure about the spelling, though) at the same time, one of them living in the pocket. And if it´s pregnent but there isn´t enough food around it can stop the development of the baby for up to one year, until the food situation improves. I think it´s pretty amazing!

A kangaroo

Our last activity was driving through the Olympic Park. I think I´ll be introduced to the park more closely during one of my subjects, called the Olympic Games. We were dropped off at a ferry station there and took a ferry to Circular Quay. On our way on Parramatta River we some really posh houses. After the tour we went home to take a shower and met for a dinner in Darling Harbour. We felt like having some dessert, as well, so we went to upstairs at the mall there. We ate these huge pieces of carrot and tiramisu cake (worth $8 each) and had a nice chat with the owner of the cafe. He couldn´t believe we eat reindeer in Finland - after all, it´s Santa´s little helper :P

A posh house on Parramatta River

My Weekend

Ok, I admit, that´s the most boring title ever... But it´s past midnight and I´ve done a bunch today. I feel kinda obligated to write because I know I´ll be doing a lot during this week and if I leave all the writing till later there´s no way I´m gonna remember everything. By the way, if you´re wondering why I keep adding pictures so late, the reason is because I wait till I get pictures taken by other people as well, so I can choose the best ones to be published here.

Silja arrived here on Saturday and as I predicted we´ve been doing tons of things already :) It´s great having her here being a tourist with me! We´re interested in same kinds of things and like to do a lot and go from one place to another... I´m glad I don´t have too many uni sessions this week so I´m free to do whatever we decide to do.

On Saturday we met at Silja´s hostel, which is located close to Central Station, and took a bus to the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was my third attempt to go there (it had started raining the two previous times) and the weather was beautiful this time. First we did the Governmental House tour that was being held by this pretty old gentleman. He claimed he was fully Australian but he had quite a strong British accent that was so pleasent to listen. I usually consider tours boring if the guide just goes on and on explaining about some historical moments. But this man told some interesting facts about the Govermental House, which is now used by the governor of New South Wales (who is the first lady governor) when she has receptions for quests, balls etc. The house is rather small but looks majestetic and is decorated beautifully. We were told some details, like how they used to break the pool table into 60 pieces to take it with them to their summer residence, and how they´ve got some buttons under the dining table that they can use to ask for more wine. We were happy with the tour and learned some real facts about the Australian government, as well. After walking around in the gardens we went to the Rocks and tried to find a nice but resonably priced restaurant. There´re some old buildings and a market street there. Since Silja had been traveling for hours, doing a stopover in Kuala Lumpur, we headed back to our homes pretty early. I went for a run to some suburban area. I´m a bit scared to be outside alone when it´s dark so I stayed on streets with lots of lights and people. It felt good getting some proper exercise after being sick and not doing anything for 4 days!

The Governmental House

A fun looking plant

On Sunday we went to the Taronga Zoo. It was a very hot and sunny day so some of the animals were tired and hiding in the bushes but we got to see most of them. The zoo is pretty big and there´re so many different animals there! We saw the Australian animals - kangaroos, koalas, emus, krokodiles etc - and a bunch of other ones, too. There were animals of whom I had never even heard before that looked like a mix of two or more known animals :) (Unfortunaly I can´t remember what they´re called.) We watched two shows: a bird flight and a seal show. The birds were trained very well to fly and land to certain places and this dollar bird could even fly to pick up money and return it to this man from the audience. The seals were really skillful, too. Both of the shows were also educational to the children, about protecting the nature and not throwing trash on the ground. All in all, the zoo seemed to be taking good care of its animals (even though a few bears brought from cold areas looked like they were a way too hot) and collecting money to save animals and their living environments. We spent some 5 hours walking around in the zoo.

A giraff and a view over Sydney

After taking the ferry back to Circular Quay we went to our own places to take a shower and met again for a dinner. We had cheap $5 meals at Star Bar. Silja had a nice piece of chicken with vegetables but I ended up ordering just something, which turned out to be mash and sausages :/ From there we headed to the Domain (in the Botanical Gardens) to watch Tropfest. It´s the biggest short film festival in the World and definately worth going! There were tens of thousands of people there sitting on the grass, watching movies and having a pickic. The screen was a triangle, actually consisting of 3 screens, so people were spread around it. We met Anna, an Australian girl who I had met at the Language Skills session, and her friends and got to sit on their blankets. Even though we missed the two first films (because a bird pooped on Silja´s shoulder on our way there and we had to stop to clean her up) it was a great event! Each film was about 10min long and they showed the 18 finalists of the national competition. The films were really different from each other, varying from imagenary friends and humours dogs to killing and getting divorced/leaving your family/something. I haven´t seen many short films before but I think I should start watching them since I really enjoyed the event, or at least the athmosphere of it :)

Tropfest

Plagiarism

I really wanted to go to the beach on Thursday but since I wasn´t feeling too good I decided to take it easy and just go to a required orientation session, Academic Language Skills. It was meant both for international students and local first year students. During the 2-hour-long session we were lectured about academic writing (which is precise, consice, includes lots of nouns instead of verbs etc...) and shown some examples. I think I need to develop my academic writing skills in order to get good results for my subjects here. The ELSSA center offers intensive English courses, which I´m planning on taking. The lady also spent quite a while talking about plagiarism. I´ve always thought plagiarism means intentionally copying someone else´s text and using it as yours. But here they can accuse you of plagionarism if your references aren´t correct or if there just happens to be someone else coming up with the same idea or result you´ve figured out. They´ve got this software that compares your text to any other text and if it finds too many similarities (ie same words) you have to explain your actions to some board. I was feeling frustrated listening to that. She even showed some examples of what it being considered plagionarism here and that´s exactly what we´ve been doing at LUT all the time without being accused of anything. So I think I´ll have some interesting moments writing my assingments...

I didn´t do a lot for the rest of the day on Thursday. Just bought the Australian (a newspaper) and read it in Broadway Cafe drinking cappucino. Then came home, cooked some dinner, wrote this blog, watched a movie and went to bed.

On Friday Carla and I woke up early and went to do a basic Excel workshop to the UTS. It was held by this IT student and it was a really good basic review of how to use Excel. I learned some new things, as well. The UTS is offering many different sessions for new students but since most of them are meant for new university students (telling how to study for exams, work in a group, manage stress etc...) I haven´t felt like attending them. Anyways, after the session we went to Bondi beach. Unfortunately it became half cloudy after just an hour so we took the same coastal walk to Bronte that I had already done with Tim and Moy before. We walked back to the bus stop checking out some of the nice houses in the area.

Exchange vs. Study Abroad students??

Yesterday we started the day with the library tour we had missed the day before. It was useful getting to know your way around the library and being shown how to search for information from the databases. After the tour we had a couple of hours before the next session - or at least that´s what we thought. We picked up our Student IDs. (My picture was taken by this bored lady who didn´t do any proper zooming and didn´t care me looking like an idiot in the picture.) I´m not that excited about the Student ID anymore, though. They have this weird system of separating international students to 3 different categories: Degree students (doing either the whole degree or masters), Exchange students (the ones who actually exchange so that an UTS student goes to their home uni) and Study Abroad students (international students that pay the tuition fees, or their home university pays them, like in my case). I totally understand the separation of degree and exchange students but cannot see the point of separating exchange and paying students. The main difference is degree and exchange students get travel concession while Study Abroad students have to pay the full price. I feel frustrated having to pay so much more for my transportation, especially since I use the busses and trains quite often. In my opinion paying students should get the same benefits! Well, maybe there´s some logical reason behind it, but I haven´t found it out.

Anyways, we crabbed salads for lunch from a nearby restaurant and went to the Railway Square to eat them and enjoy the sunshine. Then we headed back to the uni all prepared to do our Academic Language Skills session. After waiting for 10min behind the door of the class room we became consious and went to the 18th floor to the ELSSA center to ask what was going on. They explained some mistakes had been made so that the webpage said the sessions were available also on Wednesday, but actually they had been cancelled. So instead of the session we went to Circular Quay and started walking along Geogre Street (a long street going through the city centre, where most of the shopping centres and stores are). We went to one of the malls to buy smoothies and on the way to the food court stepped into this small clothes store. I found a pretty pale pink dress that used to be $69 at the price of $10! That´s what I call shopping: Finding expensive (brand) clothes with amazing reductions. We bought frozen yoghort and walked to the Rocks. We sat by the sea enjoying the view of the Opera House and then walked a loop to see some nice restaurants and old beautiful buildgins. Then we took a train back to Geegal.

In front of the Opera House

An old boat at Circular Quay

It was Valentines Day (Happy Late Valentines Day to everyone and I´m so sorry I haven´t had time to send cards or anything!) so they organized a party at Gumal (another UTS student accommodation). The theme of the party was familiar: singles wear green, taken wear red and unsure (or gay, as some had changed it to the invition poster) wear orange. It was interesting seeing the other student accommodations. Gumal is a lot bigger than Geegal. It´s more than one buildings, 18 floors, a nice roof top and the apartments are newer and more modern. Even though they have more equipment (like air conditioning) and are cleaner than Geegal, I definately prefer living here! Geegal is a smaller and more close community where you get to know everyone :) My throat was hurting pretty badly during the party, even though I had tried to limit my speaking to the minimum during the day, so I preferred spending time somewhere else but at the main party area where the music was being played loud. So I went downstairs to have a few jelly shots with some Americans and then started talking with Florian (from Germany) at a more quiet area of the roof top. I have to admit, the view over Sydney you see at the roof top is amazing! At midnight I felt like going home to sleep.

Orientations and sophistication

Monday was the official orientation day for new UTS students. It was held in the tower building, which is 28 levels high and located in the city centre. (By the way, it´s a good landmark if you´re lost!) It was raining a lot in the morning and even though we had umbrellas we were more or less soaked when we got to the uni. First we got to listen to some speeches given by the vice-chancellor, some professors and the chairman of the Student Association (or the UTS Union). We saw also an aborginal show with didjeridoos and dancing. The performers asked some students to join the routines making it fun to watching. After the official part we had a tea break. I hadn´t realised how many students there actually are at the UTS. The Great Hall was packed with Australian first year students (they don´t use the word freshman here) and international students. We had a few more info sessions - studying in an university and essential advice on practical matters - and the Peer Networkers (kind of tutors) took us to a lunch. We went to this nearby Chinese seafood restaurant where waitresses kept bringing us different kinds of dishes to be shared. First we didn´t understand the concept - they added the price of each individual dish to a shared bill - so we accepted everything. The smart way would´ve been taking only the dishes we felt like eating. Anyways, it was good and Shinae was teaching me the proper way to eat with sticks. After the orientation day I didn´t do anything special; went to do a bodypump session at the Fitness Centre and to drink a few cappucinos to Broadway Pub with Carla, Shinae and Helen.

On Tuesday Carla, Moy and I took a bus to the Royal Botanic Gardens. I guess it just isn´t meant to me to get to explore the gardens since it started raining when we got there. We walked for a while along the coast and saw tons of runners! I wonder if they should´ve been working at that hour on a weekday... Anyways, it made me feel like I should exersice more, which I´ll do once I´m not sick anymore. We espaced the weather (which kept alternating from raining to sunshine) to the Art Gallery of NSW. Since I´m not a big fan of art I felt a bit akward going there but it ended up being such a positive experience! Me and Carla agree on modern art: It looks just weird and we can´t really understand the greatness of it. So we were delighted to see they had paintings from the earlier centuries, as well. They were awesome! A lot of them were from Bible stories and they were painted so accurately they could´ve been photos. We also saw some Japanese and Chinese art and I decided that once I´m old and rich I´ll buy some of the stylish Japanese art to my house. As we went down the levels the art became newer, and therefore weirder. We basically just walked through the modern art sections and found some Aborginal art at the bottom level. They seem to be painting a lot by draving small dots that form different shapes. As a conclusion, the Art Gallery is cool and I´m planning on going there again!

We had booked a library tour in the afternoon so we decided to take a bus to the UTS and eat some lunch there. But we learned one really important thing: Do not hop just into any bus going to the right direction! We did, and ended up having a long tour around some suburbs of Sydney and never making it to the uni. It was quite a fun tour, though :) After sitting in the bus for some 45min and watching as we drove past some local centers, schools and houses, we were kicked out of the bus in the middle of some random suburb. Before we could say anything the bus had dissapeared. We started walking and asking for advice from the people we met. It didn´t take long to spot a bus, and we sprinted to catch it - just to find out it was the same guy driving it who had driven us there! He seemed a bit confused having us in the bus again ;) So then we sat in the bus for another 45min seeing the same things, but at the other side of the road. By the time we were back in the city the library tour had started a long ago so we went to the Paddy´s Markets (a shopping centre for fresh fruit, Chinese food, cheap crap and outlet stores) to buy some food. At home Carla and I cooked beef with vegetables, which was tasty :P

I hate the flu :(

First of all, I gotta do some major complaining :/ I catched the flu a couple of days ago. I´m not really sick but my throat hurts and I´ve lost my voice. I´m trying not to be speaking but it´s hard since there´re always people around and I´m not used to being quiet. Oh well, I guess I´ll have to learn to decide what is really worth saying. I just kinda wish I was properly sick so I´d have no option but just lay in bed. Now I can do stuff, even though I feel a bit weak, and it´s hard trying to convince myself the quickest way to get better is resting. Today I had planned to go to the beach and I´d want to go to the gym, too, but instead I´ve been just taking it easy and even trying to avoid people so I wouldn´t have to speak.

In the case you think this isn´t enough complaining, I´ll go on... I´ve bought some new pairs of summer shoes and have been walking a lot on them, which has caused several serious blisters. My left heel is bleeding and I´ve got blisters on the bottoms of both my feet. Yesterday I treated them: Stapped them with a needle and took the liquid out of them. It´s helped a bit. I also spent $30 on blister patches, and additional $20 on flu medicine.

I hope I´ll be well when Silja arrives here on Saturday morning. I don´t think I´ve mentioned she´s coming to visit me :D She´ll be here for 9 days. We´ve already planned some stuff to do together, like a tour at the Blue Mountains and a show in the Opera House. I´m sure it´ll be a great week full of sightseeing!

Ballet and shots

It really takes some time to write this blog... I guess I should write more regularly.

Yesterday morning I woke up to go the Fitness Centre to get my own gym program done. They offer long term members invidividualized gym programs made by the instructors. I didn´t get mine done yet, though, because the instructor had gotten sick. They had sent me a voice mail message about it but I hadn´t received it (or actually I did but was too lazy to set up the voice mail service to listen to it). So I just came back home to take a shower and headed to the Broadway Shopping Centre to buy stuff: shoes, a bra and 2 tops.

I had asked Tim and Moy to go watch a Chinese dance show with me and to my surprise they wanted to go! So we took a bus to the State Theatre, which is a really cool place. It´s one of those old theathers with great decorations; crystal lamps, statues and everything! It was the perfect environment for the show, Rhythms of the Orient. The dancers came from the Beijing Dance Academy and many of them are winners of national and international competitions. They were so amazing! Especially the men doing all the jumps, spins and other tricks and being unbelievable flexible was impressive. The first part was more traditional Chinese dances with colorful costumes. The second part was my personal favorite. Especially this humorous routine where a lady and a man played an old couple was so good - they really looked like they were 80-years-olds! The show ended with an impressive ballet routine. Tim and Moy enjoyed the show, as well, so I felt good I had asked them to go.

Tim and I

Dancing

The curtain call of all dancers

After the show we came back to Geegal and a bunch of people went out to celebrate Andy´s Birthday. Since we had spent so much money on our drinks the night before Tim and I decided to have some drinks at home before heading out. We ended up drinking quite a few shots of Gin and orange juice. When we finally left for the clubs it was already well past midnight and we had trouble finding people. We kept texting with Moy but every time we arrived at a pub they had already left to go somewhere else. We found Carlos at Star Bar and had a few drinks there. Being friends with Antti (who lived in Geegal last year) Carlos is a big fan of Finlandia Vodka. We ended up having this huge (drunken) depate about vodkas, which made no sense. Another continous topic of depating with Tim seems to be singning karaoke... When we got back home we decided to have one more drink and ended up talking till 7am. When I was finally about to go to bed I realised I had locked myself out of my room. I had no choice but to walk to the UTS Security to get a spare key. My new shoes were killing my feet - I´ve got huge bleeding blisters - so I walked to the UTS and back bare foot. I was back at home at 8:30am, exhausted, and slept till noon.

Now I´m thinking drinking is a waste of time. If we had stayed home yesterday night watching a movie we could´ve actually done something today, like going to the beach. Now the achievement of the day has been buying the new coffee machine and cleaning my room. And updating my blog.

Our flat rules!

Friday was the long waited cleaning day! Our flat had been, honestly saying, really dirty. Especially the kitchen needed some serious cleaning. Our newest resident, Carla from Holland, provided us cleaning stuff and the rest of us spent over 4 hours just cleaning the place! We threw out many big bags of unused and broken stuff, including an old television. It took quite long to go through all the stuff and decide what we wanted to keep. But all the work was definately worth it - our flat looks so much better now :) I´ll take and post some pictures one of these days (before it gets messy here again...)

We thought we deserved to do something fun after all that cleaning so we decided to head to the Chinatown for a dinner at a food court and to watch the Launch of Chinese New Year at Belware Park. Unfortunately we missed most of the performances because it took so long to get our food. We saw a music performance and the official launch that included fire crackers and a burning pig face. It´s the year of the pig so you can see pig decorations everywhere. Sydney is one of the main places where Chinese New Year is celebrated and the festival lasts for almost a month with different kinds of events, food, museums etc...

A music performance

Moy, Shinae, I and Tim with Chinese New Year decorations

From Belware Park we walked to Darling Harbour. On our way there we stopped to watch a street performance. It was this guy doing all kinds of tricks, like swallowing objects. In his final trick he pulled his BMX-bike to the top of a pole, jumped up with assistance of this big man, stood on his bike and did some jonglooring (spelling?) with a torch, a sword and an apple that he kept eating. The show was good but he could´ve cut the speaking parts a bit shorter.

A street performer doing his final trick

We had a few drinks at a really nice place with a beautiful view over the see, skyscrapers and lights. I really like Darling Harbour, both during the day and night! Besides the cleaning, I also celebrated getting such good grades on the exams I had done in January. Later we tried to get in to a club called Bungalow 8 to meet Carlos and some other people but I guess it was too many of us so they didn´t let us in. We went to this another place instead and sat outside at a nice patio enjoying the warm night. Then we walked to yet another place on George Street to have some cheap drinks and play pool. Tim and I ended up having some 10 drinks altogether :P

A view of Darling Harbour at night

P.S. To make it official, Tim and I have this bet about getting better grades this semester. The loser has to buy the winner a nice dinner at the restaurant on top of Sydney Tower. I´m already looking forward to having a free dinner at such a posh place ;)

Tourist moments

It´s been a while since I´ve updated my blog... I added some pictures to my previous posts. Right now I´m sitting in my room, writing this blog and drinking coffee that I made with my brand new coffee machine :) (And eating TimTams - Australian chocolate covered cookies.)

On Thursday Shinae, Moy and I went to the Chinese Gardens and the National Maritime Museum. The Chinese Gardens are at a relatively small area but there´s a lot to see there: beautiful plants and flowers, a small pond with big fish, traditional Chinese buildings and a tea house. We were lucky to have Shinae with us since she knows a lot about Chinese culture so she explained us many things, like what some of the plants and animals symbolize. We also got to see a small lizard there. They were renting traditional Chinese costums to people who could walk around the gardens wearing them and taking pictures. It´d be a perfect place to take wedding pictures, for example. All in all, we had a nice and relaxed walk there on a sunny afternoon.


The Chinese Gardens

Our next destination was the National Maritime Museum. It was mostly historical things related to ships, sailing, wars and water sports. It was interesting seeing all the old things they used to use. There was also the fastest boat in the World. It´s top speed is 500km/h! The record was set some 20 years ago and people attempting to break it since have ended up killed. One of the funniest ships was this one that was built of beer cans :)

After having a nice lunch sitting outside in Darling Harbour I went to a fatburner class at the Fitness Centre. Later that evening we had a noodle dinner in flat 7. The UTS Housing Service bought the food for us to make up the construction that´s going on here. To be honest, it is causing some noise. We had a nice evening eating the food and talking to each other. I got to meet quite a few new residents having just arrived to Geegal, as well as some older residents that I hadn´t met before. It seems like we´re having a good group of people living here this year and I´m looking forward to getting to know them better. Once the construction is finished we´ll be able to spend some time at the courtyard. We were already planning all sorts of activities to do together; Sunday morning breakfasts outside, poker tournaments, trips in Sydney and the surrounding areas, theme parties, movies etc...

No more shopping!

If someone had told me I can get sick of shopping I wouldn´t have believed. I´ve been shopping a way too much during the past week I´ve been here: all kinds of essential stuff for my room and flat, clothes, food etc... Since I was allowed to bring only 20kg of luggage I had almost no clothes with me when I arrived so I actually really needed some. They´re having huge summer sales (20-80% off) in every store and I have to admit I´ve been buying some clothes just because they´re cheap and look cute. But now I feel like I´ve spent too much money and just thinking about going into those stores with all the sales makes me feel like not wanting to do it. Luckily I´ve got almost everything I need for now, expect for some high heels.

On Sunday we went to Manly with people from Geegal (plus an ex-geegalian and a traveller). We took a ferry there, which was really nice indeed. We got to see a good view of the Opera House and some other Sydney attractions. There was a street of stores, restaurants and ice cream places (we ate some Stockholm ice cream that was delicious :P ) and a nice beach. We spent most of the time swimming, trying to build a sand castle (that looked like a blumb) and burying Shinae to sand and shaping her as a mermaid. There were quite a few blue bubbles there. They are these weird animals that look like bubbles with blue poisonous strings hanging from them. You gotta watch out for them in the water.

Husain and Tim burying Shinae to sand

Sydney Opera House

I can´t recall doing anything special on Monday. I went to the UTS Fitness Centre and did a bodypump class. It was exactly similar to the classes at home and it felt good getting some excersise. They don´t use special shoes here for indoor sports, though, but you´re allowed to attend classes wearing your outdoor running shoes. I had spent a few moments at sport stores looking for indoor shoes until a clerk explained me they aren´t needed here. On Tuesday Moy and I tried capoiera (a sport that´s a mix of dance and martial arts). The instructor is a real pro and he made it look really cool! We couldn´t understand most of what he was explaining, though, since he comes from some other country. Unfortunately capoiera doesn´t really fit to my schedule with uni so I doupt I´ll keep doing it. I´d love to find a dance school with reasonable prices!

Besides capoiera I went to Darling Harbour on Tuesday. I visited the Outback Centre that presents the Australian Aborginal culture. There were some cool looking paintings (priced between $200-1500), boomerangs, pots and candles made by the native Australians. I attented a live didjeridoo performance. Didjeridoo is a traditional Australian instrument that is basically a kind of flute made of a piece of old tree. It makes sounds that sound like different animals; birds, wolfs, crocodiles etc... The artist holds onto the instrument with one hand at a time and uses the other one to mimic the animal whose sound is playing played. This guy was playing didjeridoo while they showed some beautiful pictures of landscapes from different parts of Australia. Seeing them made me want to travel to rain forest and desert! I would like to get to know more about the Aborginals culture. Later that day a group of us went to the Broadway Mall to see a movie Stranger than Fiction (if I remember the name correctly). Tickets are always cheaper on Tuesdays.

An Aborginal Australian guy playing the didjeridoo

Today I woke up pretty late and went to a yoga class. Then I planned on going to the Royal Botanic Gardens to walk around and read a book. But by the time I had taken a train there and bought a salad to eat sitting at some bench it started raining. Fortunately it cleared up a bit for about an hour that I spent explorering the park. It´s so far one of my favorite places in Sydney! There are many different kinds of exotic trees, plants and flowers there. Since I know nearly nothing about them I can´t say much more than that they look beautiful. It began thundering and lightning but it took quite a long time before it started raining again, which I think is weird since I´m used to combining thundering and rain. I stood under a big tree until it stopped raining and headed back home. I have to go back to the gardens to see the rest of them and visit the Govermental House.

At the Royal Botanic Garden

It´s been raining since and I´ve been just watching TV and enjoying the company of our new little friends - these small flies that live and born in our kitchen. They make cooking and eating kinda disgusting :/ But I managed to add some pictures to my blog. Or actually Tim gave me a program that makes the smaller so it doesn´t take like forever to post them online. I´m happy to be living next to a computer guy ;)

Beach <3

I finally got my report of Singapore posted online! I tried to add some pictures but it didn´t work for some reason. I´ll try again later but if it doesn´t work I´ll have to use IRC gallery or something for pictures.

Yesterday I, Tim and Moy went to the Bondi Beach. First we took a coastal walk from Bondi to Bronte and back. It was so beautiful there! It was a bit cloudy but the sky cleared up later so we decided to go swimming. The water was so warm you could´ve stayed there forever! The waves were the highest I´ve ever been to and it was fun playing in the water - even though I drank like litres of the salty water and had to go drink and rest. I realised my bikini isn´t just old but it´s also unnecessarily loose. I flashed my boobs a few times after it kinda fell of after diving to a wave :/ So another good excuse to go shopping. The beach was definately tons of fun and I can´t wait to go back there! I just got a bit sunburned. I kept adding sun scream while we were on the beach but didn´t use it during the walk so now parts of my neck and back are red. (Mom don´t worry; I´ll be more careful the next time!)

Bondi Beach

Later we went to Abercrombie Hotel to have a few drinks and check out the place. It was people from our flat and from flat 4 going. First we thought it was just one of the neighborhood bars but more and more people kept coming in and when we left at 1pm there was a long que waiting to get in there. It was a nice bar indeed. Not too different from Finnish bars, though. There was a nice courtyard where you could sit and chat and get some fresh air. Alcohol is as expensive as in Finland so I´ve got the impression people do quite a lot pre-partying here, as well.

I, Kaitlin and Helen at the Abercrombie Hotel

Singapore Day 3

We met rather early in the morning at a subway station and went to a nearby Starbucks to drink our morning coffee. From there we walked to this park. We had been expecting something more peaceful with less traffic and noise but I guess it was a good enough place considering it was located right in downtown. There was a spice garden with common spices such as vanilla, ginger and mint growing there. We found even cola trees there! In general, there are lots of trees and plants everywhere around Singapore making the city look nicer and less crowded. Speaking of crowded, there are 4,5 million inhabitants living in an area that´s the size of Oulujärvi! (Statistically it´s 1600 people per square kilometre, in comparison to the same figure being 16 in Finland.)

At the park.

I just loved shopping in Singapore! There are tons of huge and posh malls at Orchard Street and even though we spent over 6 hours shopping we only managed to go 3 malls altogether. The prices were so low I was just amazed! It was the hardest thing to decide what to buy among so much selection. We also went to a beauty shop to rest for a few minutes while they treated us with manicures and pedicures. For lunch we had noodles at a food court (an area of several food places) and we also got this juice that was self-made of fresh fruit.

After we got tired of shopping we went to Little India. It wasn´t as exciting as Chinatown but it was nice walking around there. First we thought there was some kind of event going on there because there were tons of men hanging around at the streets but then we came to the conclusion it must have been just their regular way of spending a Sunday night. We went to drink lassi (a fruit drink) to a local bar and were treated as some special guests.
As a conclusion, it was interesting seeing all the different parts of Singapore; Chinatown with all the decorations, food and Chinese people, the City Centre of the posh malls and then Little India that was the poorest (and dirtiest) area. I liked Singapore and could actually consider workingthere at some point if I got a good job offer.

This (too dark) picture from Little India shows that even though it´s illegal to throw trash to the streets in Singapore they possibly can´t arrest everyone doing it.

Singapore Day 2

I was glad to get to sleep in before we took part in a canoing trip at Singapore river organized by NUS. Most of the participants were exchange students but some local students had decided to join us, as well. The Singaporean students that I talked to seemed friendly and were willing to help us finding good places to go, eat and shop. The actual canoing part of the trip took almost 3 hours and we got to see many interesting places and buildings along the river, including the opera house that has been designed to remind this fruit (whose name I already forgot, but I tasted it and it was pretty good). It´s winter in Singapore now and it´s cloudy and rainy almost all the time there. We were lucky to get only a few mild showers during our canoing trip. By the way, I would´ve called it kayaking instead of canoing because the kayaks were closed on top.

A view of Singapore river where went canooing.

After our canoing trip we went to take a shower at my hotel before heading to Chinatown. It´s Chinese New Year in a couple of weeks and they were already preparing for the celebrations. There were beautiful decorations and lights over the streets and some fireworks, as well. Many Chinese people were sitting by the streets eating food from coffee shops (Raf, a Singaporean student, explained me coffee shops don´t mean places such as Starbucks but food kiosks selling mostly Chinese or Asian food, at a really cheap price) and just talking to each other. We ate some delicious Chinese food and for desert we bought dried fruits covered with sugar. Chinatown was definitely my favourite place in Singapore! I just liked the atmosphere there the best.

Food courts and decorations in China Town.

We ended the day by visiting at the harbour of Singapore river. All the skyscrapers with their many lights looked beautiful in the dark and there were some small boats offering short cruises to tourists. We walked a loop around the river and stopped by to taste some local beer at an outdoor café (Silja tasted the beer since I´m not still drinking any!). There would´ve been an Indian student party that night but we decided to skip it. Parties are always parties (meaning fun!) but since I was in Singapore only for the weekend I preferred seeing around the city.

Singapore Day 1

I´m at the Perth airport waiting for my flight to Sydney and I´ve got finally time to do the first real postings to my blog. Unfortunately free wireless internet connection isn´t provided here and since I don´t feel like paying I´m typing this with Word and I´ll copypaste it to my blog and post online as soon as possible.

I had a great weekend in Singapore with my friend Silja! She´s doing an exchange at the National University of Singapore (NUS) this spring and has been there since mid January. You can read more about Singapore, and living and studying there, at her blog (There´s a good story of our weekend - in Finnish)

Anyways, first I flew from Helsinki to London Heathrow and did a short stop over there before continuing to Singapore. I actually managed to get through the 12-hour long flight without serious symptoms of boredom. I arrived in Singapore at around 18 and took a cap to my hotel, which was located in Chinatown. My room was barely big enough to fit a bed in there but it was equipped with a heat conditioner – which was the most important thing considering it was +30C and really humid!

After a quick shower I met Silja and we went to the NUS campus to watch a performance organized by different national societies of international students. They had all kinds of routines – traditional costumes, dances, martial arts, songs, singing… My absolute favourite were the Chinese whose routine was a skillfull combination of jazz dance and martial arts with weapons such as sticks and swords. The local people are so tiny - short and skinny – and they look a lot younger than they actually are. And the girls are really pretty!

After the performance I was planning on being too tired to do anything else but some local and international students persuaded us to go clubbing with them. It was definitely worth it! The club was one of the coolest I´ve ever been to. It was a big and new complex of 6 different parts. We spent most of the time at a Latin club and at a nice patio outside of it. We also ate some pratas (Indian food that reminds pancakes with either sweet or sour filling) at a nearby restaurant. After 3am Silja and I decided it was time to head home, while the others stayed still at the club. I hear clubs are open till 5-6am in Singapore.