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