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
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