Formal dinner and Dutch Queens Birthday

Snif. I spent so much time writing about New Zealand but no one has commented :(

So, I´ve been back home for over a week now... I´ve been mostly just trying to catch up with uni work: writing assingments, working on group projects and studying for my Olympic Games mid-term exam. I also got some results. I got 26/30 for my Finance mid-term exam. All of my calculations were right but I messed up on the multiple choice section. We got 13.5/20 for our Olympic Games group presentation, whose topic was security at the Olympics. I thought we did a pretty good job, but apparently the tutor didn´t think so :/

Last Friday we had the UTS Residences Annual Dinner. The housing services offered all residents a free formal dinner at the Great Hall in the UTS Tower Building. The dresscode was fun/formal/fabulous (or something along that line) so people were dressed quite differently. Some girls had real evening gowns, while some had gone for more creative costumes. Most of us were wearing cocktail dresses. Anyways, everyone looked really nice :) I had decided to wear this Chinese looking dress I had bought from Singapore, and even though I was a bit concerned about having long sleeves it turned out to look just fine. The dinner started at 7pm with a welcome drink and we were given one more free drink during the evening. (Which is quite a contrast compared to the number of shots we get at formal academic balls in Finland. But on the other hand, we pay for the tickets.) We got really nice food indeed: salmon salad for starter, chicken or lamb with smashed potatoes for main course and chocolate mousse or cheese cake for dessert (I had both :P ) There was some program - speach by the vice chancellor, a few other speaches and toasts, a dance performance - but most of the time people were just sitting on their tables or walking around. They had made sitting charts to separate people from their old friends, which I think was a nice idea. I was seated with American, Canadian, German and Indian people, and it was nice seeing some new faces. Many people changed tables to sit with their friends, though, and I ended up eating dessert with Carla, Shinae, Tim and Till. There was a live band playing. Carla tried her best to teach me some ballroom dancing :) The music was fun to listen to, but I had no idea how to dance to some of the songs so I just sat down listening to them. Because of not being offered more free drinks I decided not to spend my money on any drinks that night. Some girls had apparently had a few too many, since I heard quite a few of them throwing up in the toilets. Gross. After the party was over we headed to Bar Broadway. I stayed there just for maybe an hour before walking home with Renar, Moy and Carla. The rest of our group stayed out till 5am. All in all, it was a fun night, and I enjoyed the formal dinner athmosphere!


Denise, Moy, Carla, Cameron, Shinae, Madeleine, I and Tim


Carla, Denise and I


People dancing

It was the Dutch Queens Birthday on Monday. It´s one of the main public holidays in Holland and they´ve got big festival celebrations. Carla invited me to join her and Madeleine to go to Scubar, that advertised having a Dutch night. They didn´t really have one, though. We had been expecting at least Dutch music and maybe some special drink offers, but it seemed just like a normal Sunday night. There were some Dutch people there wearing their orange shirts, though, and we spent most of the night talking to these four backpackers. It was rather interesting being the only non-Dutch, but I just pretended like being one ;) I couldn´t understand what they were talking about, though, even though I can recognize a few words every now and then because they are similar to German. They were polite talking to me in English, though, so I didn´t get bored. This guy (who wasn´t a backpacker but on a business trip) kept buying everyone beer and since I hate beer he bought me two vodkas with lemonade/grandberry. Unlike normally, I got really tired after drinking them and decided to walk home when the bar closed and the others headed for another club in Darling Harbour.

Carla, I and Madeleine wearing orange boas