It seems another 2 weeks have gone past already... after a 30°C week, it is cooling down in Sydney now - only 20°C, more rain and the leaves are falling.
In the meantime, Laura has moved from Bondi Junction to Newtown so we're literally just one minute away from each other - lots of opportunities to do stuff together! We made Raspberry Tiramisu together the other day; and I still can't get my head around the fact that everything's so expensive here - Amaretto liqueur for $35 a bottle! The only logical conclusion: make more tiramisu when I'm back in Germany.
I think I've attained some sort of a weekly routine by now - the same classes every week, readings, assignments to hand in etc.! So far, I have written two article reviews on linguistic papers and that one summary - and I'm about to start on the first bigger assignment which is due after Easter break. Fortunately, some of the university staff decided to strike these past weeks which meant no class on Tuesday and Wednesday. And they apologize to the International Students for it - since we're the fee-paying students! Well, I guess they have a point: we pay close to $150 an hour for our classes which is why missed classes need to be re-scheduled.
On Friday, Laura and I went to an Arts Exhibition in Willoughby which was a tribute to the architects of Canberra organised by the ex-husband of Laura's landlady. As you might know, the history of Canberra, Australia's capital city, is similar to that of Washington D.C. in the USA: instead of making up their mind which city they would rather have as a capital, the Australians simply built an entirely new city in the middle of nowhere. The exhibition was very interesting since I'd never been to a suchlike event before - but in the end, the wine&cheese buffet caught Laura's and my interest... Saturday was again all about buffets: a lunch cruise around Sydney Harbour organised for International Students. Besides the breathtaking views of Sydney and surroundings, the lunch buffet left nothing to be desired!
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| Darling Harbour Views |
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| In front of the Sydney skyline with Laura and Nina |
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| A different perspective of the Sydney icons |
The cruise departed from Darling Harbour and since I wanted to pop over to Manly in the afternoon, I caught the ferry to Circular Quay and then on to Manly Wharf with Matthias (a fellow scholarship holder of mine who studies at UNSW). And yet again, I witnessed a sunset without equal:
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| Manly Wharf |
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| Sunset over Manly |
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| Glowing clouds |
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| Sydney Skyline at dusk |
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| Amazing colours |
Last weekend, I was invited to join an international dinner at Emily's. Emily is both in my Media Discourse class and in World Englishes. She made an all-American dinner with Chilli, Macaroni&Cheese and S'mores Brownies which was fabulous! Thanks for the awesome night everyone:
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| Dinner at Emily's with (f.l.t.r.) Nathan (Thailand), Emily (USA), Ignacio & Mercedes (Argentina), Marine (France), Rika and Mayuko (Japan) |
Even though I have class on Thursdays, it seems to become a tradition to go out on Wednesday nights... last week, Matthias offered to cook dinner. So I spent the night in Kingsford with him and his flatmates - two guys from France and a Norwegian student. Besides the food - which was delicious! - it was so good to speak Swedish again! We ended up going to a bar that had a Wednesdays $7 cocktail special - cheap for Australia! The rest is history...
This Wednesday, PhotoSoc friends of mine and I went out to "The Soda Factory" which is a bar in central Sydney disguised as a hot dog restaurant. There are a lot of these disguised bars that only locals would know about - so thanks for taking me, Caro and Freia! Oh and by the way: the PhotoSoc pub crawl photos have been developed now so take a look:
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| At Newtown Hotel - back row f.l.t.r.: Laura, me, Newtown's Olivia Jones :-) , Freia, Kirtan, front row: Fred |
Going out this Wednesday, we ended up in Oxford Street which is the centre of Sydney's LGBT community. We met Emily and Matthias there and checked out the pubs and bars together - not forgetting the mysterious "Adult Bookshops" that you see everywhere around Sydney! Mysterious because the entrance is always on street level but all you see are stairs going up... so we decided to check it out :)
Equipped with some wine, we later headed on to Hyde Park and sat down near a pond. And if you know Sydney, you know you will probably not be sitting there on your own for long... some Italian guys joined us with their wine and we talked all night before meeting Gordon, a local we just ran into in the middle of the night, who showed us around and bought us drinks - gotta love the Australian hospitableness!
At the moment, Roberta and Raphi (my landlady and one of her daughters) are in Fiji - which is why I have the entire house to myself. That includes Stella, the dog, and Bonnie, the cat which I think I haven't introduced so far.
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| Stella after a walk |
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| Bonnie likes to sit on important documents and laptops |
And so, I take Stella for two walks a day, feed the animals twice a day (apparently, the animals need breakfast and dinner!) and take care of the house. And they lived happily ever after - if Stella didn't have a mind of her own! When I took her to Sydney Park the other day, she decided that it was just so much more fun to chase after ducks than to listen - so it took me 15 minutes to get her out of the pond. Luckily, no one saw us - it would have been a sight to see...
Oh yes and last night, I went to a concert with Laura, Franzi and Tanja - the long anticipated "Lumineers" played at Enmore Theatre! To check out their music, simply click on the following link which will take you to one of their songs on youtube: The Lumineers - Ho Hey (Official Video)
I hope you enjoyed reading about Australia again - I will keep posting things, it's just that for the most part, I'm having my own routine here right now - which is why I won't keep you posted on every little detail. I apologise to everyone in advance for not posting regularly! But be sure to check the blog for updates every now and then - if something exciting happens, I will let you know! =)
By the way: if you're not on facebook and still want to be notified whenever there's a new post, you can register your e-mail address to follow this blog in the right-hand sidebar. Just saying...
Till then, stay tuned and I'll catch ya's later!
Yours,
Yours,
Chris
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