Back to Uni

First day of the semester. I have bought a bike(!) and I'm now riding to Uni. It is purple and has pretty flowery stickers on it. With my speed it takes about 20-25 min to get there, but I don't exactly exhaust myself. The downside of this (I know I'm vain), is "helmet hair". It is illegal to ride a bike in Australia without a helmet, so I guess I'll just have to live with it.

My subjects this year are:
1. Reporting
2. Australian Political Institutions
3. Introduction to Media Studies
4. Personal and Social Identities

This gives me a total of 12 hours contact per week, which is pretty good.

The best house mates anyone could want!

I can't believe how cool my housemates are. James, Barry, Liam and Tim are awesome

Celebrating Fastelavn

I love tradition and I get slightly hysteric when things are not as they always have been. For instance, the table cloth on our national holiday, the 17th of May, HAS to be blue. Another colour would simply be wrong. Yes, we all have issues.

So I decided to celebrate Fastelav and teach these ignorant Aussies about this wonderful day. First of all I needed the ingredients for Fastelavns buns. That was quite a mission. With no one at home I had to walk to the shop. In pouring rain I struggled (okay, it might have been a drizzle, but my flip flops got wet and slippery and it was sort of hard to walk). But I did get there and after an hour of searching I had located flour, sugar, milk and feathers! Very proud of myself I started the journey home.

Baking was no drama. I love spending time in the kitchen. The next part of the preparations included finding some sort of branches to stick my feathers on. I went into the garden; not without fear. It's been weeks since the grass has been cut and my vivid imagination pictured all sorts of dangerous animals just waiting for an opportunity to attack. I found a nice little tree to break some branches off, but after a bit of thinking I decided to pick another one. I guess the owner of the house would not be too happy if I destroyed their still very young tree. So I broke some branches off the neighbour's tree instead and attached the feathers.

Everything was now ready, so I forced Liam and Barry to come celebrate with me.

Liam: Mmmm... This is the best eva!

Barry: I'm so happy. I wish it was Fastelavn everyday.

HAPPY FASTELAVN EVERYONE!

4 Days in Sydney

I love Sydney. It truly is a great city with lots of nice buildings, parks and turisty stuff to do. I guess one of the reasons I prefer it to Brisbane is that it's closer to the sea. Brisbane has its rivers, but it's not quite the same. Left Brisbane freakishly early Friday morning (the plane left at 7am and I'm still trying to recover from that horrible experience). Spent most of Friday walking around in the city eating ice cream, visiting the opera house, etc.

Visited a a Greek friend of Vas in the evening. I think I'll never quite get over these people's fridges... They had like 4, all filled with all kinds of goodies. Coming from a home where the selection in the fridge consisted of some jam and cheese and sometimes milk; this was truly an experience.

Saturday was a friend of Vas's 21st. Turning 21 is a big deal here, and this girl had a rather big party with family and friends. Almost all of them were Greek, and so was a lot of the music and food. I refused to join in on any traditional dancing. I haven't abandoned my Viking pride.

Sunday we took a ferry to Manly. Very pretty place with scenic walks and beaches. I had my first triple cheese burger from McDonald's there. Mmmm... Ate ice cream, and more ice cream and even more ice cream.

Monday we went to Bondi beach, a quite well known beach. Paris Hilton was observed there not too long ago. I know, very exciting. Had calamari and chips for brunch by the sea. Went for a walk along the beach before we ended up in a posh shopping centre where we spent our last hours in Sydney.