Week 11: "Lets go to the beach beach... lets go get away..."

Week 11, lets go.

The week kicked off in great culinary form... Sunday and Monday night I had peppered steaks with mash and carrots... sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo tasty. My old boss would be proud of cooking them perfectly as medium rare, nice and pink in the middle... yummmmmmmmmmmmm.

Monday was not too eventful, lectures, practicals and I skipped movie night this week as it was Space Jam. Instead we watched After Earth in a friends flat. An interesting movie, it could ha
ve been so good but it just wasnt quite there, we ended up picking so many holes in it and laughing at it, oops.



Tuesday came and went relatively quickly. I went down and helped out with a Smile Garden project that KB are part of. I was trying to get people to have their picture taken and donate money to a mental health charity and the pictures are going to be hung around uni which is pretty cool. Note to self, don't go into advertising. But good fun nonetheless.

Wednesday had a great forecast so halfway through the morning I decided to do the work for my afternoon practical and head down to the beach. We had great fun soaking up the sun and messing around in the waves! We all came back pretty red. Wednesday evening was our infamous glassy night. Great fun as per usual :) and I managed to only buy one drink when out, bonus. The end of the night got even better as I was treated to a kebab by my flatmate... I dont think I can describe how good it was so I am not going to try and then when we got back to KB waffles were being made for us all. So a kebab and two waffles later I headed off to bed.

Thursday was spent attempting to do work and then giving up and headed to the beach. We tried to go up to Towradgi beach as a bit of a change but the strong wind was whipping the sand into us so we headed down to North Beach and found a slightly sheltered spot. Another pleasant afternoon was spent soaking up the sun and splashing in the surf :).

Friday morning was an early 8.30am lecture and then I managed to do a good few hours of work in the library before going off to meet my international buddies for coffee (not that I drink coffee tehe).
Friday afternoon I had my haircut by a mate over at old KB, Im not going to lie I was a bit apprehensive when she was snipping and snipping but I should have had more faith as it turned out great :), of course I couldnt have her do it for free so I gave her a pack of tim tams (tim tams=amazing!!!!). Fitness friday killed me this week, I have a slight sniffle and cough so I died pretty quickly, but hey ho its great doing so much exercise... all of those endorphin's. On Friday night we went down to North Gong pub and had some foodies to celebrate a friends 19th birthday. It was unbelievably good not having to cook for myself.

Saturday morning was KB sports, but as its the beginning of mid-session we only had a few of us. We headed down regardless and got a masterclass in how to play basketball. I got some practice of my korfball shooting, but it is so much easier in a basketball hoop than  in a korf. I grabbed some lunch and cycled off down to the beach with my board for a surf. The beach was pretty seaweedy but I managed to stand up on my first attempt! Unfortunately the waves died down and I called it a day, not before soaking up some more rays.

Dad I know you wanted a picture of my bicycle contraption so here it is :).

Saturday evening we had a movie night and watched the Hangover 3 and the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. It occurred to me, if you haven't read the book that film would seem so very random!!! That evening I also gobbled half a bar of real English chocolate, Aussi chocolate is just not the same!

Sunday was an early start... up for 7am and I headed straight down to get a train to Sydney. I managed to navigate from Central to Circular Quay without a map (I know right!?) and on the way came across some random art... there were random yellow snails everywhere, oh and did I say they were massive!

I also came across this cool arrangement of mirror pillars in Hyde Park, when you walked through them it was really hard to distinguish between reflections and the landscape.

After meeting up with my friend from UEA we took some snaps at the Opera House and Sydney Bridge. We then headed up to Sydney Bridge which gave an awesome view of Circular Quay, Opera House and all the skyscrapers.

We headed back through The Rocks which is a famous row of market stalls and boutiques, we nabbed some freebies and headed off to get the boat to manly. Being a sunday it was really busy but we didnt have to wait too long for a ferry. We navigated to the back of the boat and got a stunning view of Circular Quay as we left. We also were witness to a proposal made using an aeroplane and vapour in the sky over Sydney, lets hope she said yes!

We stopped off at subway once we arrived at Manly for lunch and sat on Manly beach stuffing our faces... yum yum yum. There were so many surfers out in the water! It was definitely the most surfers I have ever seen along one beach. We then headed off to Shelly Beach, a short walk along the coast. We discovered why it was called Shelly beach because there were loads of shells on it... We donned out goggles and went to go see what we could find under the water. After lots of steamed up goggles and pretty cool water we saw a few pretty cool fish and went to dry off in the sun. After overhearing some hilariously bogan banter from the group next to us we headed back to the ferry and Sydney CBD. By this time it was late afternoon but we still went to Sydney Aquarium (with a cheeky BOGOFF voucher), we saw some hence sharkes, creepy crayfish and many jellies.

By this time we were once again ravenous for foodies, so we wandered into the city and eventually found a cool little pub, that resembles a darker Weatherspoons, and we had some fish and chips and me a ciders. Lets just say it doesnt compare to English fish and chips but it was still soooo good! It was getting on a bit so after eating we headeback to central and headed our separate ways. My 1h45 journey wasnt too bad, I nearly fells asleep so many times but managed to get off at the right stop.

All in all it was such a great day! I have finally seen the big attraction in Sydney, phew!

More photos to come :)

Week 10: Learning to love footy (rugby)!

Here I am at the end of week 10!

This week has been a week of routine. Monday the ever present film night, Pulp Fiction this week. Although it was a clever and good movie it is definitely not worth the hype that I know some people give it, and man its loooong. Tuesday was a day of assignment deadlines, as ever I was on the ball and had them finished :). In the evening there was an acoustic night organised by one of my aussie international buddies. We headed down and had a relaxed night with some surprisingly good and some surprisingly different music.

The first couple of days this week we had some pretty rubbish weather after what had been an age of dry weather. I couldn't remember the last time it had rained. Lets just say aussi rain is much the same to UK rain, less cold and quite heavier.

Wednesday began to clear up and we headed off on a fieldtrip around Lake Illawarra for my Coasts module. It was a pretty easy practical, most of it spent on the bus going around the lake, even so it was good to get out of Wollongong and see the local area, which I haven't done as much as I would have liked so far.

That evening a small group of us went out and had a pretty eventful end to the night! Thursday was spent sleeping and catching up with some work out in the courtyard with the sun on me. Friday was more productive, with an early (8.30am) lecture and I started my next essay assignment which. The afternoon consisted of bits of procrastination, buying charity cakes from the office (yumyum) and making rocky road. It's safe to say I can make a mean rocky road! And I forgot to take a piccy of it darn! Saturday kicked off with a charity breakfast bbq, I could seriously get used to having bacon, egg and sausage sandwiches for breakfast yum yum yum. Then we headed off for KB sports but a lack of number meant we resorted to throwing a frisbee around! We headed down to the beach in the afternoon to catch some rays and yes I have got round to getting sun cream and using it! By the end of the day I was fairly red.

Saturday evening was a friends 19th so we headed off to town for a night out and had a surprisingly good time! I have to say I could get used to going out at 9/10ish and being home in bed for 1.30/2am rather than the later UK times! Before heading out we had homemade pizza's and watched the footy (rugby) on and we witnessed a great game as Newcastle overcame Storm (from Melbourne), dare I say I enjoyed it more than a football (soccer) match OOO it's a close call.

Me and the gang devouring pizzas!

After a decent nights sleep I decided to go for a jog... up Mount Keira! Everything was going great, minus the burning calf's and heat until I came across a massive rock fall which had obliterated the path. After trying to cross it and find the path I gave up and headed back. I only got a few strange looks as I pranced- I mean jogged back down.

Once getting back I headed for my favorite shop in the world... the farmers market at leisure coast.  So I am all stocked up and treated myself to some cheeky pepper steaks so I am uber excited for those tonight :). Check out the ducks that were crossing the road on campus!

This afternoon we headed off to the sports field and had a pretty epic game of touch. We had six a side and it worked really well, I scored some sneaky tries. I decided I had to represent being the only pom. The highlight of tonight so far has been doing laundry... I know right! Living the dream ;) .

Week 9: Fireworks!

So the begining of this week has taken the course of many of the rest with movie night (how amazing is iron man 3!!!!!!!!) and a decent amount of study and early nights. Wednesday as part of my water management module we headed down to Wollongong Sewage Treatment Plant for a field trip... I know right, classy! It was pretty interesting actually to see how the water system runs in a town situation. It wasnt too smelly, it was mostly wastewater and recycling rather than raw sewage. The ritual wednesday at glassy went down.

Thursday afternoon I headed down to the beach with my board through his car sun roof, we debated whether it looked more like a unicorn or rhino and chose rhino to be manly! I am still learning to stand up on my board but I am determined and practice makes perfect. Friday afternoon was fitness again, last week I was hurting halfway through the week and although this week wasnt quite as bad I can feel it now on sunday night. Friday night we watched the Wallace and Gromit movie, so much funnier than I remember, perhaps it the friends I was with... Ooo and during the film we had our first rain in 30 days! :O I looked it up on the Aussi Met Office as I couldnt remember the last time it had rained. Unfortunately it has been an overcast weekend with temps only in the high teens, hard life right!

Saturday morning was spent catching up on sleep, attempting to do some work and playing pool. We participated in a bake off in the afternoon and our rag tag team of a pommy (me), aussi and an american quite successfully make a victoria sandwich cake with jam and then raspberry cream on the top. It went pretty well for how quickly we had to make it, we resorted to using a blender!

After rushing to finish the cake we then shoved an overnight bag of stuff together and headed off in two cars. Our destination was Gunning, where they host the second largest fireworks in Australia (only NY Sydney beats them). After a fun and relaxing journey with various stops here and there we made it, albeit slightly late. Nonetheless we saw some epic fireworks.

We then stayed around our make-shift fire (an old keg with a washing machine drum on top, how cool!) and had some chicken rolls with stuffing, coleslaw, marshmallow and a bevvy. Just another quick note on the weather, it was a cold night so prob about 10-15 degrees brrrr, how am I going to survive going back to England?! Once the fire died down we headed part way back and crashed an our friends near Moss Vale. This house was epic! On par with the Sydney house from a few weeks back. After a few mishaps with the other car we finally all arrived gone midnight and set up an epic array of mattresses for all 8 of us. We watched some movies and chatted and got a few hours sleep I think. We awoke in the morning to a massive bbq breakfast of eggs, bacon and rolls! NOM NOM NOM!!! I think its up there as one of the best brekkies so far. So a massive massive thank you to our hosts! Before heading back to the gong we wents for a little trip into Morton National Park, such a beautiful place with great views. Here are a selection of photos :). 

Makeshift fire cauldron!

How did I nearly forget!!!! I saw my first wild kangaroo. Whilst we were having brekkie we spotted this kangaroo chilling under a tree about 20m from the house.

Road trip music! :) 

Oh we also came back in a 7 seater monster of a car! There will be more photos to follow shortly :). 

On another note I now have a flickr account, so if you wanna check out more photos my name on there is chriz.rhodes :). 

And add me on skype chriz.rhodes ! 

So I have been here now 9 weeks, wow. It is quite unremarkable how the smallest events in the first few days and weeks have spiralled into something so great. For example it was only coincidence that in my first week I was helping someone with their internet down by the office and some aussi's rocked up and invited me to their house warming party that evening. It turns out that I have made great mates with them all. I am at the point where I have been here long enough that I am looking back at how amazing these weeks have been and my goal is to keep it going. Although I am really struggling to make a decision for mid session break... so my choices are head to NZ for as long as I can swing and hire a car over there, hire a car/van in the NSW area and find some places I want to visit, spend some time chilling at Wollongong and do some day trips or perhaps the most likely is a weekend or two away and a bit of chill time in the middle. If anybody out there has any suggestion please let me know, im so indecisive.

The week ahead looks like its going to be spent doing CW until tuesday when my two assignments are due and then take it a bit easier after that. I think the weather is going to break by tuesday or wednesday which will be awesome :) and we will see what next weekend holds there is currently a potential plan and hopefully it goes ahead. 

For now this is me...  tonight I will be eating our Victoria sponge cake and getting an early night :) 

Week 8: Blue Mountains and Koalas

So this week began in a similar fashion to many others, film night monday was Sherlock Holmes. What a great film! Love Robert Downey Jr. I forgot to mention last week was Hot Fuzz, equally awesome. And next thing I knew it was thursday, after 13km walking, cycling and carrying a surfboard I managed to get myself a surfboard and a bike. So I can now head down to the beach whenever I feel like it :). This was ontop of a 6km early morning jog. Wednesday evening we had a KB bbq... so many yummy sausages, coleslaw and salad. Yep im passionate about my food :). And later on we even had waffles... mmmmmmmmm. Well enough on food I could go on all day. I handed my assignment for GIS in on friday, and decided to head out on my new bike surf board contraption and hit the waves.

Lets just say the first trip was almost successful. I managed to stand up a few times, I think I need to work on my pop and once my front foot is in the right place I was fine :). Ill get my practise on. After my surf we had KB fitness session, so the first 45 mins consisted of a run, 20 star jumps, 30 press ups, 40 sit ups, 50 squats then repeated.... ouch! the final 15 mins we did some boxing with pads. How awesome is boxing with pads! Lets just say if I wasnt hurting before that session (which I was from thursday) then I really was afterwards. 

So on Saturday I went on a trip to the Blue Mountains arranged by Colourful Tours. We kicked off at 7.45am in a minibus, way too early! and headed up to Featherdale Wildlife Park. They are a small zoo who have all kinds of Aussi and global animals. We saw, a massive croc, wombats, tassy devil, emus, joeys, wallabes, parrots, birds, owls and the highlight would have to be the Koalas.

After that we headed off to Wentworth Falls, a cool waterfall running off a plateau. There were some great views of the lowlands of the Blue Mountains from there. We went a little stroll and learn about some of the plants and animals, did you know that 96% of Aussi animals are endemic... wow ;). 

We then headed off to Katoomba and wandered around town before heading to the YHA for our bbq lunch, we had some epic sausages and we got to try kangaroo meat. It was fairly similar to beef but with a slightly different taste. 

From there we headed off to the infamous three sisters, where we took a few pics at the touristy viewpoint and then headed off the beaten track to go for a bit of a walk. 

We went down the Furber steps, passing a waterfall which look like it had a face in it, but not any face... king kongs face! 

We descended further, stopping at a cave to test out the acoustics, we all made a coooo-eeee sound out into the blue mountains and we got an echo back from the otherside of the small valley we were in! So neat! On our way back up we stopped off on a different water fall and of course I dunked my head in :). Once back to the bus we made our way back to Wollongong, getting back, albeit exhausted, at 7 ish.   

Such a great day was had by all of us with more epic pictures to come! 

Sunday has gone by fairly quickly, catching up on some much needed rest and sleep, then some KB sports of frisbee and basketball. This afternoon I hitched a ride to the farmers market... seriously in love with that place. So I am all fruit and veged up for the week. The rest of the afternoon should be spent doing some work but I am rather sceptical about that actually happening!  

Also, a cool little feature that I have added to the top of the blog is a link to my fb pictures so when I upload a piccy it will come on there... pretty nifty if I do say so myself ;). 

  

Week 7: Crawling Around and Sunrise Swimming

Origami Cranes

So the beginning of this week has been similar to the last few, finishing assignments and going to Uni. Although it has been amazing to be able to be able to chill in the sun with my laptop in the courtyard. Its winter and I'm sunbathing what is this place!!! Wednesday was the customary hostage and glassy night which was great fun :) and how amazing is absolut pear flavor. I also had my first kebab... YUM!!!

Thursday morning I watched a few episode of Sherlock and the night was DIY and Craft night at KB and, with a lot of help, made an origami crane... how awesome is that :).

Friday morning I headed down to a Global Buddies meeting and it looks like things are sorting themselves out and there should be a lot to look forward to! Friday afternoon was pub crawl number one of the weekend, we donned our 'iliketoparty' shirts and headed to various pubs around town. Lets just say it was an experience!

Saturday came around and I wasnt feeling too worse for ware so I headed out to play some soccer with KB folks. It was great being one of the better ones at soccer as im used to playi

ng touch and not being that great at it. We also played ultimate frisbee which was surprisingly great fun! Its similar to netball in the fact you can run with the frisbee and you are trying to catch it in an end zone. Once you score you switch ends. Great fun and combined with soccer very tiring! The evening consisted of watching Life of Pi, such a slow beginning to the film but really good once it gets going.

Funny sign at a pub

One of the things that I was really looking to was sunrise, so on sunday a massive group of us headed down to north gong beach at 5am to go and watch. It was such a great morning! The hardened ones of us went for a swim which was warmer than the beach at the time of the morning. It was so beautiful watching sunrise and how the light changes the landscape completely. We then headed off to the bbq are for breakfast, bacon, sausage and egg. SOOOOOOO YUMMY.

(Mum and Dad, you can stop reading now)

After this was the infamous KB pub crawl... number two of the weekend for me. This started at 10am.... yes 10am, we headed off on the party bus...

ooooooooo I havent mentioned that party buses yet! So the clubs in Wollongong organise a bus to come and pick us up for nights out and it drops us back at the end of the night. So its basically a bus full of students all having a great time singing and dancing...

So back to the pub crawl. we started off at 10am around KB, I was dressed in a white shirt as in a scientist, the next numberous hours were spent writing on each others shirts, singing and dancing on the bus and hitting a few pubs. The looks that we got from local as we were driving through town was unbelievably funny! I cannot imagine this would happen in England. We finished up at a houseparty which was great fun and that was sunday.

Pub Crawling :) 

KB Pub Crawl :) 

So this next week will be spent finishing off some uni work and hopefully ill find a surfboard that I wanna buy!