Week 19: Exam Celebrations :)

So I kicked the week off with my last exam. It was the coasts exams, which was by far the hardest exam, it actually felt like a third year exam. Even so it went well and the exams results will be interesting! We had some chilled drinks that evening as quite a few people had finished, which is always fun.

Tpical Aussi... "Serving Suggestion: Bloody Cold"

I kicked off my freedom by hitting the beach, before being invited to fishnets for lunch with a few of the lads. We got HUGE burgers and chips for amazingly cheap, somehow I finished the majority of my plate which filled a big hole in my stomach. The picture does not do it justice! Later on I headed back to the beach and caught some more rays. Up until wednesday night I spent most of my time on the beach.

Amazing Fishnets Burger

So wednesday evening we headed out to a friends houseparty and played a few games before heading out to glassy. Once we got back to KB we decided to head down to watch the sunrise for a good friends last night in the Gong. We took a load of blankets and had a good morning on the beach watching the sun rise, despite it being a bit cloudy. We got an amazing brekkie roll from the Kiosk and headed back to KB.

Great Morning!

Its safe to say that not much was achieved on thursday but I did manage to head up to mt keira and back in the late afternoon. We also had a small gathering in the evening but I didn't last long as I was rather tired! Friday was a late start, unsurprisingly! I headed down to the station to pick up a friend for the station before making an amazing spag bol and then we had some more chilled drinks in the evening.

Sitting rather precariously up Mt Keira :)

Hello Mr Kookaburra

Saturday we went for a walk up mt keira but decided to give up as it was so humid and hot. We took a little tour around Wollongong and came back to eat up all the food that has been left by my roomates. They all have now left. Its weird being the first in the place and the last out. So tonight is my last night in KB for 2013, it has been a great semester and I am so excited for next session. But before then it looks like I have a lot of travelling to do :).

Check out all the stuff that has been donated by KB residents! Good effort!

Sunday I packed up all my stuff which went well, not too much stuff, before hitting the beach. The surf was not at its best but the sun was out and lots of soduku puzzles were completed, yeah because im geeky like that. In the evening I was kindly transported up to Sutherland with my stuff to store for the summer. Also this kicked off the start of my Grand Tour of New South Wales. Kicking off in Sutherland or I should say Illawong, I have had my first "home cooked" meal and to keep tradition it was a BBQ with salad and a yummy potato bake. Its safe to say I have a great food belly going on!

Goodbye for now KB, its been a phenomenal semester!

That's it for now, I have a slight suspicion that the upcoming weeks are going to be rather more interesting to read so get keen folks!

Week 18: Sydney Electric Run

So the week kicked off in phenomenally exciting style, with exams for GIS and Water Management on monday and tuesday. These went fairly well, I was really shocked at the amount of questions I could chose from for Water, I think there were about 20 different combinations of questions I could have taken. Coinciding with these exams we had two days of pretty grim weather, grey and rainy all day unfortunately. I look up the stats on the BOM and it turns out we had over 100mm of rain in two days! To give a comparison Norwich usually gets about 600mm in a year!

After my tuesday exam I headed off for my usual jog to the beach (although I ended up doing over 8km), and was planning on going for a bit of a swim, but it turned out all the rainy and stormy weather meant that the red flags were up at the beach. Instead I headed around to the harbour to see the waves crashing over the harbour wall. It was a very picturesc and I got a couple of great shots.

Lucky photo! 

A reminder of Finding Nemo :) Pelicans are BIG!

Its safe to say I was very relieved to find myself waking up on wednesday morning two exams down. So I headed off to have a mosey around town and get some food in, before hitting the beach. The sun tried to come out for my but it was struggling so I didnt last long.


Thursday I woke up with the sun gleaming down. So, to maintain tradition it seems, I headed down to the beach for a days 'revision' on the beach. I packed up a little picnic and took my coasts textbook. After some reading, swimming, chatting and sun bathing I managed to amble back to KB after a cheeky 5 hour beach session. Its safe to say that I got a great tan that day, I was described as being two-toned with my tan lines! I only had slight sun burn on my thighs which I was proud of.

Picnic :)

Friday was spent getting the revision in early with a tough session of fitness. A very tiring 1000 rep circuit. My upper abs are still hurting today. Saturday daytime was a similar affair studying for coasts. But in the late arvo we all got kitted up in our Electric Run gear and headed off to Sydney. So the Electric Run is a charity 5km run which is done in the dark and they put loads of cool lighting up and have music going as you go around. We made the short journey up to Sydney Olympic Park and had a subway dinner (yum as ever), we glow sticked up with hundreds of glow sticks, and painted up with some paint we found and got in the queue. After an hour wait in the rain we eventually got set on our way at a decent jog, but this quickly turned into a walk with the amount of people there were going around. Unfortunately we think the rain caused a bit of havoc with the organising of the event, but even for we all were having a great time dancing along in the lights and music. This was without doubt the highlight of the week and a much needed break from the study and a bit of change of scenery at the same time. Its safe to say trying to clean the paint off myself once we got back wasnt the easiest and my white shorts fell victim to the paint but even so it was a great evening.

So writing this it is 7pm in the evening, I just got distracted for about an hour putting the christmas tree up in the foyer, ultimate procrastination right! It feels very peculiar putting up a christmas tree in shorts and a t-shirt surround by KB people rather than doing it in the cold with my family. The plan for tonight it to try and do as much revision as possible, failing that pizza for dinner and an early night.

Very early for Christmas but hey ho! 

Week 17: Procrasti-blog

So as I mentioned last week this week should be very boring and right now I should be writing... "This week I did nothing but revise for my exams"...But alas, I am a study abroad student who needs to only pass his exams and I have to make the most of my time here.


So I kicked off the week with some revision, I decided to put the work in early. I also decided to go for a jog/walk up Mt Keira. It took a good hour to get up there (mostly walking I have to admit) and the walk up was very spooky, with a very strong wind blowing through the trees and the sun gradually going down. The view from the top was as spectacular as I had remembered, if only it had been a bit sunnier. I decided to bite the bullet and go down the stream/river bed that I had heard about. It's safe to say that I nearly stacked it a dozen times. That's a dangerous route to go down with all the dead leaves and the steepness of the route. Nonetheless I made it back in one piece, without too many injuries and before dark.We had a bit of a Batman night in the evening and watched The Dark Night, what a great movie!

Amazing view ! 

Check out this little critter I cam across!

It turned out that the Melbourne Cup was being held on Tuesday. Think of the FA Cup crossed with Royal Ascot or something like that. This horse race "stops the nation", I was a bit sceptical but litrally everything stopped for the half an hour or so around the race. KB had put on a spread of nibbles and we all watched it on the big screen, after putting a few cheeky bets on the sweepstakes. I managed to get Ethiopia in the sweepstakes, it never had a chance apparently. Even so it was a great break from revision. And another break from revision was a trip to the beach straight after tehe! It was a pretty dangerous afternoon for the beach, we went out trying to catch some waves bodysurfing and really struggled. There was such an undercurrent and the waves were breaking so far out and were so big. Even so it was great fun, I am really really getting used to having the beach just a stones-throw away. In the evening we had another Batman night and watched all but the last 20 mins of The Dark Night Rises, stupid film file :P.

On wednesday I did do some more reivision, honest!I also did a cheeky trip to the farmers market YUMYUM! I think most people have heard about the Bushfires in the NSW area, because of all the damage done there was a music night arranged by us students to raise some money. So we all went off and heard a few friends play some songs at the Tennis Club, which was great fun and had a cheeky sing along to Gay Pirate by Cosmo Jarvis (check it out!). I came back and had an insane rump steak!

NOM

I really cracked on with revision thursday before heading off up to Sydney for the night. We grabbed a take away from a thai place. I have some chicken stew rice something which was surprisingly good actually, im not usually a big fan of thai food but nom. After a bit of an issue getting into our friends student accommodation we eventually get in and get ready to head out, not before having some of our Double Black Johnnie Walker. We met up with a few more people and headed out to a place called Ivy. So it turns out that Ivy is this massive club with multiple levels with a pool level at the top. Naturally we went to check it out! If it had been full of student this place would have been insane, but the Sydney locals don't give off the friendliest vibe. It was so surreal everyone dancing around the pool and some of the more adventurous people around us went for a swim. We headed home via a kebab shop, naturally! We awoke too early and feeling rather worse for ware but we ambled back to the train via hollister, i resisted buying anything! We got back to the gong just after lunch and I took the executive decision that I should go to the beach, can you blame me? I made it back in time for fitness, this was a very hard week at fitness, lots of leg work and it doesn't help being that tired.

Not the best photo but hey!

The weekend was spent doing my best to stay focused revising for my exams on Monday and Tuesday. I never knew how hard it was to revise for the sake of revising. Usually you revise because you need to do really well in the exam but as I just have to pass my subjects I have really struggled to keep my mind focused and motivated. It was made better on sunday by it raining pretty much all day, ah it feels like home in this weather, maybe to the temperature though. But here we are at Sunday evening and my first exams in Water Management tomorrow morning at 9am, 3 hours, 3 questions, so whats done is done and I will just have to do my best. I am looking forward to getting to Tuesday at 4.30pm after my two exams and the a week Monday at 4.30pm when I finish all my exams. What should I treat myself to for completing my exams I wonder? hmmmm!

I am tempted to state that this next week will be spent working really hard revising for my last exam, but lets face it you saw how this week went!

Week 16: Halloween Ball!

So the beginning of this week was spent working on my GIS project and revising for my water exam. These went by fairly uneventfully and im glad to finally have finished all but the exams for the year.

Wednesday arvo me and a few coursemates headed to Scarborough Pub for a nice cold drink and a great view. I was even entrusted in driving us back to Uni, via a quick detor over the curvy bridge which jutts out over the sea. I loved getting back behind the wheel again, its been far too long! In the evening I managed to shave off 30s per km for my 7km run to the beach and back, chuffed to say the least.

And yes I got a haircut! 

Great View! 

Without a doubt the highlight of the week was the KB Halloween Formal. The theme was Halloween Thrift shop, so we headed out earlier in the week to Vinnies (aka The Salvation Army Thrift Shop) and, with lots of help, managed to find a fur jacket, hat, suspenders, trousers (pants)... yeah I went as a pimp. So we all headed off on the party bus to the Portofino Function Centre, which was decorated brilliantly with all manner of spooky things. We had a three course meal, vol au vents with chicken, mushroom and a white sauce... YUM... then falling off the bone lamb shank... YUM and fruits and cream to finish. We also had wine and beers all night, I stuck to the red wine :) lovely! The evening was an absolute hoot. With some great photos taken in the photo booth, lots of dancing and to finish it off an amazing kebab... YUM again.

Yeah we had a big chief! 

The next morning was, unsurprisingly, a late start but a big lunch and a trip to the beach definitely picked me up. Whilst at the beach we spotted some Blue Bottle Jellyfish washed up on the beach, it turns out they are not lethal and only give you a really bad sting so not too bad I guess. In the evening we had the KB performance night at Unibar. It was great to see some familiar faces showing us their musical talent! I then shooted off to meet up with my international buddy who was having dinner at good old amigos. A few ciders and lots of chuckles later we headed back. Once back at KB I re-watched the hunger games, good movie!

Uh-oh a blue bottle jelly!

Saturday was meant to be spent revising, I did a couple of hours before heading to the beach again... This was the 3rd day in a row! The smoke that had blown in from forest fires gradually cleared and we had a glorious afternoon in the surf and the sun. I returned to the work before finishing off the day with American Pie 2.

This is me trying to take a selfie whilst body surfing... harder than you think!

Sunday morning I headed out for another jog and really struggled, damn heat and humidity! But hey another 5 or 6 km done :). The rest of the day was spent writing up lectures notes, unbelievable one of lecturers went through 90 slides in a lecture, I don't know how that was possible!

A short post this week, and don't be surprised if the next couple are fairly short aswell because I should be revising for my exams and not doing any interesting! Note the emphasis on the word should! We will see what the next few weeks bring me :).