First days in Australia

I've been here for 4 whole days now and I love every single bit of it (except scary and big arse spiders creeping up on my wall). I don't really know where to start from. I mean I haven't really been up to that much yet as I live off campus and haven't personally met any students yet, but still, it feels like every day is an adventure and there are just SO many things that are new. Oh, before I get to them, let me just quickly bring out some points about my travel here:

 * It was a 27,5 hour flight. (Still can't believe it)



At the Amsterdam airport

 * I flew out from Helsinki and had my first layover of 3 hours in Amsterdam. (PS. Met Cath who was on her way to her exchange in Korea).


Ni hao, ma!

* Flight to Hong Kong was 11,5 hours long

* In Hong Kong I had literally 30min to get to my next flight. Within that 30min I managed to capture this picture :)


At the Hong Kong International airport

* Flight from HK to Sydney was 9 hours

* Arrived to Sydney at 9PM local time and by 9.20PM I had my bags and was on my way to Penrith.

So, here I am. After that long of a flight I guess it's normal that I slept until 12pm the following morning. The warm sunbeams through my window were quite helpful, though, and soon after I was out and about to go and explore. The first thing that confused me was the stupid traffic. I am so not going to get used to it, why would you even like to drive on the right side....just don't get it. Even people walked on the left side which annoyed me so much...oh well. Soon after I had left the house I got lost of course. That's how I usually roll lol. Want to do everything by myself and figure out the routes even though I have no glue of any directions whatsoever, haah, typical me. Anyhow, after a 45min walk I finally found the train station (that now takes me 10-15min to get to).

Once I arrived at the campus station I got lost again bahahaha, but it wasn't that bad. Soon I found the campus shuttle (which surprise, surprise, was next to the station all along, duuh) and was happily on my way to the Kingswood campus. The campus was huge!!!! I only went to the main building to pick up some papers and pens and register myself, and were too tired to go any further. I talked to some of the peeps with green shirts (they were there to help out new students with questions) and heard the funny Aussie accent continuously all around me. I mean, how is it even possible to speak like that hahaha, I mean no offence, Liz, Cath and any other Aussie friends I might get, but it just sounds so wrong. It's really a mixture of Scottish and South African English, at least that's how it sounds to me. I do have to mention that I had to use the phrases like: "Sorry?" "What did you say?" "Can you repeat that, please?" "Pardon?" "What's that?", tooo many times.

Anyhow, I didn't get much around at the campus that day. So, tomorrow will be the very first day for me to explore the rest of the campus in Kingswood and then go to my other campus in Werrington South, that I still don't have any glue about. Should be fun!?

On Friday I went to Penrith Plaza, which is a huge shopping center in Penrith, the closest city to St. Marys where I live. It was only 10min by train. The city itself looked very cute, I mean the streets were like the ones on beach boulevards full of souvenires and cheap stuff nobody needs. I did get my famous Australian flip flops for just 2 dollars, so it was a happy day for me.

In the Plaza, though, were all the stores you could imagine, I mean they even had TARGET!!! I love Target :) Other great stores were the ones with summer sales on dresses and all kinds of girlie stuff. My ultimate favorite, though, was a pet store. They had real puppies and kittens and fish and parrots and I just couldn't leave that place. As I won't be able to get a dog right now it's not hard to guess where I will be spending my free days....mmm, maybe at the beach though :P

On Saturday it was mostly raining. I stayed in the whole day and catched up with the sleep. Took some photos in the backyard but that was it. I also had to figure out my schedule and classes, which actually turned out to be a lot of fun.

On Sunday, which is today, it was supposed to be raining. Well, it didn't! I woke up quite early and went for a nice walk. I passed the grocery store and bought some fruit for the coming week. The food is so cheap here, I just love it! I really don't understand how do people even eat in Estonia when the food is so much cheaper in countries where the paychecks are 3 times higher....mystery.
In the afternoon I went for a walk to find a park that Google Maps showed to be close to my place. It was a magnificant place, I loved how the trees were able to give me some shadows in a 35 degree heat that was killing me lol.


It's supposed to be raining the whole week, we'll see. Even with the rain it is said to reach 30 degrees, so that will be something new. I have no classes on Thursdays and Fridays, so hopefully will make it to Bondi Beach in Sydney one of these days or on the weekend then, that's something to wait for.

Well, I am also waiting for my classes to start, so I guess I should head to my (awesome, king size) bed.

Until next week, be blessed!