1 week milestone.. and oh yeah, uni.

As bad as it sounds, I have to keep reminding myself that I am here for uni. Right now, it still hasn't hit me that I'm in Australia.. It's just felt like I'm on holiday somewhere.

Monday was my first orientation session. It was a simple introductory talk to the study abroad and exchange students, as well as getting our student cards - nothing too strenuous yet. The weird thing was receiving advice about how to spot and avoid rips, as well as getting a talk from a surfer about his camp - I've never heard this sort of info at an orientation before - that's when you know you're in aus :D

Tuesday we were back at uni and had unwillingly signed ourselves up for a test that 'everyone had to do' and 'didn't mean anything' - sureee, that's what they always say!!

It consisted of filling in the blanks and speed reading and the point was to see if anyone needed any help or support with their English... The 'fill in the blank' exercises were actually really hard. It was 3 different passages of text about random topics and words had been taken out, with just the first letter left. Reading the instructions it seemed fairly straight forward but it's so much harder than it sounds! I found myself suddenly forgetting all the words in the English language and struggling to put anything logical.

Luckily the speed reading was much better for me, I finished the task and was fairly happy with it. Thank god, because if it was judged just by the first exercise there's no way I'd pass as a British student whose first language was English!

Wednesday was another talk, but this time course specific. After watching a few productions from previous students, we got forced into 'speed-dating.' At first I was cringing at the thought of forced conversation with other people who didn't really want to talk to strangers either, but actually it turned out to be quite fun. I had some interesting conversations with some interesting people, and walked out smiling :)

Frreedoommmm.

Thursday = no uni = time to explore.

The Chinese Garden of Friendship was on both mine and Greta's Sydney list, so we decided to walk down and visit. We didn't realise you had to pay, so we deliberated going in. It was only 3.50 so decided to in the end, and I'm so glad we did.

The gardens are absolutely beautiful. The greenery, the lakes, the traditional Chinese scenery - and all this amongst the contrasting modern city buildings made it breathtaking. Walking around the gardens I forgot I was in the middle of a bustling city, until I reached an opening, looked up and saw the towers.

I'd happily go back again, and recommend to anyone around the area to go!

From there we walked to Darling Harbour. This was also nice, but we were hungry so didn't explore much. Instead, we sat on the balcony of the Hard Rock Cafe, sipping cocktails, eating lunch and admiring the views from there :D

Friday was a home day; cleaning, buying food, sorting out my phone contract and trying Aussie food (a Youtube video to follow eventually) so nothing exciting to write about there.

The sun was shining on Saturday so I decided to tick off a few things from my list. We walked down to 'The Rocks' area which is an old town in Sydney, looked around the market and walked to Dawes Point Park. The view from here is stunning. You have the Opera House on one side of you and Harbour bridge on the other with ocean in between.

Our friend messaged over the weekend wanting to go to the zoo on Sunday, so due to the trains being cancelled - two bus rides later the 3 of us arrived in Featherdale. It was a really nice day out (really hot too), but we all stroked and got a picture with a koala and saw some Aussie native animals roaming around the zoo grounds which was pretty cool. There were some quite brave kids just petting the kangaroos who were lying around, but I was too scared, I thought they were meant to be violent??! hahaha