Freedom!

As you may know, I have recently had exams, which were not only stressful, but annoying and got largely in the way of the student/hippy/traveller lifestyle I would prefer to be living. They didn't really get in the way of my alcohol consumption though... This was not helped by the presence of a group of Norwegians and a certain backpacking menace.

There are five Norwegian students living in Kooloobong who, like me, are on exchange. Unlike me, they study design and hence have no exams! Because of this, their last 2 weeks have been filled with parties and merriness, and when other people are having parties and being merry, I find it very difficult not to join in! And then there's Mike...

Mike is a boy from England who has spent his last year travelling around Asia and Australia with a garden gnome called Jeff. He once met Debs one night while in England, and decided that this was a good enough reason to come and visit her in Wollongong in the middle of exam season. Obviously Debs didn't want to fail her exams and needed to revise (go on Facebook, Skype, nap, browse the internet), so she practically begged me to take care of Mike for a night, which I did. We watched movies, got to know each other, drank vodka and exchanged travel stories (after a year or backpacking, my tales didn't quite seem to sound so impressive...)

Obviously, since he isn't a student, he had no exams either, so has been spending his time here wondering around meeting people and distracting them from their revision (Facebook, Skype, napping, internet browsing). Despite the fact that he may have caused me to fail an exam, I feel like we have a lot in common, we get along well and that we share a lot of the same ideals, and it is a huge shame that he's moving on and that we won't see each other for a while, but I've told him to expect a visit once we're both back in England, so it's not goodbye forever!

This is a link to the Norwegians' blog - it's written in Norwegian, but Google Translate does a good enough job of deciphering it for it to be understandable, and here is Mike's blog which is written from the perspective of his gnome companion. They're both well worth a read if you have the time to spare!

I'd like to now just take a moment to say that I've had a fantastic time since I got here in July and have loved meeting and spending time with all these new, interesting and kind people, but now, since the semester is over, I am finally free to do what I intended to do on my year abroad...


TRAVEL!!!


Uni here doesn't start again until mid February, so I have three months to see and do as much as I can! On Sunday I will be flying to New Zealand, which is where I will be until December 20th. If you're an avid reader of the blog, you'll know I'll be working on a farm for my first week which I'm really excited for, can't wait to get away from city life. After that, I'll be meeting up with the Norwegians somewhere on the North Island, and I expect I'll be with them until they leave, at which point I'll go to the South Island to do some exploring and self discovery (cliché alert...), and possibly do the highest bungee jump in the southern hemisphere! (I seem to have developed a taste for dangerous activities that involve potential death)

When I get back to Australia, I will be going to Albury to spend Christmas with Flic and her family with some of the other English exchange students, but I've not planned much further than that... There is talk of Sydney for New Year, and the possible purchase of a car after that... Whatever happens, I'll be sure to let you all know and keep you updated!

Missing all of you back home dearly, thanks for reading! Would love to know what you guys are getting up to and how you're surviving without me, so give me an email or Facebook or something :)

What a way to make a living

Well, I realise I've been a little quiet on here recently, but I've just had nothing interesting to blog about really! The workload here at The Gong is pretty excessive compared to Sheffield, for example, back at home I would have to do one pre/post lab per week, and last year only three of the post labs were full formal write ups. Out here, I have two or three post labs or assessments due every week, and every post lab is a formal write up. The reason for this is because each subject has its own lab over here (instead of a big lab module back home) and there is no communication between the subjects because people can take whatever combination of classes they want... On top of this, I have mid-session exams coming up this week, which we don't have in Sheffield, so I'm having to revise on top of everything else. All in all, the work required for one semester is...

17 lab reports
2 spectroscopy assignments
1 literature review
1 presentation based on literature review
3 mid-session exams and...
9 hours of lecture content every week

So I've not really been able to experience Australia as I'd like to during term time, but don't worry, I still jump at any chance of getting my groove on and partying. Even managed to go see a band last week called Architecture in Helsinki, so if you haven't heard of them I'd recommend them! They're an Australian band and have been around for a while - no idea if they ever made it to the UK, I thought I'd heard of them but all of their music sounded new to me so who knows :p

In other news, Spring is finally here, and I can definitely feel it getting warmer (especially because of that gaping hole in the ozone layer). Beginning to spend more and more days lazing in the sun and not getting much else done, but I'm completely okay with that (I'm also okay with getting a hefty tan)! I also got round to booking my flights to New Zealand, and I'll be there between the 20th November and 20th December! Getting pretty excited, hoping to do some WWOOFing while I'm over there (Willing Workers on Organic Farms - work on a farm in exchange for food and shelter), so I'm in the process of picking out a farm to do it on!

Summer in the southern hemisphere is going to be awesome, and I can't wait to enjoy every second of it!