Family

The fam have arrived!

Sadly, even though I was 45mins early to the airport, I managed to wait in the wrong arrivals hall and so our reunion was a little disjointed, but eventually we all found each other. Arrivals was packed as everyone was coming to meet their friends and family who were flying out to Australia and there were lots of smiling faces and tearful reunions going on around me. 

Once we were finally together again we hopped in a cab to get away from the thronging masses as quickly as possible and arrived shortly at the hotel. They were all very pale and jetlagged and just, well... squishy! You forget how much you body changes throughout the seasons, and comparing their pale English winter skin to my Australia summer skin was absolutely hilarious, no offence guys. 

After they had showered and unpacked I took them down to Coogee to let them thaw out a bit. It was a boiling hot day and they just kind of melted onto the beach in the heat. This was Moo's reaction to this sun...

Squinty mole rat

As per my usual routine, I made them do the Coogee to Bondi walk that afternoon too. Sadly, after only about 20mins, this was the state of them... I felt a bit mean.

Ella was dying of heat exhaustion, my Mum was simply just really over tired, my Dad had blisters already, and we'd totally lost Hannah. Brilliant. However, we eventually found some water and some plasters (and Hannah) and finally made it to Bondi where we had an early supper at Lush. Needless to say, they pretty much went straight to bed after that!

The next few days were a little more successful as they slowly acclimatised and got over their jetlag. We explored Sydney and did very touristy things like visit Circular Quay and the Opera House and stuff as my Dad and sisters have never been to Australia before and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

We beached, and shopped, and visited some family friends and desperately tried to feel Christmassy in the heat! Sadly the weather wasn't all that great for them as it's was quite overcast and muggy some days, but still a hell of a lot better than the English winter.

Finding it very hard to get it into my head that it's the 23rd December....!

B

Long Time No See, Stranger

A certain Mr Oliver Amphlett has come out to visit! 

I went to go meet him at the airport and after a little bit of an emotional (on my behalf... with everyone staring, it was very embarrassing) reunion in the airport we headed off to begin our intense three week catch up and travel adventure!

We spent the next few days mooching about in Sydney, waiting for Oli to get over his jetlag, going to places like Searock, UNSW campus, Circular Quay etc. As my standard jetlag cure for everyone who first arrives in Sydney (Harry was the first victim, my family shall be the next), I made him do the Coogee to Bondi walk. It's quite a long walk, but the views are amazing and you go down into each little cove and can see all the different beaches. The walk finishes by walking past Icebergs which is a super famous sea pool/bar/club just on the edge of Bondi, and then you end up right on the beach where we stopped for a few drinks at The Bucket List.

We spent some time shopping in Surry Hills and found the most amazing cupcake place called Sparkle Cupcakery which is a very cool little place and the cupcakes are YUM.

We also found a shop with a skate park in the back of it....

...how incredibly hipster. I also found my new favourite shop which is called Service on Oxford Street. It stocks loads of amazing one-off stuff by Australia designers and everything is beautiful and very unique, but sadly pretty spenny. 

One of the days we went to the markets in The Rocks and then headed to right underneath the Harbour Bridge for Oli to do some of his long exposure photography.

We also went to go see Justin Martin play at The World Bar with Harry which was a good night out, and met up with Nelly for a nice supper at a gorgeous little tapas place near home called The Spanish Fly. So strange to all be out in Sydney together!

We leave for our big East Coast road trip early tomorrow morning... very excited!

B

End of Exams

So usually finishing your exams at the end of Semester 2 (I've started out here halfway through the year as the academic year is different) is a huge relief and a good excuse for a huge party to start the summer with a bang. Well, not so much for me, as I didn't really have any exams... All of my Spanish tests were in class (there were quite a few though - oral, written, listening, grammar... you name it) and then everything else for Music was just presentations or hand-ins, all of which were over and done with before lectures even stopped for the exam period. There was one day when I had three exams on one day but.... meh.

So, here I am now all finished and ready to party and pretty much EVERYONE else is just beginning their exams. It's been quite fun to walk around gloating about my four month summer (when everyone else only has three) for these past few days but the novelty is waring off and people are really beginning to start to hate me.

Good news though, Harry's moved from the Hunter Valley and now lives at UNSW! He's got a very important new job with a famous race horse trainer just by Randwick Racecourse which is literally across the road, and whilst he was flat hunting, came and crashed at mine for a few days. By chance, a friend here called Em was going off travelling and was looking for someone to sub-let the room off her so that she wasn't paying rent for a room she wasn't using, so Harry has now moved in to her room and is living on campus with me! I have to move out of my room in a few weeks as my tenancy runs out on 26th November, but another girl in the same flat will be moving out then and also be wanting someone to sub-let her room, and so by the end of this month Harry and I will be living in the same flat. Good times ahead boys and girls, good times ahead....! Sadly though, Harry is on a bit of a bizarre schedule as his shifts are from 3am - 9am and then he has the rest of the day off except for having to go back to feed the horses at 2pm for an hour, and this obviously means he has to be in bed pretty early and can't come out much. I'll convince him soon enough though, but he's on best behaviour as it's his first week so I'm being tolerant at the moment. 

I'm keeping myself busy with work at the bar which is pretty hectic now as it's getting into the Summer season, and I've still got another 3 weeks of my internship. Also obviously doing my best to get that mythical bikini bod I know is hiding in there somewhere ready for Summer, but I sprained my ankle last night whilst running and so am now hobbling around like a cripple. I had a bit of a panic moment as I haven't sprained my ankle for years (I think the last time I did it was on the trampoline when I was about 12!?) and had no idea what I was meant to do as Mum/Sister Gil wasn't there to nurse me! I've managed to seek out some suitably sporty people though who have told me "Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate" and so I've been watching Breaking Bad with my foot up with a bag of peas feeling like a right tit. Oh well...

The weather hasn't really been that great for the past week but suddenly today was boiling and so I dragged Harry and some others down to Coogee for a beach day. We just lay and baked ourselves and soaked up some much needed post-exam vitamin D, but I've managed to burn my bum and so I can't sit down OR walk now, which is proving to be quite annoying. Also the woman in the pharmacy called me a 'silly pom' when I hobbled in to buy some aftersun and ibuprofen... bit embarrassing. I was meant to go out to a shisha bar this evening with a few friends but I had to bail as I wouldn't be able to do that lotus flower thing with you legs, which is obviously obligatory when smoking shisha, and so, what was the point!? (If I'm honest, the real reason is that I have also burnt the lower half (!?) of my face but I was wearing lip balm with SPF in it and it means that I now have a weird white line all the way round my lips.... BRILLIANT. I'm a mess. Hopefully it'll be gone by tomorrow....)
Halloween was an odd one this year. I thought I was going to have to work until midnight and wouldn't be able to join in with anything at all, but they let me go at 8pm as the bar wasn't busy. I rushed home, shoved on some black clothes, Halloweened the shit outta my face, grabbed some wine and ran to meet everyone in a friends flat. I was met with a 'What.... what are you!?' by most people, which was fair enough as everyone else's costumes were pretty impressive. Here are two of my faves....

Ailsa's freaky cat eyes

Stan and Thierry as Jesse and Heisenberg from Breaking Bag - good hey!?

Everyone got very drunk and most people traded bits of their costumes with other people, so by the end everyone was looking like a bizarre hybrid of some kind of meth-brewing-vampire-cat, or something equally as weird. I woke up in the morning wearing a vampire cape (yup, thats right, I slept in it) and there was a micro scooter in my room which definitely is not mine. Also, according to the photos on my phone, we went to Macdonalds at some point and Adam ordered a burger which had no burger in it!?

Look at his little face, bless. I've never seen someone look so shocked and upset over some bread. (Quite possibly one of the most hilarious moments EVER though.)
I have horrible images of myself zooming around Macdonalds on the scooter in the vampire cape, but lets just not think about that. I hope that didn't happen....

Anyway, that's my life right now. Lots of much more exciting things coming up soon, as Oli's coming out here for 3 weeks at the end of this month, then my family come out for Christmas and New Year, and then I'm going to hit up Indonesia and Asia for Feb/Jan with friends before uni starts again in March. Plus a few festivals thrown in their somewhere.

Love to all back home...!

B

Harry and Bean's Big Day Out

Harry calls me 'Bean' because he know's another girl called Becky who he used to work in a pub with, and her nickname was Bean. He says that we're bizarrely similar in mannerisms and looks, and so then I became 'The Other Bean', but when 'Original Bean' isn't around, I just become 'Bean'!

We had a slow morning and then jumped on a bus to Bondi to go and explore. I haven't properly been to Bondi Beach yet so it was a fun touristy thing for both of us to do. Even though it's the middle of Winter out here it was 25 degrees and amazingly sunny!

Despite knowing that everyone back home is having an incredible time at Boomtown Festival, and missing them all loads, we were feeling pretty smug to be enjoying a day like this one together in Australia on the beach. "How did we wangle this one!?"

We spent the whole day wandering around all the little cafes and shops and lying and chatting on the beach. There were loads of people preparing for the beach party that will be hosted here at the end of City2Surf. City2Surf is a huge annual 14km run from the centre of Sydney to Bondi and over 80,000 people come and run from all over the world. My friend Grace is running tomorrow, so we'll be rooting for her (though she'll be fine as she recently ran the London Marathon. 14km!? Pah....)

After we got bored of watching people learning to surf and weird old men running up and down the beach in their pants, we decided to do the coastal walk from Bondi to Coogee. It took us about two hours but we go to see loads of other bays such as Bronte and Tamarama, and we stopped and watched this group of guys who were filming themselves doing stunts on rollerskates at Bronte. One of them jumped down some 15ft stairs and landed it... unfortunately I didn't manage to film it but it was pretty impressive to watch.

When we arrived at Coogee the sun was beginning to set and everyone was out in the park just above the beach having bbqs and relaxing in the last of the (Winter) sun. This is the area that I will probably move to for next semester, as I am hoping to move out of halls and find a house, so it was nice to be able to have a look around.

We were both tired after walking so far and so we just cooked some supper and had another chilled evening. Harry also has to be up off nice and early tomorrow to go meet a friend to catch a train to the Hunter Valley. I'll be sad to see him go but I live right next to Randwick Racecouse (which he got very excited about) and so he'll be up here fairly frequently, hopefully. Similarly, I'll probably go stay with him in the Hunter Valley sometime soon to get out of the city for a while which'll be nice.

I'm slowly amassing recruits out here, now I have Tally AND Harry! To all those still at home though, I miss you all and I'm enjoying seeing your smiling faces every day and I have hundreds of photographs up all over my room - such fond memories of the very brief month of English Summer I had before I came out here. I hope you're all partying through the rest of it on behalf of me!

Missing y'all, heaps of love,

B