Oh yeah, I have a blog....

So it has been quite a while since I last wrote a blogpost and I can tell you that I've been busy. I left off in NZ which is now almost 1,5 months ago!

Last post I also promised to give some pictures so I'll include 2-3 links below where you can skim through my google drive to look at all the pictures of my travels and some activities so far.

But back to what I have been doing. Over the past month I travelled Australia, settled into my accommodation, travelled some more during the O-week (fancy name for orientation week) and I have started my studies. Since so much happened I'll keep it fairly short because you'll just get bored otherwise.

Lets start with travelling Australia; Me and my girlfriend Catherine travelled to Australia from Auckland, we first flew into Brisbane where we had an evening of amazing korean BBQ (if you've never had it go now, it's amazing) and the next morning we flew to our first destination: Sydney.
Sydney is probably the biggest city I have ever been to in my life although it really does not feel like it. We were able to look at most of the sights on the first day only to find out that the next day would be Australia day (!). For people that have never heard of it, think of koningsdag but then instead of celebrating the king they celebrate their aussieness during the day with many activities and a massive firework show at the end of the day (see google drive for a video).
In sydney we walked around the city and saw the sydney opera house (also had a drink there with the most amazing view), visited the royal botanic gardens, the sydney aquarium (and yes we found nemo), sydney fish market and the city in general. To everyone still going to this side of the world I really recommend going to Sydney for a couple days.
After Sydney we rented a car and drove to the Blue Mountains which is about an hour and a half drive west of Sydney. Because we rented the car fairly early on the day we couldn't check into our AirBnB yet so we got some recommendations for a couple hikes and we chose one of them, the wentworth falls hike. It's a relatively short hike at about 5 KM but it was quite steep since you go all the way down to the bottom of the waterfall. There are some picture on the drive for you to check them out, this hike was totally worth the climb! The next day we went to a small place called Blackheath which, as we were told by the host, has the best tracks in the Blue Mountains and boy was she right about that. It was a canyon track of about 7-9 KM that went all the way through a narrow canyon filled with tropical and rainforresty trees and once you got to the end and the top of the canyon again there were the most amazing views of the whole area. I now understand why they called it the BLUE mountains and so will you after taking a look.

Okay, that was a lot about the Sydney area, after the blue mountains we went back up to Brisbane to take the ferry to Moreton Island. It is an island an odd 50 KM from the shore which is known for being the 3rd biggest sand island in the world (basically the lesser known brother of Fraser Island which is 3 hours drive up north). Once we arrived we had an on-island transfer to our glamp and for the people who never heard of that; it's a compound noun of glamorous and camping which means that had a queen sized bed and our own little ensuite. Because we were there out of high season there were only 2 other couples staying there and every time we went to the beach it felt like our own private beach with palm trees behind us and beach stretching along the shore as far as the eye could see.
After BBQing, swimming, snorkeling and just relaxing in general we set off after 3 days to a small place called Tamborine. A little more than an hour south of Brisbane right in the middle of a really big rainforest. We (again) did some hikes and even saw some wild wallabies :)

After all this travelling Catherine sadly had to return home to continue her own studies and I headed towards University and settled in in my room on campus. So far I've really enjoyed living on campus and uni feels like a little bit like it is my backyard, which it technically is as well.

In the O-week there was an internationals trip to Byron Bay, the city known for its laidback culture and many many surfers. We did a hike up to the lighthouse and the most eastern point in all of Australia, went kayaking with dolphins and we must have seen more than 100 dolphins not even 20 meters away from our kayaks and one day I learned to surf (picture in the google drive as proof). During this trip I also met most of my friends and we got a bit of a friend group going on of more than 12+ international students.

I have rambled on and talked more than enough for now and it's time to wrap it up. Next time I will talk more about my studies and how my courses are going (spoiler: so far so good) and about my other experiences down under.

-Ruben

PS, As promised here are the links to the pictures on google drive:
NZ: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2yfZOY3x98FR0RtNnJuUnRLVXM

AUS: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2yfZOY3x98FbncxTzQtLU1WckU

AUS day: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2yfZOY3x98FejY1a1ZoSC1Ldkk

SURF: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2yfZOY3x98FdU9LRzU2RlJSeEE