New Home, Sunshine & Dragons

It's funny how once Uni was all done I still have remained busier than I had expected!  On Saturday morning I packed up everything and did a wee bit of cleaning.  In the arvo I headed into town to participate in this 'conversation' thing that I was selected to do (they promised they'd compensate with money so I was game!).  It was actually a really cool experience! For the past few weeks I've been filling out questionnaires and surveys to be apart of this 'conversation' even though I really had no idea what it was about, all I knew was that they wanted international students and I could get money so I was game! I got to the business office and discovered that I had been one of seven that were selected to participate in a government procedure to creating effective advertising for studying abroad students as well as building AU careers in North America.  Pretty cool stuff!  It was a video recorded and audio recorded session where they would show us various advertisements and we would give our opinions and thoughts on it.  I also met another Minnesotan there!  He had studied abroad there, then moved to AU to get his masters and further his work experience. I ended up chatting with him a little over an hour after the meeting... he gave me a really clear view on what moving to AU is really like and the processes he had gone through and all that jazz... which may or may not have been a good thing to hear... haha

Saturday night Ricardo & Marlon hopped on over (more like drove) to SUV & helped me move all my stuff to my new place! This is where I am living this month:  :)

I was pretty tired at the end of the day so I didn't unpack anything. Instead we all just watched some Human Planet, then went to bed!

Sunday I went to church, then down the the Buller Center for lunch and some neighborhood outreach.  I got to go door to door with this guy called Paul who was visiting our church. He's a worship leader at a church in North Sydney, but he moved here not too long ago from London!  Considering London is my fav place on earth I had plenty of questions. Probs talked the poor guys ear off! Nevertheless it is still cool to be super accepting of people who dont know anyone.  If Sydney has taught me anything, it's taught me that even simple conversations in an unknown place can really mean a lot to someone!  After that I headed off to work the night away!

Monday I was up early and hopped on a train for 30min to meet my mate David just west of Sydney.  We went on a little road trip down to the southern beaches, they are so ridiculously gorgeous!

It was the perfect day outside!  WAY warmer than it has been these last few weeks, I was even outside in just a t-shirt!  We climbed on rocks and even got to watch a few whales!  There was this cute old man that was showing us where the whales were and how to follow them.  Knowing me and how much I absolutely adore sweet old men, I loved how much he was telling us about them!  Then we headed to Wollongong to see a Rugby game!  David is like a huge Illawara Dragons fan so he provided me with the adequate gear for the game. haha

It was fun to finally get to see rugby live and it was actually a really really good game!  After the game it was pretty late so we headed home.  Traffic was horrible so it ended taking us a good 3.5 hours to get back to Sydney... but it was still totally worth it!

I finally got a bit of a sleep in today and unpacking. I've just been cleaning and reading and kinda bumming around today but it's a good bumming around. I'm off to work in a bit here, then hopefully off to wine tasting with Katrina in Hunter Valley which is a couple hours north of Sydney tomorrow... if we can find a car to take that is...