Il mio Overseas a Sydney, Australia (Gen-Lug 2007)... e il mio periodo di Tesi all'Estero a Rotterdam/Utrecht, Olanda (Ott 2007-Mar 2008)!

17th February – Manly Beach and Shelly Beach/2

After the described conquest, a bigger and bigger crowd followed us and settled in the area. This lovely beach has some beautiful colours under the water, and it’s like a remote corner, distant 5-10 minutes walking from the more popular beach.

After the whole day spent there we moved back to our beloved house in Redfern, but while my friends caught a ferry in the late afternoon, I stopped a few more hours in Manly to meet Lucia, a girl from Pesaro who is a friend of a friend of mine (Andrea!!!). I haven’t got a picture with her, who has been really kind with me for all the time, but I have only got this image of the often mentioned Manly Beach. Now you know why I called it “jewel”.

Postato da: DexterH46 a 08:47 | link | commenti
holiday, beach, sydney

17th February – Manly Beach and Shelly Beach/1

After a week full of orientation events, a full day on a beach was the ideal. A group of five (best result so far) left the house in Redfern (Me, Harrison, Federica, Gauthier and the new entry Krista, who brought also two friends with her!) heading to another Sydney jewel: Manly Beach!
The journey began with a ferry from Circular Quay to Manly Wharf. During the travel we could appreciate some great views, including this one of the Harbour Bridge.

Once arrived in Manly we walked all along “The Corso” before arriving to Manly Beach. Since we wanted to take the popular “Manly Walk” (luckily we didn’t, it’s very very long and even hard, but we will take it…) we started to walk from Manly Beach to another area, a less popular beach called Shelly Beach, where there are no waves. For an instance it seemed me to be back in Italy, anyway I conquered the place together with my friends, here you can see some picture of the great overlord (me) after the great effort! ;-)

Postato da: DexterH46 a 06:13 | link | commenti (4)
holiday, beach, sydney

12th February – UTS Welcome

The more time passes, the more I feel the “holiday” will be soon replaced by the University.
But the time hasn’t come yet!
On this Monday the Uni has organised a “welcome” for all the International students: exchange, study abroad and “whole duration” students, I belong to the first category as you know.
Unfortunately the weather has been really bad, everyone got to the UTS Tower absolutely wet, even if someone tried to avoid water catching a taxi. No way, raining was so strong that no umbrella, no k-way, no car would have saved you completely.
After some steps I got into a floor where a lot of flags from all over the world were waiting for us, together with a lot of people.

The Vice-Chancellor (I guess) gave us his welcome, then other people spoke to the crowd, and some aboriginal people also performed a short show on the stage. Due to the huge number of participants, not everyone could get into the Great Hall, so some people (like me, just to mention one!) had to watch everything through a screen placed outside the Hall.

After the official welcome the Peer Networkers (some young local students, dunno if volunteers or not, but I know they always wear an orange t-shirt) brought us to a Chinese restaurant to have a meal all together.
The place was good but, dammit, so expensive!!! And the worst thing was that the waiters were not spelling (in my opinion) a good English, so everytime they were offering you something you had to guess what was it. Furthermore nobody told us that every “yes” was a $5 more on the bill! When the people at my table realised this, we started to answer “NO” at any single question that was made us. It resulted in a $12 each meal. Not bad considering that people in other tables (there were at least 10 different tables) paid $11, $14, $15, $18, $20 per person!!!
The day at Uni ended with all the information we needed, given us by the International Staff.
They also organised an Aussie-quiz (great James!!!), something that I will do to my friends once back in Italy... so start to study if you wanna win great prizes!
Personally I gave correct answers for the first six questions, then at the tie-break questions I made an error:out! What a pity, two more questions and I would have won!

Postato da: DexterH46 a 11:30 | link | commenti
bureaucracy, sydney, uts

9th February – Coogee Beach

“Another day, another bay” I may say, exactly how I have put it on my Messenger account.
The weather seemed to be good friend for this day, so we went to explore another beach among those you can apprecciate in the Sydney area. This time we went to Coogee. The group of the day was formed by me, Federica and Ruzbeh, and left home in the early morning. At lunchtime I could have some food (watermelon brought from home!!!) on the beach to chill after the relaxing sunbathing.

In the early afternoon Dusan joined us, so the group was now composed by four elements, not bad for our house! When the weather started to change there was no more point in having a swim, so I decided to run on the beach, to keep fit at least.

Incredible but true, the only time I didn’t go in the water a bluebottle (which is a jellyfish) stung me! It never happened by any kind of jellyfish in 24 years and this little bastard, which has been brought on the shore by a wave while I was walking there, stung me.

My right ankle was full of this red spots, signs of the venom it has put inside my body, I had even to go to the Surf Rescue people (I thought I would have called them the first time I had tried surfing, not before!) to put some ice on it.

After I recovered from my injury the sky was absolutely cloudy, so we decided to catch a bus to go home. Anyway it wasn’t that late, it should have been something past 6pm, so already a good time to go, since we were out from the morning.

Postato da: DexterH46 a 06:44 | link | commenti
holiday, beach, sydney

8th February – Royal Botanic Gardens (III – Other Animals)

This is the third and last part about Royal Botanic Gardens, even if I am sure we will go back there because we couldn’t explore the whole park in this afternoon.

So here you can see me opening a tap for a thirsty parrot (always remember animals names may be wrong)...

...Ruzbeh in Zeus’ hands (err... even mithology is not my favourite subject... it might not be Zeus!)...

...and finally Harrison climbing some reed!

Postato da: DexterH46 a 04:59 | link | commenti (3)
holiday, sydney

8th February – Royal Botanic Gardens (II - Animals)

In order, from the top to the bottom, I try to guess the name of these animals...
1)Flying fox

2)Duck

3)Opossum

I do NOT promise you that these are their real names, I am so bad with animals in Italian... and in English is even more confusing!
Anyway the lesson of the day is that you can find loads of free animals in this beautiful park, and the three samples I am giving you are only a small part of all the ones you can see! Don’t trust me? Come and see!

Postato da: DexterH46 a 10:29 | link | commenti
holiday, sydney

8th February – Royal Botanic Gardens (I - Landscapes)

On 7 February I have “wasted” my time doing some water experiments for my Italian friends questioning wheter or not it is true that the whirl goes in the opposite direction if compared to the Northern Emisphere’s one. No results anyway, it’s hard to say (and, after all, in which way does it go in my country? Can’t remember...).
The following day I’ve spent the whole afternoon with Gauthier, Harrison and Ruzbeh at Royal Botanic Gardens. A beautiful free-entrance park in Central Sydney. I prefer to show you three pictures per day rather than writing dozens of lines about it,  today we start with some beautiful sights... enjoy!

Amazing vegetation at first...

The Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge over there...

And a tiny lake in the middle of the gardens!

Postato da: DexterH46 a 10:20 | link | commenti (2)
holiday, sydney

6th February – I am a student

It may seem that there is nothing about studying in what I write, but unfortunately there is something! I arrived in Australia with the need to swap a subject in place of another one because I had a clashing timetable, so, after two weeks and some mails sent without success, I went to the UTS School of Business. You can find a picture of the entrance, a bright one next to a courtyard. The building is on five floors, and the escalator is accessible to both students and Academic staff (not like in Bologna where students must use the stairs!). Postgraduate students can also take advantage of some free soft drinks during the evenings when they have lectures (anyway please note: I have discovered it “only” during the first teaching week).

The entrance of the UTS Business School

After having spoken to some administrative staff, I had a stroll in the City, taking advantage of the beautiful sunny day, and ended to the Town Hall where I took a picture of a flower arrangement next to the Cathedral. Reading a sign there I found out that this is not the only one, and going around in Sydney I have the opportunity to see many more of them!

A beautiful flower arrangement in the City centre

Postato da: DexterH46 a 09:29 | link | commenti
sydney, uts

5th February - Superbowl on tv!

On Monday morning I've tried for the first time to see wheter or not it will be possible to watch football (let's call it soccer as they say here) matches or not on the internet through p2p softwares.
This time wasn't for the Italian soccer (it has been suspended), but for the Superbowl, maybe the biggest sport event in the US. For those who don't know, it's the final game of the US American Football League, the well-known NFL.
I've tried to get the images of the event, but sometimes the system wasn't able to show them clearly and you could get just some stills. This is due to our not strongest connection ever.
Anyway I have been very lucky: I just tried to turn the tv on and... it was there! Despite I've lost the first 10minutes I could see all the event for free, which is virtually impossible in Italy...
For your information Indianapolis Colts beated Chicago Bears, and you can see the proof from these pics I took from the tv in my room.

Postato da: DexterH46 a 10:30 | link | commenti
holiday, accomodation

4th February - Sunday at Bronte Beach

After a short sleep, on Sunday me and Federica decided to go to see another beach: Bronte. We caught a bus to get there and as soon as we arrived (around midday I guess) we could admire one more beautiful beach.

The first sight of Bronte Beach

This time the place was slightly less crowded, and differently from the other beaches, there was an area where the water wasn’t deep at all but the waves were still nice stuff: the ideal for a beginner like me.
At around 5pm we have been reached by our housemate Ali... but unfortunately he brought the clouds with him, so for the last hour we couldn’t get the sun: for me has been a good opportunity to have a walk all along the beach to take some pictures.
I put here only two of them: in the first you can see some small shells that populate the rocks in this beach while in the second you can admire a lovely area where the water has dug a kind of small cave filled by some green plants (don’t ask me what they are, I may just guess seaweed, but am not sure).

Some small shells populating Bronte Beach rocks

A small part of environment untouched by the men

Postato da: DexterH46 a 04:18 | link | commenti (2)
holiday, beach, sydney