Squash and Surf !

“Time flies when having fun!”

 This phrase has probably never been as appropriate for my life as right now. Pretty much every day is filled with new and exciting opportunities so you don´t really have the time to get bored… Or at least I don´t :) ... Gosh, I love Australia!

To begin with I have started playing squash down here, which is great! I even found a club, Norwood Squash, which is only 10 minutes bike ride away from Kent Town (where I live). Although, I must admit that I was a bit disappointed about the standard of the squash here in Adelaide as there are not very many active clubs and the few players I´ve met are either “soon to become senior citizens” or just not that good. Perhaps I have been coming at the wrong hours or something but so far I have almost only seen “veteran” players…

However, they do have more active squash club pennants here in South Australia then in Denmark or Iceland. They use a ranking system called Squash Matrix.com where every player is registered and records kept of all their games during the season. There is played in 4. Divisions, which are called State 1, 2, 3 and 4 where, state 1 is the elite division and there are 4 female players per team. My club has a team in all divisions so I went to try out for one of them last Saturday with good results. They seem to think I might have some potential so they have put me as player nr 1. in their team in 2. division and as a reserve player for the elite division team!  So I am very excited about that and it means I will get to play matches 1-2x a week from now on J And additionally I will be taking some private coaching lessons to try to improve my tactics and skills… So hopefully I will return home as a better and improved player ;) 

But the big question is of course: Will my knee be able to keep up? Because of that I have also been spending some time at the fitness centre to keep the muscles around the knee strong and trying to prevent further injuries.

Yesterday I tried surfing for the first time !!  That was SO COOL and definitely something I have to try again! I really understand now why so many people chose to bend their lifestyle around surfing. You just feel so free there surfing on the waves (or at least I am one step closer to imagining how that feels now;)) The weather was very windy though and the current strong so it was quite difficult to paddle against the waves, but totally worth it when you finally caught a good wave to surf with. Before you begin assuming I am a natural born surfer, I have to admit I only managed to stand up properly once and was just very lucky that Annette caught exactly that glory moment on picture!  Had many rides where I either just lied on the board or was on my knees. But still, I guess that’s a start ;)

    

The university started 2 weeks ago and I am on my way into week 3 now. I have to admit that I have not been spending much time studying so far, but at least the lectures and tutorials seem exciting. The work load is a bit heavier here than at ASB as there are many projects and assignments to hand in and they make you participate much more in the tutorials and lectures which I guess is good. The biggest problem is just that I still find my self deeply caught up in the holiday mode, so it is difficult to pick up the academic books when you can go and do soooooo many other things that seem more exciting. But with a little co-ordination and time management I should be just fine…

Like they say so frequently down here: NO WORRIES !  

The next thing on my travel agenda is already next Thursday. Me along with some other Danes and Germans have decided to take a long weekend and visit Tasmania, the home of the Danish crown princess, Mary. And who knows maybe we’ll see some Tasmanian devils… ;)

For now, over and out and remember….

NO WORRIES !

Finally a picture of the flat mates of room 132, Kent Town :)

Finally a grown-up

Again, I apologize for being so lazy at updating this side! But before I write about the previously promised topics I have to tell you about my "possibly life changing experience" I had last night!

Get ready, it´s a big deal! ;)

 

For the FIRST TIME in my life I went to the cinema ALONE !!!  yep, you read that right, me sitting all by my self with my popcorn and coke in a move theatre J hihihi….

It really wasn’t on purpose or anything, it was just a result of a “minor” misunderstanding… ;)

I had decided to go to the cinema with Cris (a Canadian guy who also lives in Kent Town) to see a specific movie which I believed was “He´s just not that into you” so I had really gotten into the chick flick mode and Cris also seemed to be very excited about seeing the movie! 

However when walking to the cinema I can´t understand why Cris is in such a big hurry. According my info, the film wasn´t supposed to start until after 30 min and we had plenty of time! I also got a bit suspicious when Cris asked my whether I had read the book/ the comics the film was made after… (remember I think we are on our way to see a chick flick) However, the moment of truth dramatically occurs when Cris is buying his ticket: 

“One to WATCHMEN” A superhero film I had sworn that I would never see… So my reaction is: “WHAT…! That superhero crap movie ??? “  …  And that is when we discover our little misunderstanding… hehe…  after all it was also a bit strange that Cris was so excited about seeing a chick flick ;)

Nevertheless, in my stubbornness I of course decided to rather go and see my chick flick which resulted in me sitting all alone in the movie theatre… ;O) 

And I have to say, many lonely thoughts fly through your head while sitting there alone. To begin with I thought to myself, damn I must look like “the girl who got stud op on her date” or just “that STINKY INTERNATIONAL STUDENT” … hehe…  But then I began to comfort my self by imagining I was a movie critic or the fact that now I could finally consider myself as a real grown up!

 

But even with those great methods of trying to reassure my self I wasn’t “that stinky international student who went to the cinema alone” my final conclusion is:

Been there, done that and don’t feel the need to do it again!

But at least I learnt that about myself and can now proudly say: “HEY, I´ve tried going to the cinema alone!” ;O)

 

And p.s. thank you Cris for helping me achieve that ;)

Ace Mate !

Wow, time passes 

way to quickly by here in Adelaide! I can’t believe I have been here for almost 2 weeks now ! However at the same time it also feels like a lifetime since I left from home… There have been so many new thing to take in... New places, new people “new” language (Australians do use a lot of slang J) and of course we have been extremely busy since we got here with several things, such as settling down, finding accommodation, buying things we need, exploring the city of Adelaide and our new university campus, meeting

 new people, going to the beach, drinking beer and so on... ;)

The weather has been awesome since we arrived… Sunny and blue sky and no humidity, so you can easily walk around without sweating too much which is perfect! Although it does get a bit cold at night…  But I guess I can live with that ;)

The trip down here was obviously veeeery looong !  I had to take 4 connecting flights to get from Iceland to Adelaide.So the flight route looked like this: Keflavik – Copenhagen – Paris – Singapore – Adelaide and it took all together 40 hours to get here. I know some of you might be thinking that this was a strange choice of connecting flights… It is probably possible to get there more easily by flying to London and fly directly from there to Australia… But whatever… We had bought the tickets very early through Kilroy Travels and they set it up like this… We didn’t know any better at the time…

Another thing is that when you fly basically half way around the globe in 40 hours you also cross several time zones which means that when you arrive very early in the morning at the local time in Australia your body clock thinks it is around midnight the day before..   So it was really a challenge to stay awake during our first day in Adelaide..  But somehow me and Annette managed to stay awake until dinner time and then we hadn’t really slept for three days !!  You can only imagine the jet lack we suffered from the next week…. Hehe…  

 

Gosh, there are still so many things I have to write about…  However I think I’ll stop here from now and try to catch up during the next days… So you’ll get the updates in a smaller dozes and not just all at once (as a communication student I realize that most people only have the

 concentration to read short blogs at a time J )

So stay tuned for the next days to hear about:

• ·      the Royal Adelaide “mental” hospital
  
• ·      Accommodation searching hell
  
• ·      Sun burns
  
• ·      The Kent Town Lodge
  
• ·      And more… J
  

Welcome to my new blog site!

Here you will be able to follow my stay in Australia both verbally and visually for the next 6 months J

In case you are wondering why I choose to write in English, it is simply to create a middle ground for my friends and family around the world so that everybody interested can get a chance to follow my adventures “in-the-land-down-under” J Another reason is to practise and develop a better fluency in my English writing skills. Hope that’s okay by everyone, and PLEASE feel free to comment in any language I understand! J

 

A brief summary:

Me and two other girls (Annette and Caroline) from ASB (Aarhus School of Business) are on our way to Australia for one semester as a part of our study program, BA-English and Business communication, at ASB.

I left Iceland the 11^th February 2009 and will return the 11^th August 2009 and probably be in Denmark again around 1^st September.

The school we will be studying at is called The University of Adelaide and is located in South Australia. (Approx, 900 km away from the fires in Victoria state!)

The courses I will be taking are: Marketing II, Management II, Cross Cultural Communications and Social Sciences of Australia.

We expect to find accommodation when we arrive in Adelaide, but to begin with we will be staying at a temporary accommodation provided by the school.

After the semester finishes in the beginning of July we expect to travel around Australia for about 3 weeks and then on our way home we will use 2 weeks to stop in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok and thereby explore a little of Asia.