Week fifteen: Luckiest girl in the world

Fifteen weeks! I cannot even comprehend how time is passing so quickly. This week it has truly started to dawn on me how lucky I am to be here. To be living in Australia. To have found such an amazing group of friends. To have the whole summer off to travel. I am literally one of the luckiest people in the world.

Monday was - of course! - a library day, made slightly more bearable by the appearance of a free BBQ and milkshakes in the courtyard outside the Auchmuty library. I'm still not entirely sure why it was all there - the milkshakes were some sort of promotion, but the BBQ I have no idea... Still, I'm not one to look a free BBQ in the mouth!

Tuesday was a fairly routine library day. In the evening, Liz cooked noodles at Church Street and then we headed out to the Great Northern to watch Anna sing at Open Mic night - there is nothing this girl cannot do! Unfortunately her set was quite late and Kirst and I had to rush off for the bus two songs in, but hopefully she will do it again soon :)

Wednesday was another library day, yaaaawn. At lunchtime we all congregated in the courtyard for a natter and some food. A photographer popped over and asked to take our photos for the prospectus - right as I was half way through my subway. The group snaps he took inevitably contained many uber attractive shots of me stuffing my face. Fit. He moved onto individual shots, by which time I had finished my sub, so I was safe. Smiley smile snap snap snap. Lots of photos. It was only once I got home that afternoon that I found the poppy seed sitting front and centre in my teeth. "Hey school kids! Come to Newcastle! We even let retards with food in their teeth study here!" FML.

In the evening we headed to Church Street and cracked out the goon for the first time since spring break. A few weeks off the stuff had weakened my goon-immunity, and the night was a messy one for all involved! We headed to Bar Beach for a 19th birthday party - I feel so old!

Drunken love for Julian the coconut.

Thursday morning  was my Aboriginal studies tute - another two hours of my life which I will never get back. The free NUSA BBQ soothed my pain a little. You can tell the international students a mile off - we are all completely skint, and therefore seem to always congregate at NUSA, where there is free tea and coffee, cereal, toast and BBQs. Why does UEA not have anything like this. I love free stuff. Especially food. In the afternoon we went shopping to Charlestown Square, then had an incredibly healthy dinner of chips and cookies by the harbour, before heading up to Anna's incredible balcony for a natter.

Chips and sunset over the harbour.

This week has been my turn to cook Block Dinner, with Myles. Seeing as we seem to have something to do every night, we agreed to cook block breakfast instead, and so whipped up some pancakes for the flat. Afterwards, I nipped to town to get to my job interview for Greenpeace! It seemed to go fairly well, so fingers crossed that I will soon be pestering Aussies on the street and persuading them to donate to Greenpeace. Yay hippy money! Post-interview, I headed to the beach and spent the rest of the day chilling, eventually joined by Kirsty and Liz. In the evening, we headed on the long (and very hot) walk up to see a flat at the top of a practically vertical hill between Newcastle beach and Bar beach. The apartment was beautiful and the view was amazing, but it's very expensive, and - despite its proximity to Darby street and its cafe culture - very far from the train station and town centre. We nipped to Coco Monde for hazelnut hot chocolate, yummmm. Lars cooked dinner for us, and we stayed at Church Street and got an early night due our verrrrrry early start on Saturday morning...

The incredible view from the flat.

Coco Monde hazelnut hot chocolate is so good!

Beautiful Newcastle city hall :)

The first alarm went at 5am. The next went at 5.15am. Time to get up. In a daze, we got dressed and grabbed our towels and my camera, before heading off to Bogey Hole. It was pretty chilly and very windy, and the streets were deserted other than the odd nutter runner starting off in the pre-dawn darkness. Once we got to Bogey Hole we settled down on the rock cliff and watched the sunrise and took photos. The actual sunrise was so quick, it took literally a minute! It was beautiful. Once the sun was in the sky, we thought we may as well go for an early morning dip! Bogey Hole was freezing, but it was such a fun way to start the day! Nothing wakes you up better than a hypothermic swim at sunrise!

Beautiful!

Sunrise over the South Pacific.

Bogey Hole time!

Freezing and beautiful.

Yay!

Love these guys.

We dashed back to Church Street afterwards, wrapped up in towels, and all headed for showers to warm up. Nathan cooked up some amazing pancakes for breakfast, which were accompanied with peanut butter and jam, watermelon and coffee. Nom nom nom. We met up with the other girls from Anna's end of Church Street and got the bus to Anna Bay, meeting Jack and Kirst en-route. Once at Anna Bay, we got a lift to the sand dunes, where we were equipped with sandboards. Stockton sand dunes - the largest moving sand mass in the world - were huge, and going down the you go so fast! We even managed to sandboard down standing up - like snowboarding, but without bindings (and snow)! We all, inevitably, wiped out at the end, but it was so much  fun! After an hour or so, we were boiling, sweaty and sandy - mmmmm so attractive! We got the shuttle back to the beach and spent the afternoon sunbathing, diving through the waves, climbing up the rocks, and burying Nathan in the sand. We ended the day back in Newy, with an amazing BBQ on the harbourside, listening to the music floating over from the Fat As Butter festival on Nobbys Foreshore.

I made a new friend.

Reppin' UEA.

Yum!

Sunday was chilled, and suitably unproductive. In the evening I headed down to Honeysuckle with Kirst and Jack to watch the rugby world cup final, where we were joined by Liz, Anna, Nathan, Dom and his girlfriend. The kiwis sat behind us we understandably jubilant when they just managed to beat the frogs. Afterwards, we waited for 40 minutes for the bus - hate Sunday timetables! - and had an early night. Yay lameness.

This week has been a lot of fun. Sure, I have continued to develop a deep and lasting loathing for the Auchmuty library and its cavernous dungeon of computers; but I have really started to appreciate how insanely lucky I am to be here. I have started going on 7am runs - I know, who are you and what have you done with Livvy!? The weather has finally turned, it is currently beautiful, sunny and warm at 9.30am. I have watched the sun rise, I have gone for a 6am swim in the oldest ocean baths in Australia. I have sandboarded. I have finally gone swimming in the sea without thinking DEAR GOD THIS IS SO COLD!

Australia is beautiful. The sky here is bluer; the mornings smell like apricot jam (I have no idea why, but it's amazing!); the birds are beautiful and blumming noisy; the sea is rough and wavy and completely clear; the animals are strange and incredible; everything comes with a side of avocado; the BBQs are omnipresent an plentiful.... I love it here. Taking a year abroad was the best decision I have ever made. I am the luckiest girl in the world. My life is amazing.

:)