Katie

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I totally love fried sushi, since I tasted the soft-shell crab I can't really decide whether it's that or the tempura prawn that is my favorite, so I just go for both.

Melbourne Open House was held last weekend, meening that a lot of houses that you normaly won't get into were open to the public. So I checked out about a dussin of them last sunday.

The pixel house is located at Melbourne Uni:s campus, I'm not sure what it contains, but I'm hoping that I will be able to check out it's interior some other day, since I decided not to wait in line for two hours on the day..


I did get to see a few beautiful roof gardens,


and among other buildings, St Pauls Cathederal.

A girl at my hostel has this sign on her door, so I keep getting reminded of that I absolutely have to go to New Zeeland as well before I go home, but I think that will have to wait until the semester is over, there's still a lot to see around here :)

Sushi costs about the same here as in Sweden, if you want it allready cut up in pieces that is. If you get those rolls that are about as big as 5 pieces instead, it's suddenly 1/3 of the price... can sharp knives really be that expensive here?

Anyways, I totally love the sushi here, there's just so much to choose from that I can have all the variation in the world even though I don't eat raw fish. The fried shrimp is my favorite so far :)

Well, it was at the zoo in a glass cage, but still..uhhhh, and the scary thing is actually that they arn't as red as I had imagined, they actually look more black, so there's just simply no way I'd be able to tell them from any other spider...

But I did enjoy seeing the other animals at Melbourne zoo, where I went with Sarah today,

like this adorable meerkat


and the wallabys


and of course some kangoroos


I did get to see what a real-life wombat looks like, but as these animals are active at night, we only got to see them sleep


a lot of the orangutangs were sleeping as well, after having tucked themselves in under their sheets


I think this was the first time I saw bambo that wasn't i a pot, but I'm not quite sure..


And of course there were a lot of birds as well, we had to watch our heads in the big aviary though


The male Eclectus Parrot was cuddling up (or possibly fighting) with a Kakatu, while the female one of the same species watched them carefully from the hollow tree she had just climbed out of.


The Helmeted Honeyeater has the longest tounge I've seen in a bird, it's att least twice the size of this little birds beek. 


People always talk about the cool black parrots of Australia, I wonder if they mean those Black Kakatus? They are really cool indeed.


Pelikans and Peakoks roam freely around the entire park


I did think that the Gento Penguins at Melbourne zoo were really cute, but the Australian Small Penguins do beat them, they are about the cutest thing I'v ever seen, I'll have to go down to the beaches to see them in the wild someday :)

In one to two weeks I'll move from the rooming house in Richmond, were I'm staying at the moment, to this little townhouse in Carlton, just of Lygon street about two blocks from school :) I'll be sharing it with 3 people, but will have my own bedroom, I don't remember who told me to check for housing at gumtree, but anyways, thanks :) I'll miss all the parrots around here, but I figure that I can just use some of the time I'll avoid wasting on getting to school and back to go see them :P

I've heard it from tree ozzys at different occasions now, I must say I do feel more safe now, knowing there are no deadly spiders crawling around in Melbourne, or mabie it's just because those two below are the only spiders I have seen so far.

I had to get a bit creative yesterday when hanging things up to dry in my room, as there's no dryer where you hang clothes here...

Well, we had the introduction last week of course, but I had my first classes today. I absolutely love the "Atmospheric Animation" course, I haven't gotten a good grip on my design studio yet, but It doesn't seem as fun as I first thought unfortunatlly.. I'm relly looking forward to the sondscape course tomorrow as well. And for those of you who have been talking to me in the last few days, yes, I got all of my first-choise courses :)

As for everything else that has happend since I wrote last week, I think I'll just post some pictures :P


I have no idea what those are, but they smell really good so I'll have to try one someday :)


Horse-racing is a really big thing here, but it's seems to be more about dressing up and getting drunk than actually betting, it was a fun day at Flemmington rasecourse on the saturday before the last one anyway.


The trainstation right by the school has an old trainstation inside


Me with the wombat I won at the introduction


Bing, Karina and me at a sushi-place in town


The courtyard at school where we got to try to play footy


The penguins at the Melbourne aquarium are just sooooo cute :)


My mum now thinks that all of Melbourne looks like a village, so I simply have to post another photo of the CBD


The place where I live for the time being


Melbourne Cricet Ground during the footy last sunday


And last, but not least, a better photo of the parrots, as promised :)

We tend to sometimes ignore the obvious although it is right there in front of us time after time... some might put it out to be a neccecary human reaction... but how can it ever give one peace of mind as we are constantly faced with the choise of continuing to hope for a change or breacking all ties?

I posted a photo of the CBD a couple of days ago, so here comes a photo from Richmond, where I live. Most of Melbourne, outside of the CBD, looks pretty much this way with two- or possibly three-story houses. This particularly is Bridge Road, just round the corner from my current home at Hoddle Street.



I haven't gotten the day-rythm right yet by the way, but it's at least moving in the right direction :)

I thought I had the timezone-change done pretty well, I left Stockholm at 14:30 (swedish time) to reach Bangkok at 00:50 (swedish time), so I didn't even make an effort to sleep at that flight. The flight to Melbourne was between 03:10 and 12:00 (swedish time), by wich time I was crazy tired and managed to get 4-5 hours of sleep between meals. Enough to make it of the plane at 20:00 (australian time) without falling asleep, but little enough to go to sleep once I had gotten to my new room and unpacked the most essential stuff. so I got up at 09:30 yestarday, and it seemed like I had aquired an accepteble day-rythm.. so far, so good.

Yesterday I didn't go to sleep until 4 am since I got stuck with facbook, skype, and wasn't all that tired, wich would have been fine if I hade slept the normal 8-9 hours. Imagine how shocked I was to see the clock turn 7 pm when I i awoke!

So, no pictures from today, it was pitch black once I got out. The darkness in fact will take me some time to get used to. As soon as you get out of the 10 or so CBD blocks where offices in high-rise buildings leave their lights on at night, everything is dark. There's blinds over every window, even on stories way to high for anyone to be able to peek in, only the biggest roads have lighs, and then only from the middle of the road, nothing on the pavewalks, even the strip-clubs you find on each and every corner don't have neon signs or any other kind of lighting. The only places actually well lit up are some of the many inner-city parks, wich is not a bad choise I guess.

Once I did wake up, I barely made it to a Trivia-night (wich is the same as a quiz-night) I was invited to earlier. That was pretty fun, while the questions on australian athletes and music were way out of my league, there were quite a few european questions that were easy enough for some australians to know, thus perfect for me. And not suprisingly enough the was also a question about the twilight-series :)    

Well, as anyone who checks my blog once in a while knows, I have not been updating it on any kind of regular basis since like....forever? And although I doubt that will change, I will however try to capture some of the things I do during me semester here as some sort of picture diary, and I thought I'd write in english for the time being, juste ´cuse I feel like it :)

First some pictures from my going away barbecue last friday (that unfortunatly left me with 53 moosquito stings, wich meens two things; 1. Lasse isn't such a mosquito magnet as we thought on midsummer :( and 2. There is actually one reason to why it's good that I have left the bikini-weather for australian winter), in any case, it was a really nice evening, thank you all for comming!















I came here late last night after two unadventureus 10-hour flights through Bangkok, mabie I am getting used to flying.. Anyway, her comes some pictures from today; 


I have not seen a single snake or spider so far :) actually, I have not seen any sort of bug or animal accept birds, among them two black swans and those beautiful lori-parrots, a flock of whose almost flew straight into me :S The picture doesn't make them justice at all.. I'll try to get a closeup without backlight later..

   
There's also a lot of parrot-plants (direct translation from swedish), I really love those and tried to grow one in a pot once, unsucsessfully... I see why...


The CBD - Central Buisness District of Melbourne


Riverwalk in the evening