Christmas on it's way to Byron Bay

Hello Readers!

Now we are at a camping site in Byron Bay just south of Brisbane. We have been driving around 130 swedish miles so far.

Before that we had visited Dan, Jordy, Ash, Fran in Noosa, where we could kindly enough sleep at their moms house. We had a great time. I'll tell you one thing the nature there is absolutely beautiful. The typical climate i think of when i think of Australia. Along the way we saw the biggest bugs ever! I managed to miss a kangaroo while I was in the bathroom. The kangaroo was only 10-15 meters from Linda, steering at her.
After a while we left Noosa for Brisbane. Thank you family Konstantinou for letting us stay at your place.


In Brisbane we went to get the rest of Sarahs stuff. It was a nice town even if we didn't see that much of it. 
Now we are in Byron Bay. It is a total paradise. Nice weather, beautiful beach, sweet town. 
We are really enjoying ourselfs. It is also here we will celebrate Christmas.
The camper vans we drive in are pretty cool. It got a small kitchen, 5 beds in one car and 3 in one. Check them out here: http://www.wickedcampers.com.au/australia-campervans/van-type/classic-campers.html

I don't have time to put up pictures yet but you'll see them on facebook when i come home.

Merry Christmas!

Whitsunday

Hi People!

It's been a busy week as you can imagine.
 
On monday Linda, Carolina, Robin. A couple of days before that Benjamin and Fidan arrived.
It was so nice to be with Linda again. 
We showed them around Melbourne the first couple of days and then on Wednesday we flew to Whitsunday.
Whitsunday is very hot and the water is crystal clear!
We have been camping the first 2 days here and tomorrow we are driving towards Noosa where i hopefully can meet up with my old pal Dan.

Here in Whitsunday we have been sleeping at a couple of different camping spots. First night we just slept at a random parking spot and yesterday we sleept at a cheap camping place.
It's been really nice here and we have been enjoying the sun. Today we even went out snorkeling.

Okey now i have to check my mail...


Catch ya later!

Great ocean road

Hello there readers!

This week has been the official "end of exam week". We celebrated by going to a lot of pubs which was good fun :)

 This monday was Emmy's last day in Melbourne so we decided to travel to "the great ocean road". The roads had a lot of curves and and you could watch out over the ocean from the road. We arrived at this place, i think it was called Beauchamp Falls.
There you could walk through the forrest and look at the beautiful nature which included waterfalls. While we were walking through the forrest I miss-stepped and went right down in the water. Luckily for me it was that deep and there were no snakes there at the time. I hurt my foot a little bit but not that bad. It was great fun though :)

 On monday Rasmus will leave for Sydney and on tuesday Sarah Button will come and visit. Sarah brings the good weather with her too. On tuesday we will have 29 degrees sun!

 Catch ya later!

Vacation!

Finally the last exam is over. Now i'm no longer in Australia studying, now i am in Australia on vacation and it's a BIG difference :D

The study period has been pretty tough but it has been worth it. I must say i prefer the way we study back in a sense that it's often not more the 1-2 courses at a time and not all exams in 2-3 weeks. Because then you don't have to compromise in some courses you can actually give 100% focus. But some things are better in Australian schools like their grade system. You can actually count how you have been doing during the course and in that way know how you will have to perform in the exams. They grade in marks and different assignment, test etc. is worth different amount of marks. In Sweden we have 2 kind of marks in University, Pass and Fail.. In some cases we have pass with distinction but it's not that many at least not in my program.

My cousin Rasmus is living in our house now. It's nice to have a familiar face around and that talks in my accent ;)
Today to celebrate that all of us is done with our exams, we are gonna have a party in our house and then later go out in Melbourne city.

Hear you later!

Long time no see!

Hi there readers!

Sorry for not writing here for a while but i've been studying really hard for the exams (1/2 done).

First of all I want to thank everyone for all the lovely words and gifts on my birthday especially my family and my sweetheart. On the night to my birthday I got to skype with my family, who sang for me of course. It was great seeing them and I was really happy to see my sisters kids.
In the morning I woke and it just happend to be that my girlfriend had sent my a letter and bought a bottle of whiskey for me, that was really sweet of her and i was really touched.
My family present was so good that I kinda feel ashamed of talking about it, but they helped me with some money for the road trip in December. I couldn't be more thankful for having such a nice family, girlfriend and friends :)
I celebrated a little bit in campus by smoking a cigar and drinking some scotch with some great friends that I got to know here.

In other news there have been many parties since the last time I wrote here. I've also been to the aquarium seeing some cool fish. I've been photographing the Occupy movement for the photo journalism course. The weather has been so warm lately and my back is all red ;)

As i said before yesterday I did my first exam and it went really good I feel.. But we'll see, my feeling is an "A".

Where sweden wins!

Sorry that I haven't updated the blog for a while but there hasn't been that much to tell you about to be honest. We are getting closer and closer to the exam and assignment due times are also getting closer and closer. So I have been super busy studying. Can't wait until it's over and my friends and my sunshine Linda to arrive here.

First of all the title does not mean that I will be comparing Sweden and Australia in a way of who is the best.
BUT
I got some swedish candy from my lovely parents the other day and it is sooooo much better than australian candy. Australian candy doesn't taste as much as swedish candy. Oh snap! 1-0 Sweden!

This morning I got up in time so I could see Sweden against Holland in the Euro championship qualifiers last round.(Football = Soccer) This game was really really important. If we won against Holland (which are ranked 2nd in the world) it would mean that we are qualified to Euro 2012! This was of course not an easy task for our swedish national team but they did an excellent match and won with 3-2. Oh snap! It was worth to go up 5am for ;)

At our gym a Melbourne football team that plays in the first division in Australia called A-League does their daily training. So today when I only had football in my mind (and of course my lovley girl back home, miss you), I started talking to this football player, It turnes out he had played in Denmark for Bronby with some of our national team players like Johan Elmander, Samuel Holmen, Max von Schlebrugge. The player that i was talking to's name was David Williams. He also said that their fitness coach was from Malmo and was working before for Malmo FF.

Well enough with the patriotic shit. They(Sweden) will have cold weather as "hell" soon and that is not what i'm looking forward to when I will be going back..

Good on ya!

Portsea

This weekend I decided to go with Dennis on his diving trip to Portsea(That looks like a mini Italy on the map). Dennis had to take the Advanced diving course and I had to do my photo assignment which involved taking photos of an open environment with people in it. So kaablamm! There I was in beautiful Portsea with all the divers and not diving.. I enjoyed it a lot though. Sun was shining, the air was hot and the water was cristal clear. All this became the perfect recipe for nice looking photos.

On the Portsea pire where Dennis, Penny, Gayle, Nat and the other divers did there dives was alot of fishermen. Apparently there was a lot of squid to fish there, they were big fans of calamari down at Portsea.

We slept in this little cabin that belonged to the diving instructor Nat's grandparents. So on the late evenings we made sure to have a couple of beers before we went to sleep..
It was nice to do something different for a change due to all the school work that's been going around lately.

Today (Monday) was the nicest school day yet. Why? 27 degrees!! I'm actually a little burned :D
Had a perfect lunch sitting on the grass in the sun at the center of campus with Grant eating veggies and tuna before heading to the gym. When I got home I got a lot of homework done, so this has been a totally awesome day.

On a boat!

Hi readers!

Today is a really beautiful day. Maybe 25 degrees and the sun is shining!
Today me and Dennis are going on a trip to a place called Portsea south of Melbourne. There Dennis is taking his Deep water diving certificate.
Me on the other hand believe it or not is gonna do some school work on the boat. My photo assignment is about taking photos of an open environment with people doing there thing. In this case i chose to follow the diving club. I'm gonna tell a story with my photos on how they prepare before, what they do during and what they do after a dive. Most of the photos will take place when the sun is going up, going down and when it's dark due to the teachers requirements that we have to work with a high ISO and letting in much exposure (which means that we have to work with low light).

It will be very nice to see the open sea again and to grill some food in front of a bonfire at night. And most important of all it's gonna be 27 degrees!! :)
I'll make sure that you guys get to see some of the photos when i'm back on sunday.

have a good one!

Swedish food!

Okey I admit I have missed the swedish food a bit.. but so had Dennis and Emmy. So we decided to go to Ikea in Melbourne to eat and buy some groceries :)
It took us some time to find it but eventually we found it.
It was really good to eat swedish meatballs with mashed potato and lingon berry. And lets not forget the brown sauce. After we've eaten we went to the shop to buy some groceries. I bought meatballs and a pouch of candy. Emmy bought some "knäckebröd" and famous swedish "Kalles" caviar. Dennis bought just some candy.
We were really really tempted to buy the cray fish and some party costumes to arrange a cray fish party, but we decided to wait.

Catch you later!

Flare surf!

First assignment and first test check!

Today I sent in my first assignment. The assignment was for Photojournalism.
The task was to photograph different object/things that could look like a letter and then spell out a word with these letters. The pictures was also suppose to have the same theme as the word.

Have a look see if you can see what word it is:

Today I had my first test. It was for the programming course. It went good. 23/30 is not that bad.

St.Kilda

Hi readers!

Yesterday we decided to spend the day at St.Kilda.
St.Kilda is a beautiful suburb close to the beach and since it was almost summer weather it felt like the right decision. It was nice but the closer to the beach we got the colder it got.
So me and Emmy that went before the others (because we were free from school) was freezing at the end.

After the other joined (Dennis, Lauren, Alyse, Tadd and Lili) we went for something to eat.
Then we decided to go to our house to drink some whine and play a card game. I can tell you one thing I had a major headache this morning. But we had a really good time :)

Bugs and Zoo!

Hi everyone!

It's been a busy week with a lot of school work and partying but also some other interesting stuff happening.
On thursday just like every thursday we go to the eagle bar and drink a couple of beers but before that Me, Dennis, Emmy, Matt and Lauren went to a pub closer to town to eat "Chicken Parma". It was an enormous filé so we got pretty full (and we drank a couple of jugs to so..).
When me and Dennis were on or way home from Eagle bar something cool happened.. Dennis stopped me and pointed at something in front of us. It was a Possum standing on the ground on it's two legs staring at us and then started running towards us. Maybe one meter from us it turned and ran in to someones backyard instead. Pretty cool experience nevertheless haha :)

The morning after when I just woken up, I went down to eat breakfast. Emmy told me: "You have to go in to the bathroom and look to the left of the door."
So I did. There was some kind of bug. Couldn't really see what it was but after a while I got the mission to get it out from the house. So i sprayed it with some mosquito spray and that's when it woke up. All legs unfolded from it's sleeping state and the bug started moving. That's when I saw it was some kind of cockroach. So I took a plate and a glass. I carefully pushed the roach between the glass and plate. Then I was going to release it in to a kind of a well(or spring). I took away the glass and the turned the plate. The roach still wasn't falling in to "street well" so because I had my fingers on the edges of the plate I panicked of the thought of the roach climbing up my arm. So I dropped the plate. 1-0 Roach vs Andy. But the roach fell into the well even if it cost me a plate. 1-1 Roach vs Andy.

This saturday we also went to the Zoo. The Zoo was gigantic. It had a lot of animals from all over the world. It was a shame that the Kangaroos were just sleeping at the time but still got to see some fascinating animals. It was annoying however with all the kids there. They were screaming like crazy, punching the windows of the poor animals, and were always running in to you..

All right thats all I got for you this time!
/Andy

Nephew

Today my nephew and godson turns 4 years old. My happy thoughts goes to him today.
Don't worry sis i didn't forget to think about you on your birthday while i were on the airplane.

Happy Birthday Neo!

Rain man!

Today it has been raining most part of the day. Today was just an ordinary school day where I went to my programming class and then went to the gym.

Melbourne has these beautiful parrots everywhere and today when I was walking home these parrots were blocking the sidewalk.. they did not move even if I was walking towards them. So i had to step out and walk on the streets instead.. Damn parrots! But they are beautiful. You can only see those parrots in pet stores in Sweden.

La Trobe has a excellent sport centre where I have the gold pass. Which means I get access to the gym and the pool if i would like to go for a swim. You can check out the gym with this brochure:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/sara/assets/downloads/spo-fac/LTUSC_layout_FINAL%2013371.pdf

2 weeks ago I started this new workout schedule. It is actually the same workout program as Brad Pitt had during the movie "Fight Club". So maybe I'll have a Fight Club body in a near future. Wish me luck I WILL NEED IT!.. :P

(look at that face! that means business ;) )

Sun is shining!

Muhahaha Today was a long school day but it didn't matter because it was about 20 degrees outside and its still WINTER! Seems promising.. :)

New week of school

Hi Everyone!

Sorry that I haven't been updating for a while but i've been busy with the first week at La Trobe University.
I'm enrolled in these three courses:

- Object-Oriented Programming
- Photojournalism A
- Game Theory

The teacher in programming is really good. She has alot of knowledge and has been in the programming world since the 70's so she knows what she's talking about. By the way did you know that they say that the first programmer in fact was a woman from the 1800th (Ada Lovelace, 1815-1852)?

Photojournalism is really fun because i can explore and learn more and more about my system camera. Really fun exercises and assignments :)

I can't really figure out how Game Theory is yet but i think it's gonna be cool. We're going to for instance do some programming for Xbox.

In other news.. well there aren't so many other news. We have besides been to school mostly been partying down in Melbourne city. Melbourne really do have a awesome night life.

Catch ya later!

First lesson

I had my first lesson at La Trobe. It's an Java programming course. The lesson was only 1 hour long! It was however a introduction lesson.
I'll tell you something about Australian schools. They love papers! I already got mountains of papers.. Back home everything is digitized.
The teacher seems really good though so im pretty exited to get started :)

Aussie football

Yesterday me, Emmy and Dennis had a great time at the common room. Played a little bit pool and drinking a little wine and people playing guitar in the background. Before all that a great dude that we have got to know his name is Matt had cooked some dinner for us. It was delicious!

Today we're going to see our first Australian football game. It is called AFL. For us it looks like rugby but you can pass the ball forward but we'll see soon enough :)

In our time here we've seen a couple of strange animals. One of the strangest animals yet is a Possum. We see them all the time climbing in the tree's and on the electric wires.

This is a Possum:

Party with some Aussies!

Finally the aussie students are back from holiday. We met some nice australians today and later to night a party is waiting. Me and Dennis are bit worried because the bar we're going to later is a Gay bar and we've never been anything close to that so.. But we're hoping for free drinks before we tell them that we're not gay :D

They have nice play room at the campus were you can play pool, ping pong, air hockey and fussball.

I think we will have alot of fun in that room in a close future :)

Finally Broadband!

Today we got our broadband so now i can update the blog a little more spontanious :)

So here's some updates of what i've been doing lately:

Friday: I was at a Toga party (which means that you dress up like Ceasar)

Saturday: The Amazing race competition between all the international students was held in Melbourne. If you don't know what amazing race is, watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxA6a4IHm4U , So how did it end? Well, me and Dennis ended up in SECOND PLACE! The price for 1st place was a ticket to Phillipine Islands for each member! Bummer that we didn't won..
The prices for second place was tickets to the Eureka tower and VIP tickets to the Melbourne aquarium.

Yesterday we went to a nice bar in Melbourne city, the bar was called Brown Couches and yes it was as it sounded (brown couches everywhere). It was a great evening and I got to drink my first whiskey since i arrived :)

I'll keep you guys updated!

Time to party!

Hi everyone!

Unfortunitly we have'nt got our broadband yet but hopefully it will come soon.

In other news the weather here is kinda nice now about 15 degrees celcius and the sun is shining. Our school have thrown in a good welcome week for us international students this week. Full of entertaining lectures (for example: Learning OZ, Learn to drive on the wrong side of the road)and free amazingly good lunches every day so we are living the dream at the moment.

Yesterday we were at a welcome cruise as i said in the last thread. It was nice. A big disco boat with alcohol and snacks in it :) Met alot of new interesting people from different cultures from all over the world. For instance i met people from Ecuador, Mexico, Saudi-Arabia, USA, Kanada, Germany, Denmark, Norway and so forth.

Today there is a toga party near the school and after that it moves on to the student pub on campus called THE EAGLE. You will probably hear me mention this pub alot in my time here.

Catch ya later!

La trobe

Yesterday I got registered at La trobe, everything was super easy. Tomorrow is the introduction. That's when they show us around the school so we hopefully can find everything when we need it.
We just bought a ticket for the welcome cruise on Thursday. We're gonna ride with a cruise boat thats gonna show us around Melbourne. A band will play on the boat and snacks will be served, also to buy drinks will be possible. Looking forward to that.

Me, Emmy and Dennis has been really paranoid about seeing deadly spiders here but for now we haven't seen any insect at all. Yesterday we saw a flock of parrots flying by really loud.
As for the world upside down Australia takes the price. Traffic on the wrong side of the road and a half moon that lies upside down.

Called the broadband company today and it seems that we have to get a regular phone so we can call a number and then get a number that the company needs to give us internet.

So hopefully i can post some pictures soon.

Have a good one mates!

Living in da house!

We have finally after two awfully cold nights in a hostel got our house. It is even better than we could have imagine. We will as soon as we get are broadband post a video showing our house and also some pictures we've taken the past couple of days. Last night we had a cool night at a sports bar. We socialised with alot of funny Australian and dutch folks.

By the way, the first night at the hostel I woke up and totally froze. Not because of the cold but because a man was standing right beside Dennis bed. He had a white hood that covered his face. He was looking at Dennis and at the same time bending his knees up and down over and over again. But then I realised after blinking a couple of times that it was just me hallucinating because of the jetlag and the sudden awaken and also the light from the window got my eyes confused. A funny story even if Dennis disagrees :)

First day check!

The flight was harder than I thought, at least 24h flight time. The food was sometimes great and sometimes awful. We had an unexpected stop in Shanghai and had to go trough the airport to later find out that it was still the same plane.. i wonder why they did that? After we arrived in Melbourne we were really really jetlagged so we took the nearest taxi to a hostel and rested. After we woke up we went to take a beer at a sportsbar and then went right back to bed. And now we're totally rest out.

Today the plan is to get sim-card for my phone and call Paul about our house and finally on the evening we're going to see the football (Soccer) game in which the swedish ladies are gonna meet Australia :)

Pictures will come probably tommorowt back to bed. And now we're totally rest out :)

The big day

Today is the big day. I'm flying to Australia tonight.. Will be a long flight since i ain't arriving until saturday.

Yesterday i got some gifts from my Parents and both my sisters families. I am so greatful and happy :)

Next time i will be writing from Melbourne ;)

Note to self

Good to have for home trip in January. So i don't leave anything behind.
My packing list:

1. Macbook+Charger+Sleeve
2. Passport
3. Plane ticket
4. Bank socket
5. 7 t-shirts incl tank tops
6. 3 pair of pants
7. 3 pair of shorts
8. 1 cap
9. 1 thicker shirt
10. 2 shirts
11. Underwear and socks
12. 2 towels
13. School bag
14. Bathroom stuff incl toothbrush, deo, shaver, parfym and contact lenses
15. Kamera
16. School papers
17. Iphone + borrowed phone + chargers
18. Converter
19. 2 pair of shoes + 1 pair of flip flops

4 days to goodbye Sweden and Hallo Australia!

Now i'm packing my stuff.. Not really sure about what i'm going to pack down..
So i guess my readers kan help me out.

Here is some of the stuff i'm gonna take with me:

- Important papers like: passport, visa, exchange student papers, plane ticket
- 2 Towels
- Alot of underwear and socks
- A School bag
- 4 t-shirts
- 1 or 2 pair pants
- 2 pair of shorts
- A hat and a cap
- a jack and a converter
- a bank socket
- sunglasses
- my Macbook
- my Iphone
- bathroom stuff

please help me if i forgot anything important by commenting this post :)

Great tips!

Now when it's soon time to pack my bags i will think of some tips i've got, which is pack LIGHT! In half a year you will probably snap up a couple of "souvenirs" along the way. I got some other great tips from this blog: http://blogg.lnu.se/studerautomlands/blog/category/emma-pluggar-i-australien/

- Pack light. You need room in your luggage. Believe me!

- Check carefully how the climate is before you leave, So you'll get the right stuff with you. ”Australia is always hot and sunny, right”. NO. I have experience that it ain't.

- Don't spend to much time thinking about Sweden and everyone you'll miss. 6 months will pass by so fast, live for the day and try to get the most of your experience.

- Take part in as much as you can in the beginning. That's how you get to know people!

- Be careful of you choice of ackommodation. Don't just take the first best! There are often more alternativs than you think. It is important that you feel comfortable where you live so that it at least feels a little like home. Position is also important. Think of your priorities before you choose a place to live in.

- Get a blog. So people at home can keep track on what you are doing and how you are, this way you dont have to mail them 700 times a day.

- Call from Skype using a webcam. See to that your parents have Skype and webcam. They get to see you live from time to time and their worries will calm down a little at least.

- Get a sim card in Australia. Check which operator has the best offers. In Australia you can say that the most expensive operator has the best coverage (Which is important when you are traveling around), while a cheap operator has generally a bad coverage.

- Take a jack with you. Then you can use several Swedish standard appliances at same time as you only need one adapter.

- Travel! Try to see more than just the place where you are studying. To travel as an exchange student is about so much more then just your studies.

- Don't just hang out with the other exchange students, try to get friends from the domestic population as well. They can learn and show you so much!

- Start studying in time. Don't shoot on it until the exam starts.

- Check out which discounts that are available. A good way to save money! For instance in Australia it is cheaper to go to the cinema on tuesdays when you are a student.

- Be prepared that you will change. It's not certain that everything will be the same when you come back home again. People at home change as well.

Switching to english

From now on this blog will be written in English considering my international friends and future friends. It can also be good practice before my Exchange program in Aussie :)

Nattsurf

Det här kommer jag inte göra p.g.a. min lilla fobi för mörkt vatten men gud vad härligt detta ser ut.

Nightsurf from Iker Elorrieta on Vimeo.

38 Dagar kvar

Nu är det snart dags. Snart sitter jag i planet mot Australien.

Det är snart ett år sen jag skickade in min första ansökan. I Mars i år fick jag det 90% beslutet att jag kommit in på skolan La trobe university i Melbourne och slutligen fick det sista och avgörande beskedet att JA jag är antagen i April i år.

Checklista av allt som skulle göras efter det beskedet:
Försäkring 

Learning agreement

Ladok registrering

Visum

Vaccination

CSN

Boende

Andrahands kontrakt till den lägenheten jag har nu.

Jag sätter en STOR bock på allt ovanstående ;)