Camping, video calls, breakfast with koalas, hiking and football

Take a comfy chair, perhaps a snack and drink and enjoy a long story.
In the week of August 13, I had my days well filled as usual because sitting still is something I cannot do. To see if I could sit still for a moment, I went to the yoga class for the first time in about my entire life on Tuesday evening, which is given in my housing location every Tuesday from 6 to 7 pm. And at least now we know; yoga is nothing for me. It started quite dreamy and floating. After that, there were some exercises that should make you flexible,  or for which you need to be flexible, it depends how you look at it. And I'm really anything but agile, so you can already imagine that it was not the best combination. Anyway, it was fun to try, but I will stick to sports from now on.
 
On Wednesday evening, I finally went to the movie Mamma Mia 2 with Anne. It was a super nice and cheerful movie. On Thursday, I had to study a little because I had a mini quiz for my econometrics course on Friday which counted a bit for my final mark. Oh and if you’re now thinking, huh you do not study outside your classes, then I can tell you that I am certainly studying at home so now and then, only not more than 1 to 2 hours a day. But well that day I also went to the gym (#gonna be fitgirl) and I collected my camping gear at the bushwalkers society that I could borrow all weekend. After that, I went to Chris's house to help with cooking and afterwards we sat with around 25 people in their living room behind the TV watching The Bachelor (the Americans are a big fan of that TV show). Afterwards, we went to Ivy what was a great night again. Maybe we will try something new next week, just to see what other bars and clubs there are, but for now is Ivy a great club to go to.
 
Friday was a busy and hectic day because I went on a camping trip for the whole weekend with the bushwalkers in Morton National Park, 4 hours south of Sydney. After my last class, I was picked up by Tim with whom I would ride to the place where we would camp with a group of 20 bushwalkers. At 10 o'clock, Tim was a bit tired of driving and the road here is pretty boring and straight ahead. So he asked me if I might wanted to take over for an hour. And because it was actually only a long way straight ahead, where you drive about 100 km/h, I thought I should be able to do that. So I got behind the wheel on the right side because they drive here on the left side of the road (in case you did not know that yet). Sorry mom and dad, I know you actually did not really want me to drive here, but the driving went really well. Tim thought that I was doing perfect for the fact that I drove in Australia for the first time. Then after a while, I turned right onto a dirt road at Morton National Park. This was my first experience driving off-road, but since there were no more cars there at that time, I only needed to focus on the road and my speed.  I saw 2 wombats in the wild that evening. They looked really sweet and fat. At 11.30pm we arrived at the place where we’re camping for the whole weekend. We were camping on a land of someone who rent it to people who like to camp there. The trip leader was Marty, he is 55 and organized everything. After a short introduction to everyone (because I did not know anyone), I still had to set up my tent at half past one in the morning.
 
Luckily I used to camp a lot with my parents when I was little, because setting up a tent that you’re not familiar with in the pitch dark with only a headlamp on the forehead, is not the easiest. But fortunately it was a super easy tent and with 15 minutes the tent was standing and my stuff was inside the tent (I do give credits to my parents for learning me how to camp when I was a child, so thanks mum and dad). Then I sat in the cabin and talked with some people. The group was very diverse. Everyone was a local except 3 of us, I, Ben, an exchange student from the US and Matthew, an exchange student from Scotland. So I learned a lot about Australian nature and culture that weekend. I was one of the youngest in the group. Adam was also 20, then there were two girls, Nanakie and Sam from about 24, then 5 people around late twenties (Lisa and Leo and some others) who were busy with their PhD or just started working, than a few people in their thirties, a couple in their early forties (Sam and Steve) and Marty with his wife Jenny, and Paul with his wife Karola who were in their mid-fifties. Sorry for all the names, but that makes it easier for me to remember the story and write it down. At half past 1, it was really time to go to bed because some people would leave early in the morning for a hike. And then... the real camping feeling came up again. The feeling that you quickly crawl into the sleeping bag in the cold, as deep as possible, hoping that you warm up quickly, what actually happened faster than expected. I do not know if it was because of the sleeping bag or the scotch that I had just drunk quickly 5 minutes before going to bed, but at least it was nice and warm.
 
On Saturday morning, a group left for a climb and a hike of 10 hours at 7 o'clock in the morning and returned home at 6 o'clock in the evening. I really have a lot of respect for their perseverance. The second group left at around 9.30am and was back at 4.30pm. My group left around 10 o'clock and we were back after 2 o'clock. This was the easiest hike, but I found it difficult what to expect so it seemed better to do a hike not too difficult. That afternoon we went with the jeep to the creek at 5 o'clock and then I saw kangaroos in the wild for the first time and I called through the car "omg kangarooosssss" what made the others laugh. The kangaroos, if they were upright, were just a little bit bigger than I am. I wanted to take a picture, but when we stopped by car, they unfortunately hopped into the forest. That evening we had dinner together and sat by the campfire, and Marty had bought chestnuts on the market. I used to go to the forest with my dad in autumn when I was younger to pick up chestnuts and then pop them at home, so I thought it was great that Marty had brought it.
 
On Sunday morning, we walked to the river and we came across dozens of wombat holes. Wombats are mostly active at night and during the day you can hardly find them. Kangaroos also hide mainly during the day so the best time to see them is with sunrise or sunset.
After a nice morning walk, we all went to a town called Gerroa to have lunch there. I was in the car with Steve, Sam and Kosta this time. In Gerroa, we had lunch at the Fisherman's Club. We sat at a long table with a huge window with a beautiful view of the bay. Then we drove back to Sydney and I was dropped off at home around dinner time after a long exhausting but fantastic weekend. It really felt like a big family camping trip because there was such a good atmosphere, as if it was my second family. Everyone was there for each other, helped each other and everybody enjoyed camping and hiking. I could look back on a great camping trip with the most friendly and nice people I could wish for.
 
Oh damn, I forget to tell some other things. In fact, there was a lot of emailing back and forth on Friday before we went camping because 16 kilometres to the east of our camping spot was a fairly large fire of about 1600 hectares (that's about 2250 soccer fields). They have an app here called Fires Near Me NSW. I downloaded it immediately and there were at that moment 74 fires in total in NSW, one larger than the other. In that app, you can see the status of the fire, and about the fire that we were somewhat afraid of, stood "being controlled", so not "under control". But the owner of the campsite assured us everything was okay, so we all got into the car on Friday. But it is still somewhat scary because you do not have phone reception in Morton NP most of the time, so calling someone if you are in trouble, is not often an option. So you only get updates via the car radio. But it is also very nice to be so secluded from everyone with only beautiful nature around you. I had all the confidence in Marty and the owner of the campsite that they could make a good estimate of the fire risk. Anyway, due to the drought, the fire season has started a lot earlier than usual and they also expect more intense fires in the summer. So you should always stay alert when you go hiking in a more isolated area.
 
The week of August 20 was a somewhat quieter week with few crazy things. Wednesday afternoon I drank a free coffee with Adam at the uni (I will always be a Dutchie hihi), because I have 5 free coffees with my USU membership (kind of a union of the university where every student is actually a member of when you come here to study). Wednesday and Thursday I watched The Bachelor again at Chris's house and Thursday and Friday we went to a nice bar called Bearded Tit (yes I know, a bit of a crazy name) and out in the city. Further, I went for a run with Michael (also lives in the house of Chris) on Saturday and on Sunday I went to the Australian Museum with Maria. That was great because it gave a lot of information about the Aboriginals, influential people in Australia but also about the nature and the animals that lived or live in Australia. So I learned something more about the Australian history of the Aboriginals. How Aboriginals used to eat, but also about 'the Stolen Generations'.
 
The greatest assault on Indigenous cultural and family life was the 'taking away' of Indigenous children from their families. This happened in every Australian State from the late 1800s until 1969, when the practice officially ended. During this time, as many as 100,000 children may have been taken from their families. No one knows the true figure, as proper records were not kept. These children have become known as 'the Stolen Generations'. Taking the children took three forms: placing Indigenous children into government-run institutions, adoption of children by white families and fostering children into white families. These forced separations were part of more or less deliberate policies of assimilation with the aim to sever children from their culture and to raise them to think and act ‘white’. But this is of course very barbaric to take the children away from their parents, who sometimes were still at their mother’s breast. Anyway, I have enriched my Australian history knowledge that day, with which probably Nander and my mom are happy because they sometimes think I miss a bit of history knowledge, is that not right?
 
Furthermore, my phone has been ringing off the hook this weekend, because I have been video calling for more than 7 hours on Saturday, Sunday and Monday evening. On Saturday I had a good chat with Nander, Jetse and Lara, almost one hour per person and Sunday with my parents, Martine and Bente and on Monday with Linde and again Nander. So it's a good thing that I have an internet bundle of 20GB on my phone, otherwise I would have gone through my telephone bundle. But I like to stay in good contact with my friends and family from back home. So if you want to make a (video) call with me, you can make an appointment with my secretary by telephone number 0410 ... no no just joking. You can just send me a text and then we can probably find a moment in both of our agenda’s to make a call. 

In the week of 27 August, the midterm exams started to come really close with only a week to go. But I had completely stuffed my agenda from Friday 30 August to Sunday (oops you know me), so that meant I had to study a bit more than usual before Friday. 

On Friday morning it happened; I fell head over heels in love again. My alarm went off at 5.45am but that was totally worth it because I had breakfast with koalas in Wild Life Sydney. With my eyes still half asleep, we walked (also Emiel and Pravesh) towards Wild Life Sydney. We got a tour and the tour guide told us about the Australian animals they had here. For example, koalas are about a month pregnant. Further, the male Koala has a dark scent in the centre of his chest. He rubs this on the tree in order to mark his territory. Also, a few kangaroos hopped between us and I could pet one of the black kangaroos and they were very soft. After about an hour and a half, I slowly got hungry for breakfast and at 8:30 am it was really time for breakfast with koalas. So after more than 6 weeks, I finally saw my first koalas in real life. Perhaps less beautiful than in the wild, but for even experienced Australians is it difficult to spot koalas in the wild because of their good camouflage. So at least I thought it would be a good idea to know what to look for in those tall trees to find them anyway;) We got a deliciously extensive buffet for breakfast with omelette, fresh fruit and juice, tomatoes and some Asian food (no idea what it was, but it was tasty) in the koala enclosure. We were not allowed to touch the koalas, but you could come very close to them up to 10 centimetres. We were also allowed to take a photo with a koala. And I am totally in love with those super cute soft koalas. They are so adorable. After breakfast, we did one last round in the zoo and went back home afterwards. I could look back on a beautiful and unique experience with koalas.

On Saturday, my alarm went off just after 6 am because I went hiking with the Bushwalkers again today. I took the train around 7 o'clock and was picked up at 8.30am in Warrimoo by Frances, a woman who was also in the hiking group of that day because there was no public transport to the starting point of the trails. We were with a group of 7 and we did 2 hikes in the Blue Mountains; Rodriquez Pass (12.5 kilometres, hard trail with 900 meters of altitude) and Grand Canyon (6.5 kilometres, medium trail with 450 meters of altitude meters). We did both trails in less than 8 hours which was pretty fast. My legs were super tired at the end because of the many altitude meters, but everyone had the same feeling. In short, it was an exhausting but again beautiful hiking day.

And on Sunday afternoon, I went to my first football game with Emiel, Pravesh, Boris and Chris at Olympic Station Sydney. It is a bit confusing what the difference is between rugby and football because you have rugby union, rugby league, football and Australian football. So whether it was a rugby or football match, I still don’t know, but it was a great experience. Fortunately, Boris follows a lot of sports online so he could explain the basic rules to me which made it a bit easier for me to understand the game.

And with the end of this blog, I have been in Sydney for 6 and a half weeks which means I am on a quarter of my total time here in Australia. It is unbelievable how quickly time flies by. I have 4 midterm exams and an assignment this coming two weeks. So it’s really time to put my nose in the books. Do not forget to have a look at the photo album that belongs to this blog with beautiful pictures of camping, hiking, cute koalas and other animals.

Love, Simone