A perfect day for kangaroos

I’ve arrived in Australia just 5 days ago and guess how long it took me to see koala’s and kangaroos…yup, just about 24 hours! Coming from China, Australia is full of green, it’s spacious, there are no people on the streets after 10 (on Sundays at least), the fridge is full of things I want to eat (like stuff that’s not dried squid or cows stomach) and the air doesn’t smell like cars at all times. Everyone is friendly and I’m pretty happy…

After spending some quality time in Hong Kong with Kristof, Steve and I left to Sydney,where Steve’s family picked us up, after which we drove to Newcastle where they all live. I met the rest of Steve’s family (he has 3 sisters and a brother) and everyone is extremely nice. Newcastle is really cute: it’s like a small city right next to the sea so there’s lots of nice beaches, houses come multi-coloured and at times it feels a bit like being on the way to southern Spain. The weather was great the first two days, up to 25 at the beginning of spring (yeeey, I finally made it to the part of the world where seasons fall on wrong times in the year), but it’s a bit cooler right now and it’s been raining about non-stop the last 3 days, in accordance with the weather back home, no doubt just to make me feel at home over here. No spiders so far, but I had a quick look through one of the many Australian animals-books they have over here, and seemingly about every spider is black or black with some extra colour, big, hairy and very dangerous. Skipped all other animals as I don’t think I can handle it completely yet. The first couple of days were amazing and actually very funny, like most first days when you just arrive in a new country. Days seem to pass by very fast, there’s lots to see and do and you never have a clue where exactly you are in the city. Steve had lots of catching up to do with family and friends as he hadn’t been home in two years, and I had lots of catching up to do with australian vocabulary (on which later on more for sure), comedy shows on tv, eating pies and the local pubs (and beers). We’ve been to the beach a couple of times too and I’ve already seen millions of bluebottles, like small jellyfish but very blue and very stingy) washed up on shore Since we’re planning to stay in australia for a while we also had to take care of some more serious things like looking into more appropriate visa’s and searching for jobs. We’ll see how that will work out. For the next couple of months lots of exciting stuff is being planned: camping next to koala’s in the wild, a long drive down to Melbourne along the coast to go celebrate Steve’s sister Leanne’s 30th birthday, Sydney, finding jobs hopefully and no doubt much more exciting things!