Too Pink?

So who else thinks I should change the design? Oskar and I both agree that it's too pink, but I really don't know much about blogs and couldn't find anything better than this! Help, please!

So far, so good :)

So I finally found some time to just sit down and write for a bit – I know it’s taken me a while, but so much has happened since I got to Sydney and so much is still happening. I’m completely wrapped up in everything and I want to try everything and be everywhere at once, so I really haven’t gotten much time for myself, or much sleep for that matter. But this is my designated blog-post writing time so I’m going to do my best to summarise my first weeks in Sydney!

I’ll just start off by summarising what college life is like – as most of you will know, after a long and tedious application process I was finally accepted into New College, one of the oldest colleges on campus, and right now I feel like the luckiest, happiest person ever, to have gotten a place here. I remember reading about the college being ‘more than a place to live’, that it was a real ‘community’ – I thought it seemed ridiculous then, but now I really understand what they mean. New College is really so much more. We have so much going on, so many activities arranged for us, and most importantly – everyone is just SO nice, it really feels like I all of a sudden have a huge extended family here. I really love it.

To be honest though, when I first arrived I thought I’d made a huge mistake in choosing to live at college. The place was empty and my room was freezing (I didn’t realise I had to hit a switch to turn on the floor heating, but now my floor is nice and toasty and people come to my room just to lie on my floor. And to spend time with me of course, because I’m amazing). Basically, it felt like I’d come to live in a prison. But now all 250+ New Collegians are here, we’ve had college activities almost every night, and every day I’m getting to know new people.

Here I’m known as Kea or Kia – it’s short for Ikea, because I’m Swedish. Every collegian gets a nickname upon arrival, and that’s the name you use when you introduce yourself. At first I didn’t even respond when they called me Kea, but now I hardly respond when someone calls me Jining. It’s also a bit confusing when I’m introducing myself to someone outside of college, because I’m so used to being ‘Kea’ now. I like it though, for once people actually remember my name! Just a sample of other nicknames so you know what it’s like, there’s: Shirt, Panama, Sahara, Ghandi, Buzz, Nutjob, Corky, Crocker, Yam, Lynx, Dr. Pepper, The Hoff, TheParty, Mufasa, Chansey, Tank, Siege, etc. etc. Two of the guys I’ve spent a lot of time with lately are called Saggy and Balzac, and when you call for them together it sounds like ‘saggy ball-sack’. It’s awesome. J

I should probably describe some of the people I’ve been spending most of my time with, because I’ll probably be talking about them a lot over this year. So here are some short introductions:

Saggy - he's Indian but grew up in Singapore, he says really strange things, blurts things out without thinking. He's generally inconsiderate sometimes. And he's a total homophobe, but I'm quickly getting that out of his system. Re-reading this, I realise that he just seems like a jerk, but he's actually just naïve and innocent, and he can be a sweetheart.

Dr. Pepper: Pepper's great, she's doing Medicine and Literature here and she writes and I love texting her because her texts are like real messages and it's just nice. She's very good at bananagrams. Oh and she's Chinese. Anyway, I really like her, she doesn't have much free time but I try to hog the little free time she does have.

Kutcher: He's Malaysian and just strange and crazy, in the best way! He's done all these weird dares before, like eating menstruation pills and contraceptive pills and he's also had whipped cream stuffed up his ass, and he's streaked naked through a park and all kinds of other things.

V: Her name is really Varvara, but everyone just calls her V - she's the person I spend most of my time with. I really like her. When we first started talking we found out that we share almost exactly the same music taste. It was crazy because she listens to loads of the small, obscure, indie bands that I like. And since then we've sort of just done everything together. Haha, she's studying physics too! Of course she is.

V has a car anyway, and she really likes driving, so we’ve been going out for drives a lot. It’s really the easiest way to get around in Sydney, since the public transport is messy and the buses are always late. Sydney is such a huge city as well (over 4 million citizens!). I’ve been finding it really difficult to find my way around the city centre. Luckily, I have V, who’s been taking me to all these amazing places – she’s lived in Sydney her entire life when she’s actually a Russian citizen.

One night when we were out at the unibar on campus we got bored of the music so V and her boyfriend Jimmy just took us around town. It was wonderful – they obviously knew their way around, taking us first to Unversity of Sydney (and the graffiti tunnel!), then to this place in the botanical gardens where you get this amazing view of darling harbour and everything that Sydney is famous for – it was beautiful . Then we drove over the bridge, and the view from there was amazing as well. I loved it, and felt so happy about being here.

Another night they took me out to this really remote hilltop about 1½ hour’s drive from here, to go stargazing! They’re members of this observing group/society-thing, which means that they can access the observatory, but when we arrived it turned out that they’d gotten the dates wrong and that the society wasn’t there, so we weren’t actually able to see anything through a telescope. It was still SO AMAZING though, I’ve never seen so many stars – everything was even clearer than what we’ve seen at Oskar’s summerhouse, or in Öregrund. Somehow the Milky Way just looked bigger and more spread out as well – I can’t really find the right words to describe it, other than saying that I loved it and that I can’t wait to go back and look at everything through the telescope.

All in all – I feel at home here. In a really strange way I even feel MORE at home here than at Edinburgh - just because I feel that the 'me' here is much more like the way I used to be in Kungsholmen. The people I spend most of my time with are really strange in one way or another, I want to give examples but that would just make this post too long – anyway all of my close friends here are weird (and a lot of fun!), and it makes it easy for me to just be myself. The Edinburgh 'me' is much more calm and grounded and sensible, but here I’m just – crazy? In a fun way. I think that’s how people perceive me anyway.

I was going to write heaps more, but I should probably be doing some work. I've been ignoring two week's worth of tutorial homework and I've already skipped three lectures that I should catch up on. They record all lectures here though, which makes it so easy for me to skip them! Anyway - I'll write more as soon as I have time.

MUCH LOVE,

J