Riverside Motherfucker!

Nope, not my new favorite song. It’s where Carliene and I found our apartment. I don’t know what it is, but I always seem to have luck or meet the right people (or both) when room hunting. And it took us exactly two days. Look it up on google maps. HIER
That’s right, the location is a dream!! It is a two bedroom apartment on the ground floor with a terrace looking over one of the inland rivers of Gold Coast in the middle of Surfers Paradise!
Friday afternoon, after visiting the Gold Coast accommodation service and through them a real estate agency, we were given the keys to two apartments in the area around the hostel where we were staying to go and take a look. We immediately fell in love with this place. So there are two bedrooms of which one has a walk in closet that goes to the bathroom, not kidding. Of course I couldn’t deny Carliene that luxury, so I agreed on her getting that room. Then there’s a shower, a bath tub (yep, both), a washing machine and dryer and a fully equipped kitchen with a huge fridge and freezer. It’s madness! So last night we had a little house warming party with all our new buddies, mostly staff from the hostel, and the neighbors got to find out that there are new people living that easily can party until about 4am. Pretty soon I will make some more pics of the house; I didn’t really get to do that yet… only one of the view from our terrace. Muwha!
Then where I left off last time. We have had a really nice party in the city last Thursday, with some people from the hostel at which we obviously where the last ones to leave.
The first couple of days we spent walking around the city to get to know our way around here. It is a really awesome city with a very relaxed vibe coming from everything. People in shorts and flip-flops, surfers walking around barefooted with their board under their arm and friendliness everywhere!! For example, I once walked into a bar to order some drinks and the girls behind the counter greets me as if I had returned after being gone for half a year and she was happy to see me again, while it really was the first time I ever got there and then she gave me a compliment about my shirt. Cool! That same attitude comes from most people, where they really like to chat and hear about your life story and what you’re doing in Surfers Paradise. Usually they expect me to be a backpacker, because this place is full of them, and then they are really pleasantly surprised to hear that I’ll be around for a couple of months to study. It is simply amazing.
On Saturday we went on a (by me) long expected festival in Brisbane. My good ol’ buddies Mark and Miranda tipped me about it and Carliene was cool enough to agree on going. After a two hour long bus and train ride we got in the middle of Brissy (as they call it here) where there was a huge terrain on which they had set up six stages. The line-up was basically a dream to me, could have been groezrock (for the insiders) only three times bigger. For the not-insiders that means rock noise. We had a blast and afterwards we went by taxi to Mark and Miranda’s place where we spent the night after rocking Guitar Hero till about three. The next day they were cool enough to offer us a ride home. We took the tourist way where we first went to check out their new house to be that’s being built now. Then we went to a small national park on a mountain between Brissy and Gold Coast. It was very strange to be in a city first, drive half an hour and stand in a rain forest, then drive another half hour and be at the beach again. The environment obviously is very beautiful, but you have to be so super careful with all the strange animals that live here. Because I don’t want anyone to worry, I will spare most details and statistics on snakes and bugs and all that.
Monday we had an appointment at the real estate agency to sign the paperwork (A LOT!!), pay the bound and two weeks in advance and finally receive the keys. There was no power yet and because we had to go to the university in the afternoon for an orientation session, we couldn’t make an appointment with the electricity company to come and switch it on again; that had to wait until this morning (Tuesday that is)…
The uni looks lovely and the orientation session was very interesting.. ahum. The spoke for an hour and a half, but could have cut off an hour of that. I really don’t need to have explained to me that the ocean is a place where people can drown, that aussies drive on the left side, that there is strength in numbers when you go out. After the session we picked up our new student cards and went to the uni bar to meet and greet our fellow exchange students. Of course we left with about ten new contacts in our phone list of people who all live in Surfers Paradise, so not on-campus at the uni. During the evening, like I already said was the housewarming.
This morning I got woken up by the electricity guy and after that I decided to have a go at surfing. It was a two hour lesson and it rocked!! Yes, I did manage to stand up a couple of time and ride a wave to the beach. For the first day we only started very shallow, about waist deep in the water. The waves we surfed were already broken; nevertheless it feels amazing to be pushed forward by the force of water. There was a guy from the surf school who made pictures. Tomorrow I will pick up the CD of my pics so everyone can enjoy Niek’s first day surfing skills in full glory.
The rest of the week will probably be about the same, because we don’t have to go to class before next Monday. Life rocks here and I love this country.
Mom and Dad, I know that before I left I said that Australia would have to do a really great job to beat the great time I had in Spain, but I’m afraid that has already happened.

PICS!

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