Port Kembla, Last Exam, and Coogee to Bondi

Early on Thursday Jason, Ashley, and Amy left, leaving Katie, Tyler, and me left in the PH. Friday I decided to take a study break and go down to Port Kembla, which is just south of Wollongong, with Katie and Tyler. We had read that whales had just been spotted from Hill 60, which is a hill (obviously) right on the coast, so we hopped on the train and took it four stops to the south. The train station dumped us sort of in the middle of nowhere, so we just started walking towards the coast, continuing down south, picking our way past the big factories and plants down there. Eventually we found a beachy area which we climbed down to and followed around, climbing the rocks and skirting around the steep parts to come to Hill 60 a few kilometers away.

The walk was pretty and it was a gorgeous, fairly warm day out. I've mentioned before that there are five islands in this area, and the biggest one is right off of Hill 60.

We hung out a bit and headed back, making it back to Wollongong in time to catch the market still open. Once back in the apartment, it was study time once more for me.

Saturday brought more study time until about 1pm when I left to take my second and last exam. I haven't really tried to take the bus anywhere on a weekend in quite some time, so I'm glad I had left super early because I had totally forgotten that the buses come half as frequently. I got to my Food Chemistry exam right on time though, after having to trek to the complete other side of campus where I've never even been before. I was thankful that my exam wasn't back in the gym, but I had been nervous about finding the right building and all. The class, which is about 60 students, was split up into a few different rooms and intermixed with other classes. I was put into a large classroom (but not nearly as big as a gym!) which was about half and half my class and an international law class. This time I had desk 19, and I noticed the number on the desk said, "CHEATING LEADS TO EXCLUSION." Little less cheerful than the last one. In all honesty I didn't study for that exam as well as I should of, and because of that it was pretty hard. I'm really counting on the fact that all I have to do is pass though - that exam was 60% of my grade for that class... but yeah, I took 3 hours and 5 minutes to finish my exam out of the allotted 3 hours 15 minutes. Despite the rough time, it felt excellent to walk out and be done. Went home, ate, watched part of a world cup game, and went to sleep.

Sunday morning we headed out to Sydney on the 9:20 train, walking over to the Paddy's Markets from Central to check them out. They were ok, but we bought a couple little things and didn't stay too long. We were hungry, but as we had discovered, all the kebab stands in the market oddly don't actually sell any kebabs. The market is right in chinatown though, and I had gotten a craving for dumplings, so we decided to try a little restaurant on the street, which really didn't turn out to be a good idea. After waiting forever, and being told they didn't have some of their menu items, we were told that we had to spend 5$ for every person we had sitting at the table. Then after suffering through a whole jumble of confusion trying to explain things to the waitress who hardly spoke english and being given something that looked completely unedible, we just got up and left. We didn't actually end up eating until a couple hours later.

We made our way back to Central, picking up a bus to Coogee. Thing is that Katie and Tyler hadn't realized that they had to get their tickets stamped, so when some officers came onto the bus to check everyone's tickets, they were made to get off the bus. I had stamped mine, but I got off with them and waited while they were chastised but not fined. We were put on the next bus which went to Clovelly, just north of Coogee, cutting our walk slightly short. The walk was about 6km I believe, and took us maybe 2-3 hours as we kept stopping for pictures or just to take in the views. The Bondi-Coogee walk is a well-known walk along the coastline from beach to beach. As it was another beautiful day (and really warm!), there were a ton of people out.

The walk was really pretty and we ended up at Bondi, where me and Katie went to find food while Tyler rented a board and went surfing for a couple hours. We grabbed some kebabs for real this time and I bought some sunnies since mine had decided to self-destruct at the beginning of the walk. We hopped on a bus as the sun started to go down, and caught the train all the way back to Wollongong.

Today wasn't nearly as scenic, as we all just bummed around the apartment most of the day and clean a bit. The most I did was go to collect a refund for the time I won't be using my Australian insurance, and decide not to get my hair cut in town after discovering it cost 50$...