Week 2 and 3

Week 2:
This was a less eventful week. I spent Monday till Wednesday working on my review and finished it. On Tuesday I went to campus to work in the office and buy a bike at the UQ bike shop. So now I have a very good bike and I am no longer allowed to be lazy and take the bus. The bike ride to campus is going to take me a while to get used to though. There are proper hills here, which, as a Dutchy, I am obviously not used to. I am super thankful for the fact that there is a shower in the building where I work on campus, because otherwise I would be the smelliest person there. So, now I get into my workout clothes, bike to UQ, have a shower, and start working.

On Thursday and Friday I started to work on the internship. I wasn’t allowed to start in the lab yet so I started working on a database; organizing information, adding information, and linking photographs to sample numbers. On Saturday I wanted to go on another weekend adventure, but my body was not having it. So, I spent the day being super, super lazy! That helped, and on Sunday I took the bus to Mount Coot-tha which has a beautiful view of Brisbane. The heat was unbearable though, so I got my photographs (and selfie) and spent an hour in the shade waiting for the bus back down. On the way down the mountain, I got off at the bus stop for the botanical garden. This is the second garden that was built in Brisbane, because the first botanical garden, located in the center along the river, got flooded once. I took my time walking around the gardens and enjoyed the different plants, local wildlife, and special garden sections, such as the Japanese garden and bonsai exhibition. I didn’t have enough time to go through the whole garden; I missed the native Australian section; so I’ll be going back another time (again, this is free as well!).

Week 3:
Then a new week started with my alarm going off at 6 am again. This gives me enough time to slowly wake up, have a nutritious breakfast, pack my bag, get on my bike, arrive all sweaty on campus, take a shower, and walk into the office at 8.30 for another day. From Monday to Friday I worked on the database and on Friday I had the feeling I had square eyes from looking at the screen all the time. By the time I bike home, I usually only had enough energy left to cook or reheat myself some dinner, chat with my housemates, and be lazy. The advantage of working on the database is that all the data is on a computer on campus, so I cannot do anything at home. On Friday I joined some PhD’s from my department for the Biology drinks again and then biked home in the dark for the first time.

On Saturday I cleaned the house together with Jessie. We both kind of got into it, so by the time we were getting satisfied with the result, we had been cleaning for about 5 hours without noticing that time went by that fast. So we ended up begin really tired and dehydrated. Kio then decided to reward our hard work by cooking a fabulous meal with grilled pumpkin, parsnips, and humus. And then we topped it off with a movie night with the amazing popcorn (:D).

On Sunday I went to a meetup, which is a meeting organized by a group on a social website called meetup.com. I had realized this week, that I need to put some effort in getting a social life, as all the people at my office either have families or are super busy finishing their PhDs. So I signed up for meetup and joined some groups, and while I was looking through the different events organized, I came across a Czech Sunday lunch. Again, I could not believe what was happening and did not understand which part of the world I was in. So, I signed up for the lunch and got a lift from the organizer of the meetup, as the lunch was outside the city and public transport could not get me there. The organizer, Rob, is Czech himself and has been in Australia for 12 years. It was nice to chat with him, but he was a little weird and awkward. He kept flaunting all his ‘knowledge’ and whenever I would say I didn’t know something or something was new information for me, he would make me feel like I was the dumbest person in the world. But during the lunch, while there were other people from the meetup group, I realized that he is probably a little socially awkward and that is the way he tries to camouflage that. The other people in the meetup group were really nice and interesting though, so I think I’m going to join them next weekend for a German dinner. The Czech lunch itself was amazing. There were a lot of seniors that had been born in the Czech republic, I had a traditional Czech dish (vepřo, knedlo, zelo), I got a shot of Becherovka, and bought myself some Czech sweets; so I was in paradise!

Today I started a new week of the internship and had my lab induction. Tomorrow, when my login is activated, I will have to go through a lot of paperwork so that I am allowed in the lab. A small victory today, was the fact that I didn’t have to get of my bike for the steep hills on my way home, except when the chain of my bike fell off just before the top of a hill. So, I am getting better with the hills, also due to me realizing I needed to put the seat higher, but I’m still a sweaty mess anytime I bike somewhere.