Back in Sydney

After a long Southern Hemisphere summer, I am back in Sydney from my travels. It was an intense period as I travelled for a full month and not a few friends and I were looking for a house to move into for the next semester. Housing market in Sydney is as crazy as in London, so finding a place in a week is tricky. Gladly one of my friends came back to Sydney and started looking earlier. She managed to find a real estate agent that works in one of the areas not too far from university called Glebe. After many unsuccessful viewings and applications, she offered us a house that was not exactly what we were after as it had 2 bedrooms, not 3 as we originally intended. Yet it was beautiful and in a nice area, so we took it. Few days after I landed from New Zealand I was moving into a new home.

However, it was not as easy as it sounds because almost all the houses that are in the rental market come unfurnished. This meant that even when we finally got a house for the first nights we still slept on the floor, had not fridge or chairs to sit on. Nonetheless, we quickly realized that it is possible to find a lot of furniture for free on facebook marketplace. That became our strategy to furnish the house. It was not quick but in couple of weeks we got all the essentials. We looked for furnishings in the surrounding area, so that we would not have to rent car/van, which would have made it quite pricey too.

A few fun moments from the moving: we found someone who lived 5 minutes away from our house and was giving up a fridge. It had tiny wheels, so we were pushing it all the way on the street at 9 o’clock on a Sunday night. I have to say – we had a lot of fun just because there were so many moments that felt completely absurd and surreal. You would never think you year abroad in Sydney would include memories like that.

Either way moving in with friends is a bonding experience. I really appreciate having people I love around and have to say that the start of second semester in Sydney is vastly different from the first one. It feels familiar and secure, I am now exciting about time I have here because I know exactly how I want to spend it – where to travel and with whom, academic subjects I want to focus on, societies I want to join, and places I want to go to more often. Now in my house we have a list of all the fun things we can do together or separately. These include going to Botany View Hotel for karaoke or jazz, Kalyx Culture events, and going out to Club 77 to mention just a few.

I am now starting to realise just how much I love living here especially with the world pride month taking place in Sydney, there were so many events to go to, so many beautiful people in the streets, and most importantly so much freedom and joy around. Coming here, I knew I would like it, but I did not expect to feel so much like home.