Friday, 14 October – Surf Session
On Friday, around 11 am at Nobby’s Beach the International Office, and Newcastle Surf School had arranged a surf session for the international students at UoN, which the two of us had, of course, signed up for.
Linnea had lectures before lunch, so she went to the beach on a chartered bus, while Gustav – who much like every Friday had nothing scheduled at the uni – went straight to the beach and ended up arriving a bit before Linnea. This, in turn, resulted in that we were placed in different surfing group.
Gustav suited up first. The guys from the surf school gave a quick set of instruction on how to go about when standing up on the surfboard as well as information about staying away from the riptide. The instructors said that, as beginners, if we had gone alone to the beach to surf, they would not recommend surfing since the waves were quite rough.
The water was quite cold, but with wetsuits and rash shirts on it didn’t feel that cold. It was quite hard to stand up on the board. The first step was just to sync up with an oncoming wave and to paddle to get up to speed. The second step was then to get up on two feet.
For the most part, Gustav just went in on the waves on his stomach. But after many tries, Gustav managed to get up on two feet just to fall over straight away. It was enjoyable and straining at the same time.
At one time, when falling over Gustav managed to pull a muscle in his back. This resulted in a very uncomfortable feeling, making breathing harder and painful for some time. This passed quite quickly after some massaging on the affected area.
After an hour, it was time to switch place. Gustav got up from the water and changed into his regular clothes while Linnea put on the wetsuit.
When Gustav went into the water, it had been cloudy. But when Linnea got in it had started to break up and the sun was starting to peek through the veil of clouds.
While Linnea was surfing Gustav got lunch (included in the surf session) consisting of sandwiches, juice, an apple, and a small piece of carrot cake.
When Linnea has surfed and eaten, we went to The Emporium, which is a small mall consisting of a few niche stores. All stores in the Emporium feels like they’re selling hand-crafted or at least local design goods made by the people owning and running the shops.
At one of the stores, we met one of Linnea’s Australian classmates who happened to own one of the shops together with two other people. They were designing and selling furniture that was very vibrant and fresh.
We continued home and relaxed in preparation for a busy weekend.
Saturday, 15 October – Shopping
On Saturday, we went on the 100 bus to Charlestown Square – a big shopping centre in the Newcastle metropolitan area. We went there to pick up merch for the Color Run that took place the day after.
Without having to wait in line for too long, we got our merch as well as one set for Svenja who was going to the Color Run as well. The merch we got consisted on a t-shirt, a headband, and a few other things.
We decided to stay at the shopping centre a bit longer and didn’t take the next bus back. We ended up going to an H&M that just had opened as we moved to Newcastle. As we were walking through the store they played Dancing Queen and many other Swedish songs. When Gustav was paying for the clothes he had picked out, we ended up talking a bit to the cashier who thought it was nice that we were from Sweden and we commented that we thought it was nice that they played a bit of Swedish music.
After H&M, we went to Sportsgirl – the store that was the main sponsor for the Color Run. We had gotten a discount and Linnea wanted a new pair of sandals. So, she bought a nice pair of sandals made of leather and got 20 % off thanks to the Color Run.
Instead of going on a bus back home, we instead went on a bus to the city centre to a café called The Press Book House Cafe. We bought sandwiches and our first filtered brew coffee in Australia. We had to argue with the cashier to get milk with the coffee since he thought we hadn’t drunk filtered coffee before. The main reason he was hesitant with the milk was because the coffee was a medium roast that you pretty much don’t need to have with milk.
We enjoyed our coffee and our sandwiches at a table on the sidewalk. Apart from the traffic, it was quite calm.
After finishing our fika, we went to Spotlight – a textile store – to look for some textile fabric for one of Linnea’s prototypes. Linnea managed to find a fabric that seemed good, so she bought a sample for her scale model to try it out.
Sunday, 16 October – The Color Run
The day of the Color Run, we got up early in order to get to the start on time. Svenja and we took the train from Waratah shortly after 7am and arrived at Teralba at about 8 am.
We participated in some warm-up Zumba and started to get pumped for the race. Linnea got some manicure as part of the colour-theme of the run.
At about a quarter to 9 am the people started to fill-up the start chutes. Linnea managed to make a path for us towards the front, so at the end, we were in the second start chute.
At 9 am, the first start chute opened and the people in front of us started running. When the first start chute was clear, we could start moving forward to the starting line. A short while later the signal for the second start chute sounded and we were off. Linnea sprinted off (in order to get a good photo of herself, see below). When we had run off the field we started to catch up with most of the people from the first start chute since the vast majority of them had stopped running and were walking instead after just 200 metres.
We ran past a lot of people and came to the first zone that had pink foam covering the street. Our legs got a bit pink, but nothing to speak of compared to how we looked after running through the colour zone where they threw coloured corn starch at us.
The run was nice and the ground was flat all the way, which was nice since there were a lot of hills in and around of Mayfield where we usually ran. The weirdest zone was the slime zone, which was a new zone for the Color Run. At the slime zone, they pumped out green slime onto the passersby and this slime also made the street slippery.
The weirdest zone was the slime zone, which was a new zone for the Color Run. At the slime zone, they pumped out green slime onto the passersby and this slime also made the street slippery. So that might not have been the brightest of ideas.
We finished the 5Ks in just above 30 minutes, which for the two of us is quite a good time.
Among the sponsors of the Color Run, there was LG promoting their washing machines. As part of the promotion they had a dunk tank – the kind where you sit on a board over a tub of water and the board is connected to a button that another person is supposed to hit with a ball. Both of us had a go in the dunk tank and in return, we got a clean t-shirt and a towel, a good trade.
We didn’t stick around much longer and went back on the train at about 10:20 am. We went back home where we washed our clothes and showered. Most colours apart from the slime went out of the clothes. But our shoes remained glittery for some time.
We spent our afternoon at the Ocean Baths mostly sunbathing. It was nice, but it was a bit too windy.
That was the end of a good weekend!
/ Gustav & Linnea