You are never alone in Sydney

Yesterday, the last Orientation day, we got showed around in school, and all the class rooms was named after color. That goes well with my blog name!

Yesterday I won my first prize!! There was mingle and pizza slices on the staff in the room where everybody had put up their drawings / photos covering every wall. Suddenly one of my program directors stood up on a chair and announced 5 winners that would be picked out by him walking around in the class room. The winner's prizes was a book with different design work, made by students at Billy Blue, really just full of inspiration. Suddenly he asked "who i Freja, here?", I turned around and won the price! He looked me into the eyes and said, "Freja, your photographs are really, really good". I celebratd with a huge pizza slice after that.

around 14, I and Niklas sat down starting looking for apartments. We sat in 4,5 hours with finally one "date" each the same evening, 20. He found a great one and will now stay there until the end of march while mine was dark and not very clean. Didn't take it. Not inspiring för fem öre.

After that I went with Niklas to an AMAZINGLY cozy bar and met up with another swede we met in the class room before. We had a really great time but Niklas had to go starting moving in already. There was a huge group of swedes there where one was named Freja! Suddenly I just stood there realizing I didn't know any one of the people around me, and I felt so calm in my self, so relaxed and happy. That just hit me.

Today, Friday, we have the day off. I could borrow my room mate's surf board, so I'm heading off right now to Manly beach (need to take ferry), meeting up with Niklas and Martin.

On my way home, after having different conversations with different people everywhere, like the bus driver, at the train, in food store, with a guard and in a line to the bus, I realized it will be hard to find moments of loneliness in the city of Sydney.

I'm ALIVE

I feel so much alive and Billy Blue is so RIGHT. I feel free, happy and strong and I'm creating my own paths and getting to know different people.

Thursday is last orientation week, then it really starts Monday. I'm so up for it. I'm really motivated.

Here are some of my steps to school. Will show you more later.

This is my work from Wendy's garden at the Billy Blue wall, where I chose the drawing in the top (bad mobile - picture of it though) motive for it's similarities with Pettson , the rest just goes under the theme Pattern. Unfortunately I couldn't make the color printer work, so they're B&W, but the patterns is still there.

Steel room

After school I bought an essential graphic design student towel for getting clean, and then I headed to Jackson Ainsworth and his sister Lucy’s Art Gallery opening, where they let designers and artists put their work out in public for free. I’m very proud of both of them, and for meeting up with Jackson’s family. Jackson attended the same class as I in the Berghs semester, before continuing on Billy Blue.

Then I said bye to My, or no, See you later. You are a true sunlight in my life, girl <3

What an intro!

 

My Billy Blue day started in a blue room full of excited new students. When you entered the door you were given a plastic pipe in a certain colour. Suddenly a guy entered the stage wearing sweat pants. He was joined by a guy really good at bongo drums and this all ended up with all students hitting our different coloured and different thickness/length - pipes against our hands to make a sound. It was AMAZING and it sounded like an orchestra of beautiful tones accompanied with the drums! We played for almost 20 minutes and everybody was totally sweaty and happy and laughing and whistling. The guy lifted for example the pipe in yellow and all people with a yellow pipe were told to hit in a certain rhythm and all the time different combinations. He was amazing at leading this drum concert. Daniel, you should have loved this rhythms!

After that we got this;

The assignment of today, you didn't need to follow these "rules", you should just be creative, they said

I have recently bought a painting pad, Quill,"Visual art diary" A4, some Moleskine books thanks to Daniel, and 6 pencils

We watched a short very beautiful documentary about Wendy before heading towards "her" garden. It was like a hidden spot in a hill situated beautifully before Harbour Bridge. I started talking to a nice guy in our group I thought was Australian and he thought I was Brazilian until we realised we were both Swedes. Ha. It ended up with us staying and taking photos in the garden, talking and drawing a long time after everybody left. WE MET WENDY IN THE GARDEN. What a garden!! And what a day. Tomorrow we'll meet 10 for info about everything you can inform about and after lunch we will show everybody our drawings and photos.

Student card - art stores

My pale student card with expiry date forever

 

Strange animal (possum?) that was saved by the garden man. It was shaking and scared and just a sorry animal. But very cute.

Tomorrow's mission is to create an Australian bank (this one's good for students) account and meet My before she go home! 'Night!

After School (#1/3 this day)

I have lost my voice thanks to my cold so I am glad I don't have to say something here, just write.

Aha, my first school day wasn't really my first school day. Just a paper hour where I got papers and info. Didn't really meet any students. But WOW, what a place! It's beautiful! Creative and inspiring. I'm sure I'll really enjoy this. Got my schedule where I could choose 1 out of 4 different time-setups. I got the one where I have almost all the lessons this semester in the morning and get home around 13.00. After this I will have time for training and studying and other stuff. I also thought that maybe I'll look for apartment in Manley, where I was today meeting My and her friends. That means I can spend some time at the beach surfing after school! :D

Tomorrow I need to buy a Vodafone stick to my computer to be able to connect to the internet wherever I am. It's complicated  without. Like now for example, I write some blog posts and I have to post them at the same time.

Now I will organize my stuff and wait for Malin to come home from work so that we can make some dinner!   



My schedule to be this semester;

Monday, Studio Practice 8.30-12, Academic Meeting 12-13, Symbols and Distribution 13.30-17-30
Tuesday, Frameworks of Design 8.30-13
Wednesday, Finishing skills 12-13
Thursday, Typography and Context 8.30-13
Friday, own studies

(Some of these lessons will start later in the semester and some will end earlier than the others)

My first Sydney adress

There was her hand, pulling me up with a lovely smile and grabbing my other heavy bag. Across the street was her home and she invited me into it in a way that made me wonder if I had lived there before. We just clicked. Welcome home to Sydney, sort of.

Here I sit early in the morning in the area Glebe on a mattress in her one and only beautiful bottom floor room with a really high ceiling and a damn fireplace. Hi. I have unpacked almost everything and the Norrland surfing girl is still asleep. Feels like we know each other already. So easy going. I have the worst cold than ever but I feel so alive that I think I don't care about it. Even though I can't get out running as I had planned, also because of my knees. My first mission after writing this is to get myself some breakfast before packing and preparing my little school bag and myself for a big day. I'll look for the closest store and leave 10.26 with a bus called “city”, taking the train from Town Hall to North Sydney, follow the crowd and run in the last stair I can find, take a little sneak peak on the discrete hand made un-touristy map that Malin draw for me and continue across the street. Apparently the school isn't at all in the top of the sky scraper but at floor one or something so I must have glorified the whole thing a little. Sorry for that. Anyway, in a couple of hours I will spend three at Billy Blue with my little school bag on my Freja-back and I can't believe it.

I'll definitely have to write again afterwards.

Tough start

Hi guys!

Sorry I haven's updated in a couple of days, It's been hard with the internet connection and a lot of other stuff, like CSN. Right now when I'm writing, I have no internet either, so I'll post this as soon as I do. Well, Friday I thought was my first real Sydney-dag but the Jet Lag decided that I was supposed to sleep away the whole day and so I did. My came the same evening. It was amazing having that wonderful sun-person stepping inside my hostel room! We went out eating wonderful china food and then I had to sleep again. My crawled up in the other bed in my room. Next day I FINALLY put my fee  in the warm Bondi-sand before I ended up with fever, a soar thought, headache, ache in my body and a cold. Sleep again and I couldn't go the party My went on the same evening. Next day My and I was on the same level = TIRED as old ladies and there and then we decided to do the stores on Oxford street. We walked really slowly and after each stair we had to stop for a while. There were beautifully designed dresses everywhere we went along the street, so I ended up buying one at a vintage store as I realized I would never ever see anything like it again. At another second hand I found a KAP (=swedish word for like treasure). A Rip Curl wet suit for 175 kr!!!!!!!!!!!!! They're normally like (?). Anyway, the shopping day ended up with My and I sitting at a lovely and charming book café.

After that we got our HEAVY bags at the hostel and My dropped me off at Starbucks. From there I sort of never got up and especially not with the help rom a train and a bus as I had planned. I wasn't even relieved when I saw a monkey-sort-of-animal in a tree outside, in the middle of the city, indicating I was sitting in a pretty cool country. I had decided with the swedish girl I would be  staying at, already attending Billy Blue, that I would come around eight. The bags was suddenly way to heavy because of my fever and my knees that I had just “broken” totally after carrying all the bags in the stairs. My phone was “SIM inactive” when trying calling for a cab and I ended up crying at a stone stair after chasing a taxi by myself, my knees and bags and being dropped of with his questions in my head; “So you don't have your mum and dad in Sydney?” “Not any siblings?” “Friends then?” “Totally alone?” “And why do you carry so much stuff?” “You said you don't know the girl you will stay with?” “What? You come here studying and don't have a job?!”. I felt extremely positive after that drive. Never felt smaller. The girl I waited for was unfortunately 45 minutes late from work.

I realized when I sat at that stair crying even more seeing happy loving couples just “haha”:ing everywhere, exactly this moment is one of those tough ones that would come, and that I had looked forward to manage on my own, so therefore I didn't call anyone in my low mindset but managed it anyway. On my own. But with just a little help from the wonderful girl I would start living with just a couple of minutes later.

Timedifference: 10 hrs

I’m here, I’m here!

Cold.

After spending 15 hours in Abu Dhabi and showing my passport to the guy before entering the plane I realized that I was now only a flight from my new hometown and tears of joy and sacredness started falling. Now I understood it. When standing in line to get to the plane I spotted an interesting woman talking beautiful French with a kid. Sometime you just pass somebody that you would want to know more about. I got onto the plane and saw the woman again. After sitting down and the airplane doors were closed, she needed to switch place since her 2 year old son had got a seat for he’s own. Luckily I had two free seats to the left and the airplane hostess guided them there. They sat down and she told me that she had spotted me at the airport and found me interesting! Like the Swedish expression ”som grädde på moset” it ends up with her telling that she freelances as a graphic designer and early on worked as a photographer and us changing e-mail. Sometimes I just love flying!

I slept for 11 hours without a plan really and woke up by a food-wagon next to me. Didn’t hear what she said but I said yes and suddenly I sat there with no breakfast at all but more like dinner. My new found friend told me it was dinner. Aha. It was 5 o’clock, Sydney time. How was I supposed to sleep in Sydney?

Took quite a while to get to the hostel at Kings Cross station and in 2,5 hours about 5 Australian people walked with me to show different locations I was looking for, GAVE me small money to be able to call, said welcome to Australia and offered me to help me to carry my bag. I felt very, very, very welcome.

Spoke with a nice Englishman on the bus going the same direction and decided to get some food together 2 hours later. We did and met up under the well known Coca-Cola sign and bought take away 12 in the night. Sat down on a bench, talked and watched people.

I woke up at a good time, 8 in the morning, hugging my Daniel pillow and didn’t feel to warm. Welcome, first Sydney-day! Internet time is not for free on this hostel and it’s not like on the pictures, I’ll skip uploading a picture of the hostel here. I’m glad I haven’t pre-rented an apartment to live in when pictures apparently do not always tell the through. On the schedule it says; shop food, eat food, shop shampoo and sun protection, call CSN, fix my stuff, buy a telephone card, see Sydney and MEET UP WITH MY!!!! <3