Yum Cha

I have never had Yum Cha in my life so Ben thought it is a good idea to get some for lunch. We went into this nice Chinese restaurant and I was quite excited. Ben took the menus and I couldn't believe what I saw! They served chicken feet!!!! How crazy is that?! Ben told me that this was a quite normal dish for Chinese and he had it before. He wanted me to get some, but I just can't think of anything worse than eating a chicken's foot! I then discovered another unusual thing on the menu: Marinated trotters. So you could order pig's feet, sliced. I have never seen anything like that before! I don't know if my appetite just kind of disappeared or if the food didn't sit well in my stomach but after we had some dumplings I felt really sick. I think that was the only and last time I have had Yum Cha, maybe I am not used to this kind of food, but I prefer to have a burger or some Italian food over this.

Best breakfast ever

On Saturday I went out for a girls' night, one of those rare nights without Ben. To my surprise Ben decided to stay in, but fair enough, who doesn't want a night in by themselves once in a while?
I came home pretty late on Sunday morning and wanted to sleep in but unfortunately Ben's alarm went off at 10 and woke me up. Good thing about this was that I was ready for a nice breakfast. I can tell you, I got the best breakfast ever! Ben surprised me with a plate of strawberries and honeydew melon with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. After that he brought me an egg and bacon roll AND after that I was pretty full. But I got more, half an hour later he served me a cup of tea with my favourite poppy seed strudel. How did I deserve this?! Don't ask me, I don't know- but the one thing I know is that I am pretty lucky to get a three course breakfast menu!

A new found treasure

On Monday Ben and I went to Centennial Park. It is a really huge park where you can drive in with your car. There is so many soccer fields, lakes and green areas, it is unbelievable. You get all kind of birds there, from pelicans to cockatoos and swans. Since my hip injury I am very conscious of fast movements, I am scared I'll get that pain again if I start working out too soon. So on Monday Ben went for a run while I fed some cockatoos. There was a creepy black swan that slowly followed me for a while, it just wouldn't let me feed the other birds. I am not sure if it just wanted some seeds too but to me it looked more angry than hungry. Finally a dog ran past and chased it, so I could concentrate on all my little cockatoos. Yesterday Ben and I went to the park again. This time I decided to run for the first time in 3 months. I even ran 3km before my hip started to hurt. I felt like it was enough for my first work out. Ben and I decided to come here running more often now as it is just beautiful and the temperature in the evening is perfect now. Seriously, who wouldn't want to run at a place like this:

Free tickets to Sneaky Sound System? Why not!

Our friend asked us if we wanted to go see Sneaky Sound System last week. I haven't listened to their music in ages, but I have heard about their concert since it was on my uni's campus. First Ben said "I think I'm a bit old for them" but then after considering we get to see them for free, we thought "Why not?!" It was weird to be on campus this late and I was surprised how many students were out drinking on a Thursday. I do not feel part of that group anymore. I don't know if it's the fact that I am doing a postgraduate and am not 20 anymore, or if it's because I am not living close to campus. We were a bit annoyed that Sneaky Sound System only started at 9.30pm. It was far to late for the main act considering it was during a weekday. My friend pointed out that she was not really singing and when you watched closely you could tell that she was only moving her lips to the music. I guess it is fine for dance music as people are actually dancing at the concert instead of listening to a band, where the performance is everything. Still, I was a little disappointed.

Tomorrow I am meeting with my brother in law's sister. They are only here for 3 days and I am so happy to get to meet them on their business trip! I hope it will be nice and warm so I can show them around and take them to the beach!

Australia so far...

I never had time  to make a video about my time here, but I always thought about doing it. So finally you can see a clip about my life here in Australia. You will see the cliffs where I live, me and my friends on a music festival (note: it's pretty hot considering it's March), the skatepark right at the beach and much more. I hope you enjoy!

Quiet Night

On Tuesday I decided to go to the movies with Ben. It was "Tightass Tuesday" as Ben likes to call it and so we watched "The Vow". It was the worst movie for a man but the best movie for girls. I absolutely loved it and I had a hard time keeping back tears. I am glad we went to watch it! The day after Ben and I were standing in the kitchen when suddenly the lights started to flicker and slowly died. I have to say it was quite creepy. You know the moment when this happens in horror movies when the lights go off and something scary happens? I expected to see the silhouette of a ghost or something else, but thank god we didn't! We checked the electricity but everything seemed to be fine in our apartment. Then we went onto the balcony and realised that the whole block around our house was dark. Thank god I love candles so we had enough to put some into every room. I don't know what the problem these days in Bondi is, this has happened 3 times in 2 weeks now. Ben and I washed up with candle light and then went to bed. There was not really anything to do without light. I tried to read in bed but the constant flickering of the candle just annoyed me. I have to say that it was quite romantic and refreshing having a night without the tv on. I was glad when I woke up and the electricity was back on though.

Pinapple Quinoa

I made this pineapple quinoa last week and I really enjoyed it. I love having something sweet in my savory dish, I am a fan of pineapple with anything - Schnitzel, burger etc.
This one is quite interesting as it has some soy sauce in it, so it is salty as well as sweet! You can find the recipe here which I altered a bit! I added some bacon, just because Ben prefers to have some meat in most dishes. I also added broccoli. Delicious!

Birthday Weekend in Manly

Last week we celebrated the birthdays of two our closest friends here in Sydney. To do something different, we - or let's say the birthday girl decided to have a party in Manly. This is quite far away so we booked an apartment to stay overnight. I wasn't the luckiest with my hip problems and eye infection, but still came out to party for a while. Thank god I've got a boyfriend who walks me home early even though the others decide to party on. We went to a bar that served mainly cider, which would have been great for me if I wasn't on strong painkillers. I still had one (don't tell my mum).

Alyce and Potter had so many people attending their birthday party it was amazing to see how many friends they made in the short time they've been living in Sydney. We all chatted so much and got to know new interesting people. Only the weather was a bit miserable, but I guess after this horrible summer (can we even call it a summer?) we are all used to this anyways.
The next morning we went for breakfast to a nice grill across the beach. Funny that 5 of us ended up getting the same dish - eggs benedikt. It felt good to do something different and go out in a new area of Sydney especially with our close friends from London. I wish we could do that more often!

Rain, go away!

Yesterday was a day where I woke up and decided to stay in bed. It was pouring down and the rain was so loud, it gave me goosebumps. It had been pouring all night and there were floods all over Sydney. It took Ben over an hour to get to work as opposed to the usual 20 minutes. When I did some research for my school project my Internet suddenly turned off. I was thinking it broke when I realised that the electricity was down. Do you ever think about how important electricity is in our lives? You can't cook, watch TV, charge your phone, listen to the radio, nothing. I thought I'll look up if they announced anything on the Internet in case the floods were responsible for that breakdown but I couldn't even do that. When I went shopping instead I saw that all the shops on my street were closed. Thank god when I came back after 2 hours I was able to continue my research. Not for long though, because 3 hours later it was down again. So I decided to go for a walk, to do something good for my injured hip and get some fresh air. Down in Tamarama Beach I saw the craziest waves. I sat down on the cliffs and watched 3 crazy surfers that didn't show any fear in 5m waves. There was no way I would be in the water right now! I took some really nice pictures there:

Pretty quiet week!

As if my infected eye wasn't enough, I also got a hip pain that grew so much that I wasn't able to stand, lay down or sit. I saw 2 doctors and had an x-ray. The only good thing was that I got strong pain killers that knocked me out and let me sleep. I had cried in my sleep the days before, even Ben woke up. It was definitely the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. A week later I am feeling a lot better. It came out that my pain wasn't due to any nerve impingements but muscles. I never knew that muscles could cause so much pain. The best medicine is my boyfriend who gives me massages to relax those mean muscles and today I'm feeling so much better. I am so glad!
Here are some pictures from last week. There hasn't been happening that much here, since I had to lay down and rest a lot, but the weekend is coming and I am ready for some fun.

I visited Ben at work. Amazing pumpkin and feta cheese pizza on the right. 

The tag I got at the hospital, really weird I had never gotten anything like that before. Fruit with chocolate sauce, is there anything better than that?!