I went for a walk along the coast today for the afternoon from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach. The weather was great and lots of people were out and about. The walk is fairly easy with a few hills to go up and down as you can see in the pictures. It took me about 90 minutes to walk back, and longer on the way there as I stopped more to take in the sights.

You can see the picutres here.

I headed over to Sydney Olympic Park today to catch a pair of rugby games. The feature game was the Wests Tigers versus the Sydney Roosters. The Tigers play out of Telstra Stadium (the Olympic Stadium) so they were the team to cheer for. In the pictures, it may not look like many people are at the game - but the stadium is huge and attendance was announced as 19,360! The home team Tigers won the game. I think I may actually now understand the basics of rugby and I wonder why it hasn’t caught on more in North America - it’s a really great game!

Before the game, I went to see the Aquatic Centre. It was cool to see all the bleachers by the pool and realize that back in 2000, they were packed to see the world’s best swimmers. I know I now live in Calgary that was also home to the Olympics, but I think it’s because I remember the 2000 Olympics more than the 1998 Calgary games that made seeing the Sydney Olympic Park so interesting.

You can see the pictures here and I’ve also included a video file below of the final few seconds of the game so you can get a feel for the crowd.

I got away from the hospital a little early today. Actually, I was “told” that I should go home so that I could go to the beach since it was such a nice afternoon. So I headed down the hill on foot for about twenty minutes and came to this beautiful place! The beach is called Coogee Beach. It is also a short distance from the famous Bondi Beach and they are connected by a coastal walk that I plan to do this weekend if the weather stays good. As the sun was going down, I grabbed some fish and chips from a place along the beach walkway called “Chish and Fips” and sat by the water. After sunset, I grabbed a latte for the walk back.

You can see all the pictures here and there are a couple of videos below. The videos are nothing fancy, and there is a lot of wind noise, but you’ll get the idea!

Seeing as today was my first full day in Sydney, I figured I should do what anyone would do - be a tourist! I took the bus into Sydney for the afternoon and explored the waterfront, saw the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, caught some Jazz at the Darling Harbour Jazz Festival, walked through the Botanical Gardens, and took a ferry around the harbour. Not bad for an afternoon! The weather was fantastic with not a cloud in the sky all day as you’ll see in the pictures. I know you would think that you could only take so many pictures of a bridge and an opera house, but I took lots! I couldn’t decide which ones to drop, so I posted most of them so bear with me! Tomorrow is my first day in the hospital here so I’m looking forward to that. More to come!

You can see all the pictures from my day here.

Just thought I’d let you all know that I survived the long flight to Australia and have gotten settled in High Cross Park Lodge - where I’ll be staying for the next 4 weeks during my elective. It is right across the street from the Children’s Hospital where I’ll be working so it’s very convenient. There are also lots of cafes, shops, groceries, etc. nearby making it really easy to get things so far.

My room is small, but functional, and there is a shared kitchen that I have access to as well. The weather is not very good here today - only about 12 degrees with wind and rain. Tomorrow’s forecast is looking better so hopefully I’ll get some good pictures of my surroundings before I start at the hospital on Tuesday. I can probably use the day of rest today due to the weather anyways after all the traveling and the 16 hour (or 8 hour depending on how you look at it) time change!

You can see more pictures of the lodge here.

Here we are after writing our last exam of the year. I’m off to Australia on Friday and hope to have lots of updates from there! (In case you are wondering, Tuataras is a reptile from New Zealand and is our class name.)

I figured it was time for something new and fresh with the site seeing as the old layout had been up for quite a while. I know this may seem drastic, but with Wordpress themes, it was actually really easy to do. The theme I am now using is called 3 column Relaxation. I like how it’s nice and clean and the header graphic can be changed quite easily. I may play around a bit with the colours, etc… but overall, I think I like it the way it is.

I’ve also decided to take the jump to flickr for my online photo albums. The idea is that it is web-based photo management which makes it really easy to upload photos from anywhere and they can easily be included in the side bar on the site. I haven’t moved any photos over to it yet - until then, I’ll keep the link there to the old Photo archive from the old site design. I’m not getting rid of them just yet incase I find something quirky about flickr and decide just to stay with what I’ve always been doing.

One last change is that I’ve decided that andyskinn.com will be the main link to the site and the links to the posts. The old hoydnewsnetwork.com links should all still work. Why do this now? I figured it was a good time with the change anyways - plus, I was getting tired of having to spell out hoydnewsnetwork to people anyways!

Hope everyone likes the change - let me know if you notice anything weird since I may have broken something along the way!