Christmas, new year and the month January

So after a long radio silence I am back again with a new story/update of my time here in Down Under. The last info you probably had is that I went to Melbourne for Christmas to meet up with my family.
Just before I left to go to Melbourne I ended up in the hospital on a Saturday night just before Christmas. After having an amazing cruise on a boat where I have seen most of the beaches of Sydney I started to feel my stomach moaning at me. Went to the toilet and thought I felt better
( haha fooled myself there big time!!)

Went home and starting to feel much worse. After that it just got worse and worse, I started hyperventilating , went to the toilet multiple times and was feeling cold and warm at the same time. I felt completely shit;), so I called the medical care centre and they told me to go to the hospital asap… grabbed a taxi and went to the nearest hospital. After arriving and waiting for 6 ****ing hours I finally got helped by a doctor. After a few minutes he came with the diagnose of gastroenteritis. Also known as an infection in my bowels. Blugh I felt terrible for 5 days In a row and had to follow a stupid diet that did not allow me to eat anything the first two days. And Christmas was coming, shit, all you actually do during Christmas is being with family eating and drinking like crazay.

Eventually everything turned out quite okay so I grabbed a domestic flight to Melbourne and I was of. After being picked up by my auntie Chris and Cousin Alex we went back to the place where they live. This is the first time that I have seen their house and environment. Well I have to say it is a lovely house with an awesome view at the front cause it looks out over a nice golf course. After that we went out to do several kinds of things like doing last minute shopping for the Christmas dinner etcetera. The next day I got to meet my relatives whom I did not know yet in real life. We were facebook buddies but that was it. So after seeing Pat, Paul, Samantha, Kate, Isabel, Chris, Jess,Alex,Blake,Mikeala (sorry if I spelled this wrong mickey!) and Dylan we all had a lovely Christmas by having lots of food and just a small amount of alcohol;)

We also went out for some lovely meals a little up front the coast and I have sitted on Arthurs Seat, a what we dutchies call a mountain and the crazy ozzies call a Hill. ( A hill is not 251 metres high, a mountain is!!!!) I have also seen koala’s (who do not get stoned of eating bamboo Alex and chris!!), kangaroos , dingo’s and other ozzie animals which I haven’t seen in real life until this particular moment. If you are interested in seeing pictures just go to my facebookpage and look at the Melbourne album.
I almost forgot to mention to you what an awesome family I have got here as well , you know why? Cause they gave me the Harbour Bridge Walk as my Christmas gift. How fricking awesome is that! Thank you so much all of you. So I only had 1 more day left of spending time with the Chris and Alex we went to a drive-in cinema… How cool is that? It really is like in those old school movies where people open their trunks of their car and watch the film. That was quite an experience and I thought it was really cool. The next day I could quickly squeeze in a game of golf with Paul and his mate Andrew. That was a nice morning and afterwards we grabbed a nice cold beer.

Thanks so much again for everyone to welcome me and let me have such a nice time here in Melbourne, it was great!!

So after that new year still had to come. Well If you have seen my Facebook page recently you will notice all of the movies and pictures I put on from new years. Yes it was really amazingly, crazy,cool,wauw,jezus,omg fireworks. It is definitely the best fire work show I have ever seen in my life. And the best part is, we were on the water … 150 meters away from the Harbour Bridge….. and we had an absolutely AMAZING view. And that is a complete understatement. To have an impression of what kind of view a had I really recommend to take a quick look at my pictures of new year on Facebook.

So enough about all the amazing fun stuff I had and move on to the main reason I actually am in Australia and that is my internship at Australian Superyachts. It has been really busy from Christmas till the 11th of January. This all had to do with the superyacht called M/Y The Octopus. The Octopus is a 126 meter long boat and it is absolutely breath takingly big. I mean just check this website for all of the features of this boat and go look for yourself on the internet.
http://www.superyachtfan.com/superyacht_octopus.html

We were managing this huge yacht for 2 weeks. They have got 60 crew members and were going on a trip for 2 months and they needed food. So for 2 days in a row I have been shopping for 6 straight hours in a huge store called Costco. Just to give you an impression of how much I needed to get. This was just the coffee beans, instant coffee , tea and sweets:
* 90 kilo’s of coffee beans
* 90 Kilo’s of instant coffee
* More then 400 bags of tea
* More then 50 kilo’s of sweets ( and all different kinds of sweets of course)

So to be honest. It was so incredibly busy. I was in charge of ordering 80 cases of beer (yes they know me already, I AM the man for that JOB ). It had to be canned beers in packages of 24 or 30 cans with 330 millilitres. Well if there is something you cannot buy in Sydney it is Canned Heineken beer. Pfoe that cost me a lot of time to get it fixed. Eventually everything fell in to place and we got it sorted.

And normally I don’t get paid for my internship. I receive 50 dollar per weeks for travel expenses, but I worked on an Saturday as well and got paid!!! and being coordinating the entire process of bringing the food and beverages on to the boat ( we were using forklifts and cranes) a lot of pallets had to get on to that boat… it looked like I would never stop haha.

The past 2 weeks at my internship have been good. My placement plan got approved and I think my boss(es) are quite happy with me. Sadly enough my colleague’s/ friends are gonna leave me the next 2 weeks. Ilona (and her friend Jenny) and Mendel (and his girlfriend Lydia) are both nearly finished with their internship and they will be going back to Holland and Germany. Luckily Nick is still staying here for at least another 2 months;)! These people I have just named I can call true friends here already. We are having so much fun doing stuff and hanging out with all of us. So it’s a good thing that we already decided that we are going to meet each other the next year!

The past week ( 12th till 16th )of January till has been a nice and easy week. Work was not too hard and I have done some nice thing in my spare time. Last Thursday I went out with Jenny, Ilona and one of their housemates called Jeff, We went to the bar Ivy. That’s a nightclub in the city center. It has 2 buildings were you can go out. One of the buildings has a rooftop with a swimming pool. Haha how awesome is that!?! Yeah you probably already guessed it. I jumped in the pool of course. That was such a fun night. Rooftop pool party, yes it does sound just as good as you think.

Most of the weekends I do spend at the beach or somewhere where I can explore stuff that I haven’t seen before. Last weekend was not any different. On Friday I went swimming with Mendel and Lydia and in the evening we had a nice drink at the Opera Bar with a view of the Opera House and the Harbour bridge, lovely views, lovely views! Saturday I went to Maroubra beach together with Ilona, Jenny, Mendel and Lydia. After chillin for a few hours we went back home to see the Darling Harbour Fireworks. Darling Harbour is a popular place to go out in Sydney and has a small harbour where the light up fireworks every Saturday evening at 21.00 o clock in the evening. And Sunday we went to the Bondeena beach and had a walk through the national park, We did a 7 kilometer walk. Note for myself next time… bring more water haha. Its okay to say that It was really hot haha. So yes I am having an amazing time here in Sydney. And last but not least Nick and I are going for a 7 hour deep sea fishing trip on friday, really looking forward doing that. After that we are going to a pub and a club to celebrate mendels last day at the office. We are gonna make a hell of a party out of that night. Nick and Mendel get ready to do some shots!

I do know how lucky I am to be here. Seeing these incredible yachts, being here in this amazing place all on the other side of the world. It is absolutely amazing, starting somewhere new, not having a (sorry dad) fucking clue what to do in the beginning, it really makes you grown as a person and it feels really rewarding. I do also miss my family sometimes, it is not always easy to miss the people you love the most like your own family. That’s why I am so incredibly happy and excited that mum Dad and Georgina are coming over to see me within 3 weeks!!!

Like you can read I have made several friends since I have been here and I am very happy and proud to call them my friends here, I have been hanging around with them for the past 2 months and they really made me feel welcome and make Sydney Australia feel like home for me as well. It makes me feel sad that they are leaving so soon. But I also know we are gonna meet soon again. Thanks guys, you are absolutely awesome!

And last but not least a massive shout out to my girlfriend Tessa who is in South- Africa doing here internship now and following her dreams and goals. I am so proud of you. I love you absolutely to bits, I miss you incredibly and I can’t wait to hold you in my arms!
So this was a long story and I hope you are all up to date now. Just make sure you keep on looking on my facebook page cause I will be posting a lot more photo’s.

See ya buddies!