Exams are over! I had zero periods of class today (all my teachers were away)! I did a speech in assembly and people listened and giggled slightly at the funny/cute bits! But we all know why you’re reading this. It’s to find out what you can do in Sydney with a student budget (first edition here)
One day. $10. (Chloe beat me on freeness but I did buy her lollies and we stayed out later and went to dinner so.) One hell of an adventure.
So if you’ve read Chloe’s blog this will be old news to you. But she left out some crucial information and I’m going to do it my way so yay.
First we went to see a workshop/mini production of Stolen, which is a text we’re studying for CATP (contemporary Australian theatre practice, if you really want to know) in drama. We paid for it last year, so that counts as being free. When we escaped from our drama teacher’s endless questions it was pouring and we had no umbrella so we walked in the rain/got soaked/wrapped scarves around our heads like old European women and then decided to put on British accents for the rest of the day because of coolness etc. We bought offcuts from the Sticky lolly shop for only $4 so that basically counts as being free. Basically.
It’s late and I have a French speaking thingo tomorrow (yes a Saturday fun fun) so this is going to take the form of a list – I’m so Chloe-esque! – starting from ... NOW.
FREE STUFF:
1. FREE MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) at Circular Quay – pretended to know stuff about art, watched an interesting film thingo with this French woman talking about whether emeralds were green or blue or grue, and whether if nine coins disappeared at the same time, maybe they were actually just the ONE ENTITY or maybe they didn’t exist at all. This was while a white sphere passed over the black screen, or someone stacked babushka dolls. It was strangely entrancing. When we escaped, we laughed our heads of. Contemporary art. Haha.
2. FREE Customs House – walked on map of Sydney as tourists still and looked for articles about Anglo-Irish relations in an Irish paper and translated an entire article on koalas in Le Monde. Irony ... totally lost two marks in my French listening paper on a question about koalas and what the government is doing to rescue their endangered sleepy heads.
3. FREE hugs in Pitt Street Mall – I know, it’s the original Free Hugs site too (watch this video and smile).
Chloe and I met these heaps nice (cute) (huggable) guys who were volunteering for Oxfam (add socially aware to list of adjectives) and had a nice conversation, gave them some lollies, scored a couple of hugs. Chloe lost her British accent straight away because one of them had a British accent too but I swear that he started off having an Aussie accent perhaps maybe. I kept mine because I’m awesome. General happiness ensued ... I love talking to strangers, don’t give me any lectures on stranger danger either, number one Pitt Street isn’t exactly a dark alleyway at night with steam rising from grates and beer bottles wrapped in paper bags littering the ground, and number two *quotes that statistic about the majority of sexual assaults being perpetrated by people who know the victim*.
4. FREE perfume from David Jones ... and then later on from Myer – it was yummy, okay. Green. Chanel. I don’t know, it smelt like my apple oven cleaner. IN A GOOD WAY.
5. FREE musical performance – listened to this guy play La Vie en Rose on the grand piano in David Jones, that’s some fancy pants shopping centre they have right there.
6. FREE spectator sport – that’s right, watching a giant chess match in Hyde Park. No better sport in the world, man.
7. FREE amusement by way of American tourists – finished off our lollies underneath the Opera House on those really reclined seats that look out onto the Harbour Bridge. Some American students came down near us and started trying to take luvoes with seagulls ... (more ellipses needed) ... Funny thing was that despite them trying to get as close to the seagulls as possible, they always flew away, but as soon as they left a seagull ATTACKED MY HEAD. It was a great moment.
8. FREE stroll through the gorgeous botanical gardens which re-wet our shoes but was lovely nonetheless.
9. NOT SO FREE picnic with Cindy and Carol and Alex and Chloe in Hyde Park. I had only eaten two strawberries and lollies since about 7am so by the time the others got to Town Hall at 3:30 I was half-starved (and reminding myself of 40-hour famine and the like). I bought a litre of juice and some chips and the others bought some stuff too and we had a big feast in Hyde Park.
10. NOT SO FREE BUT RIDICULOUSLY INEXPENSIVE dinner at a Japanese restaurant on George Street called something something. It was AMAZING and cost $6 for soup and tempura sweet potato and apple fizzy drink I could not eat/drink it all at all.
11. FREE transport home – I dipped my school bus pass at 6:59, one minute before it expired and I would’ve had to pay and I wasn’t wearing uniform and I didn’t have my student ID so I would’ve had to pay an adult fare, too. So that was a pretty lucky day.
Anyway I hope you liked that really long, happy edition of Sydney’s Student Secrets. Your challenge: go out with $10 in Sydney for a day and see what you can do. Then email me or something. Or just do it for yourself, because I actually had a pretty smashing day. J
Love you like Sticky lolly offcuts and hugging strangers.
x
(P.S. In retrospect, that listing thing was a complete and utter fail.)
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