The nice little room i had (with no windows) with the koreans and Alex was no longer mine, had to check back out and in again on Monday 21st as you get put into rooms with your Ozintro group where you stay for a week.

Ozintro are a company that help set you up for your first week down under! They had e-mailed us a list of the people on our group before we arrived. As it was a busy week there were 2 groups of about 20 odd people. We also had our bank details and some trips arranged for the week which you pay as part of the fee. Even having someone meet you at the airport was a weight off for me.

We were told about the local supermarkets - Woolworths and Coles, some cities or suburbs had Aldi's. Backpacker lifestyle means you need to buy your shopping in and cook if you want to save money. You buy cool bags or used plastic bags and hostels provided big fridges/cupboards and name tags to store your food. Unlike the UK, alcohol can only be bought from Shops thats specifically sell alcohol. They are called bottle shops or Bottle-o's. Pain in the arse if i'm being honest but their system works better than at home as they are strict on ID at clubs and pubs too. No partying with 12 year olds.... Yay!

Checked into my room and seen i was sharing with Sam (girl from airport who i now do not think i could live without - LEGEND), Canadian Jasmine, Adam, Chris, And Lauren from England. Scott - whom i already knew from home - Ashley and the rest of our group were next door. The 1st day we walked round the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour and then jetboated around the Harbour....... Unreal and highly recommended! Got absolutely soaked which was crap for Sam since she still had no luggage meaning no clothes to change into... Haha. Such a sunny day so we walked round the botanic gardens and had dinner in the hostels bar called Scary Canarys. This was the 1st point we actually felt like we were in Australia!

The rest of the week we took surf lessons with Mojo Surf Company on a private beach (i was so crap!), went to the Sydney Aquarium, went to Side Backpackers Bar and watched live bands, went to Bondi beach then done a coastal walk to Coogee beach and had an amazing BBQ (where i ended up being burnt in random places on my face and neck?!), went to the Blue Mountains - outstanding views with little waterfalls, heart stoppingly horrendous treks... But an amazing experience - we also sorted out all important stuff like bank accounts, medicare and done travel talks so we could decide where we wanted to go. Last but not least we dressed up in Oz themed clothes for Australia Day, partied on the party bus - wild as hell, pub crawl was just as wild - and had a posh buffet dinner at a 360 degree revolving rooftop restaurant - Sydneys Westfield Tower. I tried crocodile, emu, kangaroo and didn't rate any of them! EUGH!

Really enjoyed the week with Ozintro - made friends that turned into family, experiences that turned into dear-diary moments and the relief of having everything sorted for you is second to none! My best mate Lesley having been in Oz almost a year started out with UltimateOz which i would probably recommend over Ozintro... solely for the fact they use their office as an address for you for a year and forward anything on to you! I didn't have this until i started working and there's nothing better than receiving a parcel from home.

With Ozintro they want you to book everything with them open-dated, they are extremely good sales people and sometimes you need to keep that in mind... I booked the Mojo Surf Adventure 5 day trip, RSA course (Responsible Service of Alcohol course - you need this to work in any bar/restaurant/cafe selling alcohol), Oz experience bus giving me a years hop on-off travel, Brisbane steal deal package giving me 2 nights accommodation and trip to Steve Irwin zoo. Sam booked pretty much everything as she had 6 weeks to do the east coast before her mum arrived. We used this week to catch up with Lesley (yay!!!) and learned what goon is. A 4 or 5 litre box of wine that costs about $12-14 haha. Pretty good considering the cost of a bottle of water in Sydney is $4.50 and a packet of crisps is $4!

Sydney itself is... Mad. Busy and business type people everywhere all rushing around. There is no proper cheap way of doing Sydney as a backpacker, you can save money on things like water as they have water fountains all over the city, saves you $5 a time! Backpacker bars always do happy hours or meal deals. The Ozzies are chicken schnitzel daft (chicken in breadcrumbs basically!) its bloody everywhere! Theres Star Bar on the main street that does $4 vodkas and $10 dinners and Side bar up next to the popular (and expensive) hostel Wakeup does awesome happy hours!

I decided to go to Melbourne with Lesley as she had a spare ticket for the Swedish House Mafia gig so i booked the RSA and Mojo Surf Camp for the following week. This meant everyone from my Ozintro group left when i was in Melbourne, so i would be starting in Mojo alone.... Back to square one and it was scary!