Im currently staying at my cousins place just outside of Gympie (most unfortunate name ever) which is on the east coast a couple hours north of brisbane. ill probably be here for another week or so. its really nice to sleep in a real bed, in a room by myself, using a bathroom that only 3 other people use(first bathtub ive seen in 3 months!), eat real food, and not have to go through the typical backpacker question and answer sessions: how long are you travelling for? where have you been? where are you going? where are you from? wheres saskatchewan? etc etc...

there are 2 little ones running around here, so my days are spent poking at bugs and mud with Blade, or bouncing and find new and non swallowable things to give Naree to suck on. its been raining a CRAZY amount here the last couple days, one of 2 bridges into town was completly underwater (stay tuned for pictures). but finally today it was nice and sunny and i even had to wear sunscreen! yes!

its been really nice staying with family and seeing friendly faces again. and also to see the Naree who is only 6 months old and id never met before. she has the most pinchable cheecks, but puts up somewhat of a fight so i have to catch her off guard..

Pictures!

Honestly, I SWEAR! pictures are actually up on my facebook now. really. go check. ill wait here....

Sydney- so far so good!

Well it's been 4 days since Circus left me, and i think im doing pretty good. I took a walking tour of The Rocks, which is the oldest part of sydney. its really beautiful, lots of the original buildings from the 1840's are still intact and some of the house frames still have furnature in them! The streets are really narrow, so in order to pack as much business as possible into a small space the front doors sometimes lead down hallways from the street to the back where there's a pub, or restaurant. my favorite part of all this though is that these businesses are numbered 79 1/2, or 411 1/2. Very Harry Potter. i spent pretty much an entire day down there, there are lots of little alleyways and streets to get lost in (i didnt though!)

saturday and sunday i drowned myself in markets, but managed to keep my spending under control. It started raining on satuday night and hasnt stopped since. it absolutly poured all day yesterday and some of the rooms in my hostel flooded and people had to change rooms. i didnt really believe this until i went to the bathroom and saw the entire hallway was being rained on. i immediatly ran to my room and covered my valubles (camera) in my rain jacket. Then, we're all settling down to a movie and the fire alarm goes off. naturally no one moves, which is the smartest instinct of all, until someones comes into the room and tells us all we have to evacuate. nothing was actually on fire, the rain collapsed part of the ceiling or something.

Downsides to fire alarm going off:
-standing in the street in the rain with no shoes

Upsides to fire alarm going off:
-australia firemen

Rainrainrain

Well its official, Im on my own! Cirucs left me about an hour ago, and after a tearful airport sendoff, im left to fend for myself. Luckily shes been training me to tell time by the sun (because i have no watch) and to read a map (because i have no sense of direction). im embarassed to say i got lost on the journey from central station to the hostel (a 5 minute walk when you know where youre going)

In any event, its raining and gross here so i think a day wallowing in my own self pity is on the agenda, then i have to drown my feelings in a box of wine, and then ill be ok!

my plan, as it stands now, is to hang out here for about another week, then im heading up north to see my cousin Kristen and i totally excited about that. After helping them move ill probably be going up to Darwin, or somewhere else way up north where its hopefully warm and sunny. I actually had to wear a touque the other day! Can you believe that!

Edit:

i have failed in my mission to upload pictures.

progress coming soon. promise

PICTURES!!

Can you believe it?! i got off my lazy bum and actually accomplished something! Pictures are officially posted on my facebook profile. If you havent got facebook you have 3 options:

1. Make a facebopok profile
2. Makes friends with someone who has one
3. Wait until i get home (christmas)

It'll be worth it to see them TRUST ME

Not for the faint hearted

Just in case anyone was feeeling like looking at something really gross this:



http://www.austmus.gov.au/factsheets/huntsman_spiders.htm



is the spider that was on the tent the other night. imagine if you will this thing sitting in the dirt. IMPOSSIBLE to see. and they bite. awesome



also jsut for intrests sake, there is an antidote for the funnelweb spider (most poisonous spider in the world and resides only in sydney) so if i get bit theres still hope for me

spiders!

We left Cairns for Brisbane just under a week ago. While we were waiting for our airport shuttle Circus discovered a large nest of spiders in her backpack. Not even joking. there were hundreds and hundreds of them crawling out of the backing. We were completly horrified and proceeded to scream, whack and drown them in a frenzy of bugspray. It was quite a sight.

We are now currently in Byron Bay (again) where we've set up the tent and plan to live the hippie life until tuesday.. We played trivia night again, but lost horribly this time so we just got drunk instead!

Last night, we 're laying in bed and all of a sudden i see a very large shadow crawling on the outside (thankfully not the inside) of the tent. it was completly demonic looking and i swear i heard screetching violens playing. I got out to tkae a picture of it and lo and behold, it was the size of a small dog. ok not quite but it was massive and horrible.

Ive had enough spider experiences for one trip thanks..