New Zealand

I can't get over how beautiful New Zealand is. I've seen a decent amount in the last 4 days, I just wish I had more time here. I decided to come at the last minute, booked my flight and was here 3 days later. I came on my own, but really haven't been alone for more than a few hours since I got here. Before I'd even left the airport in Christchurch I'd found 2 people from Mexico City who were staying in the same hostel as me. They were so sweet and even waited 40 minutes for me while I had all of my luggage searched for a random security check (luckily I brought next to nothing). The woman who searched my stuff was more nervous than I was, and awkwardly tried to make small talk while doing her job - she'd start asking about my trip, then ask if I brought any medications, then ask if I did drugs, then ask about Canada.. until about 1 am. I took the shuttle with the people I'd met to the hostel, and of course they had no record of my reservation.. luckily they had rooms available and I wasn't left to sleep on the streets my first night. We all went for a short walk around Christchurch, but it was nearly 2 am by then and it was like a ghost town.
The next morning I met another girl in my room who happened to be on the same flight as me the night before, and who was also staying with family in Melbourne. We got along really well and spent the next 2 days exploring the city together. It's a really beautiful place, a bit quiet, but with huge beautiful gardens and lots of little cafes (which we couldn't afford).
Oh, and there was another girl from Canada in my room who was so helpful; she'd just finished teaching in Indonesia for a year and had so much advice for me and my trip there, and the rest of SE Asia.
Friday night there was a crazy Hell themed work party at the bar below our hostel, which was so funny. I think I've been hanging out with too many British people, because I met a guy who was CONVINCED I was British? So weird.
Saturday I took the train across the country to Greymouth. The scenery was so incredibly beautiful, I couldn't believe it. My internet time is running out so I have to end this now pretty much.. umm today I took a bus up the Nelson, which is at the top of the South Island, and tomorrow I'm going to Abel Tasman national park which is supposed to be incredible ( look here if you want to get jealous :) http://www.abeltasman.co.nz). I'm here for another week and will be making my way up the North Island, which should be amazing.

Melbourne

I guess it's been a while since I last wrote.. there's really too much to write to catch up, but I'll try a bit! Umm.. well, I ended up staying in Sydney an extra week. I stayed in a few different hostels right in the centre of the city which was really nice. I met some amazing people who I was really sad to leave. Everywhere I stayed everyone was so nice and welcoming. I ended up spending a lot of time with 3 people - a girl from Finland, a guy from England and a guy from New Zealand.
The week was pretty relaxed; during the days I would explore Sydney with one of my friends - I went to the Sydney Aquarium which was fantastic, to Hyde Park a few days just to lay in the sun, to a few markets and down to the harbour to name a few.
We'd usually stay out pretty late at night, which was how I met my friend from New Zealand - he worked the night shift at reception in the last hostel I stayed at. I had some really good talks with him until the early hours of the morning a few times. He was so interesting and gave me such good advice. On my last night we talked until about 2 or 3 am, then he took me out for breakfast at 7. I ended up almost missing my bus to Melbourne actually, but made it at the last second for the 12 hour ride.
This last week I've been exploring Melbourne quite a bit. I'm staying with my uncle who's been showing me around. Yesterday we went for a drive through a rainforest in the mountains in his convertible, which was amazing.
Two of the girls from my first week program are here as well, so we went to this beautiful neighbourhood called St. Kilda, which is right on the ocean, the other day.
Melbourne is absolutely beautiful, I love being here. There's all kinds of art everywhere, which I love - graffiti murals, sculptures, paintings. I'm having really good luck here as well for some reason.. the other day I found $110 on the ground, and the next I found $20. It was crazy! I might not have to work here after all if I keep up like this.
That's about it for now.. I think I'll fly to New Zealand next week for 10 days or so, which I'm really looking forward to.
Oh, and I did laundry this week for the first time on my trip! Having clean clothes after 3 weeks was so nice.. (I may or may not have smelled pretty bad by then..)
Anyways, that's all for now!

Sydney, week one

So my first week in Sydney is over and before I move on I thought I'd try to write a bit of an update in here since it's been a while. This week was crazy! Really intense, but it ended up being a lot of fun. I did a one week tour/ orientation thing called Ozintro with a bunch of other people my age, mostly from England. We did loads around the city..Monday we went jet boating on Sydney Harbour which was so fun/ so terrifying, and had a mini tour of the city. Tuesday we went to this wildlife world place where we saw kangaroos and koalas and tons of spiders and things which was pretty sweet.. Wednesday was our learn to surf day. The weather wasn't great so the water was pretty cold, but it was still good (although I'm a horrible surfer and couldn't even get up on the board..) Oh, but we could see dolphins swimming not too far out in the water which was so amazing! Thursday we went to Bondi beach and had a BBQ and mostly lay in the sun all day, then we had a talk with the guys from Ozintro to try and figure out what to do after this week is over which was really helpful. Friday we went hiking to the Blue Mountains which was AMAZING. The weather was perfect and the views were actually breathtaking. Everyone was pretty tired after that so we had a quiet night and watched tv and movies back in the hostel. The weekend was so much fun. Some of us went shopping in this awesome market in central Sydney to buy some costumes for Saturday night since we were all going out together to some clubs. Sunday we went out for dinner in the Sydney Tower, which is this huge revolving tower that has amazing views of the whole city. Right as we were finishing dinner, fireworks started going off above Sydney Harbour. It was so perfect for our last night.
A lot of the people I was with decided to stay at the same hostel this week, but I wasn't crazy about it and wanted to see more of Sydney so I moved to another one right in the city center. I was kind of nervous moving on on my own, but the girls in my room were all really nice. It's great all the different people you meet when you do something like this - one was from Holland, one from the Canary Islands and one from Switzerland. I'd also made friends with a few British people on Saturday night who are staying at the hostel next to mine, so I've been meeting up with them. Tonight we're all going out for one of their birthdays. So that's about it so far... In terms of later plans, I'll probably be heading to Melbourne later this week or early next week and I might pop over to New Zealand for a week in December. Also, I'm going to be taking a scuba diving course on Magnetic Island which is up the East coast in January, which I'm really excited about! I'll try to update again sometime in the near future.

Heathrow

Alright, let's see if I can do this in 7 minutes.. so I'm at Heathrow right now waiting for my flight to Singapore which leaves in 2 hours. (paying $2 for 10 MINUTES internet..) I'm so excited for Sydney but sad to leave London. I had such fun with Alex, the second girl I stayed with for my last night. She was soo nice and accomodating. I met up with her after work yesterday and we headed out right away to meet up with her flatmate and his friends; they were all going out since it was on of their birthdays. They were all really friendly and we had to explain to EVERYONE how couchsurfing worked. No one would believe us that we'd only known each other a week online, and that I left my backpack (aka my life) with her after so little time and only seeing her in person for about a minute.. I actually hadn't even considered otherwise at the time.. I guess that could've been bad.. But anyways, everyone insisted on paying for everything for me and hearing all about Canada. Afterwards we took a cab back to Alex and Brent's place (the cab driver insisted we listen to Bob Marley the whooole way back). She let me sleep in her bed and she took the couch, told you she was nice! I slept really well, woke up to a freshly made breakfast and coffee. (backpacking is so rough..)
After we went to Camden market which is this really cool place with tons of vintage shops and stands selling foods, scarves, jewellry and everything from all over the world. I managed to get away only spend abotu £10 ($20 ish), not too bad. So now I get to fly for 12 hours, then 8 hours to Singapore and then to Sydney, which should be fun..... can't wait to finally be in Sydney though!

Londonnnnn

Hey, so I'll try to type this quickly as I'm at an internet cafe and the internet is so expensive..
I arrived in London yesterday morning, the plane trips went well. I thought it would take me forever to get through Heathrow but I ended up beating the crowd getting through customs in like 5 minutes which was sweet (except the lady thought I was an idiot and was so mean to me because I didn't know where I was staying, oops) .. until I realized I had nowhere to go. So I decided to take the tube into Central London to try and find the girl I would be staying with that night (through couchsurfing, I've found a few people who were willing to let me stay at their place during my time here). She and I were supposed to meet for lunch at 12:30, but I was an idiot and forgot to confirm this, PLUS it was like 10 at this point. So I wandered around for a while, hid in a Starbucks, and tried to get a hold of her. Lots of confusion, but we ended up meeting a bit later. She took my heavy backpack up to her office for the day, which was nice, so I could explore the city a bit easier. I met up with her at 6 and we went back to her house, where I met her room mates who were so much fun. One of her Italian friends came over and made us dinner, we chatted and stufffff, then I went to sleep, finally.
This morning I left their place and am hanging out here until I can drop my bags off at someone else's office all over again. So that's about it! Nothing too exciting or crazy so far...

home

Hellooo, welcome to my travel blog.
Less than a week left now... I'm not sure how much I'll actually update this when I'm gone, but you can maybe expect a few lines once a week or so?

So far my trip looks something like:

Nov 12 - 13: Ottawa - Toronto,
Toronto - London

Nov 15 - 17: London - Singapore,
Singapore - Sydney

Nov 17 - December ?: Sydney

December - January: Melbourne

January - April: SE Asia

April - ?: Eastern Europe

We'll see how that goes..

Grace