I don't give a flying fox.

So I'm here.

Sydney is lovely...but it is, as expected, a generic western city. I've seen the Opera house, the Harbour Bridge (had a nice Middle Eastern man and his mail-order bride take a picture of me in front of it), the Taronga Zoo, Manly Beach, the bar...but the highlight of my trip so far has definately been my trip up to Katoomba. I met up with Becca last weekend and we decided to head up to the Blue Mountains (about 2 hours inland from here) for a day, and four days later I found myself still there. We did a whole bunch of hiking and took a tour to the Jenolan caves, and stayed in this unbelievable hostel called the Flying Fox. Becca went back to Sydney a little earlier than I did, but I was busy hanging out with my new friends Chris and Olly. The email that I was going to send out following this trip was to be entitled "Love from Australia Part 2 - Marrying a Brit and never coming home", but I was too busy getting to know them that I didn't have time to write. We had bonfires in the backyard every night, and the last night I was there the hostel owner Ross cooked us all dinner. When I first got to Australia I was a little bit disillusioned because travelling alone was not as I had anticipated - the people in the gargantuous hostel I'm staying in in Sydney were not so friendly and I was a little bit lonely wandering around this huge city full of people by myself. But in Katoomba I found what I was looking for, which was personality and intimacy, and have returned to city far more comfortable in my own skin as a traveler. I also got to pet a kangaroo.

I'm now met up with the whole YCI group minus one, named Zachary, who will probably be overwhelmed by us tomorrow because we've been talking about him all day and we have labeled him the hippie even though we haven't met him yet and for all we know he is a capitalist bastard who hates granola. The group is pretty chill and tomorrow we start our training, but tonight, tonight there is free beer at our hostel in honour of the hostel's fourth birthday.

I feel like I have more to write but I have seen so much and done so much and thought so much and felt so much over the last six days that words can't do any of it justice. Pictures might help, so check out my photo album (link on the side, if I can figure out how to post)

New things I've learned:

-In Australia they don't know what a bathroom or a washroom is, it's just "toilet", and that's not rude;
-In Australian toilets the lights are all fluorescent blue to deter heroin users from being able to shoot up - you can't see the vein in that kind of light;
-Australian money doesn't rip, no matter how hard you try;
-Pizza didn't come to Australia until 1970.

That's all for me right now folks - off to dinner, laundry and bar.

Peace and love from Sydney,

Jo