I'm going to sleep for a week straight!

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I've been working an average of 60hrs/week for about 6 weeks. The good news is that my 9-5 contract with The Red Cross has finally ended, I only have a few weeks left at Cirque, and thankfully the wages is Australia are so high that I have managed to save enough money that I won't have to work any more while I'm here. Hooray for vacation and adventure time again! Woot!

I mentioned a few posts ago that I had had a bad experience with a flat mate while I was here (which ended in her telling me to "F*ck Off" in a note on my bank account statement when she transferred most (she kept $200 which I decided for my sanity not to go after) of my bond back to me. Yeah that's right, it says "NOW F*CK OFF" in my BANK ACCOUNT STATEMENT! Did I mention she was psycho?

Since then I was very lucky to find a great house with 3 great flat mates...Kate, Briony and Marcus. We all get along amazingly and the house is huge for the 4 of us, plus my rent is super cheap.

This is my bedroom. It's a Granny Flat. It's super private because you have to go into the back yard to get to it. The only annoying thing is when you have to get something from the house and it's raining. But since there's a draught here, that doesn't pose a problem very often.

This is what my room looks like inside. A little bare since I don't have my stuff from home but it's pretty cozy. There is a big window by the way, you just can't see it in the pic...

A few weeks ago I made plans to go see a hip hop/funk band from Melbourne called Jackson Jackson (with Harry Angus who does vocals/trumpet for The Cat Empire). I was so excited and then the night before everyone I was supposed to go with bailed. I contemplated going alone but shows just aren't the same by yourself so I did what any traveller in this situation would do...I posted on the Melbourne events page on Couchsurfing that I was looking for people to go with and this guy Mark and his girlfriend responded. Hooray! The show was super fun and I danced my ass off (something I don't do nearly as much as I do at home).

Here's a pic of the band...


and the lovely back-up singers they had as their support...



My friend Carmi from Israel who I also met on Couchsurfing (I think I would have about 2 friends if it weren't for that site. Thanks to Micheal for telling me about it:) also came along and shook his booty with me...

One of the perks of working at The Red Cross is that we were constantly offered free stuff. Last weekend we got to go to this super cheesy amusement park called Luna Park (designed by the same dude who did Coney Island) for free. Unfortunately, the oldest wooden roller coaster in the Southern Hemisphere was not running that day. But we still had fun. Here's the entrance...

Me and Nerys (Nery) about to embark on a very scary ride that may or may not take our lives.

and me and my friend Arlynne on the Pirate Ship...

So Arlynne and I were friends way back in the day, lost touch for quite some time and then got re-acquainted through the wonders of Facebook. We met up for the first time in about 8 years a few weeks ago in Melbourne. She is here for a while and she is now working at Cirque with me for the last few weeks. Here's a pic of us and her boyfriend Todd at Luna Park...

After Luna Park Nery's flat mates and I went to China Town for dinner. A lot of restaurants in Melbourne are BYO (Bring Your Own) wine and they charge you $1 or $2 for corkage (which actually means giving you a wine glass since the wine here is screw top). Notice we took full advantage of BYO...

That's Lisa (Brady) and Chaz in the background. Lisa is from Ireland and travelling with Nery. Chaz is one of their many flat mates. He's from New Zealand.

Chaz is awesome. Here he is with some of his friends he won at Luna Park...

On my last day at The Red Cross I was very exhausted. I had worked 2 doubles in a row the previous 2 days and still had 3 days of work before a day off. When it came time to drink beer and eat pizza at 4pm, I felt like this...

This is my good friend Kara from the Red Cross. They kept her on a few extra weeks after they let us go because she worked so much harder then we did. She was the go-to gal if you had any questions...



After my last day we went to a bar in Fitzroy called Lambsgo Bar. Get it? Lambs Go Bar (works very well in OZ since Aussies don't pronounce the letter "r" so bar actually sounds like "bah". Here we are at the bah...

Our Welsh friend Amy (craziest accent ever) and her boyfriend also joined us at the bah...

Since I spend so much time at Cirque Du Soleil, thought it might be appropriate to dedicate some blog space to what it's like there. Here's the Food and Beverage tent where I spend most of the time I am there...

This is Karine. She is the best Barker (someone who tries to sell food and beverages to patrons on the circus grounds by walking around and yelling). She even makes up songs to sell certain items. Might as well enjoy yourself if they make you do it (unlike me who usually just pouts and holds whatever item I'm trying to sell in the air and therefore doesn't sell too much).

This is Josh. He has since gone back to England but he was by far the best trooper at Cirque, which usually involved yelling things out very loudly in an attempt to sell more overpriced beer, popcorn and hot dogs...

Here's some other nerds I work with. Look at how much fun we have! Ha!

This is Lindsay. She is a fellow Canadian and makes me laugh all the time. Her eyes get sore and dry when she makes pop corn for too long.

This is my uniform at work...



Kidding! Here's my real uniform. Look how happy I am to be at work!

Last night was Cirquador appreciation night. We got to hang out in the Tapis Rouge tent where people who pay about $250/ticket hang out before the show. They had some food and drinks for us and they hired a magician. I love magicians!



Look how cute his bunny is. He just sat in his hat the whole time he was doing tricks and let people pet and take pics of him. Adorable!


They also had Fairy Bread which is an Australian favourite at kid's b-day parties (essentially white bread with butter and sprinkles). It's disgusting. Side note: Cotton Candy is called Fairy Floss here. Australians apparently have an obsession with Fairies.


After we went to a bar for some cheap drinks and fun. This is Lara, one of our Team Leaders. She's awesome. The driest sense of humour and doesn't beat around the bush at all. My kind of girl.

This is Sam, Marriella and Jack...

And this is Lucy who I found out (also through the wonders of Facebook) is also friends with Tom (see first like 10 blog posts). Such a small world!

So my plans for the next month include sleeping, researching my trip up the East Coast, having a great B-Day party (at which I will miss all of my friends from home immensely) and sleeping some more..

Speaking of my B-Day...you can send my pressies and cards to 24 Maghull Street, Brunswick East, Melbourne, VIC 3057, Australia. If you send it this week it just might reach me in time;)

xoxoxoxo

Toronto does Melbourne

Hello!

First the usual updates:

I have been working crazy hours lately. Cirque is ok but it's certainly a lesson in humility. It's pretty much the same job I was doing when I started working for Festival Cinemas when I was 18, selling candy, popcorn, beer, etc. and cleaning a lot. My boss the other night was 21! But at least I am making about 4 times as much as I was then per hour. The Red Cross has now extended our contracts until the end of May and since I get paid more there I am now f/t 9-5 with Red Cross and do a few nights and one full day weekend shift per week at Cirque. I didn't intend to travel to the other side of the world to essentially do the same thing I did at home for a year to save for my trip but the recession has made jobs for backpackers fairly scarce and so I figure I'll take it when I can get it and it's only for a few more months. At the end of June my plan at the moment is to take off up the east coast to see the rest of Australia. I also plan to go see some of the West Coast and to visit my friend Sarah from Toronto who is doing a semester of school in Perth. She had a week off school and came to visit me last week. I only had 2 days off while she was here so I didn't get to spend as much time with her as I would have liked but we snuck in a few fun nights...

One night we went out with my friend Karen for some drinks.

We went to this dinner theatre called Draculas which was really cool. We got to ride a ghost train into where we were having dinner! and all the people who worked there were dressed up like vampires...and anyone who knows me well knows what a big Buffy fan I am so Vampires are always a welcome form of entertainment to me. It was mostly stand up comedy and they spent a lot of the night taking the piss out of the audience which is very funny as long as it's not you (and luckily it wasn't). Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pics inside so this is the only one I have.

Then our friend Troy (also a fellow Torontonian) came to Melbourne because he is in Stomp and it was touring here for a week. We didn't get to hang out with him much cause I was working so much and he is a busy boy but here are a few pics of him Stompin' in the streets of Melbin'...(he's in the air on the right).

and here is me with Stomp tickets which he left for us at the box office. Thanks Troy:)

Here is Sarah and I at one of my favourite bars in Melbourne called Black Cat. It's pretty funky with all these 70's style couches and they are usully playing dub/hip hop.

On Sarah's last night in Melbs we went out with my friend Karen and some other people because it was Karen's last night in Australia:( Karen was such a great friend who I met at the Red Cross and I miss her so much already. She is now in New Zealand and goes to South America after that before going back to Leeds. First we went and hung out on the rooftop patio at her hostel and had some drinks. My friend Damien is 6'5" and Sarah is about 5'0". Creepy or cute? You decide...

Here's Nerys and I on the rooftop, another dear friend from the Red Cross from Belfast Ireland. Lucky for me she is here until September.

and here's a few group shots we took before going out on the town...(Katie: I think you will be happy to know that the outfit I am wearing is all one piece. A Short Suit, if you may)

Then I went to a house party and we played Twister. When was the last time you played Twister???








Not too much else to update at the moment. Been feeling rather homesick lately and thinking about/missing my friends very much. I was thinking the other day about why it is that I have chosen to do this trip and I've realized that part of it is because here I have absolutely no responsibility to/for anyone and after everything I went through with my Mom when she was ill it makes sense that this would be appealing to me. It's not that I feel overly responsible to/for anyone at home but sometimes you have to go to extremes in order to create a balance. It's not the only reason I am travelling. Of course seeing other parts of the world, stepping out of my comfort zone, meeting new people, learning how to completely rely on myself and ask for help when I need it, following my instincts and of course being warm for a year are other reasons I am doing this as well.

Just an FYI...if you want to comment on my blog, you don't need to have a google account. You can just click where it says "name" instead. I think 50% of the reason I blog is so that I have a travel journal for when I get home that I can look back on and the other 50% is to keep everyone at home updated on what I am up to without having to write a million personal emails with picture atachments but I have no way of knowing who, if anyone, is reading this unless I get feedback. It might be self-indulgent but it's so lovely to get comments because it makes me feel more connected to you guys.

I miss you and love you so much!

xx

Great Ocean Roadtrip, My first Footy game and a lesson in listening to your gut!

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated this blog but after you read this post, you'll understand why.


A few weeks ago 3 friends and I decided to go on a weekend roadrip to The Great Ocean Road. Here are the 3 lovely ladies who accompanied me. Karen (far left) I met at the Red Cross. She is from Leeds in Norh England. Nerys (middle) I met at the Red Cross as well and she is from Belfast Ireland and Andrea I met at the hostel where I first stayed when I came to Melbourne.


We rented a car and set off at 9am on Saurday morning. I was first to drive since I am used to driving in a city and although I was a little nervous about driving on the other side of the road, I am pretty proud of how well I did and how quickly I got used to it. I don't have an actual pic of me driving because I hate pictures of my profile so this will have to do. Even though I got used to driving on the opposite side of he road quickly, there were other things I couldn't get used to. When I got into the car I kept reaching for the seatbelt on my left side and turned on the windshield wipers whenever I was making a turn.

Just in case I forgot about which side of the road to drive on...we saw these signs every 20kms or so which seemed rather strange considering we were nowhere near a country border and if you had made it to the Great Ocean Road, chances are you've figured out what side of the road to drive on already.

It was the most perfect day for driving and beaching it up. It was about 35 degrees and the sky was clear. Our first stop was Torquay...

There were really cool looking rocks near the beach and one of them had a tunnel running through it.

This is what a lot of our view looked like on the drive...

Then we stopped at this place where we heard we would be able to see Koalas in the wild. The first one we saw looked a lot like me...

And here are the Koala's we spotted in the trees. How cute are they???

And here is a very pretty bird we saw. I forget what it's called.

These next few pics were taken in a town called Lorne where we stopped. It was very beautiful.

We got to Apollo Bay where we were staying the night at about 7pm and checked into our hostel which turned out to be more like a cottage.

The next day seemed like a completely different season. The temperature had dropped about 10 degrees and it was rainy and very misty. Thankfully we had seen most of the beaches the first day.

We went from wearing dresses and bathing suits to wearing scarves and pants and even then it was cold!

We decided to do a tree top walk and drove on a very curvy and narrow road to get there. A little nerve racking but Andrea somehow got us there safely. Despite living through the crazy drive, there were no guarantees against other elements. We are in Australia after all.

We even ran into some dinosaurs...

Most of them were friendly but Nerys wasn't so lucky...

The tree top walk was really cool. They built these walkways high above the ground.

One of the towers went super high. Karen is afraid of heights but she braved it and we all walked to the top.

I took a lot of pictures of trees but they are pretty boring. It's hard to capture something like that on camera but I thought this one turned out pretty good. I like the way the colours turned out.

Finally we made it to our last destination, The Twelve Apostles (more like 6 1/2 now) in Port Campbell. The forces of nature gradually eroded the softer limestone, forming caves in the cliffs which became arches and when they collapsed, rock islands as high as 45 metres were left isolated from the shore.

They are apparently the most beautiful at dusk or dawn but we needed to get back Sunday night for work Monday morning so we couldn't wait until dusk.

It was a great weekend but didn't end on the best note. My flatmate had been away for 3 weeks prior to this road trip and I had made a point of cleaning on Friday knowing that she would be home on Sunday. I found the place by answering an ad on Gumtree which is the Craigslist of Australia. She had mentioned cleaning a few times in the ad and mentioned it again when I went to meet her but she also told me how she had previously had a bad experience with a flatmate who never cleaned so I assumed she was just being overly cautious (this would be the first time I should have listened to my gut!)

Things seemed ok with us when I moved in but right away it became very apparent that she wanted things kept a certain way...a very certain way and I felt more like I was renting a room then sharing an apartment. So we are driving home from the Great Ocean Road and the first text I get from her says "the back door was left unlocked and open. Did you check it when you left?" This seemed highly unlikely to me since indeed I had checked it not to mention there are several other gates with locks you have to go through before even getting to the back door so the likelyhood of someone breaking in was very low. I decided not to respond and about an hour later I got another text that said "and I think we need to revisit the cleaning situation". Wtf? "Revisit"? Did I mention that I had cleaned on the Friday before I left? I felt like I was being scolded. I responded with "what specifically was not clean"? No response. Now I'm pissed. I mean, I'm a perfectly reasonable person and am willing to discuss any concerns like adults but could she not have waited until I got home? When I got home she wasn't there but arrived shortly after and I immediately asked her what was up with the texts and she was pretty hostile. She didn't understand why I found her text innapropriate and her complaints about the cleaning were INSANE. She said there was food on the walls (what? ok, maybe there was a one splat from like sauce that I made or something but Andrea...back me up here...have I ever left food on the walls when we lived together?) and she had moved my cereal from the counter into my cupboards even though it didn't properly fit because she didn't want to "see" it. I told her that I didn't feel at home there and she said that she felt the same because I always had my friends over. Again WHAT? I think she came home a couple of times when I had a friend over and we were in the backyard. Needless to say, the conversation basically ended with me telling her that I think she needed to live alone since living with someone else means compromising, something she obviously was not willing to do and with her telling me she wanted me to move out. Looking back on her gumtree post and initial emails to me, I should have never moved in with her in the first place. She was so obviously a control freak. I think I was blinded by not wanting to spend a long time looking, the fact that she was Canadian and the area where the flat was.

I moved out the following day and spent 2 weeks couchsurfing with friends. I felt so uncomfortable there and just wanted to avoid her as much as possible. During this 2 weeks I was also working overtime at the Red Cross and searching for a new apartment (hence why I haven't had time to update this blog). So exhausting! The good news is I have found a lovely, big home with 3 other flamates (2 girls and a guy) and I have a room that is detached from the house AND it's only $430/month. Amazing! The bad news is that my old flatmate continues to be a douche and has not returned all of my bond and has made it very difficult for me to come and pick up my dresser. She is the most passive aggressive person I've ever met! She's the kind of person who pokes and pokes at you and then when you can't take it anymore and finally react she says "Why are you over-reacting so much? Calm down. What's wrong with you?" Grrrr! I can't wait until I have my bond and never have to make contact with her again.

During my homeless bout I went to the first Footy game of the season and it was sold out. I actually really enjoyed it and the rules are much easier to follow than American/Canadian football.

I went with David from the Red Cross...

and Nerys and her friend Lisa (also from Belfast, they are travelling together)

As you can see...it wasn't much of a competition...

Thought you might enjoy this sign that I saw in Lord of the Fries with the "French Canadian" option!

These last 2 pics are mainly for my bro and Tiina. They were just in the middle of the street for anyone to use and take care of.






Other than that I start my job with Cirque du Soleil tomorrow. Should be super fun times but there is a lot of upselling that I have to do. Whatever. I can handle it for 2 months. Everyone who works there is in their 20's (and we all know I like to pretend I am) and I will be working behind the snack counter much like I did at my jobs with the cinemas in Toronto. Also on Sunday my friend Sarah comes to stay with me for a week. She is doing a semester of school in Perth and has a week off. AND my friend Troy who is in Stomp which is currently on tour in Australia comes next week as well. I am both excited and nervous that their visits will leave me feeling homesick.

If you want to send me anything I am now at 24 Maghull Street, Brunswick East, Melbourne 3057.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo