Honest to Blog!

...and i am FREAKING OUT. I'm trying to make a comparison, but I am coming up blank. Anyways, today we went out to get all of my last minute supplies, i.e detergent and a watch, which, by the way, just might be the most confusing piece of plastic I have ever owned. I mean this thing (although an absolutaly adorable white, pink, and subtle sparkliness) could quite possibly give rocket schience a run for its money. But it its water proof and can tell two different times, and thats all that really matters. So, in Target, mom found the Kathy Griffen stand-up CD and said I should burn it to my iPod... so here it goes

Way back in March my computer broke (to here that whole saga go here http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/kim/archives/003685.html It's kinda like Trapped in the Closet in that there in infinite parts) and basically i could choose between my music and my photography, and everyone who knows me knows that i chose the latter. So for the past few months I have been avoiding syncing my iPod with the fear of loosing all my songs. But now mommy came to the rescue and found some of my music but not all, so now i am at the crossroads of having my music, or risking my music to put Finding Nemo on my iPod, and once again i think i am leaning towards the latter because lets face it, Nemo is the $h*t. So i will figure that one out later.

In the mean time I'm off to burn my tongue off with Indian (funny how i hate spice though) and later Ice 80 kangaroo cookies...hmm maybe I'll post a pic later...

Well anyways...

...SEE YA IN AUSTRALIA!!!!!!

I have to be at the school in one hour, and honestly this whole trip is surreal. I've been looking forward to this since January and now after 7 months its here... but it doesn't feel like I'm leaving the house in less then an hour.

Anyways we went to Dunkin Donuts for "Brekkie" (Using my Aussie jargon) and, as you may or may not know, whenever I eat in Dunkin Donuts (at least with Katherine) something bad happens. i.e the deaths of both Heath Ledger and Anna Nicole Smith, well today the news was plasterd with delays in LAX due to thunder storms... yay me! Oh, and the seccond page of the newspaper? Plane Crash! honestly g-d has it out to get me... so i put 5 bucks in my tzedekah box.

Oh and then I had another fourth of my "chokkie" cupcake it was yummy!!!

Well then, I have to go put my P2P uniform on...its not really a uniform btw... and run to Barne's and Noble's for some Madlibs, so "Hooroo mates"!! Talk to you in "Oz". Hopefully I'll have a new entry up every few days!

**Key**
Brekkie- Breakfast
Chokkie- Chocolate
Hooroo- Goodbye
Mate- Friend
Oz- Australia

After our 20-hour plane ride (the 14 hour being more enjoyable then the 6) we of course had to pass customs. Now they do have a dog sniffing, well we were expecting a huge german shepard with a spiked collar named Rex. what we saw instead was a beagle with a bandana... So Scary! So its going up and down the row sniffing our bags. Meanwhile Lena's feet are itchy so she takes off her colorfully painted shoes. Well the beagle litterally climbed upon her luggage to sniff her shoes!.

Okay so after the airport we headed to the Olympic stadium, i have to admit i was pretty disappointed... they removed the track! But the aquatic centre was awesome! besides the fact the pools were gorgeous, we spent the entire time in the hot tubs... but you see first we had to take this swim test to get on this coolio floaty thing but the line was too long so we ditched.Oh but the good thing about the stadium was i was able to stand on the actual first place platform from the olympics, now thats once in a lifetime! Then back to the hotel.

Tonight i am rooming with Natalia and Learice. After a very short break because our room keys didnt work, we went to the lizard lounge for dinner... wasnht the best. Its weird they tell us to try new food s but they aregiving us like bugers and fish and chips, but i am trying to try ANYTHING new. Afterward we went to the aquarium where i saw a duckbilled platypus and a seal that wanted to eat me, i woul dtell more but i have to cut to the chase. So when we got back to the hotel we were all very tired, so we tried to cram into the elevator instead of waiting. Then after the door closed we realized we had **16** people when the limit was 13. So the elevator began to ascend and dropped (not far) and this happened avout 3 times before it stopped. we were so f**ed. 16 people in an elevator not much larger then a simple bed. and i FREAKED. all i could think was "is there enough air?" "what if it falls again?" "we are in sooo much trouble" Finally the technition came and was able to get us out, but not without us droppinh several times.

Im not jet lagged at all because i got like 8.5 hours of sleep on the plane.

They have strange ketchup packets here that squirt all over me!

i dont have enuff time to write check out my itineray to see.

i got a pretty koala necklace

sorry

Yesterday we were up in vision valley! Team building all around, but the ZIP LINE was amazing
THIs computer is retarted so this is gonna be skimpy.
Today we trudged 4 hours upto canberra the capital, Where we visited the institute of sport --where they train their elite athletes. It was pretty sweet, and the Athletes were HOTT. thats where the dad dad father phillip thing was from there was this kid he was so funny at the time!

Then onto the new parliment building which is actually alot like ours. Derek was emo the entire time lol he is right behind me, now billy is emo. Derek thinks he is amazing, Ill let u decide!
Ive been having loads of fun! Tomorow we drive back up to sydeny --four hours-- and flying to darwin --4 hous-- where it is 90 instead of like 50 its freezing! like two sweatshirts scarf gloves cold.

I saw some kanaroos today, and a few babies, they are adforable! i totally wann take one home, thy are kinda like deer, but so much cuter

They ave a lot of serious bikers her and lots of bike lane sf for them, mom u woul d like it!

Okay so see ya! Ill write again soon hopefully!

Hi - it's Kim, writing some updates for Becky. She called this morning from the middle of the Outback (think Crocodile Dundee) and has no Internet access so couldn't update the blog. So here's basically a bullet point list of things I could get out of her:

• She held a baby crocodile
• They have a 3.5 hour ride back to civilization tomorrow
• They went on a really cool hike today and she got some amazing photos
• The birds are beautiful; cockatoos are wild there
• She's seen kangaroos - they're cute and she has video
• Some hotels are better than others
• The Zip Line on Saturday was really cool
• She's trying tons of new foods (whenever she has the chance). Meat pies stink. This fizzy lemonade drink is really good (like Sprite, only lemonier). She had some sort of baraburger - made from fish and it had a blue cheese sauce which she loved. She's bringing home chocolate frogs. Oh, apparently, they get a food selection cards at every meal and whenever she sees something new, she orders it.
• She bought me a pretty bracelet.
• She's having trouble finding Chris a beer t-shirt
• She's bringing home Kangaroo Scrotum (can't wait to see that one).
• She's actually done laundry and was washing her pants as we spoke (they got dirty during the hike).
• They have the biggest, ugliest spiders ever there. They're colorful.
• The 10,000 species of Australian bugs don't seem to mind American bug repellent.
• She's on the bus a lot but hasn't needed the Dramamine
• They're very laid back in the Outback.

That's all I can remember, I'll update more if anything else comes back to me.

I missed a phone call from her last night but her message:

"I've ate ants, camels kangaroo - ants, camels and kangaroo. Love you. Bye."

Gross.

Well my brilliant blogging idea didnt go over so well, espescially since only two hotels had WORKING internet. So I will be going back in time and putting in blog entries for the thousand days i have missed.

Well, today... maybe yesterday... not quite sure...
Okay lets try this:
On the 25 of July, we woke up in Cains at 3 in the morning to catch a 6-ish flight to Sydney. The flight was a good 3 hours or so. We had the opportunity to buy breakfast at the airport but the line was practically out of security, so i waited to eat on the plane. Well after spending five minutes picking the rasins out of the cereal, I tried it and it was nasty (ironic me saying that, right?) and the bread had chunksk of some kind of dried fruit in it, so i figured i would get something at the next airport, didn't happen. The flight was uneventful, i watched Smart People (couldn't sleep take 1) which wasn't a bad movie... it just didn't have too much of a plot.
We landed in Sydney on time and had to go through customs to leave the country, it wasn't much but it was time consuming, so by the time we arrived at the gate (which consisted of like 20 seats and was way two small for a 727) we had five minutes untill they began boarding late. So they tried to do it in 20 minutes and we still ended up sitting at the gate with the doors closed for an hour.
The flight back to LAX was only 13 hours this time, (couldn't sleep take 2) I watched four episodes of Two and a Half men, three episodes of Back to You, Definatly,Maybe, Vantage Point and Drillbit Taylor. And then i finally fell asleep, only to wake up in an hour to a flight attendant and Laura staring at me asking if i want breakfast. I responded with "I don't know" "I think you should" "Okay, then" "Would you like coffee?" "YES!". That flight i didnt really eat anything either. Once again uneventful, i didnt crash on The Island, and i didn't even realized we landed, i was like "Oh more turbulance...why is everyone clapping?"

So then we go through customs and all, which wasn't terrible, except we were all terrified (by all I mean me) that they wouldn't let us back into the countnry, having been to that farm... and that they would confiscate my "Lucky Kangaroo Pouch". So I get up there and the man asks me my name and i FROZE and after what seemed like an eternity I replied "N**** B************* New Jersey... Sir..." I actually said SIR. He let me through, he must not have read the back of the customs form, Im probably gonna be abducted by the FBI or something soon. Then at baggage claim they had that stupid beagle again and i was terrified of it, trying to aoid its sniffing my bag.

Okay so thats that and now we are wandering around the airport looking for food, texting, and shopping in the Duty free shop. We saw this man who is on some basketball team (I could honestly care less) who could barely fit through the bathroom door, i felt bad for him. Anyway i was online for Starbucks when Rose starts calling me over (and now i am scared) she tells me my mom is on the phone so naturally ( Its my MOTHER talking to ROSE) i answer "whadido?" As it turns out my mommy missed me and wanted me to call her from a payphone so i did, and then IT happend. Natalias mom (who came to suprise Natalia on her birthday) gets an e-mail from Lena's mom saying that our flight has been delayed untill 5, so we baisically had another 4 hours in that airport after being their for like 4 (maybe Im exaggerating by a half hour). So you can imagine how pissed off we were. I took another nap only for an hour, and then the Leaders whipped out the p2p credit card to get us all dinner at Burger King (No longer Hungry Jacks) I finally get up there and order a small fry and a small soda (which of course was medium because this is america and thats as small as it gets!) and Tara says "Your only getting a SMALL fry and a SMALL soda! Your not eating again untill like two! Get some Chicken nuggets!" Sure she was joking/serious. but i still had to get the chicken nuggets. The flight was uneventful, the people i was between both slelpt so i watched Horton Hears a Who, and listend to... well i can't remember the name...

When I got to Newark it was a short sad walk to our parents, and i actually started crying while hugging Dad. Mom and Sammi were also there. I did my rounds, saying goodbye to all my new friends, crying some more. And when I got the the car, guess who was there...FALA!!!!!! yay!! We went to Omega Diner and i didnt get to sleep untill 4.

In Total i spent 38 hours awake today, Kinda like a Crack Addict in the no sleep matter!