Greetings friends! It is currently night 2 of my epic road trip across America! I am driving from Toronto to Los Angeles in 5 days in order to visit this country and also move myself and my car to LA for grad school at USC. Night 1 was in Chicago, which was a great city. I've posted some photos for you all to enjoy. We crossed at Sarnia and drove through Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. Now we're in Springfield, Missouri. We only drove through Illinois and Missouri today. We're loving this state - St. Louis is fantastic and the hotels are super cheap and REALLY nice here in Springfield! I also got to live out a childhood dream at the Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead museum. I actually walked in her house! That she built with her ... read more

Ok I've got a lot to say here but I'll probably rely on the pictures to do most of the talking in the interest of not boring you all...I've got a crazy game of catch-up to play in this blog but hopefully now that exams are done I'll be successful! Botanical Gardens and a random trip to Monash Uni On the 3rd, Danae and I decided to visit the Melbourne botanical gardens. It had been a 'thing' in Sydney that we always arrived at the botanical gardens just after they closed, so we wanted to make sure we saw these ones! They were very pretty, and we had a good time being kids and playing around in the grass. A highlight was a craft cottage up on a hill where people got together to make crafts ... read more

11 Hours on a Train Thursday, August 30th was spent on a train. For 11 hours, Danae and I headed through the farmland of central New South Wales and into Victoria, the state just south of NSW. We saw many sheep and an endless supply of rolling hills. And we learned about some interesting town names, such as my favourite, The Rock. Highlight of the trip: the staff thinking we were tourists. Well I guess we were but like they thought we were fresh off the plane tourists or something. And they thought Danae was foreign, which was extra funny. One guy approached us and said he'd "heard" we wanted to see kangaroos. We said no, we hadn't said such things. He nonetheless promised we'd see some when we got to Victoria. Funnily enough, Danae saw ... read more

The Blue Mountains are a mountain range just an hour outside of Sydney. On August 27th, Danae and I headed for a little day trip to visit them. We were picked up in the morning by our tour company and we were on our way! Our first stop was a random park where we could "see kangaroos". This is the funny thing about taking tours in Australia - they ALL have a part where you get to see kangaroos. And after you've done a few of these tours, the novelty REALLY wears off. Especially after you've been out in the outback and seen more than your share of kangaroos lying dead on the highway. Sorry for that gruesome image, but that's the reality of Australia. After that stop, we headed straight for the Grand Canyon (the ... read more

To the Nation's Capital! So at some point in between monorail-ing and visiting Darling Harbour, we decided to take a little trip to Canberra , the capital city of Australia. Danae had a good friend in the city, studying at the Australian National University (ANU). We awoke bright and early on Friday the 24th to catch our bus to Canberra. Rule #1 of booking buses: never let the blonde do the booking. We arrived at Sydney Central for our 7AM bus, only to find that there was no 7AM bus. When we called the bus company we found out that there was a mix-up and the 7AM bus was TO Sydney. We had made bookings in reverse. I pleaded ignorance in my Canadian accent, and she agreed to switch our reservations. So we headed back to ... read more