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Published: April 12th 2014
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Dear Grace and Mag,
The first thing I will say as I'm sure you know is that I still really miss him... so much. We talk and skype all the time but I would just love to see him.
Anyway, when I left Cairns I drove down to Sydney (really long way, would normally be a 3 hour flight) with Michelle. She's someone from work who happened to be leaving the same day as me so as I hate flying it was a good way to avoid it...plus it would be more fun. And it was a lot of fun. We stopped in Ayr for a night to see Michelle's old farming buddies and we stopped in Noosa and Brisbane to see my friend Polly who I stayed with the first time round in Brisey. Then we stopped in Byron Bay for a few days. I had already been there but I enjoyed it so much more this time. We also went to Nimbin this time which I didn't do the first time and have always regretted it because it is a very popular place to visit. I am glad I had a second chance. The best way I
can describe Nimbin is like a hippy town, very small, where you feel like you have stepped back in time and everyone smokes weed. Everyone is so gentle and welcoming there, the most relaxed town I have ever known! After a few days in Byron we continued down to Sydney and I stayed in the Bondi area for 3 days. Met some really nice girls in the hostel and met Kevin for a few arvo beers in a nice bar overlooking the whole bay of Bondi. That night I got a train to Melbourne. Was an overnight train meant to take about 10 hours but had a few silly dramas because of a drunk guy who delayed us a bit. He was thrown off the train so that was good.
So I arrived in Melbourne! Was really good to see Lu, Meli and Melo and be living with them again. They spoke a lot more Spanish around me than they did in Cairns and I have actually learnt a lot from it without even realising. I didn't get to see Meli for the first few days because she almost chopped her finger off whilst washing up the night before
I arrived (but she is all good now after surgery and ongoing physio). They took me out drinking and dancing a few times to a Latin night...I LOVE dancing to that music as you would probably guess hehe. Really enjoyed it!
I wanted to look for a job asap because I knew it was just 1month until you arrived Mag! I actually found 2 jobs in the space of a couple of weeks but had to leave one of them. The restaurant job I found was my favourite out of the two and had awesome people there. The hours were really late, later than I have ever known a restaurant to stay open but it was fine. Especially when you are with people you can have a giggle with. At weekends we wouldn't finish until about 5/5.30am but it is not as hard to do that as you think. We used to joke with each other about how drunk people were and the sights we saw...believe me there were some bad ones haha almost puts you off drinking yourself!!
I had the best time with Mum and you Mag, just wish you could have been there too Grace.
Did lots of exploring the area which is exactly what I wanted because I had been working a lot through the year with the aim to be able to do whatever we wanted. As you can see from photos, we did a lot and then did even more when mum arrived. Just to name a few activities we did... we went to outdoor cinema, skydiving (just Mag, I already did mine), trampolining place (my kinda heaven hehe), waterpark, shopping (probably a bit too much but it was about time to change the contents of my backpack), national park with an amazing waterfall, night markets, bars, great ocean road trip, played cards in botantic gardens in the sun, went to Phillip Island and saw loads of penguins (was really cold because of the wind so we wrapped up as much as poss) and of course we went to gorgeous beaches. The two best ones that are sticking in my head was Sorrento Back Beach on mum's first day. It had rock pools at one side of the bay deep enough to jump into. The other one was on mum and mag's last day called Mornington Beach. The water was very still
and stayed quite shallow at chest height so was very warm and crystal clear (chest height for me, waist height for others haha). We hired a paddle board and just messed around, fell off loads, was hilarious.
I had such a good time but no one warned me that it was harder to say goodbye the second time round. When Mum and Mag left I was crying solidly for 2 days - a reaction I didn't expect after feeling ok the first time. It reminded me of how priceless it is to have people you love and who know you really well around you again. Because when people travel, everyone makes friends and becomes very close to people quicker than normal but you never have the shared history and years of memories between you that you have with family and friends from home. After a few days I was beginning to feel a bit normal again. I went to the Australian Open tennis with friends from work and hung out with them quite a lot. Got really close to a few of them and will really miss them. The rest of my time in Melbourne was mainly working and
chilling with friends on beaches or having picnics in parks etc. We had few days of 45 degrees which were a bit of a struggle, especially when it only dropped to 30 degrees at night. Our flat was like sleeping in an oven.
Overall, I really enjoyed Melbourne. It is a world away from Cairns and you'd never think they were part of the same country. Different rules, laws, way of life, people are more diverse (which I really liked) and climate was very different too. I am not sure which place I actually prefer out of Cairns and Melbourne because it is impossible to directly compare the two due to their differences. Melbourne has everything but you never feel overwhelmed with the 'big city' feeling because it is spread out into suburbs, which all have there individual communities and shops so you are not always forced to go into the city centre which is quite big and busy. However, if you wanted to go into the centre, getting from one side of the city to another is made easy with trams and transport in general is very good.
Whilst Mag was here she encourage me to book
flights to Brazil 😊 I knew I wanted to go and see him and he wanted to see me too but I just needed a bit of encouragement to do it. The flights that I was looking at were so long and I am quite scared of it. I booked them at the end of December, to go at the end of February. He was so excited and obviously so was I. Now the count down was over, Mum and Mag safely back home, I finished work, Lu, Meli and Melo were due to move on soon as well.....my next stop...BRAZIL!
Could not wait to see him but I was also really nervous for flying for such a long time and also to meet his friends and family, mainly because of the language barrier. I have been trying to learn a little Portuguese so we will see how that goes! Eeeek! Excited! Nervous! But excited! Both... 😊
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