first decent post!

ok! im at the IEP office... which means free internet!... and i actually have a bit of spare time today for the first time since i set off so im gonna write a big long boring essay about whats been going on that noone will read i expect hah :)

right. so i dunno where to start!

Hong Kong
Hong kong was AMAZING. really just incredible, theres no other way to say it. it was so different to anywhere that iv ever been before but i didnt feel intimidated by it at all, probably because the main part of it is so TINY, i really felt like i could live there. maybe i will how cool would that be.

The three days were pretty intense, there is so much to do there, and so much that we missed, i could easily have stayed for at least 3 weeks just to get through all the main parts of the city. We generally had spare time to do what we wanted in the mornings and then tours and stuff in the afternoon, so on the tours we went all over the place - up a mountain, down to a fishing village, on a boat ride, on a beach (didnt even know there were beaches in hong kong! lovely. mind u its name was Repulse Bay...) to markets and shopping areas... hong kong is so busy all the time, theres so much excitement and culture there. but on the first night all the lads in our group ended up at the only english bar near our hotel!! how boring.... and then on the second night we all went to a bloody IRISH bar. kinda frustrating, i drunk the local beer tho so that made up for it. the night that they all went to the english bar me & annabel were looking around for a phone box desperately (it was like 1 am but we were totally stresed from not getting thru to home at all) and we saw some interesting looking steps so we went down them and ended up bursting thru the fire exit into this tiny little chinese bar and every single chinese face in that bar turned to us and the place went totally silent and this woman jumped up and was like 'hi hi hi can i help u, here you can do karaoke with us...' and we were like. erm... wel just step back thru this fire exit.

we had a meal organised by bunac on the second night at the top of this big tall building to try out the local cuisine and check out the view and the food was AWFUL. we all just sat there repulsed. the only thing that was nice was the rice, and we thought at least the pudding might be ice cream or something, but they gave us a bowl of lukewarm sweet bean soup...... what?! blergh.

ooh i just got a call from this company i sent my CV to this morning and i have a job inteview tomorrow! its for this job for a charity or something where u go talk to people on the street and be like hey give me money its for charity. oof i just got another call! haha literally just now, got another interview now... for G M Global... cannot remember who they are... oh well this is good.

Sydney!

We got here on monday after sleeping overnight and tried to go straight to the beach, but cuz we were all so knackered we didnt manage it and we just went for a wander down to the harbour instead. our hostel is ace, its really central but REALLY expensive so our last night booked there is tomorrow then not sure where wer gonna move to... only need to book a couple of nights because on monday wer all off to SURF CAMP hahaha! we get whisked away to a beach that is better than bondi apparantly and stay in these surf huts until thursday. we went to bondi yesterday actually and it is stunning, it was actually nicer than i thought. i expected it to just be really typical and commerical and just like, yeah nice beach... great, but its actually like shockingly beautiful iv never seen such a nice green sea before. we baked ourselves for a bit and then went i went in the sea to cool off with this girl called lauren whos from leeds, and we were absaloutely BATTERED by the waves!! practically stripped naked too as its pretty hard to keep urself in ur bikini when ur being bashed around by these killer surf waves. it was such a good work out tho, me and lauren were stuck where the waves were actually breaking, so we literally were getting thrashed and looked totally dumb, so we were like ok lets get a bit further in so that we can actually ride the wave while its building.... so we started running further into the sea trying to get to a decent place before the wave came, but because of the suction we just nowhere, we were just jogging frantically on the spot, and then every 30 seconds or so just getting bashed by to shore by another mega wave. we must have looked so dumb. but it was ace.

oh yeah, then last night we were meant to be going to a meal at wagamamas and then onto Cargo bar, which was organised by IEP for all people like us to meet and greet etc. but, check this, when we left the hotel it was PISSING IT DOWN and we were like my god not going out in this. so we ended up getting a taxi but it got there late. Wagamamas was ace tho and ridiculously cheap, i got a chicken chili ramen, 3 chicken gyozas and a fruit juice for $20.. which is like 8 pounds. crazy. then we went onto this quite nice, pretty posh bar called Cargo and then Fringe which was a bit more like a club night thing cept it was tiny, and everyone got wrecked apart from me haha it was ace tho, got lots of photos from last night that ill put up soon.

im gonna be so much healthier when i get back cuz wer just walking everywhere. the other night we walked all the way down to see the harbour bridge and the opera house, and we went a ridiculously long way around without realising and took hours. we were all knackered so thought originally itd be a good idea to have a mellow night and just stroll down to the bridge, then get back for like 11 and get some sleep... but that went out the window completely, i bet we walked at least 5 miles that night!!

anyway iv been writing this for ages, should probably go look for accomodation now! the guys wer with have just found themselves an apartment on bondi that theyv just signed the lease for this morning and theyr moving in this afternoon! theyr sorted and wer jealous, need to get going!

:) x x