adventures

Is your work meaningful?

2012-02-12T13:16:00.000+02:00

I recently finished reading an excellent book about success - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He wrote about meaningful work in his book, because he saw that successful people have role models for their success, and often that is a parent who is engaged in meaningful work.

You probably had a parent who was engaged in meaningful work when you were growing up. I'm going to give the example of my Dad , who has been done meaningful work his whole life. In my life he has had two different jobs - firstly as a captain of a container ship taking cargo from Australia to Asia, and then as a pilot guiding ships through the Great Barrier Reef. I will use Dad as an example to explain what meaningful work is.

Mum and Dad on their wedding day in Sydney, 1978. Dad is wearing his merchant navy uniform.

Dad has autonomy in his work - as a ships’ pilot he goes onto a ship by himself, goes up to the bridge, and expertly advises the ship’s captain on what route take to avoid the myriad of reefs and shallow passages.

Dad has complexity - the reef is constantly changing, with the bottom of the sea is not a constant depth with the sand moving all the time. He has to use all his experience at sea and knowledge of the reef, while trying to communicate on the bridge of the ship, often with at least three different nationalities present. He has to get home after weeks away to complete a bunch of paperwork as he is technically running his own business as a pilot.

He also sees the connection between effort and results. Ships are successfully guided through the reef. Captains of the ships he has piloted thank him for his assistance. He is invited back to pilot cruise ships and US navy ships. He is paid for each ship that he pilots.

Dad giving a speech at our wedding in Israel, 2011

So let’s say that you grew up in similar circumstances to me - you got a good education, went to good universities, and then went out and got a good job as a doctor or a lawyer or a financial expert or something like that. Well we thought we'd get great jobs and do meaningful work like our parents. But somewhere along the way we realised that our work wasn’t what we thought it would be.

Suddenly we were told that the world of work has changed, and we’ll probably have many different jobs in our lifetime, not just one like our parents. And often we will be working in large organisations where we have no chance of seeing the impact of our hard work. And a lot of the time our heads will be occupied not with some challenging problem in our field, but in trying to figure out some organisation change that makes it impossible to focus on our work. And most of the time we just sit at desks and send a bunch of emails anyway, only some of which are ever responded to. And autonomy? Well our only autonomy in those offices is looking at Facebook, which reminds us that we are autonomous individuals with friends that don't have to do what our boss says.

Now I'm realising that there is a huge number of people like me - late 20s or 30s, educated and on the hunt for meaningful work. And the exciting thing is that there is more opportunity and variety of work available to us than ever before. We don't have to work in a large company. We don't have to work for nothing in a small company either. We can do our own thing, create what we want, and find success. Now is the time of the micro-company, the freelancer, the self-publisher, the teacher and the online business owner.

Go us!

Accountability

2012-02-06T13:03:00.000+02:00

Now I havesome goals articulated, I need to work on accountability. I need to keep ontrack, to work towards my goals, not get distracted in the small things oflife.

The problemis that I am easily distracted by a mind that wanders all the time throughthoughts and ideas, so that while I'm writing this here I've had about 10 ideasfor things to do and explore that I've written on the weekly planner that sitsbeside me. I've also been checking my nails to see if they need filing. AndI've thought that I need to fix the blank white wall in front of me by fillingit with inspiring things and images. And in that time I've written about 200words, which I will need to edit and make readable for you all.

Everyoneworks in different ways, and it's a matter of you figuring out what works foryou. I need to have 5 lists of things that I need to do. Amit needs only onelist that he just does. I need to break down all my list items into minutesteps so that I do not get scared by an item and then avoid doing it. I need 20minute timers to tackle tasks I don't want to do (but need to be done). I'vetried doing away with lists and timers and going with my heart, but it neverreally works. I forget important things, stress out, and go around in circlesdoing unnecessary things.

Take a dipinto our lives now with my first video on being an entrepreneur! You can seewhat Amit and my work stations look like, and take a peek at our to do lists, andsee what is outside our window. Enjoy!

A few linksfrom the video:

The weeklyplanner from Kikki.K – it comes with lots of tear-off sheets

Books thatinspire:

The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau

Screw Work, Let’s Play: How to do what you love and get paid for it, by John Williams

Accountability– sharing your goals with others

Amit and Ijust started having morning meetings, where we write our lists for things to dotoday and also discuss any issues we are having with what we are doing at themoment.

Once a weekwe're reviewing our major goals and how we're progressing towards them for theyear. This worksbecause we're open with each other about any doubts we have, and provide honestfeedback.

There areother ways of being accountably to your goals.

One idea isa weekly check in – you can email a few close friends or loved one (or evenpost a list to Facebook!) with the list of things you aim to do that week. Andat the end of the week check in and say what you’ve actually done. Of courseyou need to make sure that you give yourself a reward if you completeeverything you said you would (like a piece of cake, drinking wine withfriends, a walk in the park, or something similar).

Another ideais creating a small mastermind group that meets weekly to help each otherachieve their goals.

Mastermindgroups exist all over the world and help people with accountability by creatinga support network around helping each other succeed in their business andgoals. There is lots of information on how to start your own mastermind group,but the basic idea is:

- a group of3 to 5 people

- working onachieving something for themselves, like creating a business

- committedto meeting once a week

- in personor via skype etc.

This sitegives a nice run down of what a mastermind group is and how it works

How do youstay accountable to your goals? And what do you think of my video?? (I noticed that I stumble over words when I'm trying to focus the camera...)

Do you really want to travel for work?

2012-01-29T23:50:00.000+02:00

People say to me that they really want a job that involves travel - like being a lawyer or accountant that just happens to have frequent interstate and overseas work. I ask them why on earth would they want that?

Getting paid to travel for work is downright exhausting. Instead of getting up and going to the office, you have to get up at 4am, pack your bag with everything you might need and be super organised, get to the airport and go through the mind-numbing security and airport check in. Wait in no man’s land with crappy places to eat and shop before getting on a cramped plane, getting to your destination, taking a cab to a generic hotel room, and then having to spend all you time in that new location/country with work people who you wouldn’t hang out with under normal circumstances.

You might get a day off to explore the city, but how much can you really see in one day? By the time you get home after a few days you're totally exhausted, have mountains of work and email to do, missed your partner and friends, missed your regular exercise and classes and meeting your friends, and have to unpack your bag and do the pile of washing you have amassed on the trip. It is not that fun, it's not cool; it's exhausting.

You might briefly see a new place, but at the end of the day you are alone in a hotel room, and that is just depressing.

Travelling for work can sometimes be ok

There can be good things about travelling for work, and those good things depend entirely on how nice your employer is, and if your colleagues happen to be your best friends I suppose.

I had a good run at my job in Australia - I would travel every 3 months or so with work all over Australia and my boss would not mind me spending the weekend once I was there.

On Friday I would check out of the 4 star hotel, work from the local office for the day, then check into a backpacker’s hostel in the evening, and start exploring. I went scuba diving off Rottnest Island near Perth, spent a long weekend on an amazing tour of Uluru, Kings Canyon and Kata Tjuta, saw a Xavier Rudd concert in the rainforest of Kuranda, scuba dived on the Great Barrier Reef, and saw friends in Melbourne for a weekend. All without paying for the airfares to get there.

I was indeed quite lucky - I had a nice boss that thought it is better for me to explore more of my country, and it didn't effect my work. I got to spend more time with my colleagues in the local offices. I saw more of my incredible country. If you have a boss like that, and work in a company that understands flexibility, then you are lucky, and it's not so bad to travel that way.

What you REALLY want is the time and money to travel

The best kind of travel is when you get to choose where you are going, and when, and who with.

And if you have a location-independent business, you can work on a project from an apartment in Buenos Aires for a few days to earn money, and then get to go out and meet people you want to spend time with. There a people right now renting apartments in Bangkok for 3 months and working, then moving on to Berlin for a few weeks – they work along the way in their location-independent business, and explore the world as they do so. It must be distracting to be working in such diverse environments sometimes, but I think I would be incredibly motivated to make it work to maintain such an exciting and inspirational lifestyle.

THAT IS the way to travel.

I'm writing this from my parent's in law's apartment in Hod Hasharon, Israel, after a huge Saturday lunch. Later this year I'll write to you from a hostel in Cape Town, South Africa. Next year I hope to be writing to you from beside my parent's pool on the Gold Coast in Queensland. And after that, well, who knows... Here are some ideas I have for where I’d like to work from:

an apartment in Paris
a boat in the Galapagos Islands
Sharm El Sheik on the Red Sea in Egypt
a B'n'B in the Trossachs in Scotland
an onsen in Japan.

I think about these places and I get so excited, I start thinking about how we will find cheap airfares, find the perfect short-term apartments, eat delicious food, see beautiful landscapes, meet interesting people, and constantly be inspired by what surrounds us. I've learnt more about myself, people and the world travelling than I have in any other way.

Where do you want to work from in the world?

Me at Uluru in 2008. Yes, I am holding a beer.

My goal for 2012: Create my Location Independent Lifestyle

2012-01-22T11:02:00.001+02:00

Whatever your dreams are, you’d better start taking them very very seriously
Barbara Sher in her book Wishcraft.

If I’m really going to be an entrepreneur in 2012, I need some real goals to make my dreams a reality.

I found this goal setting guide on Live Your Legend, and it’s really helped me clarify what my goals are, and my motivations. It’s nice to have it all written down now (I made a spreadsheet of my goals, because I like having things on one page, and I just like spreadsheets).

My goals fell into 5 areas: Work, giving back, health, travel and family and friends. I’m going to write about my work goals; because it’s the area I’ve made the biggest change in over the last year or so.

My goal for 2012: Create my location independent lifestyle and live without a boss

What is a location independent lifestyle you ask? It’s creating an income from anywhere in the world. It’s usually an online business. It’s for people who want to start something of their own, live without a boss, and work from anywhere in the world. Location independent people are also called digital nomads, mobile bohemians, or remote workers.

The idea really appeals to me because I want my life to be full of travelling, I love it so much. I also want to be able to create an awesome career that I can take with me, wherever I live in the world. This is especially important because my life will always be divided between Israel and Australia – and it always will be.

I’ve been on a journey these past few years that made me decide that I want to live without a boss, and create my own business.

My journey to living without a boss
I was working at a large research organisation in Australia for three years before I moved to Israel. I enjoyed working with people that were making a difference to Australia's future through science. But I felt like something was missing. I was rarely seeing the impact of my work. I thought about studying something, but I could never decide on one thing. I was interested in so many things - business, project management, development studies, more science communication studies - I really had no idea.

I arrived in Israel in 2010 thinking that this was my time to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. The problem was I was thinking too big - I was trying to figure out what was the one thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life that would make me happy and fulfilled? What was that one big thing I was meant to do in the world? I went round in circles and never came up with an answer, so I just went and got a job.

I got a job surprisingly quickly. I was writing grant proposals for Israeli scientists. It sounded good; it was something I could do because of my science communication background. But I didn’t enjoy it. I had little passion for a job that was mostly project management and administration. Combined with working conditions that were not what I was used to in Australia, as well as low pay (a one-third pay cut compared with Australia!), it turned into a huge burden that I had to shake off. I resigned and left after a year.

I did learn a few things in that job though.

I learned that life is too short to work in something that is unfulfilling.

I learned how to work hard. I’m now going to work damn hard so I don't have to go back to working for an Israeli company. I know that not all companies in Israel are like where I was, but why would I take the risk of suffering when I have other options!

And I learned that enjoying my life was more important than a regular pay check. I had done a bit of freelancing for my previous employer before I started working in Israel, and knew I could earn an income I could survive on by reducing my spending. If you think about it though, I’m sure you could think of something you can be paid to do to keep some money coming in…

After I quit that job I started doing freelance science communication work for Australia. It's interesting work, with nice people, good pay, and I get to sit at home in my cosy apartment with freedom. I enjoy the freelancing, but would like to add something else, and create a portfolio career for myself – one that combines a few different business that help satisfy my need for variety in my work. I’ve realised that I don’t need to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life – I just need to figure out what I want to do next.

If you want to know more about being location independent, there are a couple of good blogs to check out:

Chris Guillebeau with The Art of Non-Conformity (great book btw)
John Williams with Screw Work Lets Play (also a great book!)
Marianne Cantwell with Free-range Humans
Crobett Bar and a good article by him: 10 Digital Nomads to learn from

Jumping in the Gilboa, Israel.

Productivity plans without goals = failure

2012-01-15T13:45:00.000+02:00

Last week I posted about productivity. It was going to be my week of productivity. I did a few things I wanted to do. I failed in my goal to only look at Facebook twice a day. I am addicted to Facebook and found many reasons to adhere to that goal, so I’m going to consider it a hopeless cause for the time being.

I had neglected the reasons why I’m not productive in the first place, which Seth Godin (a very awesome marketing guru) pointed out in a recent blog:

The reason productivity improvements don't work (as well as they could)

Getting Things Done (GTD), 18 minute plans, organized folders... none of them work as well as you'd like.

The reason is simple: you don't want to get more done.

You're afraid. Getting more done would mean exposing yourself to considerable risk, to crossing bridges, to putting things into the world. Which means failure.

The leap the lizard brain (the primitive part of your brain) takes when confronting the opportunity is a simple formula: GTD=Failure.

Until you quiet the resistance and commit to actually shipping things that matter, all the productivity tips in the world aren't going to make a real difference. And, it turns out, once you do make the commitment, the productivity tips aren't that needed.

You don't need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment.

There are two key things I need to do before I can be really productive:

1. Recognising what I’m afraid of. Why don’t I want to get things done that I need to do? What scares me about achieving what I’ve set out to achieve? These are hard questions to answer, it is hard to be so honest with myself. But I’m pretty sure it’s around fear of failure, not being successful, people not liking what I do, etc. Nothing new in the field of psychology there, they are just your standard fears that I’m sure most of you have.

2. Committing to goals. I need to articulate what my goals are. I need some tangible goals. I was going to list the things I’ve committed to, like writing this blog, doing exercise, and writing 750 words every morning, but Amit pointed out that I haven’t actually said what my goals are, apart from that 2012 is my year of being an Entrepreneur. And that is only a theme, not a goal. So next week I plan to have a few goals articulated and committed to for the year.

What is holding you back from being productive?

Adjustment Week: my excuses and productivity plans

2012-01-08T13:03:00.001+02:00

I’m going to call the week that just past my adjustment week. Because I need an excuse for not actually achieving that much. The first few days of the week I battled some mild jetlag after a 32 hour long New Years Eve (thanks to flying against the clock from Seoul), tried not to freeze in our drafty apartment after being in the Aussie summer for 5 weeks, and generally tried to not feel too much culture shock being back in the Middle East.

These are my random achievements of last week: I booked a flight to the UK, planned a driving trip around Scotland, researched safaris in Africa and summer music festivals in Europe, and did about four hours of paid work. I also did a bit of research for our entrepreneurial adventure. I looked at Facebook 500 times. I sent out my first ever e-newsletter using MailChimp. And I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, which is about successful people. I was not a successful person this past week (unless I’m planning to build a career in travel planning. Which I’m not).

Amit, on the other hand, went to the print shop 17 times to prototype the package design for the product we’re launching (more on that later), taught himself how to use Adobe Illustrator, designed his first ever company logo, built a website, followed up leads for photography work, thought up a project to launch Kickstarter (which he also became obsessed with), and was generally productive. Note to self: be more like Amit. Fortunately he sits two metres away from me so I can follow his every move.

I am going to be productive this week. I’m not even using any qualifiers in there like ‘trying’ or ‘planning to’. I have to make this happen.

So to help me with that, here are some tools I’m going to use:

Scheduling periods of time each day for completing my ‘to do’ list, and doing this process each morning
Looking at Facebook only twice per day (I was going to say once, but I know I won’t be able to manage that)
20 minute micro-blocking: a technique where you set a timer and commit to doing only one thing for 20 minutes. This really works for me because often I’ll avoid starting something, particularly something a bit boring, or scary. Committing for only 20mins though is not so scary, and once I have done one 20min block, I often keep going. And along comes productivity. I learnt about this technique on the 30 Day Challenge last year.

What productivity techniques work for you? I obviously need all the ideas I can get!

2012: The year of being an Entrepreneur

2012-01-03T11:44:00.000+02:00

This year is going to be different. My husband, Amit, quit his job just before we went on our 5 week trip to Australia, and we have arrived back in Tel Aviv with both of us unemployed. Doesn’t that sound scary! Are you worried about us now? How we are going to make money without jobs?

Well we do have incomes. We are making money all by ourselves, without a boss telling us what to do.

I’m a freelance science communicator, and some lovely clients (and friends) are paying me to write about science for webpages and magazines, and I’m also doing some science editing.

I love the freedom of working from home for so many reasons: no commute into work, no tiny office with no windows, no pointless meetings, no boss. Instead I have my kitchen a few steps away, fresh air and sunlight through the windows, and so much freedom.

Amit has escaped from 15 years as a software programmer to run his photography business full time. He is taking his photography business to the next level and working hard to promote his services. Follow his work on Fly on the Wall.

Now we are the Photographer and Science Communicator, with no other day jobs. We are both sitting in our small apartment in the coolest city in the world making those things happen. But that is not all. We are creating new businesses in different areas, so we will not be relying on service provision for all our income. This is our Year of Entrepreneurship, where we will make our ideas a reality. It is our year of taking risks, jumping into the deep end, and seeing what we can really do with our time and brains and hands.

Write it down, make it happen

I was reading a newsletter for the guru of living without a boss, Barbara Winter, who wrote:

Henriette Anne Klauser explains what real power is activated by this simple act of writing. She says, "Writing down your dreams and aspirations is like hanging up a sign that says, 'Open for Business.' Putting it on paper alerts the part of your brain known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS) to join you in the play...The RAS is like a filtering system of the brain. Writing it down sets up the filter. Writing triggers the RAS, which in turn sends a signal to the cerebral cortex: 'Wake up! Pay attention! Don't miss this detail!" Once you write down a goal, your brain will be working overtime to see you get it and will alert you to the signs and signals that were there all along.

So I am writing this down. 2012 is our year of being entrepreneurs. And I’m inviting you on our journey. I’m going to write a blog post every week about our progress. I’ve written it down so it’s going to happen.

Now a question for you:
2012 is your year of ____?

Thanks to Selina Barker for her inspiration to give my year a theme.

Idea for today: Collaborative Consumption

2011-09-22T12:40:00.000+03:00

Today the idea that I've stumbled upon is Collaborative Consumption - the idea that the world is now moving from a time of hyper-consumerism into a new era where people are sharing, swapping and trading their possessions and time with the use of technology. Just take a look at eBay, car-sharing schemes, AirBNB, Couchsurfing, house swapping... the list goes on. Technology has allowed us to create communities that interact around the world, and you can even make money out of this! The average New Yorker earns $21,000 a year renting out their extra space on AirBnB.

Take a look at this TED talk by Rachel Botsman talking about how Collaborative Consumption is changing the world.

I got to this idea from an article about how the adventure clothing store Patagonia has teamed up with eBay to encourage people to sell their old Patagonia clothes. They launched the the “Buy Less, Buy Used” campaign because its the best way for the company to reduce its environmental footprint. Kind of strange for a company to encourage people not to buy stuff from their store, but to buy second hand! But that is what Patagonia is all about, reducing their impact on the earth. I recently read an excellent book by the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouninard, called "Let my people go surfing", about how he created a model sustainable business. It is an inspiring read.

So what can I do to reduce my consumption?

Think twice before you buy more stuff. Do you really need it? Why are you really buying it - to keep up appearances?
If you do buy something, buy something with the best quality you can afford, so it wont fall apart after you use it a few times. Or buy something second-hand, and extend the lifespan of the product.
Sell your stuff - on ebay etc, or swap it with a friend. Organise a clothes swap.
Rent your space - via AirBnB or couchsurfing. Perhaps you'll reduce the demand for beach side development ruining some sand dunes.
Buy green, buy local.

What other actions are you taking?

One-Pot Pasta with Peas & Tuna

2011-09-12T12:25:00.000+03:00

I go through phases with cooking, and generally the quickest and tastiest dishes are the ones that stick with my kitchen. So here is my latest recipe, which takes 15mins maximum, and is made from food that I always have in the cupboard and freezer.

One-Pot Pasta with Peas & Tuna
Serves 2 Israelis

Ingredients:
half a packet of pasta
1/3 - 1/2 bottle of tomato Passata
! clove of garlic, crushed (I use frozen pre-crushed garlic for extra speediness)
1 can of Tuna - 250g or medium sized can
Frozen peas, about 1/2 cup
Grated Parmesan (I buy freshly grated, and keep it in the freezer to keep it fresh)
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

All the ingredients, with the pasta cooking away.

1. Cook pasta as per instructions.
2. Add frozen peas to the cooking pasta 1 minute before you take it off the stove. Put in the peas and wait for the water to boil again, then check the pasta is ready.

Adding the peas to the pasta pot, waiting for the water to boil again after its dose of ice.

3. Drain the pasta & Peas. Return to the pasta pot.
4. Add some olive oil
5. Return to low heat

The drained pasta and peas, with the olive oil added.

6. Add garlic, salt and pepper, and stir
7. Add Passata so that all the pasta is covered with red

Adding the Passata

8. Add can of tuna. Heat for 1 minute.

Adding the tuna

9. Ready to Serve! Sprinkle the parmesan over the top.

Finito!

If you are a chilli fan, add some chili flakes. Amit and are are chilli wooses so we don't do that.

Now I know that Tuna is an unsustainable fishing stock, so I suggest you only eat this occasionally, or substitute the Tuna for extra cheese! Most Tuna species are currently over-fished, except Skipjack. Or you can find some tinned salmon that has been approved from the Marine Stewardship Council.

Some more info on eating sustainable seafood:
Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide
Sustainable Fish guides for all over the world

My favourite Zimmers

2011-08-13T15:11:00.002+03:00

Zimmer is the word Israelis use for a guesthouse/cabin/B&B type of accommodation. There is a lot of it in Israel, and most Zimmers have jacuzzis. There must have been a very good jacuzzi salesperson here that made jacuzzis the standard for Zimmers. Very odd, but I'm not complaining. Who doesn't like bubbling baths!

I fortunately have a very romantic husband who has taken me to a few Zimmers in Israel. Most of them have been amazing, as you will see.

Kadita - quirky cabins on a hill
2.5 hours from Tel Aviv, near Rosh Pina

When I was visiting Israel for the first time, Amit and I spent a night at Kadita at the end of July. Kadita is perched on a hill overlooking pine forests near Rosh Pina, just north of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Each cabin has unique features, and the cabin we stayed in had a porch with a hammock, a record player and records, and a loft bedroom (and a jacuzzi of course). There are lots of windows for the lovely view, and a little kitchen for preparing food. There is also a small swimming pool for the guests.

We visited again when my parents visited in October, this time to stay in a large cabin with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. This cabin has an amazing view of the forest, with huge windows. We spent the evening chatting on the balcony, and playing the classic Israeli card game Taki (which is actually almost identical to Uno).

I'd recommend Kadita for a relaxing weekend away. It is not fancy, but it is quirky, as the cabins are built from recycled materials, and are a tad ramshackled, but that adds to their charm. It is close to the forests where you can go hiking.

Kadita - cute cabins, forest views, swimming pool

Eretz Bereshit - romance in the forest
(website only in Hebrew, but the owners have great English)
Matat, 3 hours north of Tel Aviv

When we arrived at Eretz Bereshit, the owner said that we'd better get our things from the car before we went down the 100 uneven steps, because we wouldn't want to come back up afterwards. And he was so right. After descending the 100 steps we arrived at the most romantic, secluded cabin I had ever experienced, built right into the forest, surrounded by trees, with only a glimpse of the hills in the distance (and Lebanon). I felt like I was in another country - it could have been in the hills behind Byron Bay in Australia. The log cabin had a lovely big veranda with a hammock and table and chairs, an outdoor jacuzzi, and an indoor jacuzzi, a kitchen with a loaf of freshly baked bread, fresh herbs in a jar to use for your tea, a log fire, and so many gorgeous touches I went around taking photos of the pot plants and china figurines. I was completely enchanted by the place.

Eretz Bereshit - Super romantic wood cabins built in the trees. The owners are on the right of this picture, lovely people!

Hemdatia - organic luxury
Ilania, not far from Nazareth, and the Kinneret, 2 hours from Tel Aviv.

After our wedding we wanted to spend the weekend with both sets of parents not too far from Nazareth and Beit Sha'an, places that we were yet to visit. We did a search on a Zimmer website and watched video for Hemdatia and were hooked. We just had to stay there - and we weren't disappointed. It is quite expensive, but it is pure luxury, and because the place is built on ecological principles, it is luxury you can feel good about.

The rooms are built where the old stables were located, with the original bricks and mud finishes. In the courtyard is a lovely stone pool for dipping and cooling off. There is a large jacuzzi in another well appointed room. There is even a tree house in an old olive tree out the back, where you can climb up and look at the view of the village.

The beds are extremely comfortable, there is air conditioning and a wood fired heater in each cabin, and they are all thoughtfully presented.

But probably the most amazing thing about this place is the divine breakfast. The owner and a helper were in the kitchen from 6am preparing breakfast for us a 9.30am, which was made only from produce from their organic farm. There were amazing salads, burekas, omelettes, goats cheese (from their goats), herb tea, antipasti, bread... so much delicious, organic, healthy food! Far more than we could eat.

Around the rooms there are vegetables and herbs growing. And each room has the choice of both a regular toilet and a composting toilet. The owners say that even if someone has no interest in ecology and sustainability, just by seeing vegetables growing and what a composting toilet looks like will be an education for them in someway.

It is the kind of place you never want to leave...

Hemdatia - sustainable luxury....

Talking about the weather

2011-05-27T20:35:00.000+03:00

How much do you talk about the weather? Chances are it's highly related to where you live. So I'm going to talk about the weather now, well, more specifically, how you talk about the weather in Australia, England and Israel.

Talking about the weather. Part 1. Australia.

Australians love to talk about the weather. Every time I speak to my parents the conversations always include a weather report, and every email I receive mentions the weather. Perhaps my family is more weather focused, as my dad is a sailor and spends a lot of time at sea, but I would say it is not unusual to talk about the weather at the start of every conversation with someone you know well or only slightly. Aussies talk about the weather a lot. We do live in a country with the most variable weather in the world, where nothing is normal from year to year – where you can live your whole life in a 20 year drought for it to be broken by months of flooding rain that destroy everything you own, or the hottest day ever brings 47 degrees C and bushfires that cause unbelievable destruction, or the biggest cyclone in centuries flattens everything around. We're talking extreme weather, that is only becoming worse with climate change. It is hard to be a climate change denialist when you live in Australia, when with every extreme weather event people say it must be climate change.

The Australian weather nerd

I worked with some extreme weather nerds in Canberra. Extreme weather nerd behaviour includes:

closely monitoring the rain gauge in your garden, plotting the results for the season, comparing it to seasonal averages etc.
listening to all news weather reports. If you hear there is rain coming, you jump onto the Bureau of Meterology's website for the infamous weather radar, watching hopefully for patches of red
calling all your friends or running to see them when you see a red colour on the radar, representing lots of rain
getting jealous of all the red on the radar over north queensland in summer.

Now this extreme weather behaviour I witness (and participated in) was obviously the result of the long period of drought Canberra was in. Considering it rained constantly last winter, I'm not sure if such behaviour continues, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it does... (and this behaviour may also be related to many of these weather nerds living on farms/keeping gardens/being ecologists...

Talking about the weather. Part 2. England

Talking about the weather had never seemed that strange to me until I moved to England, where the weather is discussed on an entirely different level – the English talk about the weather all the time. With everyone. All day, every day. And the weather in England is always: Grey or greyer, wet or wetting, windy or windier, cold or colder. One day a year the sun comes out, and it's talked about all year.

A typical day of ones life in England:

7am. Wake up. Look out the window. Grey. Listen to the weather report on the radio. Grey and cold. Discuss the grey weather with your partner/housemates.

8am. Go to the bus stop, noticing the weather. Talk to the person next to you at the bus stop. About the weather

9am. Arrive at work. Say Good Morning. “Grey day today isn't it” you say to your colleague

9.10am. Make tea. Talk to another colleague. “It's rather grey outside today isn't it. When is the sun going to come out”, you say...

10.30am. Morning tea meeting with other colleagues. “How about this weather we're having, there is no end to this grey is there! When will the sun appear?”

I'm not going to continue. As you see, for the first 4.5 hours of the day you've talked about the weather 5 times with at least 5 different people. In one day, you probably discuss the weather 20 times, with almost every single person you talk with. Talk about taking the discussion of weather to an entirely new level. It's completely ingrained in the culture. I think that if an Englishman moved to Israel, where every day for 5 months is almost exactly the same: hot, humid, 30 degrees, he would still talk about the weather every single day (but only with other Englishmen...).

Talking about the weather. Part 3. Israel

Which brings me to Israel. I started working in an Israeli company, and in the tea room I met many people that I know barely. And I naturally talked about the weather with almost all of them. Well I did, until I mentioned it to my Israeli friend who said, “If you talk about the weather with an Israeli, they will think you have nothing else to say, and that you are a boring person”. Israelis do not talk about the weather. Well, it does come up in conversation, but it is way down the list. But then, there is little reason to talk about the weather, for a few reasons:

The weather here is boring. In Summer it is exactly the same weather for 5 months. And there is absolutely no rain for those 5 months either. In the winter people do wonder where the rain is, but not very much.
People ask about people here, how they are, are they sick, are they married/having babies yet, are they enjoying life. There is very little small talk. People are direct with their questions and answers and open with their feelings.
There are bigger things to worry about. Terrorism, war, security. The Middle East peace process. Will Israel still exist in 50 years time? Big questions, big insecurities, and the weather doesn't really rate there. No one talks about climate change. I've never seen an Israeli newspaper mention it. Life is stressful here, and there is no interest in talking about the weather.

The Israelis are in line with the Crowded House song that starts:

“No time, no place to talk about the weather

The promise of love is hard to ignore...”

More info

Talking about the weather falls into the small talk basket. Small talk is called phatic communication, and is considered a social skill.

This BBC article on the differences between British and German small talk – the Germans don't even have a word for small talk. And Hebrew doesn't really have a word for it either.

Talking about the weather in Australia vs. Indonesia:

This blog post talks about how social media is changing phatic communication.

And here is an American guy discussing how to talk about the weather.

סיימתי כיתה א+ באולפן

2011-05-23T19:25:00.000+03:00

סיימתי כיתה א+ באולפן גורדון בתל אביב. המורה שלנו היה מצויינת. השם שלה אילנה. היא אוהבת מדטציה, אז, עכשיו היא נוסעת לארה"ב, ושם היא עושה מחנה מדטציה למשך 3 חודשים. בכיתה שלי היו תלמידים מכל העולם. יש תלמידים מצרפת, אנגליה, דרום אפריקה, ארה"ב, פילפין, סודן, דרפור, רוסיה, לטביה, מולדובה, גרמניה, ועוד. אהבתי ללכת לאולפן כי זאת הדרך הטובה ביותר ללמוד עיברית. אף על פי שקשה ללמוד באולפן אחרי העבודה פעמיים בשבוע, אני חושבת שזאת הדרך הטובה ביותר ללמוד עיברית בשבילי.

What to expect at an Israeli wedding

2011-04-09T13:41:00.001+03:00

1. Huge numbers! 400 is normal, 200 is very small, 800 happens

2. People will wear jeans. In fact, many dress in a style that would be appropriate for a “dinner at the local Chinese on a Friday” by Australian standards. But this isn’t so surprising when you consider that Amit, my lovely well dressed fiance, didn’t own a pair of black pants or leather shoes until three months ago (he now owns three pairs of each).

3. Weddings happen mostly at night, after work. So you can go to a wedding on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (the most expensive) nights. Friday noon weddings happen, but there are issues with Shabbat (the sabbath) entering at sunset, and as most places are kosher, they will kick you out before the sun goes down.

4. There are no bridesmaids or groomsmen. No one wears matching outfits.

5. No one gives presents. Money only! Amit says that if you give a present you are hated forever (unless you are a very close friend, when it is allowed).

6. You will get invited to tonnes of weddings each summer. A rule of thumb on whether you should attend is whether you have the bride or groom’s phone number in your phone book. If you go to all of the wedding you will go broke, no doubt about it!

7. No speeches! There might be a video made by the couple’s friends though...

8. Ladies bring a second pair of shoes with them - flat ones - for dancing the night away.

9. Most weddings follow a particular format, which is almost upside-down compared with traditional Australian/American/English weddings.

So I’ll use an evening wedding as the example, which is the most common here. Below is my experience of Israeli weddings (all five I have attended so far). There are lots of slight variations on this theme, but you’ll get the gist...

Before the wedding
The wedding day starts late morning, when the bride starts getting ready. At midday on a week day you will see the hair salons filled with brides getting their hair done, with a make-up artist lurking in the wings to get started on their faces. This also happens at home.

Efrat having her hair and makeup done at home. Photo by Fly on the Wall

The bride gets dressed with her mum/friends at home. Then at about 2pm, the groom arrives to pick her up. None of this “waiting until she’s walking down the aisle” to see the bride - the groom and bride go off with their photographer to take photos for a few hours BEFORE the wedding. Popular photographing spots include: the dilapidated buildings in Neve Tsedek, the Tel Aviv Port, old Jaffa, Rothschild avenue, the Carmel markets, a field somewhere - wherever the contrast of a couple dressed up and the shabby/natural surrounds are greatest.

Ido and Efrat at their photo session before their wedding

After the photo session, the couple arrive at the venue, shortly followed by the families for the family photos before the wedding begins.

The wedding begins
On the wedding invitation you will see the time that the wedding event begins, and also the time for the ceremony (huppa). If your invitation says 7pm, most people will start arriving at 7.30, and continue to arrive for another 1.5hours.

When you arrive you greet the bride and groom, and then dive into eating all the yummy appetizers. There are usually people walking around with trays, and also there are stations for yummy food. Wedding have amazing food in my experience, and the appetizers are the highlight!

Remember you are in Israel, and unlike in Australia or the UK where you would dive to the bar, Israelis are in no hurry to drink. It’s all about the food.

Speaking of alcohol, it is usual at Israeli weddings to have an open bar - spirits and wine and one cocktail to welcome the guests. This is pretty uncommon in Australia because it would cost a fortune (as Aussies tend to like drinking more than Israelis).

Walking down the aisle
I have seen a couple walking down the aisle alone, but more often the groom is escorted halfway down by both parents, where he waits for the bride, who also is walked to him by both her parents (no father giving the bride away!). At the spot halfway down the aisle, the bride meets the groom, who puts the veil over her face. They then continue onto the ceremony location.

Ido putting the veil over Efrat. Photo by Digital Closeup

The ceremony
The ceremony and its location is called the Huppa (said hoop-a). It is held under a white canopy, often held up by 4 male family members holding each post. Under the Huppa you have the bride and grooms family, the bride and groom, and the Rabbi. The ceremony is then conducted by the Rabbi. This is where I get a bit lost because the ceremony is conducted in Hebrew, with many traditional prayers and blessings.

The Huppa. Photo by Digital Closeup

Key parts of the ceremony include:

Blessing the wine, the bride and groom drinking from the same cup. Photo by Digital Closeup

Exchanging the Ktuba - the wedding contract, which states how much money the groom is paying for the bride?? The Ktuba is signed before the ceremony with the Rabbi and the men of the families. Photo by Digital Closeup

The groom putting the ring on the bride’s finger (on her pointing finger, not her ring finger, where she puts it later). Photo by Digital Closeup

And to end it all, the groom smashes a glass! (a glass that is wrapped in aluminium foil so you don’t get glass everywhere). Photo by Digital Closeup

This is my take on a ceremony that I don’t quite understand - for more details check it out here: Ceremony: Jewish Wedding Rituals

In my opinion, the Huppa can be a bit impersonal, with the Rabbi following strong rituals, and the bride not usually saying a word during the whole thing. And another thing, during almost every wedding I have attended here, guests are talking between themselves during the ceremony! I find it so incredibly rude! Perhaps it is a consequence of the large numbers invited to weddings... or perhaps Israelis are just rude. You decide.

After the ceremony
Once the glass is broken, people rush to the Huppa to kiss the happy couple and say their congratulations. And then they run to get their dinner (20 mins of ceremony makes you starving apparently). There will be buffets with tonnes of food - beef, chicken, fish, six salads, etc etc.

You’ve barely digested a thing when the dancing starts, and goes on and on for another 4 hours minimum. It is all about the party at the Israeli wedding and the dance floor is packed for hours with the guests.

The dance floor. Photo by Digital Closeup

The bride on the dance floor. Photo by Fly on the Wall

The groom and bride on the dance floor. Photo by Fly on the Wall

Conclusions about Israeli Weddings (from an Aussie perspective)
Israeli weddings are all about the fun. Food, a few drinks, and dancing till your feet won’t hold you any longer. There is little formality about the whole affair. And sometimes I feel that the event doesn’t honor the bridal couple enough. But the food is fantastic, and it is great fun to dance the night away!

For a humorous take on Israeli weddings, check out comedian Benji Lovitt's blog.

What about our wedding?
We are getting married in June, on a Friday afternoon. A Friday afternoon wedding is rare in Israel, but we’re not restricted by a Rabbi or a Kosher venue, so we will all party into the evening, and everyone will have Saturday to recover before work on Sunday.

Our wedding here isn’t a registered one, because we cannot get married in Israel. Israel only permits religious weddings, and mixed-religion or secular weddings are not recognised. However, if you get married overseas, your marriage is recognised for all official purposes in Israel. We are getting married (again) in Australia in December.

Our ceremony will be conducted by a wonderful friend of ours, and will have some Jewish traditions, but will be designed by us.

There may be speeches, we won’t mind if non-Israelis bring presents, and the rest we’ll leave a surprise.

We’re super excited!

Thanks the the wonderful bride and groom, Ido and Efrat, for letting me use their wedding photos. You are the best!

A round of applause

2011-02-20T23:05:00.000+02:00

At a concert last night I was reminded of a bizarre cultural phenomenon in Israel.

Whenever I go to the theatre, opera, or concerts in Israel, the performance inevitably ends and the audience naturally breaks into a round of applause to show their appreciation. The applause is chaotic, like I'm used to in Australia, Canada, Japan, England, and other places I've been to in the world.

Then after a few seconds, a strange thing happens. Everyone starts clapping in unison, like they're clapping along to music. Now what I'm used to hearing in a packed theatre is of tumultuous, thunderous, chaotic applause. But all I hear is clapping in unison, like people clapping to a marching band of music piece. And I can't resist it and I clap along. I can't escape it. I can't understand it. I want to clap differently, to create the sound I'm used to. But I can't, I'm trapped, and even if I clap totally off the beat to everyone else, I'm just one person in a sea of hundreds.

This really frustrates me, I feel like I'm not showing how I really feel about the music, and that the audience isn't showing its appreciation as it should do. Instead they seem to be clapping along together like it's a game, and not like they've just experienced some world-class culture.

Have you ever experienced this bizarre clapping behaviour before? How do you feel about it? Is it a purely Israeli thing??

The concert I saw last night was with Richard Galliano, a musician from France who is said to be the best accordionist in the world, playing with the Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra. It was a fantastic performance, and they gave four encores (despite the fact that the audience kept getting up to leave the theatre even though the orchestra remained seated! And they did this terrible clapping thing! Poor Mr Galliano).

The program from last night's performance at the Tel Aviv Museum

I found another blog post from a few years ago that discusses the strange Israeli behaviour or synchronous clapping: The Muqata: Synchronous Clapping

Portugal for business

2011-01-08T17:00:00.002+02:00

The pavements in Lisbon are all cobbled

I just went to Lisbon for work. I left home at midday on Tuesday, and got home at midnight on Friday. That's 74 hours away from home. It includes 14 hours on aeroplanes, 10 hours in 4 airports (Tel Aviv, Rome, Lisbon, Paris), 18 hours in meeting rooms, 7 hours in restaurants with colleagues, 27 hours in a hotel room, and a bunch of transit time.

There were Christmas decorations - my first this Christmas

Things I learnt about Portugal:

They don't seem to have very good Wi-Fi
They like cod. A lot. Apparently they have 200 ways to cook cod.
They like eating thin steak with egg on top.
Portuguese parents are like Israeli ones – calling their kids every day, cooking too much food, wanting to always be near by their children – 20mins is almost too far.
The country had a dictator for many years, and a lot of people remember him fondly and wish that they still had his financial management, especially considering the country is now bankrupt.
Portuguese tarts are totally delicious! Flaky pastry with a custard filling, slightly charred on the top. Like magic.
Women kiss men on both cheeks even when you first meet them (a bit close for me!).
The Portuguese seem to be big on hygiene. Hand disinfectant everywhere. Plastic toilet seat covers.
Most people have dark, straight hair. No gingers as far as I can see. And no curly hair. So I don't exactly blend in (which I do in Israel, if you would believe. There appear to be more gingers in Israel than in Australia, and combined with curly hair being so common, I look like a local! Who would have thought).

A Lisbon street

Toothpicks

2010-09-10T21:28:00.000+03:00

Toothpicks - an Israeli obsession. When I was growing up I noticed my parents always wanting toothpicks at the end of meals. I grew up never feeling the need to stick those little pieces of wood in my mouth after I ate. Maybe I don't have gappy teeth, but then no one my age that I ate dinner with in Australia demanded toothpicks, so perhaps it just wasn't a cultural norm.

Then I came to Israel, and the very second you finish your main dish at a restaurant a pot of toothpicks magically appears on your table. Without fail those toothpicks appear, and everyone at the table will proceed to stick them between their teeth to remove all the food - steak, salad, whatever. Of course they do it very modestly with one hand covering the other while it digs out those sneaky pieces of food.

I've been learning this toothpick etiquette over the last few months, and must say I've become almost used to digging into my teeth after every meal, remembering not to speak while I do so, avoiding opening my mouth too wide like at the dentist, and covering my mouth with my other hand so the whole table doesn't look down my throat.

I don't know why Israelis have such an obsession with toothpicks. Do they have gappy teeth? Or do they have particularly good dental hygiene? Is my parent's obsession with toothpicks a sign that they are secretly of Israeli origin?

Well if you really want to know more about toothpicks, I just found out that there is a book all about the history of toothpicks, would you believe it, called The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. It is not written by and Israeli.

Jo Walks Tel Aviv

2010-07-31T11:54:00.000+03:00

A few months ago Amit and I decided to take his Canon 5D camera with us for an afternoon stroll through Tel Aviv. The stroll lasted a few hours, we show you what Tel Aviv looks like on a Friday afternoon, and we met a few friends along the way. So here is a glimpse of our city, through our eyes.

Cleaning floors, Israeli style

2010-07-28T15:30:00.000+03:00

This country is incredibly dusty. There is more dust here than I have ever experienced in Australia. It must be blowing off the Sahara.

All this means that our apartment gets dirty fast - dust covering everything and that lovely grainy feeling under your feet as you walk on the tiles. Now if I were in Australia I would fix this with a quick dust, a vacuum, and a mop. But no, that's not how it's done here!

So here are the amazing steps to cleaning your floor in Israel.

1) lift everything off the floor. Not just chairs, but everything. Pile chairs on top of tables, couch chairs on top of the couch, computer off the floor, cables off the floor, everything.

2) fill a large bucket with hot soapy water

3) throw the water all over every floor in the house. Puddles are required everywhere.

4) get a water scraper thingo and push the water into every corner of the house so it makes the dust and dirt soggy. Lift up every piece of furniture, beds, giant bookcases, everything. You must catch all the dust and dirt with the water!

Amit cleaning the floor - notice the furniture piled up!

5) scrape the lovely dirty water from all over the house into the hole in the floor, which is usually located up a slope, in a tiny corner of the bathroom.

6) drape a piece of cloth soaked in fresh water over the scraper thingo and use it as a mop to get the rest of the water of the floor. Somehow you are supposed to manage to keep this piece of fabric draped over the scraper. I've no idea how! I ended up standing on the cloth and shuffling around the house.

7) put all the pieces of furniture back, plug everything back in, and you are done. It only took us (2 people) over an hour to complete.

Needless to say, Amit and I have only cleaned the house in this way once. I tried an improvised version (partially throwing water around and scraping it into a whole, partially shuffling around the house on the cloth, pretending I was a mop).

Finally a few weeks ago we bought a mop. Now I'm sweeping and mopping, and not using the Israeli scraper, which I was obviously not born to handle!

Here are a couple of blogs that share my experience with cleaning Israeli style.
You have got to be kidding
Lesson 5 - this is a mop

England

2010-07-26T15:30:00.000+03:00

A few weeks ago, Amit and I went on a one week trip to England. I lived in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne four years ago for 15 months, so the main aim of the trip was to go and visit my great friends there.

The first thing that struck me was that I could understand what everyone around me was saying! I was flooded with voices, other people's conversations, advertisements on walls, shop signs. I'm used to turning off all these distractions in Israel, easy to do because they are mostly in Hebrew.

I just loved walking into Boots pharmacy and seeing all these familiar brands, and so much variety! Israel has most things of course, but it is a small country compared with the UK and Europe so it doesn't quite get the variety.

The architecture in the cities really shocked me as well. I'd forgotten what it looked like, all the intricate details make it so interesting to look up to from the street. I have talked before about how I love the buildings in Tel Aviv, in all their dilapidated glory and minimalist lines, but seeing English architecture reminded me of my love for living history, as seen in buildings that line the streets of London and Newcastle.

Amit on Grey St, Newcastle. Beautiful buildings. From England

We had fun shopping in the mega clothes stores, eating the delightful English cuisine (sausages, bacon, pies, sausage rolls, roast lunch, curry), drinking beer, seeing all the greenery, walking till our feet hurt, and of course seeing friends.

There is nothing quite like seeing old friends. It's like those four years never really happened, and we've been transported to a meeting where we still know each other super well, but we've had all the experiences in between to make our conversations even more interesting! Amit loved meeting my old friends too, as we're both all about the people, and he didn't mind that I dragged him around England meeting 20 people in 7 days.

Nita and Ken took us on a road trip through the Northumberland countryside to the beautiful Belsay Hall - a fantastic mixture of historic house, castle and gardens, with an amazing art exhibition exploring the impact of scale.

Enjoying the green at Belsay. From England

It was a strange experience going back to somewhere overseas that I once lived. I remember when I thought that the culture there was normal, it was part of my everyday life. I remembered the streets I walked on everyday, I remember the music I was listening to, I remember the people I knew there. All sorts of things. But in those four years since living in England I've experienced so many things that have led to me living in Israel with my man. Walking through the streets of Newcastle four years ago I could never have predicted moving to Israel! I also felt that I am living in the right place. Tel Aviv is the place for me.

Upon returning to Israel two thoughts dominated my mind:
1) I need to eat some Israeli salad!
2) I missed hearing and speaking Hebrew, strangely enough. The trip made me realise that speaking another language is an exciting thing, and I've been spurred on to study more Hebrew now.

A slide show of our England photos...

Tel Aviv - its evolution

2010-06-23T14:40:00.002+03:00

Tel Aviv has the amazing ability to re-invent itself. It is the first modern Jewish city, founded in 1909 on sand dunes next to the old city of Jaffa. It is a bubble in a region of constant conflict, as unless you read the news you wouldn't know that there were missiles falling near Sderot. Tel Aviv was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, as it has the world's largest concentration of Modernist-style buildings (Bauhaus).

Walking the streets you feel like you are walking though a european city in the height of summer. There are tree lined avenues, cafe's filled with people, and designer stores everywhere. There are differences of course: the lovely beaches a few minutes walk from the shopping district, the crazy traffic and drivers who like their horn a little too much, and of course the language!

Did you know that Rothschild Boulevard is such a lovely wide road because it is actually a filled-in river bed (a wadi), so no one wanted to build their houses on it? It was called Rothschild Blvd because the founders of Tel Aviv hoped Rothschild himself would donate some money for the city. Apparently he was more interested in developing the rural settings, so he never paid a penny to have the best street in Tel Aviv named after him. Anyway, watch the movie for other interesting facts about this vibrant city.

my favourite places to eat in Tel Aviv - take 1

2010-05-23T18:02:00.003+03:00

Food is a constant topic of conversation here. Everyone wants to know where you ate, what you ate, whether they should go. Most conversations go something like this:

"You ate at somewhere? Which restaurant? Was it good? Where is it? Give me the details immediately! (because I can't believe there is a good restaurant in Tel Aviv, or the whole if Israel, that I don't know about)".

So here are some of my favourites - they are mainly eateries rather than restaurants, which perhaps reflects our budget more than anything. I expect I'll have another list of favourite restaurants in Tel Aviv soon - there are some many tasty restaurants!

La Gaterie

184 Ben Yehuda St, Tel: 077 2180077 and 97 King George Street, Tel: 052 5035003
The story goes that the two owners of this place travelled to France and spent two years learning how to make the perfect croissant. The croissants are served with freshly sliced cheese and meat (salami or prosciutto), and a poached egg. I was skeptical at first, but it makes for the most delicious combination. I think I'm addicted... but I'm trying to limit myself to one per month. I celebrated my birthday breakfast here with a long black (americano).

Me eating the delicious croissant from La Gaterie. From Israel

The Pizza (הפיצה)
51 Bograshov, 03 5281077
The Bianca pizza here is incredible - wood-fired oven pizza with mozzarella, parmesan, feta, olive oil and parsley on top... the most authentic pizza in Tel Aviv in terms of the type of pizza base (not too thin or too thick), cooked in a proper wood-fired oven, with yummy fresh toppings.

Moon
Borgashov 58, 03 6291155
This place does amazing sushi. I really didn't expect there would be so many great sushi restaurants in Tel Aviv, but this city continues to surprise me, especially on the food front!

The sushi in Tel Aviv is different to what I've had in Australia (and Japan), nonetheless it is delicious in it's uniqueness. The fish is fresh and delicious, the styles are interesting and diverse... I want to eat more of it!

Amazing sushi at Moon. From Israel

Update: Amit and I ate at Moon tonight. The food was tasty and delicious, but the service was not up to scratch - we had to wait a long time for a table while there were free tables not cleared. Basically looked like they were understaffed, which is a shame. One of our friends worked there for many years and loves the place, so maybe we caught it on a bad night....

Tony Vespa
267 Dizengoff St, 140 Rothschild Blvd. Tel: 03 5460000
I had my doubts about this one, but after a fun night with dutch friends recently, Amit and I had some salami and cheese pizza and it went down very well... Perfect for a late night snack, it has a crispy thin base, fresh toppings, and is priced by its weight - you just tell them how big you want your slice to be!

WolfNights chef burger
40 Lilenblum Street, Rothschild Quarter. Tel: 03 517 7155I and 53 Yehuda Maccabi

I've never really been into gourmet burgers, but WolfNights may have changed me. Amit is obsessed with these burgers. Whenever we are thinking about where to eat Wolfnights is at the top of the list. Amit always goes for the Wolfnights special - a gourmet beef and lamb burger with emmental cheese and crispy bacon on a soft sesame seed bun. I quite like the beef burger with mushrooms. Addictive, not so good for the waistline, but super delicious!

La Brasserie
70 Ibn Gvirol, 03 6967111
This place has a great vibe, some delicious food (I love the bone marrow - I'd never had it before and it's so yummy!), and is open 24hours! With classy service, it's not exactly cheap, but it's a lovely night out. It is a little noisy inside, but you can sit on the street.

La Brasserie's bone marrow, served with roasted garlic and toast. Yummm

For some reviews of good places to eat in Tel Aviv (including a few I've mentioned here), check out Taste TLV

photo shoot on a roof

2010-05-06T12:12:00.004+03:00

Today I spent half the day on a Tel Avivian rooftop helping with a fashion catalogue photo shoot for the local label ShuShine. Amit was the photographer - his first time shooting a catalogue, and I was giving him a hand.

There was clothes, shoes, accessories, a large cat, make up, hairstyles, schnitzel, hummus, tehina, and lots of large cameras, but what I enjoyed most was being on the roof top and peering over the white rooftops of Tel Aviv.

Fashion, models, and the gorgeous Tel Avivian rooftops

It is a strange landscape - most buildings are about five stories high, with a flat tops glittering with solar hot water heaters. Over 90% of Israeli homes have solar hot water heating on their roof tops (1). Australia, in contrast, has a measly 5% of homes using solar hot water systems, which seems fairly ridiculous considering it is the continent with the highest about of solar radiation(2)! And heating water accounts for about 30% of your home electricity bill, so Israeli electricity bills are tiny!

You can see the hot water heaters on the roof (and a beautiful dress!)

It is true that on occasion (rarely) the sun doesn't shine here, and then we have to remember to turn the boiler on so we will have hot water. I have been stuck without hot water in the morning a few times, and that is something I really don't like - no hot water in the morning makes for a grumpy me.

Another thing about the skyline of Tel Aviv is that it's so random. There are a few skyscrapers, but there is no order to them, they are dotted all around the city. They are not very interesting to look at. The real highlight of this city is the masses of white apartment buildings, mostly with Bauhaus and minimalist architecture, mostly dilapidated and covered in electrical wires, but there is so much charm in that.

one of the random skyscrapers in the background

Getting back to fashion and the photo shoot, it was Amit's first photo shoot, but he really enjoyed it and there are some amazing pictures, as you can see. The designer, Shira, is super lovely and great to work with. I am amazed by people who can turn their ideas and creativity into designs and fashion, who can see their vision being worn by people.

You can see some more photos from the photo shoot in this gallery.

Great t-shirts, complete with Radiohead reference

Amit with his new toy - Canon 5D

Me with Shira's business card, the ShuShine label

------

Update 8 May

You can buy the new ShuShine summer collection at the following locations:

רד מאונטיין - שבזי 31 ת"א
ענת מיקולינסקי -דיזינגוף 121 ת"א, קניון רמת אביב
מאיפה זה? - בוגרשוב 57, ת"א
ONE BEDROOM - מרגוזה 12 יפו
אמילקה -סוקולוב 63 רמה"ש
אמילקה - אחוזה, רעננה
ריפ - הרצל 142, רחובות

You can find ShuShine on ebay as well

Tel Aviv, Eilat and beautiful Jerusalem

2010-05-04T18:04:00.000+03:00

I stumbled across this article published in The Times about travelling to Israel. I think it captures the energy of this country, and the diversity.

Tel Aviv, Eilat and beautiful Jerusalem

Week one at the Ulpan - learning Hebrew

2010-04-15T12:34:00.001+03:00

After two months of being surrounded by Hebrew I am really wishing I knew what people were saying. Things are changing now though, as this week I started learning Hebrew at Ulpan Gordon in Tel Aviv. I go from Sunday to Wednesday, from 9am to 1pm, for five months.

On the first day I discovered that most of the people sitting around me had similar stories to me - they had moved to Israel to be with their boyfriends or girlfriends. Seems like Israelis are going round the world and not just coming home with a tan, they are bringing girls and boys back with them! Mind you, it is mostly women in the class, so it appears that Israeli men are doing a better job at this importing business. The other half of the class are new Jewish immigrants to Israel.

The list of nationalities in the class of 40 people is impressive by any standard. I'm the only Australian, but there are people from the US, Argentina, Sweden, Russia, England, Germany, Brazil, Spain, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Kenya and Colombia (I'm sure I've left some out...).

The teacher is very good, but hasn't spoken any English after the first day. Things move quickly, we cover grammar, masculine and feminine forms of nouns... I'm just hoping it all fits into my head.

I've realised I'm terrible at grammar so that is what I'll be practicing most. Fortunately Amit helps me with my homework - learning the Hebrew script letters at the moment, and filling in the gaps of things I missed in class.

Some of my Hebrew homework - learning how to write the cursive script (looks like a bunch of squiggles hey)

I never expected I'd be learning Hebrew in my life. The language of the bible is a pretty strange thing for a non-religious Australian to learn. But then I never thought I'd live in Israel, or meet the love of my life on a cooking class in Vietnam, or talk about the science of slime to thousands of Australian kids, or write a blog, or talk about chocolate on BBC radio, or walk to university in the snow in Montreal, or ride a camel in Jordan either. Life is full of the unexpected, and that makes it wonderful. Learning Hebrew is another part of this adventure, and it has a great reason behind it - making a life with Amit in Israel. Love is always the best reason for doing unexpected things, in my opinion.

And here is a fantastic song by Feist. It has some great lyrics, like "I feel it all, I feel it all". That's what I'm trying to do right now, feel everything that life makes me feel. Hope it makes you feel happy too.

Visiting the doctor, Israeli style

2010-04-08T16:03:00.001+03:00

I've had a cough for a week so it was time to see a doctor. I have health insurance here for tourists, so I called up to make an appointment with the local clinic. There I encountered my first problem: recorded instructions in Hebrew. I got an appointment for the next day eventually (with some help from Amit).

I go into the clinic and report to the desk, where they give me a piece of paper and send me off. I sit down on a chair, a nurse comes and says "Are you seeing the nurse? Blood test?" I say no, I'm here to see the doctor. She says to sit next to the doctors door so he can see me and he will call me in.

So I go and sit next to the doctor's door, and he doesn't call anything. It seems the way to see the doctor is to push your way through the door. Open the door when he has a patient with him, retreat, but as soon as that door opens you jump up with your elderly charge and push into the room. An alternative tactic, performed by a religious lady with three kids, was to barricade the door entrance with her double pram and push her way in at every moment.

After 30 minutes I was really wishing that Israel had queues, lines, a doctor who went down a list of names, and people waited their turn, despite being older, more invalid or more religious than you, like in Australia or the UK. Lucky I had my book with me, to say the least.

With all this time passing I continued to sit there and ponder the fact that in Israel elderly people hire young female Filipino carers to look after them, so these old people and their carers can be seen on their daily walks hobling through the park (or being wheeled in their chairs), or being escorted through the doctor's door in a typical Israeli pushy way. In Australia old people go to nursing homes, or live with their children, and are generally not living in the middle of big cities. They hang out with other old people, and I must say I barely saw an old or invalid person in Canberra - like there were all hiding in the suburbs. Here old people are in your face, everywhere, very present. It actually makes me feel like Tel Aviv is more of a real place, with old people, babies, and everything in between.

Eventually the elderly, disabled, religous and crazy had gone ahead of me, I'd waited for 40 minutes, and I finally got in. The doctor started the meeting by saying "Why do you want to live here? People are so rude, I saw you sitting there but I didn't know it was you who are on my list, and all these rude people pushed in front of you! Why do you want to live here, you are educated, polite, well mannered. Israelis are so rude? Are you really going to stay?"

I laughed and said I was here because of my boyfriend, and that it will be much easier to push in when I understand Hebrew. I think he was still wondering why on earth I'd want to live here, rather than in Australia.

Result: He gave me some drugs for my cold, and they were free! And I'm going to learn how to be more pushy...

A kibbutz experience

2010-04-07T15:12:00.002+03:00

The day after the passover Seder meal the whole family went for a drive north, to visit some relatives who live at the Sasa Kibbutz, in Northern Israel, very close to the border with Lebanon.

View from Kibbutz Sasa

The Kibbutz is in the mountains, with beautiful fresh, crisp air and lovely green scenery. Amit's Dad's cousins live there, and all their families were visiting for the holidays. One of the cousins, Varda Yatom, is a ceramics sculptor, and we visited her gallery, filled with interesting pieces.

Sculptures by Varda Yatom

Every Kibbutz has a factory of some sort that is a main source of income. Amongst all this lovely scenery I was surprised to discover that the Sasa factory produces vehicle and body armor for vehicles, with large contracts with the Israeli and American defense forces. We had an interesting tour of the factory there... not at all what I'd expected to find!

me with sculptures

My first Passover

2010-04-03T00:39:00.001+03:00

Monday night was the traditional Passover dinner, called the Seder. Amit's family gathered at his parent's place, where we had toasts for the holidays and exchanged some small gifts - mainly books and clothes.

Amit's dad and nephew reading the Haggadah

Before the meal we started reading the Haggadah, which is the book about the exodus from Egypt, and the Jewish people's freedom from slavery. It talks about Moses, the ten plagues on the people of Egypt sent by God so the Pharaoh would let the Jewish slaves leave Egypt, etc. It's a good story, and the reading of the Haggadah is punctuated by traditional songs. The songs were fun, and I could sing along as they were quite repetitive.

Singing the pesach songs, complete with actions

The food you eat on Passover (Pesach) is very traditional, and you eat different things to represent different aspects of the Jewish people under slavery in Egypt and how they were freed. We ate eggs in salt water, Gefilte fish (eww), matzoh (unleavened bread), chicken soup with Matzoh balls (yum!), and lots of other delicious food... so much food yet again, and our fridge is now full of leftovers from Amit's mum!

You can read more about the Seder meal here.

Amit and me reading the Haggadah

Israel and Australia, a few facts and figures

2010-03-28T18:36:00.013+03:00

I was browsing the internet learning about the Passover holiday, which starts tomorrow, when I got sidetracked on Wikipedia (an inevitable consequence of me going on that site). I came across a few interesting stats about Australia and Israel. These are taken form Wikipedia, so doubt them as much as you like, but it does make for interesting comparisons.

Israel
Land area:
151 largest country, 22,072km², 0.01% of the world's surface (Excluding the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip; including the Golan Heights).

Population
- 2009 estimate: 7,465,002 (96th)
- Density: 356.8/km² (34th)

GDP (PPP) 2008 estimate
- Total: US$202.562 billion (50th)
- Per capita: $28,473 (31st)

Judean Desert, From Israel

Australia
Land area:
6th largest country, 7,692,024km², 5.2% of the world's surface Includes Cocos (Keeling) Islands (14 km2/5.4 sq mi), Christmas Island (135 km2/52 sq mi), Macquarie Island (128 km2/49 sq mi), and Lord Howe Island (56 km2/22 sq mi).[12] Excludes external territories of Norfolk Island (36 km2/14 sq mi), Ashmore and Cartier Islands (5 km2/1.9 sq mi), Coral Sea Islands Territory (0.91 km2/0.35 sq mi), and Heard and McDonald Islands (372 km2/144 sq mi). Excludes claims on Australian Antarctic Territory (5,896,500 km2/2,276,700 sq mi). Largest country in Oceania.

Population
- 2010 estimate: 22,203,464
- Density: 2.833/km² (232nd, only Greenland has a lower population density)

GDP (PPP) 2008 estimate
- Total: $799.054 billion (18th)
- Per capita: $36,918 (15th)

Kata Tjuta, From Central Australia

Out of interest, the largest country in the world is Russia, and the smallest of the 233 countries in the world is Vatican City.

Read up more on Israel and Australia on Wikipedia if you feel like getting sidetracked....

Israelis are not alcoholics (like Aussies)

2010-03-27T00:20:00.000+03:00

Last night we were heading to a friend's birthday party at about 9pm. I thought it would be nice to take a bottle of Cava (Spanish sparkling wine that is popular here), a cold one of course so we could drink it. Then Amit tells me that bottle shops aren't open at this time of night. "What?" I say, "How ridiculous! It's Thursday, which is like an Australian Friday! Every bottle shop should be open!".

Then came more incredulity as we drove from supermarket to corner store to whatever other shop, only to find that no one sells cold sparkling wine, or even white wine. You might find a few bottles of beer in a fridge, and tonnes of milk and cheese, but no cold wine (I lie, there was a bottle of Lambrusco, but I really don't rate that as much of drink).

Now this is unheard of in Australia. We are always in bottle shops (Bottle O's as I usually refer to them) in the evenings, buying wine for a BYO restaurant or a party we're going to. And you will always find at least 10 white wines and 5 sparklings of some description, along with tonnes of beer in the fridges of Bottle O's and supermarkets (in those states that allow that).

This latest incident illustrates the completely different drinking cultures in Israel and Australia. Aussies must be considered alcoholics by international standards. Nice to realise these things I suppose. I was just very mad that I couldn't find a cold bottle of wine! (Maybe I'm in withdrawal from being a normal Aussie.)

We went to the party empty handed, and that appeared to be the norm. There were some beers in the fridge, red wine on the table, and people were having a few drinks. I mean like two drinks. Then they'd be sensible and stop. And then go home. Pretty much the most different to an Australian party as you can get.

I'm drunk on the goodness of Israeli food, no need for Cava.

Fly on the Wall

2010-03-23T00:12:00.001+02:00

Amit recently started his new photography business called Fly on the Wall, and he launched his website. I've been helping with it, including the About page, which took us a good two hours to edit because we are both compulsive editors as it turns out.

Check out the Fly on the Wall website where you can even see a gallery featuring me called "Tales of the Redhead", which is in the top left corner.

Amit takes amazing photos natural photos of people, with no fake smiles in sight. So if you're looking for someone to take photos of your event, or you're coming to Israel and want him to follow you around (not stalker like), or even if you have an idea for an exhibition he should put on, please let us know!

You can also become a fan of Fly on the Wall of facebook, using this little widget below.

Jo Savill is a fan of

Fly on the Wall

Tel Aviv beaches

2010-03-19T19:36:00.002+02:00

One of my favourite things about living in Tel Aviv is the beach being a 10 minute walk away. And it's a beautiful beach, with white sand and blue water stretching to the horizon. Sometimes there is even a decent swell and some nice waves rolling in that keen surfers are catching (in their full length wetsuits). True, it has been too cold for me to go in the water since I arrived in February, but I have every intention of going for a swim on a warm day soon.

But how do the Tel Aviv beaches compare with Australian beaches? As Aussies will know, our beaches are the best in the world. So on a case by case comparison, South Broulee (south coast NSW) beach kicks Tel Aviv beach's butt. However, you can't do straight comparisons.

To get to the beach here you walk along tree-lined european streets and boulevards crowded with cafes, felafel bars, boutique clothes stores and gelaterias to a street with large hotels next to the beaches. The sand is covered with sun lounges, permanent umbrellas, chairs and people. The life guards sit in wooden towers, speak through large speakers, and there are no red and yellow flags to swim between.

From Tel Aviv friends and scenes

And then there are the people. Tel Aviv is very multicultural, so there are people of all backgrounds on the beach. Girls wear bikinis and sunbake. Guys wear shorts and play volleyball or soccer. Some guys just pose with their ghettoblasters playing loud electronic music (does anyone say ghettoblasters anymore? You know what I mean). Couples play paddleball - wooden bats, squash ball, and an incessant bang bang bang floods the beach. Families play in the water.

So there aren't any cricket, rugby or Aussie rules games on the beach. And the kids aren't wearing full body protecting swimming suits and hats to hide from the sun. They might be wearing a t-shirt or a hat. Or nothing.

If you go towards Jaffa to the beach there are muslim women swimming in the full length suits and headscarves with their kids running around amidst scantily clad sunbathers. On the grass next to the beach on a Friday you will find lots of families gathered with the delicious smells of mini BBQs cooking meat.

Towards the north there is a 'Separated beach' - where religious Jewish people have the opportunity to swim without having to see the temptations of the opposite sex. Of course if they exit the walled area they will immediately see acres of bare flesh in front of them, but not while they are swimming.

From Tel Aviv friends and scenes

Does it look like the dog in this picture is wearing a yarmulke (skull cap)? It does to me! Jewish doggies only allowed (with leads) on the separated beach!

So like I was saying, I would say the beaches in Tel Aviv are not more beautiful than Aussie beaches, but they are different, and I really like them for that!

I was thinking today that learning to love another country is about redefining your definition of beauty. Expanding it to incorporate all the new things you are discovering. I could be going around Israel saying the landscape is not beautiful, as Australia has wide open spaces and natural beauty and a huge blue sky, while Israel is covered with towns and cities, agriculture and desert. But I'm learning to appreciate the beauty in this country. In the dilapidated Bauhaus buildings. In the Mediterranean seaside. In the old streets of Jaffa. In the window boxes full of red geraniums. Luckily, the people and the food make this country very easy to love.

a concert in Jerusalem

2010-03-04T14:47:00.000+02:00

On the plane from Korea to Israel a few weeks ago I sat next to a really interesting man, Yitzhak Yedid, a composer from Israel who lives in Brisbane with his Australian wife and child. He told me about few of his concerts that would be on in Israel while he was here, so last night Amit and I headed up to Jerusalem for an evening at a cool venue called the Yellow Submarine. A trio of piano, violin and cello played a few pieces, some more jazz, so more celtic music, and also a world premier of Yitzhak's piece called Senstaions.

After the concert Yitzhak was in a bit of dilemma as his sister in law had taken off with his phone, wallet and keys. We drove around the beautiful streets of Jerusalem at night, with their old stone walls and atmospheric neighbourhoods. Luckily we found the sister-in-law and Yitzhak directed us out of the confusing streets of the city.

You can see some of Yitzhak's performances on YouTube.

On the way home from Jerusalem we picked up a hitchhiker, a teenager with a guitar, and dropped him further down the road. Hitchhiking is really common in Israel. I realised I have a bit of a phobia about it due to the backpacker murders in Australia. However, I think I'll get used to it here (although I don't think we'll get into a habit of picking up hitchhikers!).

Purim = randomly dressed up people in Israel

2010-03-04T14:46:00.000+02:00

Purim is a Jewish festival about some time in history when an evil guy called Haman tried to kill the jews in the ancient Persian empire, a few hundred years BC. A few people, including Queen Esther (secretly Jewish), managed to foil the plot with the use of disguises and people hiding things. So during Purim everyone dresses up in all sorts of disguises and costumes, kind of like Halloween.

During the week leading up to Purim I'd be walking through Tel Aviv and amongst the street filled with normal looking people there would be a guy dressed up as a leprechaun. In the cafes and restaurants the staff would be dressed up as fairies or other random things.

The dressed up waitress, and my coffee served with Haman's ear - From Tel Aviv friends and scenes

Also on Purim you are supposed to eat a feast and drink tonnes of alcohol. Sounds good to me. Normally Amit and his friends would go to a huge street party in Florentin, a cool suburb of Tel Aviv. But it was raining so we were lame and didn't go out.

However, we did have a big feast at Amit's parents place, which was amazing! And we ate Haman's ears (because he's the bad guy, we eat his ears every Purim). Amit's nephews were dressed up for Purim too, super cute.

The feast at Amit's parent's place - From Tel Aviv friends and scenes

The very Israeli butcher

2010-02-27T22:19:00.001+02:00

This is about my encounter with the butcher. I told this story to Israelis and they wondered what I was going on about. But to me it was an example of just how different a foreign country can be.

I went to the butchers just down the street from Amit, it has a narrow entrance and you walk past rows of long freezers with not that much in them to a butchers window display at the end, with two butchers behind. I had a piece of paper with 'chicken breast' written in Hebrew on it that Amit gave me, and I'd looked up how to say it in Hebrew (חזה עוף or 'khaze off'), but the butcher spoke English of course. I said I wanted two chicken breasts. Then came the questions - how many people is it for? Four people I said. Well two pieces is not enough! You need more! What are you cooking? How do you want it cut? Is 800g ok? I still don't think it's enough! I was in shock, what was this butcher doing telling me how much meat I needed, why was he cutting the meat for me, where were the prices?

I got out of the butchers shop with a bit more meat than I thought I needed, and it was a reasonable price for such attentive service. Having the butcher cut the meat for you with his very sharp knife is pretty handy actually! It was just so unexpected, after an Australian or English butcher who will offer advice only if you ask for it, always display the prices, and would never challenge you if you know what you want. You could describe this as very Israeli - being challenged by someone you're giving money to, and getting advice when you didn't really need it.

I used the chicken that night for my first ever dinner party in Israel, with Ido (who I'd met with Amit in Vietnam) and his girlfriend Efrat. I made stir fry with chicken, mushrooms and broccolini and a teriyaki sauce and rice. It was super quick, and turned out yummy. And it was finished up by the boys, so I guess the butcher was right about how much chicken I needed after all.

Efrat and Ido smoking the nargile (also known as the hookah, sheesha or water pipe)

I had planned on spending a few hours cooking that day, and a different menu for the dinner, but my domestic goddess practice was put on hold when Amit's mum picked me up and whisked me off to Zikhron Ya'akov for a delicious lunch. It is a beautiful town about 40mins north of Tel Aviv, on a small mountain looking over an ocean, with a paved street with cafes and cute antique shops along it. It was very picturesque, and with Israel looking so green at the moment after the winter rains it was a gorgeous drive there.

Paved street of Zikhron Ya' akov

week two in Israel

2010-02-21T14:36:00.012+02:00

Settling in
I cooked my first meal here in our kitchen. I managed to go to the supermarket and buy ingredients without being able to read most of the labels. In the bigger supermarket I was very confused that I couldn't find any bacon... turns out it was a kosher supermarket. I made spaghetti bolognaise, a classic fave of mine, and it turned out fine, despite me buying veal mince instead of beef mince... That's what happens when you can't read labels!

The spaghetti sauce - From Our apartment in Tel Aviv

Smoky bars
I realised that it had been years since I'd stepped into a bar or pub and been assaulted by cigarette smoke when I came across it here. There are signs in every bar saying no smoking, and there are no ashtrays on the tables or anything, but everyone it smoking inside! The bar tenders make ashtrays from folded cardboard coasters, so if the police come in they can say that they had nothing to do with encouraging the smoking. It's another little thing that tells me I'm really in the wild west, rather than a western country! And I really do hate that smoke of course, it makes your clothes stink and your eyes water, so unpleasant.

Seeing the country
I went to the area near Be'eri twice in the same week, just by chance. It is about an hour or so south of Tel Aviv, close to the Gaza Strip, that is famous for the red anemone flowers that are (supposed to) carpet the grass fields there. The flowers don't seem to be that cooperative this year though, probably due to the very hot weather we're having (about 28 degrees C each day - lovely!).

I went first with Amit's mum for a drive around the area to visit some memorials (including an ANZAC monument, how unexpected!) and to view Gaza from a safe distance. We couldn't see much, just a densely populated city in the haze. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. We drove through towns nearby and saw the missile shelters on the streets, as missiles randomly land in these areas. It was an interesting experience, and made me think about the fragility of peace in this country. In Tel Aviv and surrounding areas you would never think there is any danger, yet 80km away missiles could land on your street. Amit's mum said something about how Israelis don't really talk about the weather in Israel, there are more important things to talk about, like life and death.

View album - Heading south - looking at Gaza

I went again to Be'eri on Friday (the weekend is Friday and Saturday here) with Amit, Noa and Yair. We had a lovely picnic in a eucalypt plantation (very common here) and then a 'hike'(what we would call a walk or a bush walk) through some lovely grassland dotted with wild flowers. See photos on Amit's album.

The Synagogue
On Saturday we went to a synagogue in Petah Tikva (where Amit grew up) for a religious ceremony related to Elad and Einat's wedding last week. After the wedding the husband goes to the synagogue to say a prayer and say basically that he will be a good husband in front of god. Amit and his friends go to the synagogue only very rarely, so everyone felt a little out of place at this event, not only me!

Men and women are segregated in synagogues, with the men downstairs in the main part, and women upstairs, behind a curtain, so the men aren't tempted by us (apparently). So we go upstairs, and you really can't see anything from up there - you can peek through the curtain but the religious men don't really like that. Us ladies sat up there and whispered about what was going on, wondering when Elad would finally get to speak... Once he spoke we all threw wrapped lollies on Elad (and all the men down there), which was quite fun. Then we escaped to the outside.

That was about it. I would describe the experience as being just as dull as a church, but without being about to see the people speaking or what is going on, or understanding a word that was said! Also, the building was very modest, not decorated and grand like a church. This was Bulgarian type of synagogue with it's traditions by the way, there are many different branches of Judaism I hear. While we were sitting in the synagogue, Amit's friend pointed out a line in the Torah, a very famous prayer that says something like "Thank you God, king almighty, for not making me a woman". She said that explained one of the reasons she wasn't too enamoured with the religion... Fair enough!

After the synagogue we went to Elad's sister's house in a town nearby. There we had a fantastic lunch, reminding me of probably my most favourite thing about this country - the food! It is incredible - huge quantities, amazing variety, great quality and super fresh. I could go on and on about it... and I will, but later, after I've eaten the delicious leftovers from Friday dinner at Amit's family's place. His mum is the most amazing cook!

Finally, the people
I've reached the end of this blog post without talking about the people here, which is a huge oversight. Of course everything I've talked about couldn't have happened without the amazing people facilitating it all. Amit's family have been so welcoming, asking me for lunches and dinners and taking me on day trips and cooking amazing food. Amit's friends are lovely and making sure I'm enjoying life here. The people I meet are so open, warm and friendly, it makes me feel so excited to be here. It is hard to describe how wonderful everyone is, hopefully you can see it throug the smiles on our faces in the photos.

Tel Aviv, some observations

2010-02-17T11:25:00.000+02:00

I'm past my first week in Tel Aviv now. It's an amazing city, so different from where I left - Canberra! The streets are always filled with people. The boulevards are lined with green leafy trees. There are no houses, only apartment buildings, all about 5 or 6 stories high, and all white. Some are covered in tiny white tiles that shine subtley in the sun. A lot look very run down, showing that this is a new city, built quickly with population explosions. There are cats everywhere, tonnes of stray cats. There is tonnes of dog poo on the pavement.

From First week in Israel

And then there's the people. I have never been in a more multicultural city. Forget Melbourne, forget New York, Tel Aviv wins in multiculturalism hands down. There are people from everywhere - the middle east, europe, asia, africa, india... there is amazing cultural diversity. I can be walking down the street feeling very white, when someone much whiter than me speaking Hebrew walks past, and I remember that this is a melting pot of every kind of person.

And of course there is the reason I'm here - Amit. Things are going great. It is wonderful to finally be in the same place in the world... I've put my things into his apartment, I'm fitting into his life here and finding my own way too. It's great.

From First week in Israel

So I'm moving to Tel Aviv, cos I've got problems with my sleep

2010-01-24T00:43:00.007+02:00

(slightly modified quote from a song by The Wombats... works because Tel Aviv is the New York of the middle east!)

I'm moving to Tel Aviv to be with my boyfriend, Amit. It is a big move - I'm leaving my my friends, my family, my Canberra lifestyle, my job, my apartment and everything familiar behind me.

But I'm going for some very good reasons. Probably the best reasons one can have. Love. Amit and I met in Vietnam in April 2009 (see my blog post Hoi An has swollowed me whole), and since then we have exchanged hundreds of emails and phone calls and 1000's of text messages. I went to Israel in July for two weeks. Amit came to Australia in October for three weeks. We like the same things, complement each other, want the same lifestyle, have the dreams for the future.

Frequently asked questions about my move:

Isn't it dangerous in Israel?
No, no more than most other countries in the world. Tel Aviv is particularly safe these days. Yes, Israel has a huge army, every Israeli does compulsory army service. There have been many terrorist attacks on Israeli soil. Israel is surrounded by countries that don't think they should exist. It is very complex. Tel Aviv is like a bubble though, there you feel like you are in a cosmopolitan Mediterranean city, full of life and young people and beautiful beaches.

Do people speak English there?
Yes. In Tel Aviv everyone does. Waiters will even translate menus for you if they don't have an English one handy. All Amit's friends speak fluent English. However, I do plan to learn Hebrew, as it is the national language, and it will help me get by.

Do you have to wear different clothes and cover your skin as a woman there?
No. Israel is a completely western country. People in Tel Aviv wear casual clothes, bikinis on the beach and miniskirts to nightclubs.

What will you do there?
Firstly, I'll learn Hebrew at an Ulpan. Ulpans are an immersion language school. I will go to classes for half a day four times a week, for five months!

After a few months I hope to have a visa sorted out and I'll look for work in my field of science communication. Or something like that. There are a lot of possibilities.

Where will you live?
With Amit, it central Tel Aviv.

Won't you miss Australia?
Of course. I'll miss my family and friends. But right now I'm so excited about my big adventure, about being with Amit, living in the middle east in a vibrant city on the sea.

Do you have a question for me? I'll answer it on here if you send it through. Right now I'm getting back to packing, tidying, chucking out stuff, and packing some more.

Keystone Cockroaches

2010-01-18T01:08:00.001+02:00

Claire, Rod and me on the radio on Sunday... post my farewell party!
What is a Keystone Cockroach? Listen to Fuzzy Logic for the startling news on this groundbreaking concept. The end of oil, waste paper biofuels, cleaning nuclear waste, and lots more fun science topics brought to you by Jo, Claire, and Rod.

Listen on the player below.

Fuzzy Logic science radio

2010-01-15T03:14:00.004+02:00

Where did laughter come from? Are imaginary friends useful? Flies aid hearing research.

Take a listen to me and Rod on 2XX community radio in Canberra.

Photo by Rod Taylor

Christmas on the coast

2010-01-04T03:17:00.002+02:00

Here are my photos from Christmas holidays back home with my family on the Gold Coast. It was lovely spending time with the family, relaxing, enjoying the warm weather and catching some great waves at the beach!

2009 Christmas

Israel in pictures

2009-08-11T04:35:00.000+03:00

Here are the photos from my trip - enjoy!

Israel

Tel Aviv

2009-07-20T08:24:00.001+03:00

It took 31 hours from when I left home in Canberra to when I arrived in Tel Aviv... It was a massive journey - the worst of which was a 5 hour stopover in Amman, from 5am local time. Luckily I made friends with a pair of Irish sisters returning from a holiday in Thailand and we chatted about travel and work and the economic downturn for a while, then I attempted to sleep on a bench (but really just closed my eyes). Amman airport has this weird disorientating layout where each end has the same cafes with one or two slightly different, then you walk through a duty free section to the other side and it's exactly the same, so it is most confusing... And that whole time Amman is 80km from Tel Aviv, yet would take so long overland via border checkpoints at the west bank that it's not at all worth it.

From Israel

eating hummus

So I finally arrived at Tel Aviv, and Amit was waiting to pick me up at the airport. It is so amazing to see him after 3 months of talking and chatting and emailing. I arrive at about midday and we walked a bit around the city. It's a great place, so vibrant with people everywhere enjoyng the bars and cafes. It's so hot though, especially coming from a canberra winter! We had hummus for dinner, it was tasty, but my favourite was the fresh falafel. I don't think I've ever had such yummy felafel before... I'm loving the food here so far! Yesterday we went around the city on Amit's scooter, driving along the sea, which looks very blue and pretty (might go for a swim today), to the old port of Jaffa, which is the original arab area here. It has beautiful winding narrow streets only wide enough for people winding their way down to the old port. It was gorgeous, and we stopped in on some interesting artist's galleries there. Yesterday evening we met up with some of Amit's friends for some beers, they are really lovely, and it was so great to see how excited they were to meet me. We also caught up with Ido, who was with Amit in Vietnam. He's great, just the same as I remember him.

From Israel

Jaffa harbour

So Amit is taking me round Tel Aviv again today, and in the next few days we'll go to the dead sea and masada. It's all so different and interesting...

Next destination: Israel

2009-07-14T12:03:00.002+03:00

I've been told I'm not very good at updating this blog. Which is true. I tend to only write here when I'm travelling.

I'll be travelling again soon - I'm off to Tel Aviv to see Amit, who I met in Vietnam in April. I am incredibly excited. It will really interesting travelling to the Middle East, to a country with so much history, ancient and modern, and so much politics. To be honest though, I'm most excited about seeing Amit. We've been keeping in touch constantly since Vietnam, and get along so well. I don't want to write what I think it could be, I may jinx myself if I do. I leave on Friday and return on August 2. I'm not looking forward to my 29hours of travelling to get there! Canberra - Sydney - Bangkok - Amman - Tel Aviv....

On Saturday I had a ladies night at my place. There were 7 of us, and it was a great night. I made lots of tasty food with a Mediterranean theme - Hummus, Babaganoush, Souvlaki, Falafel, and sticky-date pudding for dessert. It was nice having just ladies at the table. We discussed travel, work, drunken stories, palm reading, life, love and of course men. It was agreed by the end of the night that we should have more ladies evenings in the future.

From Canberra winter

Ha Long Bay times two

2009-04-21T14:48:00.007+03:00

I went to Ha Long Bay twice, for reasons I will get to below.

Take one
Cat, Mat, Claire, Sam and I took a Vega travel tour to Halong Bay straight after our overnight train from Sapa. There were 11 of us on the boat. It was misty and grey and a tad rainy, but through the mist we caught glimpses of the mythical landscape of Ha Long bay. There are over 3000 limestone islands and formations in this world heritage site. If you're feeling nerdy, check it out on wikipedia.

First stop was Ti Top Island. This tiny island with a white beach was visited by the cosmonaut Ghermann Titop, from the Soviet Union, accompanied by President Ho Chi Minh. To mark the significance of their visit, Uncle Ho named it Ti Top Island. The island’s real attraction is the pagoda-styled lookout point its peak. After climbing the 427 stone steps winding up the tall island you get a great view from the top. But it is a hard walk up there in the humidity!

View from Ti Top Island. From Vietnam

The Surprising Cave was next. I went in thinking yeah, whatever, we have Janolan Caves in Australia, and the Careys Cave in Wee Jasper is pretty cool. And Surprising cave was not that impressive to begin with. But turning a corner it was surprising, it was so massive! It also had an interesting phallic rock formation, suitably lit up with bring pink lights...

The surprising cave. From Vietnam

We then did a spot of kayaking. My kayaking buddy was Nikos from Greece. So we paddle through a tunnel into a lagoon, and pottered around talking about science, philosophy and psychology. It was a bit dark and misty though, so we didn't spend too much time on the water.

Cat and Mat kayaking. From Vietnam

We had a very relaxing night with delicious food and wine on the boat. My room was comparable to the hotels I'd been staying in, with wood paneling and twin beds. Rather luxurious really for a junk in Halong bay!

The next day involved a lot of cruising through the waters and admiring the scenery. I think I took close to 100 photos of it all. The scenery is just so incredible - limestone islands rising from still green water, rocks covered with dense jungle, eagles soaring around. It is such a mythical landscape that you can almost see the dragons fighting in these waters, spirits creating the stunning beauty. It is the stuff of fairy tales and folk lore. The clouds and mist did not lift while we were there, but it added to the magic of it all.

A fishing village on the water of the bay. From Vietnam

Halong Bay, take two
I mentioned in a previous post that I met two fabulous Israeli guys, Amit and Ido and decided to change my plans to travel with them some more. So that is how I ended up in Halong Bay again 6 days later. This time we were on the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel Tour. There were 30 of us, the sun was shining, it was hot, and our guide AJ was absolutely hilarious. It was basically completely opposite to my last tour. The sun lit up the bay beautifully and the views were incredible.

We went kayaking for two hours, the highlight of which was the suitably random Fairy Cave. So much laughter with our guide saying all sorts of crazy things about it. There was a really special moment though when 32 people were in an unlit cave, and the torches were turned off and we spent two minutes in silence, thinking about how we had all ended up in a cave in Halong bay. It was intense, but brilliant.

Halong Bay in sunshine. From Vietnam

Our kayaks tied up while we were in the Fairy Cave. From Vietnam

That night everyone drank and listened to music and had great conversations about travel on the top deck. So people jumped off the roof of the junk into the water, but the sun had gone down and it was a tad cool so I wasn't game.

Amit paddling. From Vietnam

We were up early the following day to get off the bus for Cat Ba Island, the largest island in the bay. The group did a 2 hour hike, but Ido had just had a knee operation so we caught the local bus into town with a French couple and drank coffee and looked at the view instead. We had some great chats about our countries and cultures and all sorts of things. I'm really quite glad I didn't go hiking up a mountain!

Amit and Ido, silly smiling. From Vietnam

After a delicious lunch of fish and stirfry at the Princes hotel where we were staying, AJ took some of us on a walk around to some of Cat Ba's beaches. We stopped at a beach side bar for a tiger beer. There was a mean soccer game happening on the sand in front of us, the locals were so agile, playing on the sloping sand! Amit and I sat and chatted, looking out to the ocean and the islands. We had a great conversation about people and love and life... Again I was struggling to believe that this person that thinks so similar to me comes from such a far off place.

The tour group on the boat. From Vietnam

That night we all ended up at a bar dancing and drinking whiskey. It was great fun, I hadn't danced in ages. And dancing on an Island in Halong bay just made it all so awesome. At one stage a black guy from the states read some very cool poems. I'm all for the spontaneous poetry, there should be more of it in the world!

the longest day to end
The following day was my last in Vietnam. I was very sad to say goodbye to Amit and Ido. Particularly Amit (sorry Ido, you are a very awesome guy too!) as Amit and I had grown close in the few days we had spent together. I caught the bus from Cat Ba Island at 9.15am rather than going back with the tour, which was taking the long route as I had to catch a plane. Lucky for me the French couple also took the bus option, so we had some good chats on the bus, ferry, bus and taxi to get back to Hanoi. There was only one incident involving a rigged taxi meter, but it all ended without too much drama.

I picked up my bag from the hostel in Hanoi, caught a shuttle to the airport, and checked in. 30mins before the flight was due to depart at 5pm, there is an announcement that it has been delayed 2hours. Now this was bad news as I needed to make the check in for my international Jetstar flight in Saigon by 9.05pm... and it was a 2 hour journey. I discovered two Aussie girls in the same situation as me, and the airline was really helpful, putting our bags on an earlier flight and being reassuring that we would make it. I was so lucky to meet to Aussie girls though to keep me from stressing over the possibility of missing my international flight! We had a great chat on the plane in our front row seats reflecting on our journeys to Vietnam, our past travels, and what was happening next in our lives.

We landed in Saigon with 10mins to get off the plane and check in. The airline met us with a special bus, we ran to find our bags piled them on a trolley and then, well imagine a trolley full of bags and three girls running through the airport with people almost jumping to get out of our way... that was us! We got to the International terminal just as they were calling out final check in for our flight... We were so lucky to make it! And a benefit of arriving so late was the check in guy gave us each a whole row to lie down in for our journey to Darwin. I slept the whole way home.

home again home again
Now I'm back home and the silence of Canberra feels strange. Where are all the people? Where are all the plastic chairs and tables on the side of the road? Where's all the raw meat being cut up next to scooters? Where's the beeping of horns, the noise of air conditioners, people trying to sell me stuff, the humidity? Home feels like a foreign country. And going to work seems incredibly odd. I can't stop thinking about where I'll go travelling to next. Perhaps Israel? We'll see.

Darwin airport at dawn. From Vietnam

Vietnam photo album

2009-04-21T02:36:00.002+03:00

You can find all my photos from Vietnam in this album. These are just from my camera, there are bound to be tonnes more that I love from Cat, Mat, Claire, Sam and Amit.

Vietnam

Hoi An has swallowed me whole

2009-04-14T15:40:00.010+03:00

I love Hoi An. It is the perfect place for a holiday. There is fabulous food, fascinating architecture of the old town, incredible shopping, hot holiday weather, friendly people, and a nice beach not too far away. I could spend every holiday here, although my bank balance and my overflowing wardrobe would not thank me for that.

[the old buildings of Hoi An - with Cat and Mat chatting)

I made rice paper and new friends... all at the same time
The greatest part of my holiday started with the Red Bridge cooking school. We started with a delicious cool drink at the Hai restaurant in town, chatted to fellow novice chefs, and headed to the local food markets. Our guide Hip was very entertaining, telling us about the foods you come across in the markets here, how to cook them and what they are good for (tummy aches, headaches, etc).

We then got a boat for a nice ride down the river to the cooking school. We were showed around the herb garden, and then to the cooking class area - a covered deck on the edge of a river, with chairs in the centre facing a cooking bench, complete with the mirror about the chef. Our chef was great as well, very funny, and easy to follow. We had printed notes to annotate and lovely drinks. We learnt how to make rice paper, rice paper rolls, rice pancakes and eggplant hotpot. All very delicious and interesting items to learn to cook.

[in the food markets with the cooking class tour]

After the class we all sat down to eat some of the food we'd made, as well as some additional dishes. The setting was perfect, with views of the river.

But the main reason the cooking class was such a tipping point in our trip was because we met two wonderful guys, Amit and Ido from Israel. We met them for dinner that night at Cargo Bar - our favourite restaurant in Hoi An. I had the best mushroom risotto I've ever had that night - not what I was expecting in Vietnam! And the desserts there are to die for, absolutely delicious. Ido, Amit and I went out for a few drinks and wandered around town that night, talking about everything. The kind of conversations that only seem to happen on holidays when you're far away from home in a strange country with people from the otherside of the world from you. I got back to my hotel at 1am, having woken up a taxi driver! They were all just sleeping in their taxis.

[Cao Lau, a specialty dish in Hoi An, and tomato shake]

Beach and boating
The following day I took a free bicycle from the hotel and went to Cua Dai beach. It was no Australian beach, but it was more beautiful that I was expecting. Of course even while I was trying to read my book on the beach there were people trying to sell me stuff. It never ended. I had little will power and bought some jewelry... I got home and realised I was sunburnt. Pale skin is no good in any country!

I rode my bike into town for my fitting at the tailor Yaly. I had so many awesome clothes made, particularly for the Canberra winter. The tailor was brilliant, everything I had made fit perfectly. I bumped into Cat and Mat and then Ido and Amit. We sat down at the outdoor eating area and ate some delicious noodles and very cheap beer (about 30cents a glass!). Cat and Mat took off for more fittings at tailors, and Ido, Amit and I took a boat ride on the river. It was a great idea of Amit's- the sun was setting, the boys rowed me round, and even sang a hebrew song about sailing. It was rather surreal, but wonderful. Discovered that we shared the same taste in music and movies...

[Amit and his coconut drink]

That night we had dinner at the Riverside cafe. Run by Austrians, it had the most stylish toilets I'd seen in Vietnam. The food was quite good, and after dinner we went upstairs to an awesome lounge area to drink cocktails.

That night Amit, Ido and I ended up on a bus to a beach party at midnight. The mini van had seats for 10, but about 25 drunk backpackers squished into it! It was somewhat crazy, but we made it to the beach party. It was pretty chilled out. We went swimming in the ocean. It was lovely. Ido said I should change my plans and go with them the next day to Ninh Binh. I decided I couldn't (clothes being tailored, friends, etc). We stayed and watched the sunrise and it was absolutely stunning.

[View from the boat]

It amazed me that I could meet two wonderful people that shared so many of my interests, yet who had lived their whole lives on the other side of the world to me, in a country constantly at war, and of which I only know a little. Amit said it is not that surprising, as we are all human. But I disagree, meetings of minds like this don't just happen everyday. they are so rare.
[squished on the bus to the beach party]

Don't go to the markets when you are tired
The next day I woke up at 1pm (after going to bed a 7am...) and headed into town. Here is a tip - don't go shopping when you're not awake. Somehow I ended up ordering even more tailor made clothes and shoes, bought even more handbags... and scarves... I was in a daze and didn't notice.

That night after dinner I started thinking that maybe I could join Amit and Ido for the rest of my travels... It all depended on a flight from Hanoi to meeting my flight from Saigon...

In the morning I checked out the one flight factor. I could do it. I bought a sim card, called Amit and Ido, bought 2 plane tickets, went to 4 shops to pick up my clothes, shoes and more clothes, checked out of my hotel, and headed to Hanoi at 8pm from Hoi An, arriving at Amit and Ido's hotel just after midnight. I changed all my plans to spend a few more days with Amit and Ido, and it wasn't difficult, it all fell into place. I've never been that spontaneous in my life before, but I'm so glad I did it.

[sunrise on Cua Dai beach]

Sickness in Sapa

2009-04-08T03:14:00.012+03:00

We arrived in Lao Cai from our overnight train journey from Hanoi. The journey was smooth, I slept just fine in my four-berth cabin with a Danish family. We eventually left Lao Cai in a mini van and for an hours winding journey up to the mountain village of Sapa. It was covered in mist and cloud, and I expect that the view from the hotel would have been spectacular had it not been for the extensive mist, which has still not lifted. It was also pouring with rain. We ate breakfast, bought some heavy duty rain ponchos for about $3, and took off on our trek to the minority villages of the Dzao and H'mong with our guide Khan, who is from the Dzao minority.

As we exited the hotel we were followed by a group of women in traditional dress. They began asking us questions... "What your name?", "Where you from", "How old are you", "Ah, you very young!". Little did we know they would follow us for our entire journey, like an uninvited shadow.

[Sapa in the clouds]

Sickness

Before we'd left the hotel, Claire began feeling some gut pain. As we headed down from the road and into the villages, the rain stopped and I was overwhelmed by waves of nausea. We sat down for lunch, I couldn't eat a thing, and was very ill, not even making it to the loo. That was not fun. We changed our plans to stay the night at a homestay nearby for the night. By the time I got there, I was very sick, dizzy, nauseous... I spent some time at the loo and took myself to bed and slept for 13 hours. By this time, Claire was also nauseous and slept a lot as well. The others spent the night drinking beer, enjoying the freshly made food the family we were staying with had prepared, and engaging in cultural exchange.

[the rice padies being plowed, preparing to plant this year's crop]

Waking up in the morning I felt much better, and had a few pancakes with honey for breakfast. Claire was feeling about the same. That morning we trekked along incredibly muddy steep paths through the valley, with stunning scenes of rice paddies, children playing, buffalo, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats and pigs scavenging for food. My shoes were so slippery, but those women were still with us, and helped me get along the path without falling (although I almost fell so many times). We stopped to rest and they mobbed us trying to get us to buy their handicrafts. We'd bought the afternoon before for inflated prices and were certainly not going to be ripped off again. Eventually they got the message that we were not buying anything else and left us alone, finally to soak up our journey.

[Me feeling a better, with one of the minority women who had followed us behind me]

That afternoon we returned to the hotel to take hot showers and rest in warm beds. That was just delightful. Kahn took us for a dinner of Vietnamese Hot Pot. It wasn't exactly what we were hoping to eat, all being rather wary of food due to the illness going around, but attempted to make a dent in the the huge plate of raw meat presented by boiling it in the soup on the burner on the table. Kahn said we must try the black chicken... Black Chicken? none of us had ever heard of it. But guess what, it tasted like chicken! We ended the night with a chocolate tart at a bakery that was rather tasty and normal for a change.

Awaking the next morning, Cat and Mat had come down with head colds and stayed in bed. Claire, Sam and I went on another trek to Cat Cat village - this trek had paved paths the whole way, and it wasn't raining. Word had got round all the hundreds of women trying to peddle their crafts that we weren't in the habit of buying now, so it was some relief not having them following us. We walked to the bottom of the valley, and Sam became very ill. He got a ride on the back of a motor bike back up the hill to the hotel.

Claire and I got back to the hotel about 20mins later, and we decided to change our plans to return to Hanoi via the night train that night. We postponed our train journey, and the Ha Long Bay tour we were supposed to join the next morning by a day. Just as well we did because by 4pm Mat had also come down with the illness. Now Claire and I were mostly fine, the two men were in bed, and Cat is the last man standing so to speak, with only a head cold.

Sapa

[Cat with some medicine - a bottle filled with snakes and scorpions]

With the men in bed, Claire, Cat and I wandered around the town of Sapa. It could almost be a mountain village in Europe, except for the minority women on the street trying to sell you handicrafts. We became experts at ignoring them - no eye contact and turning your head the other way gets them leaving you alone pretty quick smart. We saw street vendors selling every kind of meat on sticks - pork, chicken, baby bird and even black chicken again on sticks, with eggs roasting on their charcoal fires. We saw bags and bags of traditional medicine with bizarre ingredients like starfish, lizards and snakes. There were markets filled with local handicrafts and silver from Thailand and pashminas from India. And there were the smells - every few seconds a new smell would waft past your nose, ranging from mildly odd to down right disgusting. We've decided that Vietnam in a plain stinky country really. Cat and Mat are masking the smell with tiger balm on their necks, which is a bloody good idea really. I'm digging into my pot of vicks.

Next

[Cat and me enjoying being dry and warm with espressos]

It's raining again outside. It is so damp and cold in Sapa, I've borrowed Claire's thermal because I'm chilled to the bone. They're not big on heating the buildings here. I keep expecting to walk into a restaurant and being all cosy and warm, but it just isn't. We're spending the day here and taking the night train back to Hanoi, arriving at 5am, and beginning our tour of Ha Long Bay at 8am. Hopefully the men are improving today, and like me their sickness only lasts 24hours. They say in the lonely planet that 20 to 50% of travellers to Vietnam get sick within 2 weeks of their stay. So far we're at 80%.

After a night on a luxury junk (an oxymoron? we'll soon find out), we're back to Hanoi for a night, and then off to Hoi An. We'll relax there, get some clothes made, check out some ruins, go to the beach, lounge by the pool, before heading on our next Vietnamese adventure.

a return to writing

2009-02-02T13:04:00.003+02:00

Writing just happened tonight. The wind outside must be blowing the cobwebs out of my head after I've spent so long just talking to my head and not through my fingers to the outside world.

Most of this blog is filled with travel stories, because I used to do a lot of travelling and I wanted to remember it all, forever more. But I've been stationary for a while now. I have a permanent job, a mortgage, and a circle of friends. I'm happy where I am. But I've also decided that I need to do more with my life.

I'm going to give this writing a go, and I'll start with a poem. Written tonight. I don't expect you to like it.

Today I woke up to the music of parrots
Through my open windows
It was a warm night
When I dreamed of people I once knew
And encountered ones I see every day
The meetings were fleeting
Like the gale rustling leaves
All these hearts and minds intersecting with mine
I woke feeling lonely
It was me and the parrots
And the people in my head
Starting a new day.

Don't worry, luckily I don't rate my poetry, so it's unlikely that you'll see any more of that. I just had to start with something.

Fiji adventures

2008-08-19T10:54:00.008+03:00

Mum, Dad and I headed to Fiji for Cat and Mat's wedding, and went in search for my great-great grandfather's grave on the way there.

Levuka town

Levuka is the place to go to see the real Fiji. It used to be the major trading port for all the pacific in the 1800’s. Now it’s more of a ghost town. Most of the shops along the formerly thriving sea front are boarded over. A few small stores survive, along with a couple of food markets and ‘amusement’ centres (i.e. pool tables). And a few restaurants support the small tourist population. The town survives due to the Tuna canning factory, which employs most of the locals.

We really enjoyed walking down the main street. Everyone is so friendly, and if you feel friendly, greet everyone with ‘Bula’ as you walk around, and you are sure to be met with a big smile and ‘bula’ in return. There are lots of rustic colonial buildings to see, and heaps of schools and churches.

The little Levuka museum is worth a visit, even if it only takes you 20mins to read everything in it.

We spent a day walking around the village, and I think that was enough. There are quite a few tours you can do that show you more of the town and its history, and we all thought they would be great to do if we went back again. You could easily spend 4 days in Levuka, and by the end of that time you’ll be feeling like it’s 1900 again.

Ovalau divesports can organise your accommodation, transfers and tours, and are a great source of info on Levuka and the surrounding islands. It is run by a German couple that have lived in the area for 20 years – Andrea and Nobi.

The Royal Hotel

We stayed at the Royal, which is certainly the place to stay if you want to feel like you’re living in colonial times. It’s the oldest hotel in Fiji, and is still decorated like it’s the early 19^th century. My single room had a single four-poster bed had a mosquito net, which did a good job in keeping out the mozzies. I opened the window to look straight out onto the ocean, and there was a table and a few chairs in the sitting room. It came with a toilet and shower, although the hot water wasn’t too plentiful.

Downstairs there’s a series of sitting rooms that looked like time stopped 100 years ago, a large pool table, a bar, computer room (with fast internet, $6 an hour), the breakfast room - $3 for toast and nice plunger coffee (with 6 flavours!), and ghost-like staff who are almost impossible to find. I felt like I was in an Agatha Christie novel at the Royal – all that was missing was a murder. I heard that the nicest place to stay is the Levuka Homestay, run by a couple from Perth in Australia. There also a new place opened up that has self contained apartments, and looked fabulously clean and new from the street. Apparently the Ovalau resort is very tired these days.

The graveyard

The reason we went to Levuka was to discover a piece of family history. My great-great grandfather, from England, was the captain of a schooner that traded around the pacific islands, and was based in Levuka in the late 1800’s. He married Henrietta, a nurse who had moved to Levuka from Sydney as a nurse for a family. They had a baby girl, Alice, my great-grandmother, and when she was only a few weeks old the captain died of a heart attack. He was buried in Levuka in 1897.

My mum’s cousins had come and seen his grave over 30 years ago, and we thought we’d try and do the same. We talked to some helpful people at the library and the national records, and they suggested we go to the graveyard a bit south of the town where all the Europeans are buried. We got in a taxi, and the driver took us about 5mins down the road to a cemetery built on a hill overlooking the sea. He pointed us towards the steep part, where the Europeans are buried, and said that a few weeks ago he’d brought some people here to look for a grave and they searched for hours without finding it. The three of us trekked up the hill and spread out in search for the grave. 15mins later we were ready to give up – many of the grave stones were toppled or the engraving worn away, and there were hundreds too look at. We’ll do some more research, we’ll try and call the cousins, we said. I started heading down the hill, and yelled out ‘I’ve found it!’. There it was, all 111years old – a stone brought from Sydney lying on a concrete grave. The lettering was in bronze or something similar, and was still very easy to read. It was quite incredible to discover that a romantic story about a great-great grandfather suddenly became much more real.

Levuka’s restaurants

Well the Royal hotel serves breakfast all day, it’s cheap, a little slow, but thick with atmosphere. You can get eggs, bacon, fruit and plunger coffee.

The Levuka pizza restaurant, opposite the wharf and tourist info centre, is the best place to eat. Main meals cost around $7 and are very tasty. The staff are excellent. You can get cheap wine by the glass, and ice-cold Fiji bitter.

Whale’s tale is tasty, in a good location on the main street, and mains cost around $10. You can even get bottles of decent wine!

Epi’s tour

Epi’s tour was fantastic. Epi is an incredible storyteller, and told us the history of Fijians and his village while sitting on the veranda of his house in Lovoni. We then had a delicious lunch made by people in the village that was made completely from local produce (and a small can of tuna). Epi took us for a wander around the village then, showing us plants that can be used as medicine, food, tea, and even to tell you where people have been. We visited the chief’s house, and he left a gift for him on behalf of us, which he organised. It was a real insight into how villagers live in Fiji.

Leleuvia

After two nights in Levuka, we went to Leleuvia island on an open topped boat. It takes about 45mins through very calm water around the reefs to the small island with white sandy beaches. It’s a family run island resort, and the staff are very friendly. Our bures are basic – bed with mosquito net, a small table, a single light bulb, and small windows that look out on the nearby ocean. There are new shared facilities that are nice and kept clean. The showers a cold, although there are solar shower bags that you can fill up and put in the sun. The food was tasty and well presented. We found that it was enough food, but big men might be a bit hungry. Beer is available at the bar. On our last night there was a kava party. The boys from the family (who entertained with singing and guitars with dinner each evening) did some extra singing and served up kava in the traditional way.

We did 2 days of diving from Leleuvia with Nobi from Ovalau watersports. He has a small dive shop set up on the island. He was a great instructor, and took us to some sites with very pretty coral formations, sharks and lots of baby fish. You wont see many large fish, sea urchins or sea cucumbers though – everything that’s edible is taken by locals and sold to Asian markets apparently. Nice, easy diving, highly recommended. $330/person for 2 days of diving, with 2 dives each day.

Leleuvia was very quiet – there were only us and another couple staying the whole time we were there. It is quite popular as a weekend spot with people from Suva though, and a recent art exhibition on the island saw 40 or 50 people staying there. A couple we chatted with on the island had just spent a few days at Caqalai, and they said that Leleuvia was in much better condition, much nicer and better food than Caqalai, although Caqalai was busier, probably due to the better write up it has in the Lonely Planet (apparently the lonely planet writer didn’t go to either of the islands though!).

It takes about 20mins to walk around the sandy beach on the island. There’s some good snorkelling off the beach, and you can see some nice soft coral there. We saw a sea snake coiled up in the sun too, although we hear that no one has ever been bitten on the island. You can also walk out on the mud flats at load tide for a few kilometres, and see lots of starfish and little moral eels in the pools. There’s a volleyball court and sea kayaks for use too whenever you feel energetic.

Overall Leleuvia was a fabulous place to get away from everything. It is a beautiful, peaceful island where you can easily pass the day reading on a sun lounge by the ocean, snorkelling and searching for sea shells on the shore. 3 nights was enough for us.

We left Leleuvia on another small boat to Wandalice landing. We travelled across a calm ocean and then up the Wandalice river, taking about 1.5hours in total. We got to the landing ( a concrete block by the bridge) and Joe from Leleuvia waited the 5mins until the local bus came to take us to Suva. The bus ride took about 1.5hours, and the bus was very comfortable, with some bollywood/R&B/rap music blaring to accompany us there.

Suva

We spent an afternoon and evening in Suva – went to museum, which was really interesting. Walking around seemed very safe. Lots of people on the streets, and they certainly aren’t as friendly as on the islands, but it’s ok to spend a few hours wandering around. We ate at the Old Mill cottage for lunch, and it was super tasty Fijian food. For dinner we went to JJ's on the Park, where we had some tasty, more up market food. Great service, not the greatest atmosphere. Seems they allow smoking in restaurants still in Fiji.

Trip plan

Nadi – Suva (1 night) – Levuka (2 nights) – Leleuvia (3 nights) – Suva (1 night) – Shangri-la (Yanuca) (2 nights) – Nadi

See all out photos here:

Fiji

Transport

Taxis

Nadi to Suva F$180, about 4 hours, depending on the weather.
Suva to Nausori $30, about 30 mins.
Levuka airport (bureta) to Levuka town $10 each, 45mins. Mini van taxis wait at the airport to pick you up and take you to Levuka. The road is unsealed, so prepare yourself for a bumpy ride! You pass through a few small villages on the way.
Yanuca (Shangri-la) to Nadi - $70, 45mins.

Flights

Nausori (Suva) to Levuka, about $69, 15mins
Excellent flight, much less painful than 5 hours on a boat!

Boats

Levuka to Leleuvia - $30 each, 45mins
Leleuvia to Wandalice landing - $30 each, 75mins

Buses

Local bus Wandalice to Suva – about $3.50
Air-conditioned sunbus Suva to Yanuca (Shangri-la) – about $15 each, 3.5 hours

Accommodation

Peninsula hotel, Suva
$130/night/3 adults
Very tired hotel, good location though. Beds very soft. TV, coffee making facilities, hot shower, small pool. Lots of staff around, not doing a whole lot.

Holiday Inn, Suva
$249/night/3 adults
This was a bit of luxury after being on an island with no hot water! Attentive staff, all the modern comforts, coffee! NZ vs Australia rugby was on the night we were there, and a huge crowd came to the hotel to watch it on their projector screens. Fantastic location.

The Royal Hotel, Levuka
About $28/night single, $42/night double
This place is the real deal.

Leleuvia island resort
$50 per night per person in a private bure, shared facilities, including all meals.

Back home after my NZ trip

2007-04-20T03:15:00.000+03:00

Well I'm back at work today - feels like I've been away for ages.. Check out my photos from the trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/jo.savill/NewZealand

NZ was fantastic - such a spectacular country. The crazy adventure sports in Queenstown were definately a highlight - rafting, the canyon swing, mountain biking... We didn't end up going kayaking in the Doubtful Sound unfortunately due to bad weather. We spent a day in the very sleepy town on Te Anau and then went back to Queenstown the next day, where we thought horse riding in a blizzard would be a good idea. Beautiful countryside, but it was bloody cold on that horse I can tell you. Once we got back to the hostel we jumped in the very hot spa and stayed there for a few hours to defrost, talking to random backpackers.

After Queenstown we spent 7 hours on a bus to the town of Franz Joseph on the west coast. It is very rugged on the west coast, with grey raging oceans, driftwood on beaches and lots of rain. Luckily we didn't see any rain, and instead climbed many ice steps on the Franz Joseph glacier in the sunshine. The glacier was incredible, so much ice. We even heard it groaning as it moved a few times. A once in a life time exprience.

Another highlight was catching the Tranz-Alpine train from Greymouth on the west coast to Christchurch in the east. A very scenic trip, and I prefer trains to buses because you can drink a bottle of wine on them!

Our last night was spent in a gaol cell in Christchurch - well in a gaol that was changed into a backpackers hostel. It was this great white cavernous building, and we slept in a real cell! Kind of spooky... There are a few picks on the photo collection.

Now I'm back in Canberra and am adjusting to being here with Chris gone. I'm just going to have a lot more time on my hands I think. I am playing mixed netball on Wednesdays, which should be fun! Hopefully the boys aren't too rough...

NZ south island adventure

2007-04-20T03:12:00.000+03:00

I'm having a great time in New Zealand. It is so beautiful here, and so completely different to Australia... It reminds me a lot of Scotland and the lake district.

First the pictures - well that's me jumping off at 109m freefall canyon swing here in Queenstown. Oh my i have never been so scared. I totally freaked out initially when I looked down to see nothing between me and the canyon below, i even screamed and said i just wouldn't do it. But somehow I managed to calm myself down, and in a moment of madness walked over the edge to the few seconds of freefall before the swing gently caught me and i swung around with the beautiful blue water of the shot over river below. It was such an incredible feeling, and what and adrenaline rush! Totally nuts. Even now 8 hours after I'm still tingling inside.

Just because doing one adventure crazy thing in Queenstown isn't enough, yesterday Claire and I went rafting down a gorgeous river with 4 rapids in it. Had a great time and even swam in the 5 degree water!

This afternoon we went downhill mountain biking, which was great fun. I did the initial easy track, the shotover road, and then the next time I did the hard track, which I really enjoyed surprisingly! It was great fun, pretty challenging, but I found looking well ahead and not at the big rock I was going over or the steep hill i was racing down really helped with the fear of what I was doing!

Christchurch was a lovely city - so very English, i mean more English that england in some ways! We went punting on the river Avon, and drank some tasty beer at Dux de Lux. A nice touristy day.

The day after saw us on a 10 hour bus via the spectacular Mt Cook and some amazing aqua lakes. Stunning scenery the whole way.

Queenstown has been great fun. I'm really enjoying travelling with Claire, its all going fantasticly.

Tomorrow we are off to Milford Sound, and then onto Doubtful Sound, where we are going on a 2 days kayaking trip - can't wait.

Photos from Kosciusko

2007-02-24T05:08:00.001+02:00

Hi All,

My parents came to visit me in Canberra. We went up to the snowy mountains for the weekend (no snow around at the moment though of course!). It was really pretty up there, and we did the big walk up the highest mountain in Australia - Mt Kosciusko. It was quite easy really. We caught the chairlift up, then did the 5hours return walk on a nice path. We saw a snake on the way too! And Polish people at the top, randomly dressed in polish national dress.. turns out the guy who first climbed the mountain was Polish and it was his birthday.

Anyway, check out some photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jo.savill there are also photos from Sydney and christmas.

Hoep you are doing well.

Christmas on the Gold Coast

2007-01-04T07:27:00.000+02:00

Gold Coast Christmas 2006

Had a great Christmas at home on the Gold Coast. It is so lovely up there. I wish Canberra was a bit closer to it!

My housewarming party: Doctors and Nurses

2006-12-18T03:15:00.000+02:00

Doctors and Nurses house party

Things are going well in Canberra - I'm enjoying being back in this cruisy city. Loving the sunshine. I'm heading home for christmas on Friday for 9 days which will be awesome. Can't wait to go to the beach and see all my family again.

Canberra update

2006-10-28T00:53:00.000+02:00

I was just thinking that since returning from overseas I haven't told all my mates what I'm up to. It seems that ordinary life has taken over, and things aren't as exciting as they were but a month ago when I was travelling Europe.

Well things are good, but in different ways of course.

It took me about 3 weeks to get used to being back in Australia after 18months away. I had culture shock in the country I'm from - a very odd feeling. I was surprised by how friendly shop assistants were to me, how fresh the air is, how the sun here burns you so quickly, and how much things cost (I'd totally forgotten what your Aussie dollar gets you). It was fabulous to see family and friends again. Soon my overseas travels went from feeling like a very long dream I'd had to a distant memory. Now I'm just so happy to have travelled, and to have such great memories and have met such awesome people. It sustains me through the dull bits.

I've almost finished my first week of work! I'm a communications officer, in case I haven't mentioned that you yet. I like it so far - really nice people, interesting work happening around me (don't have much to do as yet though), and I have my own rather large office! The location is lovely too - out at Gungahlin. It is a collection of buildings surrounded by paddocks and bushland a little bit out of town.

I just found somewhere to live - with another girl in Dickson, in a nice apartment with all the mod cons, including my own ensuite.. Bring on the luxury living. I just have to walk down my stairs to choose from heaps of yummy restaurants in Canberra's 'china town' (I use the term china town loosely as its the smallest china town I've ever seen!). I move in there on the 11th, and till then I'm staying with Chris in the south of Canberra.

Last weekend I went to Canberra's version of Oktoberfest and drank lots of beer, chatted to lots of people, watched some German folk dancing and ate pork. All good, healthy, excessive drinking type fun. Reminded me of Europe in many ways... :)

Hola amigos!

2006-09-09T19:59:00.000+03:00

I´m in Cordoba right now and it is a good 40 degrees outside... well its 35 degrees now that its 6pm. So hot! But at least it is quite dry. Spain is definitely the hottest part of the trip so far.

I had a great time in Barcelona. Nita was stayed longer in Italy so I was on my own there. But not for long really, because after just a morning by myself I met a great bunch of people who I spent time with over the next 5 days. The girl sleeping beneath me on the bunk ended up becoming my good mate and we travelled to Madrid and then onto Seville together as well. Shilly has now gone onto Lagos. It was great meeting some more cool people, and I found travelling on my own quite easy.

Barcelona is an amazing city - there is so much to do there and the night life is just huge! I didn´t get home before 4am 4 nights in a row. As a consequence by the time I got to Madrid I was coming down with a bad cold.... Which I still have now - runny nose, cough and all that. Nita met me in Madrid just fine. I hate being sick on holidays, so I´ve been trying to push through, by going on tapas tours the couple of nights in Seville which have been awesome fun. The tapas was so amazing!

Some highlights have been:

- everything Gaudi in Barcelona. The buildings he created are like something out of a fantasy book, they are just incredible. I loved how much of his work was inspired by nature.

- the Prado in Madrid had an excellent collection of art and an amazing Picasso exhibition. I was so impressed. Madrid was a nice big city, with great food and parks to wander through.

- the Alcazar in Seville was just beautiful. It was a moorish palace that was turned into a christian palace, and had amazing tiling decorations on the walls and beautiful gardens complete with peacocks.

- The mesquita in Cordoba is very beautiful, and I would say the most gorgeous church I´ve been to. It used to be a mosque and was turned into a chruch in the 1400´s. good on them for not destroying something so beautiful. It is filled with amazing archways.

- speaking spanish.. I am so glad I know some spanish because you really need to use it here in Spain! I would say out of all the countries I´ve been to on my trip Spain is the place where it is most useful to know some of the language. I´m great on menus and directions (thanks Jesùs!). I really want to learn more of the language now, it is fun to speak it.

- and of course the major highlight has been the people that I´ve met along the way, there are just so many awesome people that I´ve met on my trip now. The great thing about email is how easy it is to keep in touch with people from all over the world. Even after travelling with someone for a few days you get to know them so well, it can be hard to say goodbye.

I wish I could add some photos to this email but alas, no way of connecting my camera.

Next stop is Granada and then I´m off to London and then home! It is really hard to believe that I will be sitting at home on the Gold Coast in 11 days... It is very hard to imagine right now, here in very hot Cordoba, surrounded by people drinking sangria and cervercas and eating tapas....

I´m off for a siesta....

Istanbul

2006-08-15T18:24:00.000+03:00

We are having a great time in Istanbul - it is a fantastic place, with lots of stuff to do and see. Hyrum was ill for a few days when we got here, poor guy with food poisoning or something, but he's doing much better now. His mate Rustin arrives tonight, so we are a group of 5 for the new few weeks.

Yesterday we went on a cruise up the Bosphorous and the day before we took a ferry to Asia - well the asian side of Istanbul.

People haggle with you here to buy things almost all the time but it is not that bad, it is actually quite funny!

Its super hot here though, but nothing that I can't deal with really. The airconditioning in this computer place is fantastic.

Our hostel has a roof top bar which overlooks the water and the Blue Mosque. Absolutely stunning, and very laid back. I've been eating a lot of Kebaps and baklava. Food is really good here!

Yesterday I went to the Grand Bazaar with Canadian Dan (the second canadian Dan of the trip) and had fun buying jewelry and backgammon boards for his friends. I also did some jewlery purchasing myself. It is amazing how cheap things can get when you walk away from them..

There a mosques scattered everywhere over this vast city, and along with the call to prayer 5 times a day I know I'm not really in europe anymore. People are very friendly here, even when they are not trying to sell you something (which is most of the time). Great place to visit all in all.

On the 17th we are flying to Izmir, then going to Kusadasi, a beachside town for a night where our hostel has a pool! Can't wait for a swim, that is one thing istanbul is lacking right now. Then we catch a ferry to the greek island of Samos, and then onto Mykonos. We might go to another island around there and then we head to athens on the 24th, I have my job interview on the 25th (you can really see me researching sustainable ecosystems on a greek island now can't you....) and then off to italy on the 26th/27th where we stay with Hyrum in Naples for a few days. Once we leave turkey things are going to get much more expensive than eastern europe and istanbul... I'm sure we'll be right.

Transylvania

2006-08-11T00:12:00.000+03:00

We had a great day today on a tour of Transylvania. it was really beautiful up there in the forest covered mountains. The castles we visited were very fairytale like.

First stop was the Palais castle, which is quite a modern one really

Transylvannia was awesome today. Beautiful, very atmospheric and fairytale. I can understand the mystic about it, although the whole dracula thing is just a myth created by someone who'd never been here.

We never made it to dracula's tomb (well, Vlad's tomb). It is much more difficult to get around Bucharest than you would think. It is so not set up for tourists yet - there are no signs, people try to help but don't really know how to... Its generally a pretty crazy city, and it reminds me of a latin american city. There are parallels too - Romanian is a romance language (latin) and like some latin american countries they are just emerging from a hard core dictatorship.

The day before yesterday we walked around Bucharest to see some of the sites. Not as easy as you might think! We went to the people's palace, which is the second largest administrative building in the world, the brain child of the dictator Ceausescu , a megolmaniac to say the least. From 1984 to 1989 all the resources in romania went to building this thing, while most people were queuing for 20 hours to buy meat and had no running water. So walking around this enormous building encrusted in marble kind of gave you the creeps. The palace is at the end of a 'copy' of the Champs Elysee in Paris - only it is 1m wider and 15m longer... the dictator guy thought he was tops to say the least.

We are catching a 18 hour train to Istanbul today - we are skipping bulgaria so that we can spend some more time in Turkey. We have heard lots of warnings for all the scams when travelling in Istanbul so we feel prepared. Good there are 4 of us too.

draculas castle

2006-08-10T10:05:00.000+03:00

At dracula's castle in Transylvannia... Hyrum, me and Ken eating black bullets, a Newcastle mint.

Romania, land of Dracula

2006-08-08T23:52:00.000+03:00

I'm in Bucharest now, after a brilliant but speedy trip through the Czech republic, Vienna and Budapest.

We have met up with Hyrum now, our friend from Hawaii who is living in Naples. So we have a group of 4 for the next week until we meet Hyrum's mate Rustin in Istanbul. Ken, my mate from Newcastle met us in Budapest.

Was stressing out a bit today when I realised that it is actually quite far from Istanbul to Greece... we are trying to sort that out now so I can figure out where I will be doing my interview from!.

We had a really nice sleeper train from Budapest to Bucharest... 1st class I believe, with even a sink in the room. Played monopoly last night, very fun. Met a social anthropologist from Cambridge, so very random...

We had a great time in Budapest. It was nice hanging with our gang of friends that we had made. They have all moved onto Croatia now. Most sad. There is a pic of some of them - when we were in the train and then our last dinner in Budapest before the farewell.

The snail pic refers to our 4 hour mission to find a park in Budapest where they put all the communist propaganda statues after regime ended. We never found it that day, despite following a guy in khaki and flip flops blindly and asking loads of people for directions. the next day we caught the direct bus there. much, much easier!

Bucharest is an interesting place. Certainly a lot poorer than the other cities we have visited so far. I was wondering today whether the prevalence of sex shops, casinos, currency changers, dodgy Internet places and fancy clothes stores are a consequence of the relatively recent move from a hard core socialist government to a democratic society. Things are cheap here though, or they might be, if I can ever manage to sort out the currency conversions (they have new and old Lei, one has 4 extra zeros, and the other doesn't.... I'm so very confused!!!).

Had a massage yesterday at the baths in budapest. Was sooooo awesome. Perhaps I\'m feeling too relaxed/scattered right now or something.

Must get to sleep, as it is almost 2am, and everyone else has bunked down for the night.

Krakow and Prague

2006-07-30T23:58:00.000+03:00

We spent our 3 nights in a very cool hostel called the Stranger, and have met lots of cool people. Our first day here we went on a cycling tour around Krakow, and saw the Jewish ghetto and Oscar Schindler's factory. It was a really interesting tour and gave us a good understanding of what has happened there.

The next day a big group of us went to an amazing lake about 20mins about that was made when they filled in an abandoned quarry. It was quite spectacular. And very beautiful. It was great having a swim in the cool water. We then picnicked on the cliff edge eating polish sausage sandwiches. Yummo.

We've been hanging out with other aussies, brits, irish, american and welsh people, loads of fun. The partying in Krakow has been loads of fun. And things are so cheap here! Yesterday we've eaten some amazing food at Babushka's kitchen - a cute eatery underneath a university, where they serve up amazing polish food. We ate till we could eat no more for about 4euro! Amazing. I tried to eat as much polish food as possible - perogi, pork chops, cabbage rolls, beetroot soup, bascrz, goulash.... so very good, but incredibly filling as well!

While In Krakow we took a trip out to Auschwitz. Words cannot describe how intense it was to be there. It still makes me feel sick in the stomach to think of it. Very moving. I'm really glad we went though.

On our last day in Krakow we went to the salt mines, which are a world heritage site. They are all man made, and we went down loads of steps to end up 136m underground. We went through numerous chambers where miners had carved amazing sculptures out of the rock salt down there. The extent of the caves were incredible. We also saw the largest underground chapel in the world (or something like that) which was very impressive. The acoustics are supposed to be awesome down there for concerts. But the best thing about the salt mines was that it was 14degrees down there, which was a gorgeous change from the relentless 30 degree temperatures we've been having.

Last night we took the overnight train to Krakow, arriving here at 7 in the morning, eventually found a tram, walked up a hill till our calves burned to our hostel just for tonight - the Clown and Bard. We've met a couple of irish guys we met in Krakow, and we're all heading to Czesky Krumlov tomorrow, to chill out and float down a river. Seems like there are loads of Irish and Canadians travelling around, and Aussies of course, but not that many English and no scottish so far.

Today we wondered around Prague, drank some fabulous beer- Pilsner Urquell - and are heading out for even more Czech food tonight at a restaurant that my family discovered where we were here in May - Kolkovna.

Our one night in Berlin (before hitting krakow) was awesome. We went to the Jewish museum, mainly for the architecture and we were not disappointed - it was an amazing building, and made more of an impression on us than the exhibits. That night (after randomly bumping into a girl I met in Scotland at easter on the haggis tour at our hostel), we went back to the squatter's artists residence and bar we went to last time we were there in January and managed to crash a pub crawl. Was lots of fun chatting to random people. I think that really is the best thing about travelling, the people that you meet. And perhaps the amazing food!

Zaans Sachans and Den Bosch

2006-07-22T10:24:00.000+03:00

Today we went to Zaans Sachans - a little old-style dutch village (somewhat touristy, but the dutch are so laid back that it didn't really matter). It rained a bit, which was actally something of a relief after the unusually hot weather they have been having here. Off for some drinks tonight in Den Bosch.

First stop Paris

2006-07-21T10:10:00.000+03:00

I was quite sad leaving Newcastle on the train on Sunday. It had really become my home, after living there for over a year. My last few days there were lovely too - sunny weather, great farewell drinks, seeing the toon play at St James' Park, an evening trip to druries beach (not sure of spelling there) and quiet drinks by the quayside at the Baltic bar watching the sun disappear behind the old buildings.

I spent a nice Sunday night in hot London staying with Katie (thanks Katie and Daf!). We went to Anna Doughtey's (from college days) place for dinner, which was so lovely (thanks Anna!). I must admit I was feeling a bit of culture shock being around a bunch of Aussies after hanging out with Geordies and English people for so long.

I flew in to a stinking hot Paris on Monday. I managed to negotiate the subway system to get the train to the hotel with 3 changes (which I couldn't have done without the handy metro map that Bolt had given me on my last visit), to meet up with Nita and Erwann (Nita's Dutch friend). We went out that evening to Champs Elysee and we lay on the grass next to the Eiffel tower watching the sky change colour as it set. It was a great way to start our Paris adventure.

We began the next day with a trip to the Cemetery Pere Lachaise. It was very leafy, and the mausoleums were quite spectacular, there were so many! We went to Jim Morrison's grave, and kind of wondered why it was so popular.. Perhaps it is the interesting surroundings. After walking up a slight hill we had to sit down to recover (it really is very hot, and living in Newcastle has not prepared me for the heat at all! Nita is feeling the same way, having just left Glasgow. Hopefully we will acclimatise soon because it wont be getting any cooler...)

We descended to the sniffling metro system and arrived at the Luxembourg garden with some sandwich stuff to join the masses of Parisians sitting in the shade enjoying the summer. It was lovely just lying there enjoying the weather. Parisians really know how to do the outside thing. England hasn't mastered it, for obvious weather reasons I presume.

Highlights from the nest few days include having a drink at Le Deux Magots (where the philosophers Sartre and de Beauvoir sat), a picnic at the Sacre Cour (more sunsets!), walking undergound through the macabre Catacombs, Musee d'Orsay (gotta love Renoir and Rodin), tucking into Lebanese food near our hotel, breakfasting on croissants and pain au chocolats, the Pompadieu centre (very interesting art work), Notre Dame (I don't know, I think the York Minster and Durham Cathedral are just as good, although the Vatican probably wins in terms of spectacularness), Le Sorbonne and the Pantheon.

Getting around Paris was quite easy considering Erwann speaks fluent French, having been brought up by French parents in Holland, and my mastering of the metro system :) My French still doesn't get past the 'Bonjour" and "merci" unfortunately, although sometimes I think I understand more than I realise because of my experience in Montreal 5 years ago.

Paris is such a beautiful city, there is some kind of magic about it - the buildings, the white and silver rooftops, the grand scale of the avenues, the leafy tree-lined streets, the spacious parks filled with people enjoying them... I still think it is the most beautiful city I've ever seen. I was just a little sad that Chris wasn't there to enjoy it with me. Some day soon perhaps.

Last night we drove out of Paris in Erwann's car, through Lille, Belgium, and now we are in Den Bosch, Holland at Erwann's very nice apartment. We are in Holland till Monday when we will make our way to Krakow on the train, and begin our Eastern European leg of the trip. I was quite sad leaving Newcastle on the train on Sunday. It had really become my home, after living there for over a year. My last few days there were lovely too - sunny weather, great farewell drinks, seeing the toon play at St James' Park, an evening trip to druries beach (not sure of spelling there) and quiet drinks by the quayside at the Baltic bar watching the sun disappear behind the old buildings.

I spent a nice Sunday night in hot London staying with Katie (thanks Katie and Daf!). We went to Anna Doughtey's (from college days) place for dinner, which was so lovely (thanks Anna!). I must admit I was feeling a bit of culture shock being around a bunch of Aussies after hanging out with Geordies and English people for so long.

I flew in to a stinking hot Paris on Monday. I managed to negotiate the subway system to get the train to the hotel with 3 changes (which I couldn't have done without the handy metro map that Bolt had given me on my last visit), to meet up with Nita and Erwann (Nita's Dutch friend). We went out that evening to Champs Elysee and we lay on the grass next to the Eiffel tower watching the sky change colour as it set. It was a great way to start our Paris adventure.

We began the next day with a trip to the Cemetery Pere Lachaise. It was very leafy, and the mausoleums were quite spectacular, there were so many! We went to Jim Morrison's grave, and kind of wondered why it was so popular.. Perhaps it is the interesting surroundings. After walking up a slight hill we had to sit down to recover (it really is very hot, and living in Newcastle has not prepared me for the heat at all! Nita is feeling the same way, having just left Glasgow. Hopefully we will acclimatise soon because it wont be getting any cooler...)

We descended to the sniffling metro system and arrived at the Luxembourg garden with some sandwich stuff to join the masses of Parisians sitting in the shade enjoying the summer. It was lovely just lying there enjoying the weather. Parisians really know how to do the outside thing. England hasn't mastered it, for obvious weather reasons I presume.

Highlights from the nest few days include having a drink at Le Deux Magots (where the philosophers Sartre and de Beauvoir sat), a picnic at the Sacre Cour (more sunsets!), walking undergound through the macabre Catacombs, Musee d'Orsay (gotta love Renoir and Rodin), tucking into Lebanese food near our hotel, breakfasting on croissants and pain au chocolats, the Pompadieu centre (very interesting art work), Notre Dame (I don't know, I think the York Minster and Durham Cathedral are just as good, although the Vatican probably wins in terms of spectacularness), Le Sorbonne and the Pantheon.

Getting around Paris was quite easy considering Erwann speaks fluent French, having been brought up by French parents in Holland, and my mastering of the metro system :) My French still doesn't get past the 'Bonjour" and "merci" unfortunately, although sometimes I think I understand more than I realise because of my experience in Montreal 5 years ago.

Paris is such a beautiful city, there is some kind of magic about it - the buildings, the white and silver rooftops, the grand scale of the avenues, the leafy tree-lined streets, the spacious parks filled with people enjoying them... I still think it is the most beautiful city I've ever seen. I was just a little sad that Chris wasn't there to enjoy it with me. Some day soon perhaps.

Last night we drove out of Paris in Erwann's car, through Lille, Belgium, and now we are in Den Bosch, Holland at Erwann's very nice apartment. We are in Holland till Monday when we will make our way to Krakow on the train, and begin our Eastern European leg of the trip.

Farwell Drinks

2006-07-14T12:17:00.000+03:00

I had my farewell drinks last night, which went really well, and now I have a very sore head on my last day of work! It was so nice to see everyone there, I can't believe I have made so many friends while here, there must have been 30 people at one stage. Friends from work, netball and old housemates. We went to Camp David, a bar that has an outdoor patio, 2 for 1 drinks and free burgers, so it was a really nice atmosphere too.

I hate saying good bye to people. It doesn't seem real, like I know I must see these people again, I'm not going away forever or to another planet. But there is always the possibility that I may not see them again... I'm going to really miss my friends here. It'll sink in in about a month when I'm in Europe and I'll suddenly realise I'm not living in Newcastle anymore. I'm moving on once again.... I should be used to it by now, this is my 5th home since I left the Gold Coast to go to Uni... But people always mean so much, that is what never changes, and it always hurts to go away.

I think I'll stop trying to write silly things because I'm not coherent enough this morning after my 5 hours sleep and drinking escapades.

I left my sunnies on the table and they were discovered by my mates, hence the pics :)

cruise on the Tyne

2006-07-12T12:35:00.000+03:00

On Sunday Ken, Porter (Ken's mate) and Claire (from netball) went on a cruise up the Tyne river - started out at South Sheilds at the north sea and wound our way up the river to the Quayside, and then went all the way back again. It was so awesome, like being on holidays in your own city. I saw a side of newcastle I hadn't really seen before, like the old ship yards that are falling down, and the shipping terminals, and all these places along the way. The very cool part was when we went under the Millenium bridge, which is a tilting bridge, the first of its kind in the world. I'd never seen it open before, and we got to go underneath it! Pics attached.

It was all very English though, nothing spectacular about the ferry and everyone was in wet weather gear as it looked like rain (although we missed it luckily!), and we ate ham sandwiches for 90p and had a cup of tea. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday.

I'm busy preparing to leave Newcastle at the moment. Farewell drinks are organised for Thursday night, which should be good fun! I'm leaving on Sunday for London, then off to Paris on Monday to begin 2 months in Europe. I'm arriving back into Brisbane on September 20.

It is amazing how quickly time is going in the lead up to me leaving. I'm really going to miss this place, I've been here over a year now, and I've just got so used to it. I think I have made the most of my time here - going on trips away and seeing the countryside. In the end it will be the people that I will miss. Hopefully they will all be out to visit me in Oz before too long! Leaving hasn't really sunk in yet. It might hit me somewhere in Europe, when I'll realise that I have left Newcastle for good.

It's all very exciting. I've got almost too much to look forward to right now.

Farewell to Newcastle.... next stop Europe

2006-06-29T00:35:00.000+03:00

Well, its all happening now. I've resigned from work and finish there on the 14th. I move out of my house tomorrow and will be staying with my mate Ken for a few weeks, before I leave Newcastle on the 16th to go to London, and then head for Paris for the start of my Europe trip! Nita and I are meeting there and will be travelling mostly by train for 2 months.

The basic itinerary is: Paris, Holland, Krakow, Prague, Czesky Krumlov, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Istanbul, Athens, the Greek Islands, Naples and Spain. Then I'll be back to London before flying home to the Gold Coast in mid September.

So it is all very exciting! I'm going to miss my friend and work mates here in Newcastle, but I'm ready to leave and return home to some decent weather. I don't think I could handle another English winter...

A few weeks ago I went on a science communication conference in Belgium. It was very interesting, and Belgium is lovely. I've put in a few pics from the trip.

England has gone football crazy. I must say I've got quite into it all, especially with Australia doing so well! Robbed I say, and all my English friends have been very supportive and totally agree. Out side my work they have set up a big screen for the England games, so I've attached a pic. Cars are driving around with England flags attached to them (some even with 6 attached!) and every bar and pub and shop has England flags flying. Its all very intense! They really love their football here, that's for sure.

I've had Kirstie staying for the past week, which has been lovely. We were at college together at Uni and we haven't seen each other in almost 4 years. She is in between 2 trips around Europe, and is really enjoying it.

On Monday night it was my housemate Marek's Birthday, so we had a bit of dinner here at home and I managed to cook up some polish food for everyone. He hadn't had any polish food since coming to the UK over a year ago, and he said it was better than polish food (a very nice complement). It was a bit of an expience cooking food I'd only heard about, but it all turned out well and was quite tasty. There is a pic attached on the night - Marek is in the Newcastle football shirt we gave him for his birthday. He's a real Geordie now!

latest adventures

2006-06-07T02:51:00.000+03:00

Well I've been kind of busy lately. All these things I've been planning for so long are actually starting to happen. I've covered a fair bit of ground in the past month and a half considering I have been travelling on weekends, so hopefully you can make it through the email to the pics I've taken on my travels.
The South of England: Haywards Heath and Brighton
Lizzie came on her holiday to the UK for a month. I visited her down at Haywards Heath, where she was visiting the family she nannied for 2 years ago. We went to Brighton for a day and I caught up with some old friends who I met in Montreal 5 years ago, Sarah and Dana. Great to see them again. It was lovely down in the south, so different to the north of England.Lots of trees and tiny country lanes. Brighton was different again, a beachside resort town with white building lining a pebble beached ocean. The was a big pier with amusement games on it, and another one which was almost fully collapsed. Dad says he used to fish off the old pier when he was a lad. Was interesting to see some places he had grown up.
My Birthday party
I celebrated my birthday on the Saturday before the 18th with lots of friends. Lizzie was up visiting by then, and Nita came down for Glasgow, with 12 of us going out for Italian dinner and then to a nightclub. Was great fun to party with my mates in Newcastle
My actual birthday
Mum and Dad arrived on the 17th, so for my birthday we had the whole family together again after over a year. It was so great to see them again!

Prague
We all went to Prague on the 21st for 3 nights. Prague is such a beautiful city. It reminded me of Florence quite a bit, with its terracotta coloured roofs, river running through it and beautiful buildings. But Prague had more beautiful buildings and much more gorgeous bridge, wider streets, and the castle complex was quite incredible. Plus it was cheaper and had great food and beer! It was so easy to get around on the metro and trams too. I can't wait to go back there in the summer now. I can imagine it will be just perfect weather for sitting in a bar, drinking delicious Czech beer, and watching the tourists pass you by.

Pics of Prague:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2e0wkff.amz2sou7&x=1&y=i94qaa

Lizzie headed back to the States from Prague. She is now living in Vancouver for 5 months with the same family she was in Costa Rica with, nannying for the 2 kiddies.

The Lake district
First weekend in June saw me, Mum and Dad in the Lake District, which is one of the most beautiful areas of the UK. Beautiful fells (mountains) and lakes. The weather was pretty crap unfortunately but my parents still enjoyed it. We went for a few walks around lakes and fells. Just lovely. We also stopped by Hadrians Wall (the roman wall that was built across England to keep out the scary Scots) and a ruined castle - Barnard castle. If only the weather had been warmer than the 12 degrees max it would have been much more pleasant
Pics of the Lake district and the Netherlands:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2e0wkff.5pjymklr&x=0&y=-2j9hrv

Holland
I was in Holland last weekend to visit a friend who was observing the international criminal war courts there as part of his law degree. My friend Katie also flew over from London so it was a semi-reunion of college days 6 years ago. We were lucky to get some fine weather as Dave said it had been raining the whole time he'd been there until Katie and I arrived.

Amsterdam was an interesting city- I had expected the canals and clogs in the souvenir shops, but not the sleaze... there were quite a few stag parties around and it was a bit wrong. The sex industry is really in your face, girls in windows. I'd never seen anything like it, that's for sure. It was great seeing the wonky houses, so narrow and tall and leaning because of unstable foundations. I'll be going to the museums there when I return in a few months.

The Hague was a pleasant surprise. Like I didn't know there was a nice beach there! Not that you would go in the water cos it would be freezing, but it was really nice along the beach, they had some very nice restaurants and bars along there. It had a very Indonesian feel about it - reminded me a tiny bit of Bali (the weather made it a tad difficult to see the similarities).

We had a fun night out on Saturday, watching the sun set from a cosy bar on the beach with Dave, Katie and Dave's two mates in his course. They were nice guys. We all ended up at an Aussie bar singing along to songs by Pearl Jam and other random music.

The cycling tour around the Hague was lovely, very relaxing riding around the flat bike paths on a very nice bike. There was a nature reserve we rode though, then the royal forest near the summer palace, and then through the centre where we saw the UN buildings and more palaces. A very easy city, nothing spectacular, just nice. I really enjoyed the M C Escher exhibition though. It has his entire collection. Incredible art pieces, so detailed.. I wish I'd had more time to spend there.

What now...
Well Mum and Dad return from Portugal tonight, and they leave to go south to visit their friends tomorrow. It has been so lovely seeing them. I have really missed my family being over here.

Tomorrow I'm off to Belgium for 5 days for the ecsite conference (European science centres conference). Very exciting. I'm doing a presentation on the Centre for Life shop. I only found out I had to do the talk on Tuesday, so its a tad nerve racking, but I welcome the challenge.

The geordie T. rex!

2006-05-11T23:36:00.000+03:00

We have a new T. rex exhibition at work. For Alan Shearer's testimonial today they draped the 11m T. rex in an Alan Shearer shirt. So hilarious!

Puffins!

2006-04-24T01:11:00.000+03:00

Puffins taking off in the Farne Islands

On Saturday I went to the Farne Islands with Ken, Baz and Nita. We got a boat tour out to the islands which were teaming with wildlife. Puffins (cute birds, a cross between a penguin and a parrot to look at) flying like little torpedo flying penguins, grey seals lounging on rocky outcrops, and so many birds nesting on rock faces, including shags, guillemots, turns, eider ducks, and cormorants. It was great to see such amazing wildlife all around. I decided that was something that I've missed from my travels so far- lots of wildlife.

So many birds!

We went out dancing with the crew last night. Was so great! And today was spent wandering around town after dropping off Nita. I saw "The White Countess" at the movies, which was a great film, very subtle and beautiful, set in Shanghai before WWII.

Grey seals catching some sun

The Scottish Highlands

2006-04-18T01:16:00.000+03:00

Here comes another post to tell you of my travels. This time I stayed in the UK, travelling to Edinburgh to join a Haggis tour of the Scottish highlands. My friend Ken joined me for the trip, which was great. He was the token English person on a bus of Aussies and Kiwis, most of whom are living in London (no surprise there). There were lots of great people on the trip. It was kind of strange for me to be hanging out with so many Aussies! It has been so long. Ken went to Scotland and discovered more about the Aussie culture than anything else. Quite bizarre for him.

So the trip was great. We covered quite a bit of ground.On the first day we travelled to the Falls of Bruar, Aviemoor, Culloden moor, and ending up at Dornoch beach, which was a lovely white sandy beach. Also passed the church where Madonna and Guy Richie were married (I seem to have a Madonna theme on recent trips- her nightclub in Miami and now the church where she was married? Weird).

That night we stayed in Carbisdale Castle, which is apparently haunted (I was having none of that though, much too sceptical for that :). It was a gorgeous night and we saw the full moon rising, and then reflected in a calm lake. We danced to a Ceilidh (pronounced caely, traditional music) band in the castle, which was great fun, and then went to the local pub at Invershin which was decorated with deer antlers and random film memorabilia, like a helmet from braveheart and highlander and a bow from Robin hood prince of thieves. Was a very cute little pub and I sampled some scottish whisky and beer and chatted to lots of Australians, and also a few locals, who were wondering what the hell 50 Aussies were doing invading their local in the middle of no where.

The next day we saw Loch Ness, Urquhart castle, the great glen, the stunning Eilean Donan castle, and ended up on the rugged Isle of Skye. Our tour guides were 2 Scottish lads, very funny guys who kept us very entertained on the whole tour. We stopped at this river on Skye, the Sligachan River, where we were told a faerie story, that basically ended with all of us having to dunk our heads in the ice-cold snow-melt river so we would be beautiful forever. I thought why the hell not, and it was lovely and refreshing, but as to the beauty thing, I'll have to wait and see.

That night it was everyone to Saucy Mary's, the pub next to our hostel for many whiskeys and beers. Had good chats with lots of Aussies.

Some thing very unfortunate happened that night. The house next to Saucy Mary's burnt down in the night, and a person was killed in the fire. A couple of guys off our bus were witnesses, and one was being questioned the next morning when we were supposed to be leaving. The Skye police wouldn't let our bus leave for 2 and a half hours, at which time they let us leave but the guy they were questioning had to stay behind. His mate was saying how they went to the back of the house when it was on fire cause they could hear people screaming, but he couldn't breathe in the smoke so he went away, but his friend was a bit more involved. Very odd.

Well we saw some beautiful sights that day, driving through the spectacular Glen Coe and the Trossachs. We even visited a Hairy Coo! (Cow in a Scottish accent). We got back to Edinburgh to find a police car waiting for the bus to pick up the other guy who had witnessed the fire. Very suspicious.

Ken and I had some yummy Thai for dinner in Edinburgh before catching a train back to Newcastle. I was sooo tired last night. All that whiskey and bus travel caught up on me.

Forgot to mention that the night before we stated the tour we stayed with Chris's Canadian mates from Busabout- Steph and Alex. They are great girls, very easy going and kind to let us crash at their flat in the heart of edinburgh. Went out for a few beers with them too (key to living in scotland and coping with the crap weather = drinking lots of beer it seems :)

Costa Rica

2006-03-29T18:47:00.000+02:00

I've just returned from my trip to Costa Rica to visit my sister Lizzie. It was a fabulous trip for heaps of reasons: seeing my sister after a year apart; feeling warm after a long, cold English winter (it was snowing when I departed, and now its 14degrees! I think I'm destined for warmer weather now, thank heavens); Costa Rica is a fabulous country – so beautiful, diverse, friendly and easy to get around.

Miami?

I'll begin at the end, to explain why I'm sitting in Heathrow airport right now a day after I should have been here. I arrived at San Jose airport on Monday and was told that the plane was 2 hours late. Hmmm. Upon reaching the counter the lady says that it means I miss my connecting flight to London, hence I have a 24 hour delay, so would I like to stay in Miami or San Jose for the night at their expense? I would have gone back to my sister but it's a 2hour cab ride away from the airport, so I thought, well I've never been to Miami so I'll go there. I'd just started chatting to a couple of guys in the check-in line and they were in the same situation. So at least I had some people to hang out with.

I got to stay in the Sheraton in Miami, which was so awesome – king sized bed and all that. The two guys were from Chicago and had been to Miami, so we headed out that night to South Beach. We went to the Delano hotel, which is owned by Madonna, and it was by far the most amazing club (or whatever it is) I've ever been to. You walk into the hall of 20m high ceiling which have white flowing drapes hanging from the roof down a long room. There are a few different bars and 2 different DJ sections, a huge pool with beds around its edge you can hire (for $1200!) and it is all opulence. I had a good time dancing there, even met one of the DJ's, and then we headed to another bar which was jam packed with girls in the tightest clothing I'd ever seen. It was certainly and interesting experience, being in Miami for a night. There were loads of people out, even though it was a Monday night! Crazy place…

The next day I hung around the hotel, and the mall attached to it, until I went to the airport to catch my 8pm flight to London. And here I am, still waiting, this time for my plane to Newcastle.

Costa Rica

Now back to Costa Rica…

I got to Costa Rica without any trouble on my 3 flights and 2 hour taxi ride to where Lizzie is living. Wow she is so lucky where she is- living at Los Suenos, a Marriot resort, with 3 luxury pools to choose from, the amazing marina packed with million dollar boats, a few bars, restaurants, a coffee shop and a golf course (if one could afford to play there). All the staff there are so friendly, and so many of them know Lizzie now she has been there so long. She lives with the family she nannies for in an apartment within the resort. Very nice place.

Los Suenos Marriott Resort (Pacific Coast)

For the first few days I helped Lizzie to look after the kids she nannies for – Abby who's almost 3, and Max who's 8 months. Gorgeous kids, but such a handful! Totally wears you out trying to keep up with them.

On the Saturday we got to go out on the boat (Lizzie is working for a family where the Dad is the captain and the mum is the chef). The boat is so amazing. It's a multi-million dollar marlin fishing yacht, 125feet long, with a permanent crew of 5 people and it can sleep 14. What luxury. It was amazing cruising along in the boat.

We headed into Jaco a few times, which is the closest town to the resort. It is a surfing town on the beach, filled with restaurants and souvenir stores, American college students and not much else. It is a fun place though.

Food

The food in Costa Rica was so amazing! Fresh seafood was especially good, and soooooo cheap! Eg. $8 for a whole red snapper, cooked to perfection. Yummmmmm, I miss the food so much already. English food is not very inspiring, I can tell you.

The Caribbean

On Monday Lizzie and I headed on a bit of a trek via taxi and bus to the other side of the country, the Caribbean side. 8 hours later we arrived in Puerto Viejo, and very small coastal town quite close to Panama which is filled with surfers who never leave and people of Jamaican decent (meaning there were lots of Rastas there!). It is very different to the other side of the country where Lizzie lives. The Caribbean coast was even more laid back, the roads were atrocious, and the town had really only one street with some restaurants and bars on it. We stayed in a cabin that looked directly onto a famous surfing break called the Salsa Brava. Wow, what a view. The cabin was, well, lets say basic. We had an encounter with a cockroach and a sea crab that hidden in Lizzie's clothes, and we had to cope with cold showers.

There was one Rasta guy who seemed to always be sitting in a tree by the road. Every time we passed him he called out us. But seriously, he was always in the tree, and was well camouflaged at night with his black skin, so it was a bit disconcerting to hear the tree talking!

On our full day there we hired bicycles, and snorkelling gear, and rode south for 8km to the most beautiful beach, Punta Uva. The rainforest came right down to beach, and we sat under palm trees on the sand. We had a bit of a snorkel, and Lizzie tried out surfing on the small reef break there. It was so beautiful.

San Jose

The next day we caught the local bus to San Jose, the capital city. We'd befriended a Canadian girl who spoke fluent Spanish, and she negotiated with the dodgy taxi drivers to get us to a 5 star hostel called Pangaea. It had a pool, bar, free internet and free phone calls to the USA & Canada (not much help to us, but cool nonetheless).

We woke up early the next morning and walked into the city, where we found the central markets. They were awesome, full off amazing fruits and vegetables that we couldn't identify, meat, seafood and everything else under the sun. We saw a little food counter packed with locals and sat there for some Gallo Pinto, the traditional breakfast of eggs with black bean rice. Very yummy. Breakfast for 2 with coffee came to a huge $3. Very cool. We bought lots of jewellery there and I picked up some $4 sunnies. We caught the local bus back to Lizzie's place (a huge $2 fare!).

Back on the pacific

We went on a canopy tour the next day, a gift from the manager of the Marriott who we were chatting to at the pool one day. It was very fun, - you wear a rock climbing harness and get attached to different cables which fly you through the canopy of the rainforest. Some of the trees were so gigantic. Lots of fun.

After the canopy we headed to Manuel Antonio, which is famous for its national park. We saw monkeys and a type of raccoon, and a sloth. We hung out on the beach swimming cause it was so hot. We had walked through the rainforest but almost fainted from the heat in the. Swimming in sweat. Beautiful place especially when viewing from the water!

My last full day in Costa Rica was spent down at the resort pool, called the beach club, with Lizzie and one of the guys off the boat Martin. So relaxing lying by the beautiful pool, swimming up to the pool bar for a cocktail or hamburger, and finding some free wireless to connect to. Lizzie was friends with the pool barman, and he and is his mate invited us to go for a ride on some jet skis. So off we went at sunset around the coast. It was awesome fun, but all my muscles were aching the day afterwards from struggling to stay on the thing!

That night we went to the Marriott bar, very classy, and drank mojitos and ate ceviche (popular Costa Rican dish of marinated raw seafood) and nachos with Martin and the two Costa Rican guys from the pool.

And its over.

So my trip has been awesome, and I really don't want to step outside the airport in Newcastle and be back in the cold again. It was so great just feeling warm all the time! When I was in Costa Rica it felt like England couldn't possibly exist. Costa Rica with its wealth of natural beauty, and great weather, is a completely other world to the UK. It was a great interlude in paradise.

I highly recommend going to Costa Rica if you get a chance. There is loads to do (I barely scraped the surface), people are very friendly, and it is cheap and easy to get around. A four hour bus journey cost only $7!

Update: I've made it back to Newcastle, with a 1 hour delay and my suitcase was left behind. Should be here sometime tonight. Brightside: saves me lugging the thing home. But till then I don't have a phone and all that jazz.

And it's lovely and sunny here, and 10 degrees isn't too bad I guess.

February in the UK

2006-02-12T12:51:00.000+02:00

Thought it was time for an update on what I've been up to in this long, cold English winter.

Well, its still cold, and the thought of 4 more months of cold doesn't do wonders to the morale, but I think I'll manage with my interlude in Costa Rica next month to visit my sister. Most excited about that, the thought of sun soon makes me feel very happy!

Chris and I went to a Burn's night celebration, a Scottish night to honor a poet which involves men wearing kilts, saying the Burn's poem "Ode to the Haggis" and then everyone consuming a large slab of the stuff, accompanied by 'neeps and tatties'. Won't be eating much of that again for a while!

We celebrated Australia day with a small party at my place, introducing the English to fairy bread, vegemite, sausage sizzles (unfortunately from a fry pan) and lamingtons (I realised why I'd never tried to make them before, they are so fiddly!). It was good fun, listening to the hottest 100 as well.

Chris departed the UK the week before last. I was conveniently in London for a few days for work to visit the zoo and science museum, so we were able to spend another night together there. We were very touristy and checked out the extravagant and pastiche Harrods, where we purchased some pork pies (they were two for one so we thought we could splash out :), and admired the wares. Then we headed to Piccadilly circus, Leicester square, Soho for a cocktail and Chinatown for dinner. Yummo. Was a really nice night. London has a very exciting feel about it.

Chris left the next day for Japan. He is currently in Hong Kong, and still has to visit China, Thailand and Vietnam before he gets home to Australia in mid-March. As it looks at the moment we wont be seeing each other til I get back to Australia, which I think will be around September at the moment, after I've travelled around Europe in the Summer. Will be hard, but as before I'll keep busy...

While in London I visited the zoo for work, and got to hold an animal called a kinkajou, which is also called a honey bear, and is native to south and central America. It was so cute (see pic)!!

Last weekend I went to visit Tim (circus days) who is living in Alston working at a kids adventure camp. They mainly get school groups in there. It is a very nice part of the country with dry stone walls and green hills and not much else except pubs so we went to a few of those, hung out with his friends and work colleagues, and watched some quality Tom Cruise flicks like Top Gun and Days of Thunder. Hilarious. It was great to get out of the city though and see some of the pretty English countryside, although next time I visit I'll hope for some warmer weather!

This weekend Nita visited from Glasgow. We went to some funky cafes and bars and watched a few films, so it was a nice relaxing weekend.

Work is super busy this week with school half-term next week. The theme is the science of chocolate, so I'm finding it really hard writing and researching chocolate with out eating too much of the stuff! Oh well, it could be worse.... Researching mould would have a much worse effect....

The last pic is of Adrian, me, Chris and Baz down at the local pub the Bluebell having a game of pool on Adrian and Chris's last night in Newcastle. They'd spent so many evenings there....

Things that make me happy

2006-01-22T20:48:00.000+02:00

these are things that will always make me happy.

the ocean. The sun on my face when its not that hot. travelling. meeting new people. chatting with friends. a smile from a good looking stranger. connecting with someone. looking at the blue sky on a crisp morning. swimming in the ocean. a hot shower. a spa bath. an excellent book. a good movie. my favourite music. Listening to music as i walk. my family. being in love. walking through trees. looking up to see a starry night. balmy summer evenings. penguins. sharing a good meal and red wine. the rainforest. dancing. singing. chatting with friends about everything and everything. an email that makes me think. feeling beautiful. a clean kitchen. a movie that transports me. dreaming.

Things I like about England

2006-01-22T20:45:00.000+02:00

the clouds. Real Ale. The seasons (but not winter). The cosy pubs. The proximity to so many countries. The history. The variety of accents. Flowers in the spring. the music. that there are lots more gingers over here like me. having pale skin is normal. yorkshire puddings in the freezer section. boots. long days in the summer. Turning my face to the sunshine and not worrying about sunburn. The rolling green hills. "Why 'ay man" (the geordie accent). the seaside.

Dublin and Berlin

2006-01-18T00:04:00.000+02:00

The past two weekends have been fabulous, flying overseas to vastly different capital cities. The only downside has been feeling super tired on Monday at work. Ah well, it it totally worth it.

Berlin
Last weekend I went to the fascinating Berlin with Gez, Baz (housemates), Alan, Nick, James (Gez's mates) and Nita (friend from home living in Glasgow). It was fun travelling with a group of buddies. We stayed in an almost new hostel that was nice and close to the city centre. Germany knows how to do hostels I've decided, as everyone we spoke to was staying at a hostel they though equally impressive. Must be the German efficiency!

Nita and I did an 8 hour walking tour on the Saturday. It was a great way to get an introduction to the city, especially its complex history. We were frozen by the end of the tour though, it was so cold it chilled you to the bone. The maximum was 2 degrees and at night it went down to -6. There was ice on the ground when we arrived and it did melt while we were there. We had beautiful sunny days though, which made up a little for the cold. I never thought I would think of Newcastle as warm, but it felt quite balmy in comparison to Berlin when I returned.

On the Saturday night, after some weisswurst (my 3rd sausage of the day) and pretzel, we went on a pub crawl. I enjoyed it, chatted to Aussies, Americans and an Irishman, drank some German beer and had a laugh. The coolest place we went to was a building that squatters had taken over. The government helped to make it structurally sound a few years ago and now it houses a bunch of artists who sell their work there and it also has a few bars. It is totally covered in graffiti too. Very interesting place.

After getting home at 4am I was pretty knackered the next day. After a leisurely European breakfast of salami, cheese and bread we headed to the Pergamon museum, which houses the entire front of an ancient greek altar. Incredible to see such a large ancient building inside another building in Berlin! Also in the museum was the reconstructed surface of the tower of Babylon, Greek and roman sculptures and loads of other amazing ancient works of art. Incredible place.

Neet and I then wandered over to the Reichtag, the German Parliament building, now completely restored with a Sir Norman Foster dome on the top of it. We were up there for sunset and had a magnificent view over the city.

Dublin
The weekend before last Chris and I went to Dublin for 10pounds return including taxes! At that price we had to go somewhere. Dublin was great fun, a very cosmopolitan city that is easy to get around. We met up with my old boss from the science festival in Australia, who has just moved back to her home town of Dublin with her Aussie boyfriend. They are enjoying being back there, and it was great to have their company each night.

On Saturday Chris and I saw the Book of Kells, the art gallery and the Guinness Brewery. The highlight was definitely having a Guinness at the Gravity Bar on top of the brewery, as it had a fabulous view over Dublin. Guinness definately tastes better in Dublin! Totally different taste to anywhere else. Quite tasty actually! That night we met Marty and LIz and went to a yummy carvery and then to Temple Bar where we heard people break out singing to songs they knew as they were played by the band. Great fun.

The next day we headed to the coast on the Dart (train). We went to the cute village of Dun Lourighie, very lovely. That night Liz and Marty took us to the highest pub in Dublin, Jimmy Fox's where we had delicious seafood.

What's next
I need to stay in the country for a while to save some money! I'm visiting my sister Lizzie in the middle of March in Costa Rica for 2 weeks. Can't wait to be in the tropical paradise where she is! Then Mum and Dad visit in May/June, and the plan is to travel Europe with Nita in July and August. And after that I'll head back home to Australia. That's the plan at the moment, of course many things could change.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of Dublin and Berlin. And I hope you are doing well in the new year, which is quite miserable up here in the northern hemisphere, with the prospect of 5 more cold months ahead!

Happy New Year!

2006-01-02T22:51:00.000+02:00

Hope you had a fantastic time on New Years. I spent it in Edinburgh with Chris, my friend Nita and her friend from Glasgow Linsey (a real Glaswegian). Can't say I talked to too many Scottish people while in Scotland this time! Edinburgh was filled with foreigners like me!

We had a great time. We stayed in a hostel in Leith, a supposedly dodgy part of Edinburgh but we found it quite nice. It is where the port is and is very pretty. I caught up with Katie and her boyf who are living in London who were up for New Years, and with Anna who I worked with in Canberra, both a the Walkabout pub which was a very Aussie place to be, and fun as by 4pm in the afternoon most people in there had been celebrating since midday for the Aussie new years!

For New Years celebration we went to the street party, which was awesome. We saw a band called Hard-fi, very fun, and a few others. The atmosphere was excellent, everyone was very happy to be there and there were the traditional new years wishes all round at midnight, along with some fun fireworks. After the street party ended at 1pm we went to a random house part (friend's of Linsey's) which seemed just like a night club, with a DJ set up in the lounge room. I danced for a few hours and then we got back to our hostel on a free bus (yey for free buses!).

Christmas was lovely as well. I spent it with Chris's family (Aunties and cousins) in Lancashire, which is right next to the Yorkshire Dales. We had a huge turkey on Christmas day, on top of a large three course Christmas pub meal with had the night before. Chris's little cousins got so many pressies! We also went for a few nice walks in the area. It was nice being out of a big city for a while and in the very pretty English country side.

Between Christmas and New Years is snowed in Newcastle! It was so awesome walking to work in crunching white snow. The layer of white made everything look so beautiful as well. The snow is all gone now, but I'm hoping it will snow again before winter is out.

Wishing you all the best for 2005.

Edinburgh weekend

2005-12-05T23:29:00.000+02:00

Well it is all gearing up towards Christmas here. The days are getting shorter, there are Christmas lights up in town and the shops are manic! It is certainly a different Christmas here than in Australia.

Last weekend Chris and I went to Edinburgh. On the Friday night we met up with Nita and her sister Sarah who was visiting, and some Canadian friends of Chris's. We saw the Geordie (Newcastle) comedian Ross Noble. Very funny show. Nita and Sarah caught the bus back to Glasgow at 1am as they were off to Chile the next day. We had a few drinks in a pub called the Conan Doyle and tried to understand some Scottish accents.. They are so hard to understand!

Chris and I stayed at his Canadian friends place quite near the town. Chris met them on his bus about trip.

On Saturday we went to Edinburgh castle. Very impressive. It did cost a bit to get in (10pounds each!) but there was loads in there - some interesting war museums and some national jewels. Pity the weather was quite miserable! To warm ourselves up after the castle we went to an awesome cafe called Plasir du Chocolat. We had some amazing hot chocolates and incredible cake that was layers of meringue and chocolate mousse... Just the thing you need on a wet Scottish day!

We had a quite night in that night with a few bottles of wine and some yummy pasta. Before we left on Sunday we checked out the German Christmas markets. Chris of course sampled some german sausages.

There are some pics attached of Chris and I at the castle with the view of Edinburgh behind us.

Also attached is a picture of me and my house mate Gez dressed up at a 60's/70's party. I'm dressed up as Daphne and Gez is Velma from Scooby doo! I won best dressed at the party, hilarious.

Nicole (from the circus) is coming up next weekend and I'm most excited.

Chris is staying with me till the beginning of February. He managed to get his old job back but is getting paid about double what he was being paid before - nice work there. His work is 3 minutes work from my house, and he is helping to develop an online ordering system website for a shop called Ann Summers, which sells lingere. Poor him ;)

It is great to have him back here again, although the next month and a bit will go super quick! Christmas (lancashire) and New Year (Edinburgh) and then I picked up a 10pound return flight to Dublin so Chris and I are going there in early January, then the weekend after that I'm off to Berlin! A real jet setter over the next month. That is the great think about living in England, there are so many awesome places to visit near by, And of course England is a lovely place, but it does have terrible weather.

castles and the cold

2005-11-16T22:54:00.000+02:00

I'm getting back into real life and Italy is seeming a long time ago. I'm also got more over my compulsion to jump on the next plane and continue travelling! Well, the idea does pop into my head occasionally, but I am enjoying just being in one place with familiar people and things around me.

It has got really cold here. Tonight it will be below zero and I can't go out of the couse with out about 4 layers of clothing along with a scarf and gloves. Montreal was cold, with snow all the time and everything, but it really does feel colder here, with the strong cold wind and the dampness. Fingers crossed I survive the winter without too much trouble!

There is an ice rink in the square outside my work. Very fun to watch people gliding (well more wobbling) around in circles. I'll have a go soon, with some spare clothes in case I stack it!

On the weekend my old house mate Ken took me, Baz and his girlfriend for a drive in the countryside up the coast to Bamburgh Castle. It is very pretty up there, a castle over looking a white sandy beach and out the the farne islands. We had a pub lunch to prepare us for the cold, checked out the very old chruch where apprently St Aiden died (they have the cross beams that he apprently died on in the church), and looked at the graveyard because Ken is a stone mason and had carved many of the new headstones. Random I know.

We went for a bit of a walk along the beach by the castle. Not for too long though as it was so cold! In the picture you can see the sand being blown along the beach like mist.

On the drive home we stopped in Alnwick to go to Grannies Tea Room. We had visited Grannie's on the first drive we went on with Ken so the picture of him and me with our lovely english tea might look a bit familiar.. This time though that had scones so we had a proper english afternoon tea with scones, very quaint.

Chris arrives back in Newcastle on Friday! Hooray! Will be so good to see him after his travels around Europe. It has been almost 6 months since he left. He's not sure where he'll stay for the next 3 months, but fingers crossed he gets a job in Newcastle so he can stay here with me.

Some questions...

2005-11-06T22:20:00.000+02:00

An email quiz...

1. Time of starting this test? 7.59pm, Sunday November 6.

2. Were you named after anyone? No

3. Do you wish on stars? Shooting ones yes

4. When did you last cry? can't remember

5. Do you like your handwriting? Yes

6. What is your favourite meat? Roast pork

7. What is your most embarrassing CD on your shelf? zero CD's on my shelf, most embarrasing album on my iRiver could be... Wham

8. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you? Most certainly

9. Are you a daredevil? No.

10. Have u ever told a secret you swore not to tell? Yes.

11. How do you release anger? sing, write.

12. Where is your second home? Home at the gold coast.

13. Do you trust others easily? Yes.

14. What was your favourite toy as a child? My doll.

15. What class in school do you think is totally useless? When we had to go to chapel twice a week.

16. Have you ever been in a mosh pit? Yes.

17. Would you bungee jump? No.

18. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? No.

19. What's your favourite ice cream flavour? Most things with chocolate fudge in it.

20. What are your favourite colours? green, purple.

21. What is your least favourite thing? being cold.

22. How many people do u have a crush on right now? Only the one.

23. What do you miss most right now? Chris, good weather, family and friends back in Aust.

24. What colour underwear are you wearing? Black.

25. What are you listening to right now? Gez and Mike chatting, while flicking tv channels.

26. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? vermillion. I love the name.

27. What is the weather like right now? Cooooolllllldddd and damp underfoot.

28. Last person you talked to on the phone? Chris from Contiki.

29. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex? Smile, eyes.

30. Do you like the person who sent you this? Yes, I like both of them (Neet and Row).

31. How are you today? Feeling a bit out of it after sitting on a train for 7 1/2 hours and eating sugary and salty snacks and drinking tea.

32. Favourite drink? Water.

33. Favourite alcoholic drink? Good red wine.

34. Natural hair colour? Red/strawberry blonde/ginger(if I'm in scotland).

35. Eye colour? green/blue.

36. Wear contacts? Yes.

37. Siblings? one sister.

38. Favourite month? November in the southern hemisphere, September in the northern hemisphere.

39. Favourite food? Roast pork with lots of veges. Okonomiyaki. Chocolate.

40. Last movie you watched? Broken Flowers.

41. Favourite day of the year? A hot summer day (so missing the warm weather here!).

42. Have you ever been too shy to ask someone out? Yes.

43. Scary movies or happy endings? Happy.

44. Summer or winter? Summer.

45. Do you want your friends to write back? YES.

46. Who is most likely to respond? Unsure. Maybe Lizzie?.

47. Who is least likely to respond? Chris, cause he's on the road

48. What book/magazine are you reading? The Morality of Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith.

49. What's on your mouse pad? It is a piece of newspaper from the travel section.

50. When did you last tell a lie? I don't tell big lies.

Italy!

2005-11-01T00:11:00.000+02:00

Arrived home yesterday from an awesome 2 weeks in Italy. I spent 2 days in Rome before joining my Simply Italy Contiki tour around he country.

The tour was fantastic. there were 48 people on the tour, which did seem like a lot at the start but it as a fine amount of people. There were lots of great people, ranging in age from 20 to 35 from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, USA, Japan, Taiwan and Israel. On the tour we travelled from Rome to Tuscany (San Giminiano), Florence, Pisa, Lake Como, Verona, Venice, Urbino, Assisi, Sorrento, the Island of Capri, Pompei and back to Rome. And the Vatican if you count that as separate to Rome. It was amazing to see so many incredible places, all so different. It was really interesting to see the differences between the different regions of Italy. Each place was quite different in looks, food and people. The tour manager was excellent at giving a background on each of the places we visited and an insight into the small differences in culture and language.

I took loads of photos, so it is tough trying to choose which ones to include on this email!

I had such a great time. I'm sure I could write a massive epic on how everything was and what I did, but I am honestly so tired right now. Still need to catch up on some sleep! I'll write something brief now and will write it all down later (maybe on my way to bristol on thursday for work. 4 hour train ride here I come!).

Highlights from the trip:
Favourite spots: Venice was so incredibly beautiful, just like all the pictures and movies that are from there. The gondola ride was great fun.
Capri- a stunning island, so beautiful, house built on hillsides with white cliffs. Gorgeous day too, 24 degrees, sunny, and I even had a swim!

I have put lots of great phots onto the online photo album for you to have a look at. http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2e0wkff.aebmz38f&x=0&y=r1h24o

If you have troubles looking at these, give me an email and I'll send you my email and password so you can look at them :)

England has just finished summer time so it get dark at 5pm while I'm still at work! It feels so very strange. Not that happy to be back at work. Would rather be travelling still, I has such a brilliant time!

Pictures of the real Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

2005-10-12T22:53:00.000+02:00

I have taken some pictures on my walk to work in Newcastle. The idea of it is to give you an idea of what everyday things look like over here in the North of England. The idea was suggested by Bolt, who was interested in what it looked like over here. So this is how I see it, every morning (except this morning, when it was pouring down with rain and I caught the bus with the fogged up windows instead of walking).

Click on this link to view the side show:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2e0wkff.9ida0xtv&x=0&y=-p4t9ei

I'm super busy at the moment with work, trying to do lots of things before I leave on Sunday for Italy. Italy! Hooray! Very excited about my 2 week trip to Italy. I'm going on a contiki tour there called "Simply Italy" which basically takes me around the whole country on a bus with a bunch of people, who will hopefully be a lot of fun. I've got a couple of days extra in Rome. Chris was just there and said it is such a beautiful city, even more beautiful the Paris, which mean it must be amazing!

A Whitby weekend

2005-10-04T00:16:00.000+03:00

Had another great weekend, this one in England. Nita came down from Glasgow on Friday. That night we had some very yummy tapas and wine at the Salsa Cafe. I will have to visit there more to practise my spanish! Nita is also learning spanish as her parents have just moved to Italy, so hopefully next time we go there we will be able to say more than Beunas Noches!

On Saturday my old housemate Ken drove us two Aussies to Whitby. Whitby is a gorgeous seaside town - very english, very cute. It is famous for a few reasons:
1. It is where Captain Cook is from, where all his ships were built and the starting point of his voyages of discovery (see pic of Nita and me underneath the Capt Cook statue)
2. It has great Fish and Chips (see pictures, very tasty)
3. It is where St Hilda built her abbey. This is important because Nita and I went to high school at St Hilda's. It was great to go there to see all the history we were taught at school. And the ruins are beautiful. It is no longer the abbey that St Hilda built in the 600's, but amazing medieval ruins.

It was a lovely day, a blue sky, but just a little windy.

That evening we went out on the town to celebrate Gez's birthday. It was a great night, lots of people lots of fun. We ended up dancing at World Headquarters until 3am.

Sunday was a nice quite day. Nita and I went to lunch at the local pub The Carriage for a 3 course Sunday Lunch for 7pounds. Very yummy and very a very good hangover cure!

I'm off to London for a night this week for work, then to Cumbria to visit Tim this weekend, and then the following weekend I head off to Rome for 2 weeks! All very exciting :)

Everything in Newcastle is going well. With Spanish on Tuesdays and Netball on Thursdays I feel quite busy and I'm enjoying everything. Work is improving, with me just managing myself rather than trying to get instruction... Work is interesting and diverse, and I get along really well with Jenny, who has the same job as me. The Science Festival coordinator, who I sit next to, resigned today, citing her problems with the management as her main reason. I can totally understand... Anyway, it is all going well.

Chris is currently drinking too much beer at Oktoberfest in Munich. Wont be seeing him till mid-November... But I've managed to keep myself very busy in the mean time! Miss him heaps though.

Hope you are doing well,

Love Jo