Phalex gone wild

lots and lots of STUFF.

phil_and_alex — Fri, 9 Oct 2009 00:20:00 GMT

sooooooo.... how about that 1 month gap in blog posting? woops. but don´t worry, its not because we haven´t done enough to warrant a post - quite the opposite really. we have had an absolutely amazing time in cuzco and I shall now attempt to sum it up in under 1000 words.

Since our last post, we have volunteered in 3 different placements - a community centre/after school care place, a conservation reserve just outside Manu jungle, and another school just outside Cuzco.

Amistad, the community centre/after school care place, was really lovely. Relatively affluent compared to our first rural hardcore school, but this was kind of nice for us, and during the week we worked there we really felt helpful. We taught some good english lessons, as well as helpin out the staff with the young kids and babies, and met some really sweet kids.

The jungle was absolutely incredible. We arrived at about 1pm after an 8 hour bus ride on mountainous dirt roads, but it was totally worth it - the reserve is situated right beside a river, which you have to cross by cable, and surrounded by beautiful dense bush. We spent our mornings volunteering, doing various things including mixing soil and preparing seedlings, planting seedlings, counting and tagging saplings, looking for and counting wildlife, and deforesting bamboo. Generally awesome and only lasted for around 3 hours. In our second week, Phil and I also built a fence for the vegie patch, which was nice and rewarding. Lunch and dinner were cooked by a local woman from the closest village (who crossed the river to go home by candlelight in the evenings!) and we ate lots and lots of tasty vegetarian fare.

We spent the afternoons just chilling out, reading in the hammock or maybe swimming in the idyllic river. There were also various tracks around the reserve, one which took you to a beautiful local waterfall with a swimming hole at its base - sooooo lovely. Another way to pass the time was the play with the PET MONKEY - a baby howler monkey called Paulo who was rescued from poachers when he was very young. He just chewed your hair and slept in your lap and stuff. awesome.

On our 3rd evening, we celebrated one girls birthday with a toga party and the cook killed a rooster for us to eat, which was very exciting. Other exciting animal encounters included being surrounded by wild boars on our way to the nearby yuka plantation (yuka is a kind of root veg) and seeing them round around in circles because Old Mario (a local guy who helps out with everything on the reserve) chased them out with a machete.

Once we (very sadly) returned to Cuzco (after another horrible bus ride, this time through the night!), we started volunteering at our new placement. It was a school/community centre outside Cuzco in a very rural area (which also happened to be very near some amazing inca ruins). In the morning, it acts as a primary school for the community´s youngest kids who can´t get into town for school, and in the afternoon (when we volunteered), all the kids come in for lessons and help with homework and games. There was a big focus on personal hygiene - the teachers keep toothbrushes for each of the kids, plus soap and shampoo so they can wash at the school´s tap, which is one of the only sources of running water. After that, they´d do some work or have a little english lesson with us, then play team sports until supper. The director has put a focus on team sports to build a sense of community, and ensure all the kids grow up with good social skills and stuff, because its very isolated up there. We would leave at about 6pm and go home for dinner, and have our spanish lessons in the morning (which went very well).

On our last Wednesday volunteering, it was my birthday! We went out with our friends for dinner and tried cuy (local delicacy of GUINEA PIG) to celebrate (it wasn´t particularly good). We also had celebratory brownies and cocktails, so that was nice. Otherwise, Phil and I have spent a lot of our spare time buying Peruvian goods, as we plan to hold a fundraising stall at North Sydney markets when we get back. We sent off our 13kgs of stock yesterday and hope it reaches Aus safe and sound just before we do.

This last weekend was very action packed as we did a 3 day trek to Machu Picchu. We spent the first day mountain biking for around 4 hours, descending at least 3km in altitude. It was awesome, but we both fell off once (hello scabby knee). The second day was REALLY HARD, as we trekked over 7 hours and climbed a lot. The photos from the highest point we reached are just amazing, and it was on an original Inka Trail (not the commercial inka trail, there are many around the place). At the end of that day, we spent the evening soaking in the thermal springs at Santa Teresa (which were landscaped like a tropical resort!). We spent the 3rd day trekking on relatively even terrain, most of which was through the jungle in the afternoon. We then shacked up in Aguas Calientes, the town below Machu Picchu, and got up at 3.45am the next day to get on the first bus up the mountain to the ruins.

The site itself opens at 6am, and we were within the first 300 or so people. This meant we got tickets to climb Wayna Picchu mountain (that big mo fo you see at the back of the classic photo of Machu Picchu), and also that when we first saw the ruins, there were no people inside. Words really can´t describe how excited we were - but maybe the photos will when we eventually post them up! Machu Picchu is just incredible, and our 2 hour guided tour just emphasised how absolutely awesome it is. And yet theres still so much the historians aren´t sure of! awesome.

After a little nap after our tour, we commenced the trek up the mountain. Turns out they weren´t joking when they said "fit and healthy people only" - it was HARD! It took us about an hour to reach the summit, but it was so worth it - the view was for miles around the valleys, including an amazing view of the ruins themselves. Wow. By this time, we´re all exhausted, so we just hung out on the rocks at the top and had a little rest, appreciating the abundancy of geckos around the place and the serious lack of fences.

After some more exploring and a thunderstorm, we decided we would walk back down the mountain to Aguas rather than get the bus - BAD MOVE! 1716 uneven inka steps, after 4 days of exertion, is NOT a good idea!! but we were still proud of ourselves when we got to the bottom, despite our wobbly jelly legs. After that, we had the 1.5hr train followed by 1.5hr bus ride back to Cuzco - not so fun, but we really appreciated bed time when it eventually came around.

Yesterday we spent the day running around like headless chickens, trying to organise all our stuff for our supposed departure from Cuzco at 7.30am this morning. Turns out last minute serious travel organisation is a bad idea - we forgot to pick up the bus tickets before our travel agent closed, meaning I had to go and sweet talk the guys at the bus company office, then we forgot to pick up our laundry before they closed, meaning we had to pay our friend to pick it up and bring it to La Paz, Bolivia with her. In the end that was unecessary, as this morning, we missed the aforementioned bus! Our company left from an area just outside the main terminal, but our Peruvian house mum just thought it would be the usual departure place, and thats what she told our taxi driver. Damn. So here we are, killing time before we get the next available bus to Puno on Lake Titicaca. Hopefully the rest of our short 4 day journey to La Paz will be more successful.

Thats all we have for now - I wish I could have emphasised how awesome our time here has been, but thats what you get for not blogging sooner! Hope everyone is well, wherever you are in the world, and we´ll try and make contact again soon.

Hasta luego!

Cuzco dwellers

phil_and_alex — Tue, 1 Sep 2009 03:24:00 GMT

Hello all, Alex again. So its been nearly 2 weeks since I last blogged, but we´ve been in Cuzco the whole time so we haven´t done thaaatt much...

Last week, we started our volunteering/spanish regime - out to our rural school from 9-12, home for lunch, then out again for spanish from 4-6. We had a lovely male teacher and for us it was mostly revision of what we´d learnt in Sydney, but both of us are feeling much more competent after a bit of review and some new skills. Volunteering was fun but hard work - our teachers kept going awol on us (leaving each one of us to deal with 30 kids whose language we don´t really speak) and it turns out its really hard to teach anything, let alone another language, to children who can´t read or write.

However on Friday of last week, we arrived at school to find all the kids in the playground with kites - it was outdoors day or something, so we all trekked about 10 mins to a nearby field across a valley and flew kites and played soccer for 2 hours. it was reaaaallly nice and its beautiful scenery up there. There were cows, pigs and donkeys too! so that was fun.

Nearly forgot - on Thursday night of last last week, we went to a Cienciano vs Liverpool football match at the big local stadium. Cienciano is basically the Peruvian team minus a few, and Liverpool is a team from Uruguay. Needless to say that was awesome fun being in the Latino football fever - both our host parents came too and it was heaps of fun. Phil even bought a Cienciano beanie. And we won too! Take that uruguay.

On Saturday of last weekend, phil and I ventured out for a bout of cuzco shopping, buying peruvian knitted goods eg gloves and a blanket and a beanie for phil and happy pants for me. all good fun. in the afternoon we chilled out at maximo, the language and volunteering centre, and just saw some friends and stuff. That night though when we got home, disaster struck and I started spewing and pooing like EVERYWHERE. it was disgusting, and long story short we ended up spending the next two nights in hospital, me on a drip cause I got a parasite in my belleh. Not fun, but I stopped uncontrollably exploding pretty much as soon as I started my medication. Phil has confirmed his status as best boyfriend, possibly one of the best people in the world, after cleaning up my vomit and putting my socks on and generally looking after me extremely extremely well. Good job Marilyn and Bruce :)

So we got to go home on Monday afternoon and continued to spend time in bed, but at least I could eat. On Tuesday we took the morning off and continued relaxing (we found a nice park near our house) before recommencing Spanish in the afternoon. Went back to volunteering on Wed to more hard work and confusion; since then, we have actually decided to change projects and this afternoon we start at a community centre where we´ll always have someone with us, and we´ll teach english 3 days a week and just generally help out with kids homework and stuff on the other days. Should be really good, and not quite so daunting.

On Thursday night we farewelled one of our housemates who has been here the longest and was going to Bolivia to start the tour Phil and I are going to do in a few months. She was lovely and it was sad to see her go! Us and one of the remaining girls decided to go to trivia at a gringo cafe in town to cheer ourselves up, and phil and i bought delicious brownies, yum. we came last but it was lots of fun! an organisation called Bruce Peru runs trivia nights 3 nights a week in different tourist haunts and raise money to go towards education centres for really impoverished peruvian kids... so thats good. and we will definately be going again!

After our last day working at the school, and our last lesson with our old spanish teacher Jorge on Friday, we were treated to a super fun house party! Another 2 volunteers left over the weekend, so it was partly a farewell for them, and also the sister one of the said volunteers was in town, so she came over for dinner. It was one of the best parties I´ve ever been too! We all helped out with preparation - Phil juiced limes for the Pisco Sours (peruvian national cocktail, lime juice, sugar, egg white and pisco I think), our friend Danielle de-ended bean sprouts and I folded up wontons. Maria Luisa made a delicious long soup, to be followed by super tasty fried rice and a chicken stir fry with noodles, chinese buffet style. It was awesome! For dessert we had the delicious cocktails followed by dancing - Maria Luisa and Eduardo moved the furniture away in the living room and we got the party started on the living room dancefloor. so much fun! we were dancing to traditional peruvian and bolivian music, plus some hilarious perupop and modern music that Maria Luisa´s son had burnt them. too funny - we taught eduardo and Michael, our oldest volunteer at 66, how to dance like gangsters. Hilarious, and a video may follow in the near future!

On saturday, Phil and I ventured out to see inca ruins about half an hour from cuzco. They were obviously very cool and the bushland in the andes is soooo beautiful. we saw 3 different sites, walking and bussing between, before we headed back to town cause it was getting cold. We returned to the aforementioned trivia cafe for snacks, including yuka chips - yuka is kind of like purple sweet potato, very nutty, and makes tasty chips! Then we just hung out at home for dinner, and had a quiet day on Sunday.

Today, we had our first spanish lesson with our new teacher - we had to change time slots - and it was great and much more fast paced than previously. Im sure we will learn stacks. Now we´re heading home for lunch, then we will go out to our new placement this afternoon - wish us luck! Will let you know how it all goes in the next volume.

Lots of love to everyone, we miss you all and our pets and milo very much. xxxxx!

Cuzco Cuzco Cuzco!

phil_and_alex — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:03:00 GMT

Hello faithful readers! Are there any of you left after our dreadful blog drought? We send huge apologies for the lack of updates but have just been having too much fun. Since our last blog from Paris, we have been in and out of Barcelona, and arrived in Cuzco on Friday. But I´ll start with Barca...

So, bit of a disaster to start with as shitty Iberia airlines lost our luggage - who does that?? so we suffered the first two days of barcelona heat with one t shirt each - it was ugly. Also problematic was Alex´s cold which then got passed onto Phil - unlucky. we did end up going shopping and can claim from iberia eventually, but given their crap`tastic customer service, i dont like our chances of getting that money back in the next year!! our hostel, nest, was really nice tho and had a great kitchen which was much appreciated, plus nice communal areas and air con. very good.

when our bags did eventually arrive, we got our act together and had our fuirst proper day out - we went to a really excellent market in the city centre and bought delicious picnic food, then ate it up on a mountain park called montjuic. really nice and amazing views - especially from the municipal pool that we sfound late in the day and accidently snuck into for free... no one assssked us for money... but yeah, incredible to be able to swim around and see the whole of barcelona below us! I think it was the pool that they used for the 1992 barca olympic diving. incredible!

that night we went on the pub crawl which was quite and we got to see lots of barcelona that we hadnt seen yet. it is a full on party town - the crawl didnt start till 11 and we left EARLY at 4am... crazy. and there were loads of people out and about at that time which was weird but nice. spent the next day hanging about basically waiting for phil´s cold to improve, and also moved to our new hostel - a university residence out of town. bit of a disaster getting their public transport wise but it was worth it for the roof-top pool and unlimited free ping pong and huge breakfast buffets every morning. from here we went and saw sagrada familia - the big ass gaudi church that was started in early 1900s and won´t be finished till 2030 - which was pretty incredible. also went to the beach and swam in the med - very nice - and did a gaudi walking tour later in the week. in the course of the week, phil´s wallet got stolen.. boo.. but that was just another unfortunate event in our barcelona series. on our last night we went and had another picnic with market food in the really lovely city park - which was actually swarming with theives, two of which tried to double team us but alas, we THWARTED them as phil was sitting on his bag and noticed when the asshole tried to take it from under our noses (while his buddie distracted us)! little did they know we are actually undergrad crime fighters - we went and warned another couple who the asshole was sitting near, then saw him trying on other people so we went and told the police who then sent out a team to look for him- yay!! thwart thwart.

on our final day we went to the lovely park guell - another extravagant gaudi place with yet more nice barcelona views. that night we headed to the airport for our overnight flight to lima - yet another shitty public transport journey which we totally stuffed up, but still made it in good time. and the nice iberia guy managed to check on our bags all the way to cuzco, which meant that in our 8 hours transit time in lima, we were free to explore the city.

the flight was fine - the long leg from madrid to lima was operated by LAN who were much better than iberia and we got nice food. arrived in south america (still kicking ourselves to believe we´re actually here!) at about 6am and made our way into miraflores (not central lima, but a suburb nearby) to go to the brazilian embassy re visas. I ate a yummy peruvian breakfast consisting of mashed corn and pork - yay, corn! and we both had delicious fresh juice which they do so well here. and you know what the best bit is? it is SO CHEAP!!! hoooraaaayyyyy.

no luck at the embassy as they said its impossible to do visas via post, so we will need to do that at our next stop in la paz, bolivia. we spent the rest of the day in the city centre after a hilarious bus ride - they havent got any concept of lanes here, so it is craaazzy. theres not really bus stops either, so you just flag a bus down when you see it (according to whats written on the side) and jump on. besides the driver, there is also a helper person who hangs out the door yelling out the bus destinations and takes payment - as i said, its full on! and no one has any suspension... bump bump.

lima city was pretty uninspiring - very dirty etc, but im glad we got to see it anyway. our flight up to cuzco in the afternoon was amazing - practically empty plane as they go like every half hour, and incredible views over the andes! we flew into mountains, it was super coooool. phil took loads of plane window pictures so when we get a chance to upload them, you can all see what we mean!

luckily neither of us felt the altitude too badly, except for being a little short of breath. our host family is really nice - two retired locals, maria luisa and eduardo, plus 4 other volunteers. so its kind of like a big family hostel bed and breakfast set up - its really nice. and maria is such a good cook and eduardo is a mean cleaner - there is a strange parallel with my parents at home haha! except for the background story, which is quite exciting; turns out eduardo used to work high up in the department of justice for peru under one of many corrupt govts, and at one point he became responsible for signing off on some aid documents. Western countries had donated millions to buy computers etc for development, and eduardo had to sign off... without seeing the goods. So he said no, then got pressured and still said no, and eventually was unceremoniously dumped from his position. at the time, maria had a restaurant and two chicken shops, so they were doing very well, but in the next few months, her permits and licenses were curiously denied - so they lost both income sources, thanks to a corrupt govt. how about that! so now, their source of income is the money from us volunteers, and seeing as their kids have all moved out, it works really well because we are like surrogate children!

we just spent the weekend hanging out and resting to avoid altitude sickness, but did venture out to the ´bohemian´district on sunday morning - very nice, but everything was closed. but we saw our first alpacas! accompanied by ladies in traditional wear! very cool. for those playing at home, we know they are alpacas because their ears pointed back rather than up; llamas have all right angles with really upright ears. on sunday we also stumbled accross a huge military parade in the city centre, which was strange.

despite out best efforts at resting, on sunday night phil got very sick, and on monday morning alex followed suit... bummer. we got thru our orientation on mon morning but spent the rest of the day in bed, and now (tuesday afternoon) we´re both feeling mostly better, except with not much appetite. turns out a bakery we went to on sunday afternoon is known to be a bit dodgy - oops - and that combined with altitude made us yukky. sad! but it could have been much worse - I didnt even throw up, which made me very pleased!

today we started our volunteering after a 40 min bus ride out into the sticks of cuzco to the school we´re working at. the kids are really cute and we´re both actually quite glad to be working with rural kids rather than those better off closer into town. we felt a bit ´thrown in the deep end´ but it will only get better as we learn more spanish... and the kids love us because a) phil helped them climb on the climbing frame and b) i have curly blond hair (like some sort of alien). its nice, and there is a big mama pig with piglets who lives outside the school - don´t know why, but ive never seen piglets before so its quite exciting!

i think that brings us pretty much up to date - jesus, im exhausted. serves us right for not communicating sooner! we hope you´re all very well and happy in sydney - i think we´ve got pretty similar weather here (beautiful and clear and warm during the days, with amazing stars at night) so we´re not too jealous. so, until next time... hasta luego!

Bonjour- revised edition!

phil_and_alex — Wed, 5 Aug 2009 03:45:00 GMT

hello faithful readers! (i.e mum and dad) phil here again. so its been a while since we last blogged properly this has been mostly due to the fact we are stingey and dont want to spend our hard earned cash on internet hostels so donations to keep this blog alive are more than welcome!

it is now our last night in paris, we are staying in a nice hostel in monmatre with free internet! yay! since we last blogged properly we spent my birthday in brighton addicted to 2p machines on the pier, tried on 100000 different pairs of sunglasses and ate tasty strawberries in camden, climbed the eiffel thingy for midnight and have done more walking than we have done in our entire lives though the monotonous streets of paris. now, dont get me wrong, paris is lovely but everystreet looks the same! all the buildings are cream coloured, six stories high and have a red brasserie bar thingy on the corner.

we've stayed in three different hostels in paris, which has hads its ups and downs, its good cause we have been able to see different parts of paris from the pretty and smelly to the dingey and smelly, it sucked packing and carrying bags around everywhere though:(

for me so far highlight of paris was this approx 75 year old man dancing just near the bastille tower thingy with REALLY loud hilarious pop music wearing a totally white outfit with shiny silver writing saying "PAPY DANCE" alex was not as impressed...

so we also somehow managed to run into another two people we met, two of alex's very good friends from highschool, franny and lucy, under the eiffel tower just after midnight while trying to decide how to get to the metro stop. SO WEIRD. we have now run into 6 different people we know from sydney. is anyone left there?!? bizzaro.

another highlight of paris was between 4 of us (us and alexs friends) we spent AU$50 on hot chocolate. it was awesome, like drinking melted chocolate. soooo tasty and we justified it cause it was franny's birthday :)

we are heading off to barcelona tomorrow, very excited to get to a new city as we are sick of paying so much for food here.

ohh also! we were very happy to read that kyle sanderlands has no job anymore! yay!

okay, so this is alex now as phil is expressing his manliness helping some vulnerable new zealand girls open wine. but he says he is all finished and i trust that what he said somewhat resembles the truth. au revoir mes amis and hasta luego in barcelona!

bonjour!

phil_and_alex — Sun, 2 Aug 2009 00:34:00 GMT

hi everyone! we are noz in paris but the internet cafe has a super bizarro keyboqrd hence the funny words im typing. so this will be short!

we have done lots of wandering and seeing nice things inc luxembourg gqrdens, with ducks and sailboqts in the pond, a reqlly beautiful mosquée (moskee says phil) where we ate delicious morrocan food, the louvre et mona lisa, fake beaches on the seine (twice in one trip! they love fake beaches in europe.), funky vintage and fruit mqrkets and lots of boulangeries with tasty tasty baguettes.

for those of you who voted for more pqrtying, we tried to go out with friends from our hostel but the cool clubs were closed and we ended up at q very strange oz-bar. we will try harder next time!

got to go as cyber cafe costs are adding up. bisous de alex et phil!

PEVFEST '09

phil_and_alex — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:43:00 GMT

Just a quick one to update you all on the happenings of today...

For those who don't know (Ie everyone except my mum and dad - hi mum and dad!), today was PEVFEST in the village. no joke, thats what it was called. Basically there was average pubrock in all the pubs all afternoon, plus some quaint market stalls and people in fluro shirts looking generally organisation-y. Have to say, not very exciting... BUT we did see some morris dancers - HILARIOUS. In the laughing-at sense, not laughing-with. They painted their faces black and wore shaggy black and silver coats, whacked sticks on the ground and skipped. Very, very bizarre. Conclusion is: English people are weird.

Not much else happening today - bit of gardening and off to a local house party this evening. NO doubt we will be shown off.

Off to eat dinner now, so until next time... rock on, pevfesters.

Gallery: UK part 1

phil_and_alex — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:34:00 GMT

bham and 2 days in pb

PB or not PB.. that is the question...

phil_and_alex — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 05:32:00 GMT

HI! it's phil writing you you this time. you can probably already tell by the poor attempt at humour in the title.

so.. since we last joined you we have had many exciting and dangerous adventures. the morning after alex last updated she woke up at 6 and decided to do some research on what last minute things we could do in bham before our train trip at 1:30. So i was woken up with a SUPER excited alex 2 hours later who had discovered there was a nature park less than 20 minutes walk away through a giant park filled with flowers, ponds and ducks. pretty much perfect. so we said our tearfull goodbyes to urszula who had been such an amazing host, keeping us awake on the first day, feeding us like kings and generally being a lovely person. we went for our walk admired ducks etc and arrived at the nature park. we were pleasantly surprised it only cost £3! yay! so we went in and discovered we missed the targetted demographic by about 14 years. it was still lovely though seeing goaty things, sheepy things, giant rabbits, wallabies, giant owls and our definite favourites.. meerkats and otters!

so we spent hours there, got on our train after saying goodbye to john and bramble (the nicest scepurky(????????? no idea how to spell that, google was no help either because i couldnt get anything close enough for it to recognise) i know).

train was exciting english country side blah blah, the tube blah, more english country side then we arrived at polegate! another super cute little villagey place. we were met by alex's grandma anne who we were very excited to see and vise versa. we got into her car, she has only just started learning to drive again and i have been hearing the worst but it was a totally trouble free and relaxing drive back to pevensy bay to her lovely house where we have been for the last to days enjoying the lovely southern (mostly) sunnyness and again beeing fed like kings. today we went on a morning trip to ASDA! it's incredible! its absolutely enormous, it pretty much had its own suburb. for those who havent been to UK its a giant supermarket thing. kinda like kmart, woolworths and all the weird super specials of aldi in one convinient, absolutely huge, place. so cool. then we went to some historic castle... pfft nothing on asda.

i must run now because the bill is starting very soon and its the second part of a very exciting episode! (shoey should be very happy about this)

now i must appologise for making this sooooooo long but this whole blogging thing is very fun and exciting! i'll upload some photos after the bill.

Arrival and first days

phil_and_alex — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:32:00 GMT

Arrived nice and early (6.30am) on Tues morn to - you guessed it - shitty, cold, rainy english weather!! this is meant to be SUMMER!! but nevermind, Urszula picked us up from the airport and took us to beautiful Blenheim Palace, which has 20acres of gardens. We spent the day trapping around the lake, through their sheep fields, wandering in the beautiful house, and playing in the pleasure gardens which had a maze and butterfly house. Yay! The grounds also featured a miniture train and train track which tooted nicely. we rode it twice and twas lots of fun.

also stopped off in a few really cute english villages for tea and photos of flowerboxes. phil is very impressed.

spent today in birmingham city centre checking out the shops and english teens. also found lovely art gallery and nice church with pretty gardens, which we sat in in the sunshine which eventually appeared, hooray. also hung out in a pop-up temporary beach in the city - cool - which seemed to be some elaborate advertising scheme and featured lots of sand, deckchairs, a bar and a dj. fun! pictures will follow in next update but getting close to bedtime now - 9.30 pm and we're going strong. also still light outside which is cool.

thats all for now i think. sleepytimes now, then more hanging in bham followed by quite a long train trip to sussex. should be lovely :)

Leaving!

phil_and_alex — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:10:00 GMT

Last day in Sydney! Have done an online checkin now and will be leaving for the airport at about 1.20 this afternoon. Wooh! Bag is only 12kgs - lets just watch as that increases by the day.

This is basically just a test run to practice being a blogzor. Here goes :)