Another fab week in Sydney! The weather since last Friday has been fabulous.

Monday's highlight was the X Factor finale (Altiyan deservedly won).

Tuesday I took a surf lesson with Manly Surf School. Really good fun, despite the fairly strong winds which made paddling extremely hard work and some massive waves which totally smashed us! Had a huge brunch with Suvi at Ground Zero after my lesson and then headed into the city to catch up with Kiyomi over a bottle of wine in the GPO building.

On Wednesday Sam Tomson (from uni) and a guy called Maarten that he'd met in a hostel in Melbourne (and then again in Bondi) headed out to the Blue Mountains (blue because of the eucalyptus oil in the air) on the train for a walkabout with Evan an aboriginal guide (http://www.bluemountainswalkabout.com/)

We hiked for about 7km through some pretty rugged terrain, through some beautiful bushland and to a sacred place with carvings of kangaroos where Evan told us stories of the local aboriginal people. We spent some time in an incredible cave making aboriginal-style paintings and swimming in a billabong where there were freshwater crayfish and baby dragons (good bush tucker!)

Last night, after work, I joined Carl, Tash and Will at Luna Park for the Movember closing party. Some fabulous fancy dress, lots of free rides and overall a fantastic night out! We came back with quite a lot of stash, including not 1, but 2, stuffed toy dogs!