Today was the day of my niece Ruby's first birthday party so I had planned to phone home while all the family was there. We worked out that if I rang at 7am our time it would be 3pm back home, and the party would still be in full swing! The night before I asked at reception about a pay phone but there wasn't one in the hostel, and there wouldn't be anyone on the desk that early so I wouldn't be able to use the hostel phone. We decided we'd get up at 6:30 and go wander around looking for one, as surely there would be plenty about...wrong! San Francisco has a severe lack of public payphones! We walked around for half an hour and then had to give up So back to bed we went!

When I woke up again I checked my phone and I'd had a text the night before to tell me I'd passed my last BSL exam so have passed BSL Level 2 - go me! Hopefully I won't forget it all during this year and will be able to start level 3 when we get back (Dad - I hope you've remembered you offered to pay for me to do it!!).

We left the hostel around midday and headed for Golden Gate Park which is huge! It's bigger than Central Park in New York and is the largest man-made park in the world (I think!). We headed for an interesting looking museum but it was far too expensive for our backpacker budget! So we walked on to the bandstand and watched a brass band play for a while. We also visited the lake (after getting a bit lost) and then followed the map to get the bus back. It doesn't sound like we did much but all that took hours! Got back to the hostel and had a quick sleep before cooking tea. The hostel was a lot quieter tonight as many people had checked out sdo we sat chatting to some people over a few beers. We talked to people who had been to New Zealand and Australia and told them about our plans. They suggested places for us to go and where not to go.

After we'd been asleep for a few hours I was woken up by Catarina, a Brazilian girl from our room. She was scared as there was a homeless man sat in the common area who definitely shouldn't be there. He claimed he was from the hostel but had lost his key - likely story! As none of the boys would wake up (!) I went with her to try and wake up the staff - no luck! By this time he had gone from the common room and was lurking on the stairs. We decided the only thing we could do was to lock the door to our floor so he couldn't get back in, and hope he went away. The next morning we found out he was known to the hostel and had been in a few times before. Someone else had found him and had managed to wake the staff who then phoned the police to take him away. It turns out he has a thing for European men, so Catarina and I were safe anyway!