Hello allll

Wellllll I'm down in Victoria now, flew to Melbourne on the 5th, and came straight to this town now - Swan Hill.

Had a week off and met Dale's family/mates etc, just hung about! Had first day of work on Saturday... Basically Dale has got a job budding 30,000 trees, where he has to bend down all day, straddling trees about 3 ft tall. He makes a little cut in the bark of the tree and attaches a bud to it, from an almond tree - and then the tree (which is a nothing tree), grows into an almond tree! Clever! I was like, why on earth don't they just grow almond trees from scratch, but apparently they have really poor root systems, so they grow just a normal tree that has a strong root system and then turn it into whatever tree they want afterwards! My job is to walk (crawl, and stagger) behind Dale and tie the bud to the tree with tape.

It sounds easy when I type it - but it's really hard! Standing pretty much upsiode down for like 6 or 7 hours straight - my hamstring muscles are growing! We've only worked until like 11 or 12 the last couple of days because it's been over 40 degrees, sooooo hot its insane. Start at sunrise - about 6.15am, and finished today at about 2.30 - a bit cooler!

My whole body was in pain for the first 3 or 4 days, but feeling a lot better now!

On Sunday, we went out in Dale's Mum's boat, with his sister and her mate and boyfriend, and one of Dale's mates. Was good! Big lake called Kangaroo Lake, EVERYONE has boats! It's so cool! Everyone goes down there on a Sunday and spends the day out there with a picnic and stuff! We set up camp on a little sandy shore bit and took the boat out for lots of little rides about, and they have waterskiing stuff, some knee boards (same sort of thing as water skiing but on boards which you kneel on - I've never seen em before!), and a big tube to be pulled along! I didn;t do waterskiing or owt, cos my body was b*****ed still from the days work before! I went on the tube though and was holding on for dear life! Haha, apparently when I came off I did like a triple somersault in to the water, which I didn't even realise until the muscle pains kicked in the next day! i still have big bruises on my shins from it!

Yeah, then worked Tues, Wed, and today. Probably have enough work to keep us going until Monday or something and then the 30,000 will be done! Each row has 1000 trees in it, and today we did nearly 3000 trees. Dale has booked to go to Thailand at the start of Feb for a month (not sure what I'm going to do yet - go down to Tasmania for a few weeks, but depends how much money I can earn as to whetehr I work down there or not!), and between now and then we're going to go camping by one of the lakes, and go to Melbourne for a weekend - go to the MCG and watch some Aussie cricket and go and watch some of the Australian Open tennis. Allll very exciting!

I have another cold :(

This one is worse! I've taken loads of different medicine but none of it wants to work boo hooooo! I think that's all the news I have though!

Ooo apart from the exciting new plans for SE Asia, with Mel, Katie and (poss) Claire, which is all very exciting, but I need to save enough money by June so I can go with them to travel! And I need to find out when Sarah gets married so that I can book all my flights up, but will update that sooooooon! Bye for now!