Hey Everyone! A lot has happened since my last entry- well sort of. I believe when I last wrote Rob and I were staying in a hostel in the city. Well we decided to try out something called Couch Surfing. For those of you who don't know what that is, I will explain....

If you go to www.couchsurfing.com you will find an online community mainly of travellers or ex-travellers who are either looking for a place to stay for a couple of nights or who are offering their couch/spare room/floor to people. The concept of the site is for budgeting travellers to get some free accommodation mixed in with some good company or maybe just some good tips about the city. It is an internationally known website that has been going for years. Now, i know some of you must be thinking "well how do you know you aren't staying at a murderer's house?". To be honest, you never know for sure, but members who have hosted many times before will get vouched for by previous couch surfers and get 'validated'. They also write a profile about themselves etc etc.

We were searching around for a hostel, but all of them were expensive or atleast sounded expensive to our empty pockets, when I remembered Matt Caskey (a friend from my summer job in Boston) tell me about couch surfing, so we made a profile for rob and started searching. We messaged about 5 people through the site asking if they would be able to host us for a couple of nights (or even just one!) and gave all of them Rob's number. We weren't really sure if it was going to come through that night or not so we left the internet cafe and sat down to phone up every hostel in our guide book, while eating our lunch of hardboiled eggs (hey, we're on a budget!). At about 4 pm ish we got a call from a guy named Zack who offered us his L-shaped couch for two nights, which we gladly accepted. Zack had put on his profile that he was a massive raver (for those older folks who don't know what that means- basically someone who listens to intense dance/trance music and parties in the woods, sorry if I offend any ravers out there by simplifying it too much). He ended up being this very down to earth guy who lives in a super posh part of Melbourne who works from home for some company to do with exporting/importing goods. He was 28 (Rob's age) and from England, so they got along really well talking about their common English stuff. After spending two nights there, Rob and I searched for another couch surfer to stay at and ended up finding Andrew, a 51 year old grad student who is getting his Phd at Monash Uni and also working there doing research. He invited us to play Badminton at the uni with him (he plays every friday with a group of people) and then to go out for chinese food. The badminton turned out to be so much fun, and actually quite intense! (Yes dad, that means I actually exercised!) I suffered from Badminton Hand (similar to Tennis Elbow) for the next two days though! We ended up staying at Andrew's for three nights and having a great time, we had a homemade pizza night and watched Pineapple Express (funny!).We tried to find another couch surfing experience after Andrews but couldnt, so ended up booking into a hostel called Melbourne International Backpackers...we were a bit depressed about having to pay for accommodation after 5 free nights. The hostel has been pretty good, except our room was SO HOT. I couldn't stand it any longer one night and had to get up at 2 am to take a freezing shower to cool myself down. Last night was finally all right and I got some sleep. Melbourne just had two of its hottest days though, with temps near 100!

Rob and I also started working! We are currently fundraising for a Oxfam (the largest international aid organization in Australia!). So we are those annoying people on the streets who try to stop you. It's not exactly what I wanted to do but we are put on a retainer of $75 a day for the first week and we both needed quick cash so we agreed. The people are great but I'm just sick of selling! Anyway I am thinking about doing a tour of the great ocean road next week for 1-2 days. It's pretty cheap and I would love to see it, and it gives me something to do while I wait for some of my visas for asia to go through. After that I need to head to Canberra to get my visa for Laos (canberra has a reputation of being the most boring city in australia...also happens to be the capital!) then I will be heading back to Sydney where I will hopefully celebrate Australia day and stay there till I leave on Feb 4 for china! It's only three weeks away, time has gone by so quickly and I am definitely going to have a hard time leaving here.

I think my internet time is about to run out...so I am going to skip checking this for grammatical/spelling errors (I apologize). Oh, just to explain my photo above, Rob and I bumped into a woman walking three ferrets one night! Parents, i dont know if you remember how many times I begged for a ferret (or two)....i couldnt resist playing with them, they were so cute! She can't have dogs/cats in her apartment building so she has three ferrets instead.

Okay I am off to meet up with Rob at the hostel, have a rest, then make dinner!