G'day everyone!

It's been a while since we last gave you some news and yes, we are still alive in Melbourne! Working monday to friday does mean that we don't have much exciting news to be telling you all, but we are still enjoying ourselves despite the cold weather! It got down to about 3 degrees the other day when I was walking to work. It can be colder over night and day temperatures aren't reaching much above 13 deg at the moment. Having said that, today seems to be a nice and sunny day (which makes a change!) and there's no wind which makes a big difference. Anyways, enough about the weather!

Dave got himself a job across the road from my cafe thanks to a tip from my boss. It's a company that produces a booklet for the police, educating children about drugs, alcohol, depression, bullying etc & his job entails phoning businesses to ask if they want advertising space at the back in order to continue providing the booklet for free. It's much better than his last job as he starts at a very reasonable 9.30am and finishes by 5pm... with no standing around on streets door knocking! It's harder in a way as it is 100% commission so that is a bit annoying but at the same time, if you make sales, the commission is good!

I'm still working at the same cafe, managing to cope with the early morning starts! It's a little depressing as I'm usually in bed before anyone else at around 9pm! It's good now that I've been there a while as I know the regulars and can have a bit of a laugh with them. I've had some of the directors and choreographers from 'Mary Poppins' coming in most days as they've come over from the UK to set up the show which will run for another 9months or so before moving to Sydney. One of the guys, Geoff was extremely kind last week, he came into work and said he'd got me 2 tickets to the show for the Wednesday night for free! I was over the moon! Dave & I dressed up a little and headed out to the theatre and got the best seats in house... all for free! The show was great, good fun, with the old favourite songs as well as some new ones. The order was a little muddled up with some new scenes, but I believe it has been based a little more on the book than the film. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, singing all the way home! We'd go again for sure.

This weekend we haven't done too much. Dave had hockey yesterday which they won! We also went round to Paul and Caroline King's for dinner last night which was lovely, really good to meet them and enjoy a good meal.... and lots of wine! We had a great time. Today we're having a lazy day, trying to catch up on emails and obviously the blog!

Over the past few weeks, we've done a few touristy things at the weekends. We're still waiting for a clear day when we can go up the Rialto Towers to get a good sky view of the city. We went down to St Kilda, one of the suburbs by the beach the other week and went for a walk round Luna Park (fair rides etc), bought some candy floss then went for a walk along the front through the markets stalls. There was some nice things there, it's just a shame we can't buy lots of things and bring them home. There are lots of little cafes and cake shops, second hand stores. It has a nice vibe about the place and is very chilled. We walked up the pier and saw a little penguin in the "sea wall" hiding away, nearly out of view. We also went to the museum last weekend which was nice wandering around seeing the different exhibits. It's quite interesting to see the difference between the museums in each city (we seem to go to most museums in cities both in NZ and OZ!) It had a very bizarre exhibit of stuffed animals from all around the globe, put at different levels all around this one room, almost on shelves. It was a very unique way of presenting all the animals... if not a little odd! We finished the day with a trip to KoKo Black, a chocolatier place with yummy choccies and drinks. We decided to share a platter with chocolate ice cream, chocolate mousse (which was amazing!), 2 chocolates and some biscuits. Very indulgent but totally worth it!

So, not much exciting news that I can think of at the moment, but we are plodding along, trying to save some pennies for our month, then Dave's month of travelling. We can't believe that it's only 3 months until I come home. It feels bizarre to think about it finishing soon. We will try and keep track of things we get up to between now and our next blog so we can actually write something more exciting for you all!

Lots of love to you all, we hope that everything is going well & you're all enjoying the lovely hot weather. We're both very jealous!!

Rachel and David xxxxx