11th - 16th feb

on sunday, jenny & i set off early to go and rescue endangered wild flowers in the national park in manly. we thought it would a nice thing to do for when we come back next time and find an extra tree or 10 that we planted with our bare hands. we live on a very busy road called military road, and as we were waiting there to get the bus, a little dog crossed the road... all on its own! now this is a road that even i cannot cross for risk of being run over so instead i normally have to walk down to the pedestrian crossing and wait. must take lessons from dogs next time!! anyway. it must have been a stray as it didnt have a collar or tag but a lady that was passing by took it with her or i would have had to miss my planting session to save the dog! so... we got to manly and took a cab to the national park where we were meant to meet. we must have driven round the place tWice and could not see a soul let alone a volunteer group! in the end (and because the fare was getting higher and higher) we said DONT WORRY, we'll walk. we got out at the stone archway which was the entrance to the park and who should be passing, but bruce (i don't really know his name). he was one of the park rangers and took us on another little tour to find our group. we stopped at several places, including a visit to kev (i made his name up too) but proved unsuccessful sO, the gentleman drove us all the way back into manly! by this point we didn't really know what to do because it was only just after 9.30am on a sunday morning!! of course, we ended up on the beach!!

all along the beach were hundreds of washed up blue-bottle jellyfish. it must have been a change of current cos they were eVERywhere. we walked down to the other end of the beach where a surf festival was on, and we expected to see some hot surfer dudes, but to our disappointment, they were just surf club kids doing races on the beach. instead we sunbathed for a while and then went to have a deLiciOUS lunch at a restaurant called jELLYFiSH!! we spent the rest of the afternoon at the other end of the beach, jenny sunbathing and me building a spectacular sandcastle (sorry tommy this ones better). we had a couple of short showers which cleared a few people from the beach but just made more space for us!! i got chatting to this surfer guy who then started preaching to me about god, so i left jenny with him for what must have been 20 mins or so whilst i talked to the lifeguard about jellyfish! its not really what u want when you go for a nice day at the beach to be preached at so i stayed clear, hehe.

survived the water despite several children throughout the day getting stung and screaming like you've never heard and went and had a wet hot chocolate in the rain.

this week has been average. the work in the cafe i have been doing has really not been fun - i think its more the people than the actual work so im quite glad to be leaving that today. i hope to start a new job on tuesday at a travel place, booking adventure tours etc. and putting to use my travel experiences to date. i know what you must be thinking....... 'i thought you were supposed to leave australia on the 15th feb'?!

i sort of changed my mind.

im more possibly than not going to stay another 2months here now because that's how long they would want me for the job and i love this place so much. this means now that i won't be returning until mid may so i will have my very first birthday without twin 1 in 22 years :( very strange.

anyway, please check out the photos and keep sending me messages cos i love it.

em xx