G'day folks, hope you're all having muchos festive fun in the build up to Christmas. Sure you'll all be glad to know that the weather forecast for Chriatmas Day here is rain - arrghhhh.

So going back a few weeks, we had my birthday here in blazing sunshine and 35 degrees (sure that's a first and last for 1st December). Started off the day with a lovely suprise breakfast in the garden cooked by the fantastical Mr Thompson, with an abundance of croissants, muffins, melon, smoked salmon and scrambled egg… mmm, yes we are still poor travellers tho. We then headed off on a ferry across the harbour to Taronga Zoo - 'not more animal bonding' I hear you cry… yes, lots more… love it! One of the best bits was we got to go in the pen with the koalas who were sleeping soundly (unfortunately missed that 1 hour window of the day when they are awake) and get all up close and personal. The keeper kept telling us to get closer so we could get a really good photo, so with our faces pressed into a sleeping koala's rear we smiled sweetly for the camera - check out the pics!

We also saw kangaroos for the first time, as had only seen wallabys before. Man, all I can say about those guys is their balls are massive! Not to get too personal but they nearly hang down to the ground in quite an unecessary fashion. Anyway, balls aside, we ventured round the zoo for a good couple of hours and saw, among loads of other things, the elephants who have recently been bought over here from Chiang Mai in Thailand...they felt like old friends to us!

After getting burnt to a crisp in the Sydney sun we headed for much needed beers and the birthday suprise which Grant had booked. The surprise was drinks in Minus5 Bar on Circular Quay which was awesome. The place is so 'cool', a bar made totally out of ice including the tables, chairs, walls, glasses and even the bar itself. You have to get kitted out in huge jackets, gloves and Ugg boots as the temperature in there is minus 15 degrees..yeesh. As it was my birthday I got in free (hurrah) and we also got lots of free cocktails (hurrah again). You only get a half hour timeslot otherwise you literally freeze to the spot so we made the most of our time doing a Dumb and Dumber and licking the walls to see if our tongues stuck, downing our drinks before they turned to frozen slush and rubbing the 'parts' of one of the ice statues to see if we could melt it.

After all the icy action we stepped outside into the warm evening for a meal on the quay. We had a table outside and as we started eating a mass of fireworks went off all around the harbour for about 20 minutes - Grant still swears they were all organised by him as part of the birthday surprise but I am a little dubious considering our traveller budget...

The next night we continued the birthday celebrations with Twickers and our housemates - having a good old drinking circle in our room and teaching everyone the delights of 'chickens' and 'whizz boing bounce' . We then staggered to Bondi Hotel at about 1am to cut some drunken shapes like most Saturday nights and rolled home at about 5ish. Waking in the morning was not a good experience so I headed down to the beach in the rain at around 9am and jumped straight in the freezing sea - was a literally sick with the shock to start with (lovely)but after a while felt revitalised - best hangover cure ever!

We both had Christmas parties that week too so we were back on the grog again. Grant did some great networking at his do making some new best friends - one of whom is gay and the other camp as Christmas and just in denial, he didn't actually realise this however. He had a great night of drunken banter, but did wonder why he was the talk of the night after spending the whole night sandwiched between them both posing for cosy snaps.

We took a trip to Manly last week too which is a wicked little beach town that you can only get to by ferry. Rather than hitting the beach (so over that as we spend about a million hours on Bondi!) we had a wander round some shops, stumbling across a shop called 'Hemp of Braintree' - ha! - Grant obv got very excited and had to get a snap. He was even happier when he saw the Newcastle game on in a bar however and stayed in there while I went off to do some shopping - perfect day for both of us. We also bought our Chrimbo decorations while there and ended up buying quite a few fairy lights as they were only $20... quite a few being 600 lights to be exact!! They stretch 72 metres so when we got home we set about hanging them round our room... out into the hallway, round our housemates doors, round the kitchen, back into the hallway and back to our room... Grant is slightly concerned that we are sporting somewhat of a Las Vegas vibe but I love it… who cares if we are draining the power sources of Australia, at least our gaff now looks well classy!!

Ooh, just remembered we went to see Noel Gallagher last week too - man we have been busy. He was playing a small acoustic gig at a theatre in West Sydney so we went with some folks I work with to try and catch a glimpse of the hairy eyebrowed one. Got pretty hammered before hand but fortunately turned up just before he came on. All the old Oasis classics were there, although a lot of them were sung slightly differently as he said he didn't want to sing them like Liam - think those boys have had a barney again.

Next on our itinerary was a trip to Surf Camp for the weekend, this was based at Seal Rocks, 3 hours north of Sydney so we set off on a coach full of backpackers in search of some sweeeet surfing action. The camp is in the middle of nowhere in some woods and the accommodation was wooden cabins shared with about 20 others all piled in bunkbeds. We set off to the beach on the first day full of hope, me thinking that maybe surfing was gonna be 'my sport'. Hmmm - negative - it is well bloody hard! After a lesson on the sand we set off into the sea and started off laying down on our boards, managing to catch loads of waves - weeeeeeeeee! 'Easy' I thought. Hmmm - negative - standing up is a whole other story. It probably didn't help that it was a pretty drizzly day and the sea was kinda rough but I won't make excuses... Grant threw one of his strops (think mini golf Stu and Benny) and was raging that he couldn't get it. However, he persevered and after a lifetime of wipeouts he was up on his feet - woooooo! I kinda caught one and stood for a millisecond too - hurray!

It was full steam ahead with the drinking that night and along with our group of 25 and all the instructors we made our way through about 100 jugs of sangria and 200 jugs of beer - sweeeeeet. Muchos dancing followed and a few romances blossomed - just what these camps are for eh. One of the funniest guys was Phil, an old fat NZ bloke who was a lorry driver and just kind of hung around with the instructors - he spent most of the night dribbling on the floor, or trying to grab anything in a skirt - lucky us. There was also Frank the fat Korean, who in a game of 'get to know eachother' and telling an interesting fact about yourself proceeded to tell everyone about his girlfriend catching him having a 'special time' with his computer - way to break the ice with everyone Frank!!

The second days surfing was slightly more successful than the first. We were both able to stand for a bit, Grant even mastering a down on one knee pose - although not sure that was actually intentional. We really stuck at it tho, as most were dropping like flies due to the hangovers, Grant being in the water for like 4 hours without coming out - dedication's what you need... One of the most amazing parts of the day was seeing wild dolphins jumping (not sure that is actually the right action for a dolphin but u know what I mean) past as we surfed! There was a school of about 8 and we all just stopped and watched in awe as they passed by - wow! Keeping on the animal theme, there were also wild kangaroos living in the field next to our camp - each morning and afternoon there were about 20 all watching inquisitively as we drove by - didn't get close enough to spot any kangaroo balls this time tho. All in all it was an awesome weekend and we are now well keen to get some surfboards on Bondi and try to master these waves dude.

Right, I am thinking I best sign off now as this has been like the longest journal ever.

Merry Christmas everyone... can't believe it's less than a week... eeeeeeeeee!

Linz x

p.s  Please don't mention the cricket