It's hard to believe it's already the 5th of August!! And by the time anyone in Aus reads this it'll be the 6th making it exactly one month since I left all you beautiful people back in Perth. And I really can't decide whether it's gone quickly or not…in some ways it feels like all that time flashed by in the blink of an eye, and yet we've done SO many things in just one month that it feels like I've been gone a lifetime. Today we flew out of Vegas first thing in the morning and are now waiting at LAX for our flight on to Vancouver.

Some things I will not miss when I leave the US…

1)Fishing around in my bag through dozens of one dollar bills when all of my notes (whether they be hundreds or ones) look virtually the same! I'm really not a huge fan of the American currency…

2)Always forgetting that no matter how good a deal may appear to be in terms of cost, there's always tax to be added and often a tip too! A cheap meal in a restaurant is not always as inexpensive as it seems…

3)No spoons in cafes/coffee places/Starbucks!!! OK, I know I'm being nitpicky, but whilst a stirer stirs…what's a girl to use to scoop up and savour the foam on the top of her cappuccino!?

4)Feeling like I'm part of an incredibly wasteful society and feeling powerless to act any differently (I was in Starbucks yesterday and was surprised to see a man had brought is own coffee cup with him. I thought, wow, how awesome, a person with a social conscience, as soon as I'm in the one place for a while I'll buy myself a mug and do that too. He gave it to the girl at the counter but she refused to put the coffee directly into the cup and instead made it in a disposable cup, then poured it into his cup, then promptly chucked the disposable cup in the bin…I've also seen several ads on TV promoting the use of plastic plates as a permanent alternative to using normal crockery to give people "more time to spend with their families"!!!!! Surely somebody in this country realises how positively absurd that sounds!?)

Things I will miss…

1)Having to go back to actually buying my own meal and not being able to rely on the guaranteed ridiculousness of portion sizes

2)Good service - seems tips are good for something, because the service in restaurants etc. has been far better in general than I've had for a long time in Aus (albeit just a lil fake at times…)

3)Laughing at "interesting characters" (aka crazy people =P) like the LA lady who was dressed all in pink with all pink accessories and had a dog dyed pink in a pink pram with all pink accessories lol ah free entertainment…

When we first flew into the US and were chatting to the lady in customs she advised me that I was smart to study in Canada and simply drop through the US on the way, she joked, "the Canadians are far less crazy than us Americans" haha there may just have been some truth to that…But it's been a truly awesome experience and definitely an eye opener.

The past few days in Vegas we continued wandering around/getting lost in the hotels and even tried out luck at gambling on the last day we were there. We put $5 in the pokies (both very disappointed that the big pull down handle on the side was only for show and all we actually got to do was push a button! Hehe), got pretty bored after about 2 minutes, and promptly lost it all! Frankly I think that $5 would have been far better spent on five $1 Margaritas at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville…not that that would have been an option for me anyway!

LIVxo