well it has been a sad couple of weeks for the Aussie 5 and their fateful roadtrip. Having written to you guys from Toronto earlier this month, none of us had any idea all 5 off us would be separated and either back home or looking at Edinburgh Castle out window. I probably won't detail that much about my time in Edinburgh just yet cause i could spend weeks on what happened in the States.

The boys and I had spent about 5 days in Toronto with our last day or 2 including a move to our favourite sponsors, Days Inn, for some slightly more comfortable surroundings. This also allowed matty some quality time with his girlfriend before we continued on our trip, so everyone was a winner. The boys and I even took in some Mini-golf, a movie and finally a trip to the laundromat before moving on.

So on that fateful day, we headed off from Toronto in search of the US border in the hope of switching over our visas from our Working visa (J1- used while at camp) to our tourist visa (B1- we had a special one as you can't apply for a regular tourist visa after a working visa). We decided to head to a smaller border crossing as it better suited our route to a college town we had planned to stay at in Michigan State. BIG MISTAKE. we pulled in, were interrogated for a while then were asked to park our car and go into the customs centre for more questions.

In the space of about 5 min we'd been told our trip was over. Customs Officer King calmly told us that we had not made a "meaningful departure" from the country and therefore could not return on our new B1 visas. So basically we had 7 days remaining on our J1 visa before we had to leave the country. Despite all our advice from other travellers, previous camp leaders, CCUSA our recruiting company and the US consulate in Sydney simply going into Canada and turning round and coming back wasn't enough to change your visa. We needed to have left the country for the same length of time we had been staying for (roughly 2 months). We were totally confused, ridiculously angry and absolutely speechless. All our plans went out the window and no matter how much pleading, debating and clarification we asked for this customs bloke wouldn't change his mind. He actually said US customs has no connection with the US consulate, so despite them being responsible to enforcing border control they have no communication with the org. rsponsible for issuing passes into the country!!!! i really hope my explaination makes sense and you can all see how retarded and illogical these people are!

It was getting towards 6pm at this stage, we had a rental car booked for another 2 months, no accommodation, tickets home in 2 months and no idea what the hell we were going to do. We jumped in the car and raced the 6 hours to Chicago in order to make a trip to the Australian Consulate and US dept of homeland security for advice the following day. So we did both those things the next day and found out the Aust. consulate couldn't help and the option from the Homeland place was a long shot that required us potentially travelling the country illegally while our extension paperwork was being filed in California....b***** that! We decided it wasn't worth cruising round the country illegally with our only defense being that we'd sent some papers and they were in the mail somewhere.

We hit damage control, made plans to visit a friend of ours in Peoria (college town in illinois) and then hightail it to Vegas for at least some kind of holiday before being kicked out. Our time in Peoria turned out to be the best of our trip. We stayed in a sharehouse with 5 girls, we were some of the most welcoming and accommodating people ever! Blokes who are reading this, get your minds out of the gutter hahahhahaa. Seriously though, it was a great place! We hit a few pubs and clubs, crashed a uni tutorial class to sing happy birthday, had dinner made for us and worked on our beer pong (an interesting past time sure to take off back home).

I think i'll stop at this point because our time at Vegas was incredible and i'll write a whole bloody essay on that as well, and I'm pretty sure the weather will be great for indoor activities over here too!

catchya soon!