Last Day of Work

For the last Friday of every month my boss takes everyone out for drinks and dinner at a bar down the road from our work on his tab. By conincidence this also happened to be my last day at work! We all got dressed up and went down for drinks for my farewell, my boss also said some nice things for my goodbye and they all signed a big card for me, it was very sweet. I will definitely miss everyone I worked with, I actually really liked the job even though what we actually did wasn`t too exciting. Hopefully I can keep in touch with everyone once I`m back home.

Melbourne

I went to Melbourne for a weekend in May, unfortunately yet another camera broke at the end of my roadtrip so I couldn't get any pictures but thought I'd fill everyone in on what it was like. It was pretty cold and rainy when we went so not the best conditions but it was still a really cool place to visit. I wish I'd had more time to go so I could have gone up the Great Ocean Road but oh well. We went shopping downtown the first day, it reminded me a lot of Montreal. Really artsy districts and funky architecture, a lot younger crowd than Sydney as there's a lot of universities in the city. Could have just been the area we were in but that's what it seemed like to me. The big distinctive thing about Melbourne is the trams, streetcars to us I guess, you don`t really see them in any other cities here. We went to a comedy show on the first night, it was hilarious. Luckily Aussie humour is a lot like ours, he only made one Canadian joke and it wasn't too bad. There was an American in the audience so he kind of got picked on. The next day I went to an AFL game, Aussie rules football, which was pretty cool. It`s a strange sport, kind of a mix of soccer, football and rugby. I had a lot of fun in Melbourne, it`s weird because when I was deciding to come here I had to choose between Melbourne and Sydney,who knows what it would have been like if I`d chosen Melbourne! My computers being really slow so I can`t get any pictures off the net but if you google Melbourne architecture you can see some of the cool buildings.

The adventures of Papa Bear continue

Here are the new additions to the continuing adventures of Papa bear from the roadtrip!

There was a friend for him at our villa

Roadtrip!

For Easter in Australia it was a five day weekend because of Anzac Day (kind of like our Rememberance Day) so I took the rest of the week off after and went on a roadtrip up the coast with Tim. I flew into Coffs Harbour and met him and his friends there and we set off the next day. We went to a few places I'd been on my Contiki trip that I hadn't gotten to see enough of and some places I'd missed. The first day we went to a water park near Brisbane but it absolutely poured, there were some sunny parts but when we were leaving we got absolutely drenched.

After a mad dash to the car!

After a few nights out on the way back to Sydney we stayed a night in Yamba, a small beach town up in norther New South Wales. I've heard about it from a few people so I figured we might as well check it out. It ended up being a lot of fun, not exactly the most exciting place but it was a nice break. We went to a movie in town and it was the smallest theatre I've ever seen. It was a small little cinema with only one screen and chairs all set up, very cute. Here's Yamba's very own cinema!







We made lots of stops along the way whenever the sun was out as it rained a lot along the way. When the sun came out and we saw a beach we would stop and soak up the sun until the rain came back. Here's some shots from our stops.

For my birthday Tim surprised me with a villa in Port Stephens for the weekend. It was a really nice weekend and we went on a dolphin watching cruise on our first day. The ironic part is that we saw more dolphins later that day at the beach then we did on the cruise. I think photos do it more justice...

And last but not least I bet you didn't know this but I actually spent my birthday in Toronto..

Out in Castle Hill

I agreed to go out with a girl from work one night around where she lives, Castle Hill, not knowing really where it was. I found it it's an hour outside of the city, kind of like the equivalent of the suburbs around Toronto. It was a cute town, a lot like Oakville in some ways, but it was so weird being at her house because shes a year younger than me and still living at home. It was the first time since I got here that I'd been in a family situation, made me so homesick! She lives with her mom and 4 brothers, they were all really sweet. We went out to a local bar near her and everyone was wondering what the hell a Canadian was doing in their town, not exactly a tourist hotspot! It was a lot of fun though, here's just a couple pictures from Emma's phone. I'll update more soon, too tired to put up any more right now!