so many faces...

i have met more cool people in the last two weeks to last me a lifetime. i actually don't want to meet any more cool people. ever. it's too hard to meet cool people and then have to say bye to them. from now on, it's just you guys, and some sporadic non-cool people in my life. shoot. only 12 minutes left on my internet timer. okay, must type quickly. went to airlie beach and went sailing in the whitsundays with 23 amazing people and the crew was awesome and hiliarious and showed us a good time. and it even rained the whole trip and it was truly wonderful still. even sitting inside and playing cards was fun. didn't get to see any of the beaches we were supposed to...but, we did eat well and played even better. did lots of diving and snorkelling, saw cool things, got to lie in the nets on the front of the boat and pretend we were dolphins. crap, 4 minutes left (stupid msn). okay okay....um, i will finish this at a cheaper internet location.

wake up to the sound of the ocean...

spent the last few days on magnetic island..woke up next to the beach, looking up into palm trees and blues skies and ocean....just sat around and relaxed...went horse riding in the bush and on the beach...got to ride bareback on the horses (ow) and went swimming with them in the ocean. so amazing. luckily, they gave me a fairly skinny horse (whew!), so i'm not too sore...though i am bit bruised....alanna, i cantered! not very gracefully, but cantered never the less.... :) managed to hold on for dear life. also did a walk along the island and saw koalas. so close, i could've touched them...decided not to sinve i've heard they are vicious...luckily there's no rabies here in australia :) am currently in airlie beach, about to go sailing! don't worry, i've stocked up on motion sickness pills....starting to miss home a lot, will be back very very soon!!

love,
kim

This is me sitting 140 metres above the ground, steeling myself to jump. this was actually the scariest part, cause the chair tipped backwards and you felt as though you were falling out that door behind me...

if there's one thing you should do in australia...

it's the uncle brain tour in cairns. one day of being a kid again. seriously. you play in waterfalls, see the rainforest, eat lots of chocolate, get fed home made meals, play games on the bus, sing at the top of your lungs, and SOO SOO much more. one of the best things i've done here in Oz. our tour guide (cousin paul) was absolutely hilarious, joking around the WHOLE time. i swear i almost got a six pack from laughing so much on this trip (covered by a nice layer of cushiony goodness, of course). we rode gus the bus who had an awesome personality (and a girlfriend..a hot milk truck named volvina, and an ambulance (vanessa) lusting after him...who sends him love letters), and even got to see wild platypus...oh, and did wine tasting (not a fan of chocolate wine...). jumped off a cliff into beautiful water, swam through waterfalls....it was wonderful. then, went out afterwards with the people from my group and had a great time at the bar. awesome day. time to leave cairns though, i'm starting to know too many people here, i've been here too long...off to magnetic island tomorrow!

denise, monica, and andre and i standing in a typical setting in new zealand

booyah.

the platform i jumped from into the canyon...had to take a gondola to get to it...

coconuts on the trees

alright. where was i last? new zealand...lovely lovely new zealand. okay...hmmmm....since then i have traveled up the coast to sunny cairns, where the beach is made of mud and the town is full of backpackers. a nice place to meet new people...the first night i got in me and the guy sitting beside me on the plane (dan), walked around the city for 2 hours with our packs looking for a place to stay (didn't book ahead...bad kim). finally found a lodge where we stayed for a night with two other guys who also hadn't planned ahead....nice bed though :) had a farewell drink with tom (who had a 30 hour train ride ahead of him), and lay on the median for a while chilling out. a good place to talk, let me tell yah. met meike the next day and went to a reef talk, by paddy o' something...the irish are crazy, and irish marine biologists even crazier. he was the most animated person i've ever met...sometimes to the point where i couldn't even listen to what he was talking about and just watched him jump around and hit things. chilled out with dan and our other roomate, amir from isreal. played some cards, talked (pop quiz alanna...what does it mean if someone british says i'm on the apples?, or let's have a butcher?) meike and i went to the daintree rainforest (cape tribulation) for a couple days, and sadly, it rained the WHOLE TIME. so, instead of getting all our clothes wet, we just walked around in our bikinis while everyone around us were wearing rainjackets and layers and hats and stuff. had some fun playing on the beach, had a mudfight in the ocean, watched crabs catapult little balls of sand from their holes, saw a flat frog, a feral pig...and then found out later that day that we were playing in crocodile territory. we weren't in much danger, since people walk to the swimming hole all the time...but still.... also went to a exotic fruit eating, love soursop and custard apples, opened some coconuts (well, meike did),went on a crocodile tour (say one croc and some snakes). met some cool people, had drinks with a south african fellow from the navy (liked to call people "pork chops"...hahah), a couple scottish girls. after those two days i headed off to port douglas, a lovely town that i would like to revisit someday. went on a dive tour, and a few minutes after takeoff in the boat, people started throwing up cause it was crazy wavy. luckily, i overdosed myself on motion sickness pills and was totally fine...for the first time in my life! i was so proud of myself :) the diving was okay, but not great visibility cause it had been raining and was really windy, and didn't really get a chance to see anything new...saw some sharks, cuttlefish, etc. meh. not as cool as tom...he got to dive with whales! awesome. should've dished out the extra 600 dollars....anyways, i'm back in cairns now and today i will plan the rest of my weeks..or at least tomorrow :) i'm not sure how to get pictures posted on here without the Hello program, so you may have to wait until i get back into syd, in two or three weeks...sorry guys!
piece of advice: try and do something new everyday. and keep me posted :)

kim

country music capital and sheep and kiwis

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD.....how old are you now,....30?

for my dad's birthday i threw myself headfirst into a 143m canyon. don't worry dad..i'm being safe. my legs were tied to a cord. it's all good.
new zealand is AMAZING. soooo gorgeous...we drive through and are surrounded by huge snow capped mountains and waterfalls every day. i'm currently in queenstown, adrenaline capital of the world....i've been on a tour traveling through new zealand....seen some pretty amazing things. no penguins yet though laura....i think yesterday may have been my last hope :( climbed fox glacier a couple days ago...got crampons (the pokey things on the bottom of your boots) and everything...even managed to not stab myself in the leg! did a short walk through the rainforest and saw glowworms (who are really just fly larvae that don't have waste holes, so they have to break it down inside them...and then when they turn into flies they don't have mouths, and eventually just get eaten by their own larvae....kinda makes you wonder what the point of them are...)
last week i was in tamworth (country music capital) at unigames, where my volleyball team (sydney uni) won first (woot!). slept in tents cause all the motels were booked out...it was pretty damn cold (5degrees each night), but luckily we spent lots of time in warm pubs :) it was one big party...got to see Thirsty Merc play, an awesome australian band who i gather are getting bigger...great concert, rocked out right at the front...

awesome pics to come soon.

love,
kim

put on the wetsuits again...

today was a big step up from yesterday...yesterday i sat at home and watched 4 movies. and of those 4, thomas crown affair was two of them. meaning that i watched it twice...no comment. anyways, today i went white water rafting with Sam from volleyball and her friends. it was crazy fun. much different from the rafting i had done before...this was on a course where the olympic stuff was done....first time round we managed to capsize the boat....no matter though, we all managed to get really good at falling off the boat. surprisingly, i didn't take too many people down with me as i fell...also got to play beach volleyball while we were waiting. really doesn't get much better than that. wait..it does...THEN, we went to krispy kreme (danger.) and us four girls ended up buying a dozen donuts each. don't worry, i haven't touched them...much. a couple of days ago we had my last volleyball party...sat in the pokies room (a room in every bar that has slot machines) and chilled until the bar closed (10pm...), and then headed off to our friends place, where we got stuck in the elevator, then ate jaffles (toasted sandwiches), ate nutella (mmmm.....), drank beer, watched the dubbed italian version of hercules, and then crashed. good times. so sad that volleyball is over for me here in sydney, and i probably won't play again til....PICK-UP....woooooot.

Your step-by-step guide to eating Tim Tams (aka the most glorious cookie known to man): Step 1. Buy and open Tim Tam packets (at least two is recommended, and of different varieties)

Step 2: Bite off a little cookie from both ends (must be careful - the tendency is to get carried away and eat the whole cookie)

Step 3: Dip one end of the cookie into hot liquid (usually tea, but sonia's drink of choice is hot water), and keep the other end in your mouth

Step 4. Suck.

Step 5. Quickly shove the melting Tim Tam in your mouth.

Step 6. Enjoy the gooey aftermath.

Warning: Tim Tams and tea are addictive. Do not expect to ever maintain any resemblance of a good figure ever again. You have been warned.

Note: Special thanks to model, Sonia, for sacrificing herself to the good cause of making the world a better place through proper tim tam eatage.

us+5 cappucinos = us+2 balloons+chinatown

5 cappucinos later...

finished exams yesterday, so me and sonia decided to go to the casino (at 3pm) cause we heard we could get free drinks. so we went, signed up for members passes, and we also got 10 dollars of free gambling money each....but the free drinks didn't kick in for 2 hours, so we had some time to spare...ten minutes later we had managed to spend all of the money on button mashing at the slots (we stopped when three dollars fell out of the machine)...what is going on with those machines? they make more sense on tv... and one losing ten dollar bet on roulette (i streeted it...*cough*) we wandered around darling harbour for a couple hours and then came back and downed 5 cappucinos...which sonia payed for dearly...she is now a zombie and can't sleep (a day later). i felt drunk after so much caffeine, so needless to say we had a nice walk home involving balloons, rain, chinatown, and a videocamera.
went to the bar last night and ended up at three wise monkeys, where we hung out with some friends and had to say goodbye to some of them (*sniff*...), though i don't know if bernd got on the plane....he was still drunk when we sent him home at 4, and he had to catch a plane at 7 for cairns....it's kinda depressing....i'm still meeting new people who i really want to get to know, but i have to keep telling myself that i leave sydney in a week...crazy...

sonja, me, lena, and judith...loving life 

italian alessandro making carbonara at my place