day three!

I took these last night, after I updated my blog. They're taken from the fourth floor patio.

bit of brisbane.

it's hard to not look angry while holding your head very still while moving you arm. just a heads up.

Woke up at 6 this morning, dozed a little until 7 when I realized I may as well just wake up. So I did and went and took shower.
Now I'm just relaxing online, I might possibly be the only person in this hostel that's awake.

Currently listening to my favourite Welch receptionist, John, sing off key.
The perfect start to my morning.

I think when I'm done with interneting I'll go grab a coffee. I'm not meeting Frances until 11, which is 3 hours from now.
Hm.
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Done my internet-ing but I was want to tell y'all about this lady who's staying here.
She looks like Donnatella Versace. In fact, it could be her, just trying to experience a poor man's traveling. Her lips are painfully huge, her forehead is too taut, her hair is too blonde, she looks like she might be dresses in Versace too actually.
It's insane.
I first saw her last night and assumed she was just using the internet but then I passed her on my way to the shower this morning. Crazy crazy.

I think I'm going to pop by the grocery store now and get something for breakfast/dinner tonight.
For dinner I'm thinking pasta with a zucchini, onion, mushroom and bell pepper sauce. Probably just sauté them actually, skip the tomato or cream base.
I'll try to find some basil too.

but for breakfast… I was thinking an omelette but the pans here leave one asking for much more and I think it might be disastrous to attempt that. Perhaps just find more fruit. I'm a tad sick of just eating fruit right now.
Oh well, I'll find something editable.
Actually I wonder if the store's open right now, it's on half 8 on a sunday. Bugger.
I'll just go over there and if it's closed I'll go back to Gloria Jeans instead and go back this afternoon.

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I went to the store and it was closed so I went to "Expressbo Bar" and had a cup of tea/read a bit of Sarah Silverman's autobiography. They had all this amazing Tin Tin merch there, I almost bought some for magnus and I but it was dreadfully overpriced. Like, $44 for a t shirt. So I didn't. The lady working there had adorable new-ish dreads and she liked my bracelet. that's 5 for those counting.

The store must have opened at 9 because once I was done my tea, it was up and running.

I bought:
1 white onion
1 red bell pepper
a small bag of penne pasta
rice crackers
goat cheese
adorable tiny bottle of olive oil
small jar of olives

sort of walkway to the store

prawns!

I cam back to the hostel and ate some goat cheese & rice crackers, which was a surprisingly delicious mixing of cultures. I sat up on the 3rd floor patio and it's really lovely during the day, I might go up to the 4th floor this afternoon and relax.

I'm a woman of many cultures

om nom!

I'm meeting Frances in an hour and the place we're meeting (at least, I'm 97% sure this is where we're meeting) is about a 10-15 minute walk I figure. So I have a little while before I need to leave and all I have to do is brush my teeth.

I really want to go out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary tomorrow, but I don't much want to go alone. Maybe I'll see if anyone's interested in coming with me.
Deana said it was a breeze to get there on the bus but slightly harder to get back because of timing but I can probably handle it. So as of now that's my plan.

So Laura just said she'd like to come with me, which would be lovely because I just said I'd like to go with someone but at the same time I might die of human interaction overload. Maybe Stephanie wants to come with us… I'll ask her tonight.

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Ok, it's now half 6 in the evening. I had a really awesome day!

Before I left, a took a few photos of my room in the hostel, since I figured someone might carre.

the bottom one on the left is mine.

Around quarter past 10 I left to meet Frances. Thankfully I have myself 45 minute to get there since, surprise surprise, I got lost and ended up at some square I'd never even seen before. Asked someone for directions and got there with a minute to spare.

I waited about 3 minutes before Frances and James arrived, worrying the whole time that I was in the completely wrong place. I didn't know James was going to be there, but I'm glad he was since they're both charming.

king george square.

We got over how awesome it was to finally meet each other (I'm friends with both of them on Facebook through a friend & I think maybe I've skyped with Frances? Maybe not but we've talked a bit.)
We went walking around and stopped by another Gloria Jean's (apparently a chain store, which makes me a little sad.) to get some tea, in my case and some kind of cold thing in their case. We went and sat in some park and chatted, I got pretty excited because there were just ibises hanging around.

ibis!

Frances' feet!

pacific black duck!

Then I saw a kookaburra! hchmgsvkcjknvcmnjgv I was so excited. It let me get so so close and I took a bajillion photos of it and felt like I was really in australia. Even the Boothroyd's said it was unusual for them to let you get that close, so I felt like David Attenborough or something. Until they made fun of me for how I said it. Apparently it's not "kook-ah-burra" but "kouh-k-a-burra". The O sound is shorter, the way we say 'cook', it's not 'k-oo-k' but 'cou-k'. I dunno, I still felt pretty spiffy.

LOOK OH MY GOODNESS.

Look how close I was. Sweet Jesus I am still excited.

My hand! A Kookaburra! In the same frame!

We decided to get some lunch around 12, opted for sushi. While walking there we saw these woman in stilted in 50s housewife costumes, we're not sure what they were doing but one asked me what my favourite bought secret was. The explains everything, no?

I had some vegetable tempura and some egg and vegetable. I was expecting a japanese omelette deal, but it was hard bolded eggs and vegetables. Bit odd and not nearly as good as the tempura on but not bad by any means. We sat and chatted about music and how funny we think the other's accent was.

James & Frances

We wandered about a little more, talked to the directors of the musical Frances was just in, who seems odd and really is apparently.

she... just showed up.

We stopped by this square where were sitting on a bench and James and Frances were doing some drawing on my pants when this little girl who was about 4 I'd say came up, sat next to, asked why they were drawing on my pants and then asked if she could. I didn't have any issues with her doing something, so I handed her a sharpie and she drew some "love hearts" and something she said was her name, which I think was Kiarah. So right as she finished and I thought we'd escape her 6 (?) year old sister, Chloe, came up and wanted to draw too. I wasn't so into that idea but I figured their parents would be looking for them at any time since Kiarah had said they were at the bus stop.
So they both drew some more but then they wanted to start drawing on James and Frances and they were like "no way!" so we asked where the bus stop where their parents were was and they were like "they moved, they're behind you"

AND THEY WERE RIGHT BEHIND US. Can you even imagine coming around a corner, seeing your two children literally drawing on a stranger and not saying something!? Just sitting down!? I mean, we didn't even know they were there!
We just decided to leave because it was really weird once we knew the parents were watching us. And as we were getting up Chloe was like "no don't leave!" and the parents said nothing. No thank you to us, or no telling their daughter anything. Nothing. It was bizarre! So we got away from them, wandered about a bit and ended up at some other mini park on Roma Street.
There was this guy practising two & four staff contact twirling. He was using unlit fire staffs, so I assume he's be doing it on fire soon, maybe even tonight. He was phenomenal, I mean, I had never seen anything like that before. I got out my creeper lens (75-300mm telephoto) and took a few photos because I was amazed.
We just chilled there for a while, Frances practiced some poi stuff she'd been working on, James drew, I took pictures of them doing those two things.

so impressive.

even more impressive.

Frances.

James.

poi!

At around 10 to 6 Frances had to walk into Central Station to meet some friends from the musical she was in so they could go to the cast party so we walked back into the city, which got me re-lost because I'd know where we were. I briefly meet Nick & Margot and then they and Frances went off somewhere so James walked me back as far as the Roma Street Station, which is right by the hostel and where he was catching the train home from.

All in all it was a completely delightful day.
The only downside being with all that walking my blisters are no better, I think one of them is actually bigger. I'm almost worried, I've never had anything near this size and it hurts a ton if I scrunch my feet… like if I bend my toes towards the bottom of my heel. God damn.
Anyway, I decided not to go to the Koala place tomorrow because I can't deal with more walking. I'm just going to relax a bit, maybe take a little walk but nothing far. So expect tomorrow's post to be enthralling & amazing!

A new girl just came in, Marion, who (I think, she's got a strong French accent) moved to the Gold Coast to be with her boyfriend a few weeks ago and left him today. So is staying here until Wednesday when she leaves to go back to London. She and Rachel (the french girl, who's name I finally learned) are now chattering away in French with sounds to lovely. I am not understanding a lot, I'm pretty sure she's talking about her ex-boyfriend.
But now Marion sounds teary so it's safe to say that's what she talking about the ex.
I think she's also mentioning a cat. Hm.


I'm going to get all my photos from today on here, choose the ones I'll upload to the blog today, go and make/eat dinner and then do my evening interneting.

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Now it's half 10 at night.
I ended up just eating rice crackers, goat cheese and bell pepper for dinner. I just wasn't hungry enough for pasta. Ate dinner with Stephanie and Laura again, they're lovely. Still.

There's now a crazy drunk guy in the lobby though. He's giggling so loudly and keeps asking if anyone has weed he can smoke and when we say no he asks for cigarettes instead.

Ah, he left. Thank goodness.
I'm going to bed, so excited to sleep.
And I'm skyping with my dear family in the morning, so I'm stoked.