The Majestic City Cat

Brisbane, Queensland

Australia

Sitting in my bunk bed in the hostel right now, it's about one thirty in the morning, and this absurd older man is under his covers eating. I swear, we hear him do this every night. First he rummages through his suitcase in the dark (because apparently it never occurs to him to get the food before we turn out the lights). This takes a while because it is dark in the room. Then he finally finds the bag, and just when you think it's quiet enough to go back to sleep, NO!!!!! he opens the crinkly bag and begins eating. Chomping and crunching, sounding like he's all but licking the inside of the bag. Now for the most part we're used to this, but tonight he saw me awake and started a one sided conversation with me about "why there are too many Chinese in Australia." Now, this is not a conversation in which I wish to partake, but he rattled on for like ten minutes by himself until everyone was awake. Hostel liven is just so glamorous.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb pictures make it look like it was cold, but that was only because it was night time and we were on top of the bridge where it gets pretty windy. It's actually downright HOT. I'd guess around eighty five to ninety degrees recently. It's insane that this is the beginning of their Spring. Me and all of my tourist friends can't imagine it getting any hotter. And currently all my friends are tourists.

It's funny because you're in Australia raring to meet all these great Aussies and then you get to the hostel where everyone else is a tourist, too. But then you think, "OK, I'll go out in the city and really see Australia." And then you do all the touristy things where you in fact meet MORE TOURISTS! I only legitimately made friends with one Australian and somehow immediately lost his number so will probably never see him again. Oh well.

Currently in Brisbane; this picture is from Mount Coot-tha Lookout. I've been heading North where it is hotter, but eventually I will go back South of Sydney where the weather will be cooler.

Australia is easy living. I actually feel like I'm just in a different part of the US. Except people are more friendly, and have sweet accents. Traveling is so much fun, I keep telling people that I'm on the "Working Holiday Visa," but it's heavy on the Holiday and light on the Working so far.

I've done so much, but I kinda don't even know where to start. I'm going to Australia Zoo tomorrow, actually in six hours. Australia Zoo is the late Steve Irwin's zoo and it's supposed to be pretty amazing so I'm excited for that.

And I toured Queensland's own XXXX Brewery today where we drank a bunch of free beer, big surprise.

Go ahead.... be shocked.... I can wait.

And then I went to the Young Designer's Market which was so fabulous. I could only afford the jewelry but it was so fascinating to see their fashion compared to what I'm used to seeing in the US.

And I went kayaking on the Brisbane River. That was really fun, mostly because my dad wasn't leaving me in the dust the whole way. It was a good thing I'd done it before though because they really just put you in the kayak and let you go. The only thing they told us was to be careful of the city cats. Now I'm on a river and genuinely wondering why I should be worried about a cat. To the point that I

almost asked why we should be worried about the city cats, but didn't for fear of receiving an obvious answer like "because they are the cats of the city." So I'm out there splashing and paddling along when I see a huge ferry come up from behind with the name CityCat across the side. CityCat is the company of the river ferries, and we were supposed to be careful of them because they have a huge wake that could potentially flip us. VERY GLAD I DIDN'T ASK WHY WE SHOULD BE AFRAID OF CATS.

XOXO