Five Months In

My last blog entry was on the early morning of January 13th. I was still in Christchurch, New Zealand, taking advantage of my fifteen minutes of free Internet access at the Christchurch International Airport. Since then, I've been in Sydney, Australia. It's been ten days. The reason for my lack of updates (despite the fact that I still have to finish writing about South America and New Zealand before I can even start thinking about entries for Australia) are threefold:

• I spent a week in Sydney reunited with Kim, Kelly and Marianne; drinking buddies I first met in Mendoza, Argentina. When we realised the four of us would be in Sydney at the same time, we all booked into the same hostel. Those seven days were spent drinking, and wandering around outside the Opera House and through the Botanical Gardens; drinking and visiting the Rocks and Darling Harbour; drinking and eating out in Chinatown; drinking and cooking up some of the best hostel group meals I've had since I started travelling; drinking and hiking around the Blue Mountains and laying on Bondi Beach. Oh, and there was some drinking going on.

• The Internet is as finicky and/or as expensive as it was in New Zealand. All the South American entries I want to work on are somewhat photo-dependent (I'm not sure I have the words to merely describe hiking through the Colca Canyon), and I haven't been able to upload any new photos to Flickr in two weeks.

• Even if Marianne, Kim and Kelly hadn't been with me, my hostel in Sydney (the Blue Parrot) is the most social hostel I've stayed in. There's always somebody around to shoot the shit with, and this made for a serious lack of computer time.

These last ten days have been a bit of a blur. I didn't realise, until today, that I passed the five-month mark of my travels on Thursday. That night, I attended a performance of Massanet's Manon at the Sydney Opera House. The next day, I went to a beach on the southern reaches of Sydney and spent the majority of a sunny, hot day learning how to surf. I'm starting to forget what a normal, regular (read: boring) life feels like.

Random Number Stuff (I mean random stats, not points on random number theory):

• New Stamps in my Passport since August 21st: 20
• Times I've Done Things My Medical Insurance Wouldn't Cover If I Was Maimed: 5
• Weeks I'm Now Behind in My Blogging: 10

(In a weird coincidence, the entry I'm working on has to do with Mendoza and Argentina wine country, where I first met Kelly, Kim and Marianne.)

• Times I Ate Steak During 36 Days in Argentina: >25
• Countries in Which I've Seen Wild Penguins: 2
• Times I was Subjected to a Full Baggage Search: 1
• New Stickers Attached to My Laptop: 7
• Empty Pages Left in My Passport: 8
  

Related Entries:
1. Four Months In
2. Three Months In
3. Two Months In