"Are there gonna be snakes?!?!"

Whoa it's been a while. I blame the fact that my pre-paid internet ran out a week before I left Australia. Then, I blame jet lag. Now, there is just no excuse.

It's 4:30 am. Yes, you read that correctly. My body still thinks that it's 6:30 pm so I am on my second sleepless (read that as WIDE AWAKE) night, which means tomorrow promises to be my second sleep-like-a-dead-man day... all day. Instead of leaving out everything else that happened in Syd and skipping to now to tell you about the trip home, I'm just going to do my best to pick up where I left off. Also, I spilled Schweppes Lemonade on my computer while I was packing so the southeastern region of my keyboard sticks a little (or a lot) when I type. The length of this post will be an indicator to how long I choose to put up with it. (What I really need to do is take it to the Apple store and get it fixed... but that requires making an appointment and then driving for an hour.)

The day after the rainy day in the city was my birthday. TWENTY FIVE. I think I've (not-so) casually mentioned that just a couple of several times on here. Anyway... it rained again that day, but I was ok with it because I slept in. Renee had to work and Corrine wasn't getting home from her trip to Fiji until around lunch time. When she did get home, we jumped right in the car and drove up to Manly (one of the northern beaches) to walk hike through the bush around North Head. North Head is basically the headlands just north of Manly and the cliffs look right out at the city, so it was pretty cool. We had to jump a few fences to actually get out the cliffs, then we had to "take a short walk," as Corrine put it, out the edge. Turns out, "taking a short walk" directly translates to "carving our own trail through the bush." Oh and did I mention it rained that day? Really I'm not complaining, just joking... 95%. Either way, after we made our way (without a trail) through, I had to shut up and stop saying, "Corrine, I am NOT going through that!" because the view was incredible. The cliffs were REALLY high and pretty nerve-wracking but the water at the bottom was so pretty and if it had been warmer, and a lot closer, I would have been tempted to climb down and go swimming.

After our hike, we drove back to Manly and walked along a trail that looks back over Manly Beach. Of course those views were also amazing, and I liked it because there was an actual path to follow. I should also mention that I am the one that drove us back into Manly. Oh yeah I drove, in Australia, on my 25th birthday. How cool is that?! I thought it was at least. Corrine drives a stick-shift and I was really nervous about shifting left-handed, but I did it... with no stalling out! The weirdest part was allowing for room on the road on the left side of the car instead of the right. I probably drove right down the middle of the road a lot of the way. Good thing there no other cars out!

Once it started to get dark, we drove to this burger place on the beach and got the biggest cheeseburgers I had ever seen in my life. They had all this crazy stuff on them like beets (they call it "beet root"), pineapple, and a fried egg (along with a ton of other stuff and normal burger stuff). Yeah. I have to be honest though... it was good. The next day, Corrine and I drove to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains and hiked (on a trail) all around the Jamison Valley. The big thing that the overlooks all pointed out was "the 3 sisters." There is some old story about it, but all I can remember is that at the end of the story, the sisters turned into stone, and that is how they have been ever since then. The Blue Mountains sort of reminded me of the Blue Ridge mountains in NC, so I really liked hiking around and feeling a little at home.