last days in london

Guess what? Just realised I forgot to tell you all about my last couple of days in London. It was pretty good really, despite the disappointment of not getting to see the northern lights.

Nga (friend I used to work with in Perth) and her brother were in London for the week, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with them and getting to do some of the touristy stuff that I didn't get around to while in London. That included the Tower of London and Tate Modern. Tate Modern was cool, they had this big slide installation. Fuck knows how they can call it art, but the big twirly slide going from the 5th floor to the 1st was good fun. And there were slides going from each of the floors to the first floor, so we tested out each of them.

We also went to the theatre - twice. We went and saw 'We will rock you', which was awesome. I love queen. And the people in it were great, they had the most fantastic voices and the chick was really funny. The whole story was good too and at the end they came out and sung 'bohemian raphsody'. crap i can't spell. 3 months with no working and all drinking and I've gone dum. i mean dumb.

The next night we went and saw 'Wicked' which is the story of how the Wicked Witch of the West came to be. The first half was a bit average. After seeing we will rock you the night before maybe we were expecting a bit much. But the story at the start was a bit 'teen high-school drama' where there is the girl who becomes the bad witch and the girl who becomes the good witch and they hate each other and then they become friends. But then along comes the hot boy and they both want him and they hate each other again. But the second half picked up, you find out how the tin man becomes the tin man and how the scarecrow becomes the scarecrow and it all ties in with the movie pretty well. And the hot guy in it, I think he was called ferrero rocher or something was actually the dude who is from 'coyote ugly' and 'bootmen', so a bit perve-worthy. Pity we were up the back and my noculars weren't that good.

I also had a couple of big nights catching up with people before I left too, which was good. One night I went out with Nga and Peter, my housemate Natalie showed up for a while and Ashleigh and Jasmine who I met in France skiing. I remember drinking shots of vodka with sherbet and telling the guy next door in Nga hotel, sure we'll be quiet. The next day I think I was still drunk as me and Ashleigh went wandering through Hyde park in search of food and ended up at some dodgy cafe in king's cross. That night was my last night in London, so those from the night before all piked and didn't make it out, and a few others piked due to dodgy tubes, but Natalie and Farrah came out and Cliona and her boy tim and Chris from work showed up and later cathy showed up for a bit. So I managed to get myself home at a decent hour, telling Cliona, ring me when you get up to make sure that I don't miss my flight again! which she did, good girl. But i was already up and at 'em. Unknowingly heading to the airport only to be fucked over. But i've told you all about that already. I've been emailing lastminute, but as expected they are all 'it's not our fault' fuckers.

i am strong

yes, i made it. right to the top, to the summit of mt kilimanjaro. it was hard work, but my guide kept telling me 'kelly, you are strong' and i was like 'i am, i am strong'. but i have to say, we were also pretty lucky, we had perfect weather. on the night we went to the summit, we set out at midnight and the sky was clear and there was no wind at all. and i got to the summit just as the sun was rising, it was awesome. i was so screwed though. i have never been so exhausted. and it was not all fun and games going up the mountain either, my torch went flat so i was walking in the dark and then i started getting altitude sickness. i had a massive headache and i threw up 4 times. but i was kinda thinking, 'headache, throwing up, i get worse hang overs than this!' actually it brought back memories of when i used to go visit lisa in ballarat and i'd wake up hung over as hell and lisa would say, 'c'mon kelly, let's go. it's only a 3k round trip!' which in lisa terms is at least 3k each way. so thanks stilly, you put me in good practise for climbing the mountain.

small tip for you all. if you're ever hiking and it's sunny and you're wearing shorts, remember to sunscreen the backs of your legs. otherwise 3 words for you 'WORLD OF PAIN'. my god, you don't realise how much you like bending over until it hurts to do it. and try using the dirty old squat toilets when the backs of your legs look like their pretty much cooked.

but all in all, the whole hike was good. i was actually in a group by myself, so was hiking alone with my guide Rashid. but i stayed with the same people in the huts at night. 2 dutch chicks and a canadian guy who were all pretty fun. i learnt some new card games, so i'll have to show them to you when i get home.

my guide was really good. he had just finished a safari guide course so was telling me lots of stuff about all the african animals and the plants on the mountain and all that jazz. he also tried teaching me some basic swahili, but i kept forgetting. the one thing i remember is 'pole-pole' (pronounced pol-lay pol-lay) which means slowly-slowly. He kept telling me on the first couple of days, 'pole-pole kelly, you need to go slow for the altitude changes'. but i naturally march around like i'm on a mission, so that was probably the hardest thing for me to do the first couple of days. on the hike to the summit though it wasn't so hard to go pole-pole. we were going so slow it was like; take a step, count to three, take another step. And i was so tired that i thought my feet wouldn't move anymore, so i started imagining that there were pieces of string tied from rashids shoes to my shoes so that whenever he took a step my feet had to go. that way it felt like he was pulling my along and i wasn't so tired.

oh man, but the way back down was good. it took 7 hours to climb up, but only 2 to go down. on the way up all the slope was frozen, but on the way down it was all thick loose rock and soil and when you step on it, you slid down. so i noticed rashid was just sliding with it, kinda like he was skiing. so i thought i'll have a go at that. it was so fun and easy that despite my tiredness i was like 'rashid, let's race'. so we raced down the mountain until i almost came a cropper and thought maybe it would be best to walk for a bit.

anyway, that was my adventures at mt kili. now i am back in nairobi where i am going to hang out my the pool in my hotel until thursday when i can catch up with my safari. they left without me damn it. because of the fuckup with my flights and all i was a day late and now it's going to be two more days before the truck is in a spot where i can find it easy. but that's ok, hopefully all will be sorted.

fuck you lastminute.com

hey guys, gals and misfits,

as it turns out, i shouldn't have made that joke about missing my flight again. i arrived nice and early to fly to nairobi only to discover i'd been fucked over by the people as lastminute.com. i had requested 2 months earlier that they change my paper ticket to and e-ticket as i was not going to have anywhere for them to send a ticket. they said, yeah it's all sorted for you. i get to the airport, there's no e-ticket. i ring last minute, who were so totally unhelpful. i cracked the shits and went and talked to the emirates help desk who said they couldn't do anything because it was last minutes problem. it turns out last minute had sent out my tickets to my old address and let some random person sign for and take my tickets. however, this random was good enough to get in contact with last minute and tell them about it and they made a note of it with my details and then forgot to let me know about it. so then there was nothing they could do and it cost me over 1000 pounds to new tickets. not happy.

anyway, i still got to nairobi, but arrived a day late. so now i have done the kili trek, but have missed the start of the safari and will not be able to catch up with them for 3 more days. what a fucking shambles!

but the kili trek was great. i am so tired now. i got back a couple of hours ago. crap, am running out of internet time. will tell you all about it later.

off to safari-land

Tomorrow!! Already, off to Africa for safari and to climb mt kili and see mountain gorillas. Yay. 5 weeks and I will be back home. That's if I don't sleep in and miss my flight again! I can't believe my big long holidays are already nearly over. It's terrible. But that's ok, I'll just have to start planning my next trip. I've got some big plans for this year and it does involve a fair amount of holidaying.

So I fly out to Nairobi tomorrow and then spend a week trying to climb up a fucking big hill know as Mt Kilimanjaro. I really hope I make it as I am so ultra unfit at the moment. The lovely Rikki-Lee had a crack at it last month and went up to 5000 metres, so hopefully I'll get that far so she can't lay too much shit on me.

Then a 4 week safari that ends in Zanzibar so I will get to do some diving which will be great. I can't wait to see the mountain gorillas, it's going to be so cool. And hippos, and rhinos, and elephants. Ohh, better recharge my camera batteries before I forget.

Catch ya all later.

now for the answers.

hey everyone,

i'm pleased to report that there has been a lot of feedback and people playing the sex or torture game. although i must say that a lot of you seem to have sex on the brain, dirty kids. anyway here are the answers.

Q1. When I saw this I was like 'ha ha it looks like mum!', but Cliona also suggested an uncanny resemblence to Dargan one of the girls I play footy with.

Q2. This was in the sex museum, the big dildo's hanging off it everywhere were probably a bit of a give away with this one.

Q3. This is a chastity belt and it was actually found in BOTH museums. It was said that it was a self-inflicted torture women suffered rather than being raped when out on the road.

Q4. This was in the torture museum. It was used to screw your head until your skull cracked.

Q5. This was in the sex museum. It is an anti-masturbation device, so in all fairness it probably should be in the torture museum.

Q6. This was in the torture museum. It was basically used to hold people so you could do nasty shit to them.

game time kids

hey people,

i've finally got some time (some dumb arse slept in and missed their flight to iceland) and a decent computer (yay Natalie and Farrah for letting kelly doss) so now i can get some photos up.

remember i mentioned the game i wanted to play, sex versus torture. the rules are, i put up some pictures and you guess whether they came from the sex museum or the torture museum and what the hell you think it is. you can add your answers as a comment and i'll let you guys know later where they come from.

Q1. This is a fridge magnet of a prosti in amsterdam. who do we think this looks like?



















Q2. Sex or torture?














Q3. Sex or torture?















Q4. Sex or torture?















Q5. Sex or torture?
















Q6. Sex or torture?

Kelly can ski now ... kinda, sorta, when she hasn't been drinking too much

Happy New Year Everyone

I hope everyone had a good new years and got up to a bit of mischief. I rang in the new years in vars which is in the french alps. There was a dj playing outside and we were dancing in the snow and drinking red wine from a coconut called milky joe. -- its ok, its not supposed to make sense. there was also the crappest fireworks display i've ever seen. (some of you family members may remember one night when uncle paul let go a couple of fireworks and one fell over and headed straight for the hayshed - it was about that impressive.)

Vars was great fun, we skied in the day and partied all night. The whole hostel was up till all hours every night. At 4pm new years morning I having drinks in some random room and wearing a santa suite thinking, oh crap Ive got a ski lesson in the morning! So I powered on and did get up and go to my lesson. I was pretty happy with my skiing efforts over the week. Admittedly I was in the group for the unco-ordinated (and was the worst in the group! - Ashleigh, you weren't far behind me though!!), but by the end of the week we were up at the top of the mountain and I could successfully get down the slopes without falling flat on my arse!

Skiing is so much fun. I am definately going to have to try it out a bit more when I get back to Melb. You Vicko's we're gonna have to do a ski trip this year.

Anyway, despite the average start to the tour where the 18 hour bus trip turned into a 24 hour bus trip and we missed out on our first lesson, the whole trip was grand. I really wish I had another week. Although I don't know whether my crappy dodgy knee would have handled it - but then it can't even handle a big night out at temple walkie, so we're not going to be too concerned about it.

There were a few different people on the tour. I mainly hung out with a group of girls and guys who had an odd habit of naming fruit and then later cannibalising it. There was the scot/aussie boys from room 206 who would have parties in their room every night and thought that taking a toboggan down the stair case at 5am would be a great idea. funny stuff.

The guys in my room were good value too. Fuck I have not laughed so much in a long time. From having one suffering alcohol-induced tb and wanting to sleep in the hall because he insisted he wasnt in our room, to a visitor in superhero fancy dress insisting he'd left his undies in our room, a guy who if asked to describe himself in one word would use 'wow' and me amusing myself greatly by abusing the dirty saffa's (some jokes just don't ever get old do they?).

Oh yeah, Kent, I met a guy who went to school with you. Small world hey? His name was Adam someone, can't remember at the moment.

Anyway, it was a big trip back as well. So I am pretty much screwed from lack of sleep and the drinking and all the skiing (gee, i was in a world of pain after the first day - although i was surprised when my legs weren't sore, but my arms and boob muscles were killing me), but will get to have a good nights rest at Natalie and Farrah's before heading to Iceland in the morning.

Can't wait, I want to see Aurora Borealis, but I better not fly through it or the Langoliers will get me. For those who don't know, Langoliers are big black flying heads with sharp snappy teeth that eat up everything when you go into the past by flying through the Aurora Borealis. It was in a movie so it must be true.

So keep in touch kids and let me know how your new years went.