Nine Inch Nails

Wow it's been ages and ages since I wrote. I think it's because I was always wanting to tell everyone about my hols, telling people about work isn't as exciting. So the obvious solution is MORE HOLIDAYS. I am thinking after France and learning how to ski I am all excited about that so I think I'll take a couple of weeks off in the winter and go to Kiwi-land to do some skiing.

Tonight is exciting, I am going to see Nine Inch Nails. They are going to rock. I love 'em. I saw (I see-ed 'em Auntie Yonie) them once before, years ago, at the Big Day Out so I've been hanging out to see them again. And I also got tickets to go see The Butterfly Effect in July which will be fantastic too! I saw them in Perth a few years back and they're great too.

Ohh, guess what I did. I got myself a place to live. That's exciting. A little hovel of a unit in Kooyong. It's a good area, I met my first neighbour who told me I could come over if I need sugar or salt or anything, so that's good, nice neighbours. It's not too bad a place, it will be better when I get some furniture and housey stuff like cups and bowls. Everything is coming over from Perth - hopefully soon. At the moment all I have is a bed, a sandwich maker and little tea set from turkey! Poor Tan has come all the way from Perth and has to stay with me and has gone into shock because I don't have a kettle or some coffee!! Ah, screw 'er, she'll live ;)

i'm a doodle

i forgot to tell you about what i did on my way to footy training last week. it was funny, i am a doodle head.

i got off the tram and so did Michelle, this other girl who plays. As we were walking past Burnley Campus I said 'oh, someone told me it's a short cut, we can just cut through the campus and come out the other side where the oval is.' so michelle was like 'ok'.

god damn longest short cut EVER! we walked through the campus and came out the other side in this big paddock with greenhouses and little gardens everywhere and 8ft high fences! we walked to the end where we could see the training oval on the other side of the road, but the gate was locked. so we walked back up the way we had came in, but that gate was locked too!! someone had locked us in!! and by this stage it was dark so where wandering around in the dark going 'shit we've been locked in!'

so i said 'let's jump the fence', but michelle wasn't too keen on that idea, but seeming we were locked in we didn't have much choice. so i climbed up and over, then michelle climbed up and started having difficulties with the over bit. and me being the nice, helpful person I am was nearly wetting myself laughing while she was stuck on the top of the fence and cars are going past and other people are turning up to training thinking 'what the fuck are they doing climbing the fence?' she finally got over and it was all a good laugh, but i am not listening to other peoples 'short cuts' again!!!!

lovin' melbourne

Hey gang,

How goes it? I hope everyone had a good easter and got lots of chocies from the easter bunny. I went home for easter and took my brother and sister to the pub where they had a band in the back of a truck in the carpark. I got them pretty drunk which was funny. I got me pretty drunk too and I thought I was funny. But that's nothing new.

I am getting myself settled in melb now. I have started my new job which is great. Everyone there is really nice and I have been 'doing lunch' with a friends who also work around the city.

I've also started playing gaelic footy again. It's hard work though; the hard work being getting out to the games as they are on sunday mornings and in the arse end of nowhere. Last week we got flogged by the team on the bottom of the ladder and I copped an elbow in the face which gave me a black eye, but it's good fun all the same.

The only thing I need now is to work on the 'place to live' thing. I am still staying at my auntie's, she's on holidays (Africa and Barcelona, i am very jealous despite the fact I just finished 4 months of holidays), but i should find something soon. Some crappy little place close to the city so i don't have to comute too far.

But Melbourne is such a cool city. And it's comedy festival time at the moment. Last week we went and saw Wil Anderson, fuck he's funny. I also want to go see a couple other comedy dudes and I have tickets to see Nine Inch Nails in May which I am excited about.

Anyway, that's me for now. Keep in touch people!!

Work Work Work

Once again I have been slack on the blogging, but I haven't been up to alot. Catching up with everyone, looking for work & spending way too much time in dirty ole geebong.

The work thing has happened pretty quickly. A couple of weeks ago I thought I should start looking because I'm not sure how long it will take to find work. So I had a bit of a look on seek and started sending applications and I was only half way through when I started getting calls from recruitment dudes and later that week I had a couple of interviews and the next week I got offered a couple of jobs and so I start on Monday. So it's all happened pretty damn quick. I'm excited though, I think the company I'm going to work with will be good if the interviews are anything to go by.

So I will be starting gaelic footy this week which will be good. A bit of exercise wouldn't go astray.

Ah crap, nothing of interest to write so will get back to you later.

There's no place like home

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I last blogged so I think I'll just give you a quick run-through of what I got up to in Africa. It was awesome, by the end I was very sad because most of the group were going on to Capetown while I was going home. I was like 'I wanna go to cape town too!'. But as Blue told me on the last day of the tour, after Andrew's parting words to me were 'Kelly, I'm sorry we never got to have sex', 'Kelly you can't always get what you want.' So I headed back to Melbourne.

But fuck that was a mission and a half. I got delayed in Nairobi over 5 hours and then over 2 hours in Dubai and if you included stopovers it ended up taking me almost 3 days to get home! But I am now back in Melbourne catching up with everyone and starting to apply for a few jobs. So it's been good. Melbourne really is a beautiful city and I think I'm gonna like living here. (Until winter - then it may be a different story)

But back to Africa. The tour was great. The group were all pretty good people. Lots of aussies, kiwi's, irish and english. We went white-water rafting which was awesome and to the serengeti national park and ngorongoro crater. It was so cool, we saw lions and elephants rooting - well not lions rooting elephants, the lion was rooting another lion and the elephant was trying to root every other elephant it could get too. but that was pretty funny. and in the bush camps we seemed to get a different animal in the camps each time.

first it was a fat old pumba roaming around like he owned the place. then the next camp had baboons who came up and stole our carrots. with their beady ugly little eyes, i'm pretty sure they are all evil. and then one night i woke up and there was something grazing right by our tent. i was so sure it was an elephant and all excited i snuck out to have a look. but he heard me and shit himself, and i shit myself and all i could see was this massive shadow jump and nearly land on one of the tents and i was like 'oh crap he's gonna trample someones tent' so i quickly hid back in my tent and woke sara up to tell her there was a crazy elephant right outside the tent. it turns out it was a water buffalo, but still those things are bloody huge and i wouldn't be happy if one landed on my tent.

we did other good stuff like the elephant orphanage where we got to see baby elephants and the giraffe sanctuary and the trekking with the mountain gorilla was fantastic. oh and the diving in zanzibar and the seafood markets in stone town and the meat on a stick was pretty damn good as well.

anyway, writers cramp is setting in. keep in touch kids and for those of you around melbourne i'm sure we'll catch up soon and i'll get to tell you all my holiday stories.

hippos sweat blood and look manky

hey guys,

i made it to the tour after a 2 1/2 hour taxi ride and US$130. but it has been all good since then. we've been to rwanda where we trekked to see the mountain gorillas which was awesome. they are so bloody huge! there was this massive sliver-back in our group and when get got up you were ready to bolt! they were so cute, especially the young ones playing and wrestling.

in rwanda we also went to an orphanage and played with the kids there. they were such cute kids. all orphans due to HIV which is pretty sad. at first it was a bit strange, all the kids came up and were introducing themselves and hugging us. and we all know i'm not exactly the hugging type so that was a bit odd. then they sang us a song, but they all looked bored silly. so then our tour guide said we should sing a song. so we sang hokey pokey and then got them to join in. the kiwis taught them to do the haka which they loved and we taught them to thumb wrestle which they loved. so we all ended up having a good fun time.

crap, i was gonna write more about it, but am running out of internet time, so will do it later.

anyway, am having an awesome time and rwanda and uganda are real nice countries. next we are going to Ginja where we get to go white water rafting and quad biking which should be good fun.

catch yas

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.

a merry white christmas

hey guys and gals,

hope you all had a fantastic christmas and have a good new years lined up. i am on my way to france to go skiing for a week which will be fun.

i had a good christmas in interlaken. christmas eve, the hostel put on a big all you can eat dinner so we all sat in the big dining room together and had lots of ham. the food at the funny farm is great, i pretty much ate all my meals there all week. then we sat around the fire and had a few hot choc and rums. a few aussies had turned up and were staying in my room, so i ended up playing a game of kings with them and ending up a bit pissy. in the morning we all woke up and said merry christmas and then there was a bottle of wine going around the room.

now, there was no actual snow in interlaken and it was all foggy, but i had told the paragliding dude that i wanted a proper white chrissy and he was taking a girl paragliding up in grindlewald. so he said, i'll take the van and give you all a lift up there, so we all piled into the van... me, the rest of the aussies and a couple of american boys and went up to the snow. grindlewald was good, all full of sunshine and snow and cheese. yes cheese, lots of fondue goodness.

so that was that and then when we got back to the hostel we did the usual eat the great food and hang around the fire and play pool. if i had more time i would have spent it in interlaken, it just had such a good atmosphere and i met some great people.

one of them i was a little bit nasty to. poor jonathon, i convinced him that he really should come to jungfraujoch with me (its the top of europe) , i just failed to mention that the return trip was 170 euro!!! boy, did he whinge like a little bitch about it the whole day. but it was really good, we wandered about in the snow and the view was awesome. we tried to build a snow man but the snow was too powdery, it was like trying to build a sandcastle with dry sand. and there was also the ice palace which is all these rooms made out of ice filled with ice carvings, so we were sliding about there for ages which was fun.

anyway, so i had to leave as there was a big todo on my list. Amsterdam. It was a cool place, the whole red light district just smells like pot. I think I got half stoned just sitting in the lounge of the hostel I was in (it was a bit of a hovel), but I did go to a coffee shop with a couple of guys i met to make sure. We also did a tour of the town, the red light district, the van gogh museum and anne franks house. All good stuff, but there is heaps to do there, I could have spent a few more days at least. I never even got to ride a bike or see a windmill! But again, not enough time. So today I am off to France. So have a happy new years and talk to you in 2007!

still alive and hanging for more

he he i still cant belive it - i jumped out of a helicopter it was so exciting. i`ve only been talking about going sky diving for about 10 years now, but finally it is done. and it was so great i hadn`t even hit the ground when i was thinking that i want to do it again. even just the helicopter ride was fantastic. it started off the day was a bit foggy so we had to go to grindelwald, another town up the valley. but that was even better because it had been snowing there so we got to land in the snow. the helicopter was great. we rode up along the side of the mountains and the mountains are just huge and covered in snow and go on forever, the view is just sensational. but i got to admit it was a bit odd sitting on and being strapped to some dude for the whole ride. however, when it came to getting out of the chopper that was the least of my concerns. i was getting pretty excited when the door opened and the other pair jumped out, i thought i was going to wee. but i didn`t... lucky for the dude strapped to me! then we scooted up to the door and was standing on the edge and just as i thought `oh fuck what am i doing` it was too late i felt a shove from behind and then we were rolling and i was looking back up at the chopper. oh mz god it was so exciting. the freefall was just awesome. and then after the parachute opened it was just relaxing and looking around at the fantastic scenery. so so fun. i want to go again and again! definately one of the most exciting things ive ever done. i think skz diving and the swimming with the whale sharks in exmouth are probably the two best things ever that ive done.

jumping off cliffs and falling out of planes

well interlaken has turned out to be pretty good. i'm a bit disappointed that i can't go canyoning or glacier climbing because it is the wrong time of year, but i did go paragliding yesterday which was fantastic and tomorrow i am going sky-diving out of a helicopter. just remember - jump out not up!

so the paragliding was so cool. me and this other aussie guz jonathan went with the 2 instructors peitch and hans. jonathon went with hans who yodelled for him on the way down! i went with peitch which was cool, we followed birds to find up draughts and after 10 minutes or so of gliding we were up higher than where we took off from! we took off from a mountain about 600 metres above the town. it was so cold up there, but you had these awesome views of the mountains in all directions and the town and lakes below. i was a bit scared i'd drop my camera, don't think the travel insurance people would be too keen on me claiming a second one in a month. i also got to have a steer of the glider and then we did heaps of really fast tight loops down, it felt like you were on a roller coaster and you could see the ground hurtling up towards you. so fun. so after that i am all keen for sky diving tomorrow. and out of a helicopter too, ive never been in a chopper before so that will be cool. i am getting pretty excited about it, but im sure i will have lots of nervous wees in the morning.

will write again tomorrow and tell you if i am still alive.

the bone church

hez guzs,

this kezboard sucky. it swaps the z's and the y's so it looks like i cant spell. ah well.

so in my latest adventures i have spent a week in the czech republic a couple of days in salzberg, austria and am now in interlaken, switzerland where i am going to stay for christmas.

salzberg is best known for being the place where the sound of music was made. so there are lots of tours around it and the hostel plays the movie once a day. surely anyone who sees that on a daily basis would go nuts. but i didnt do any of that stuff, i wandered up to the monastery and the castle and spent a lot of time at the christmas markets buying christmas tree decorations. why? i dont have a christmas tree or anything, but they were so pretty and with all the markets and snowz mountains and stuff i was feeling verz christmasy.

the czech republic was good. i spent a couple of days in prague where i did a citz tour, a ghost tour and a couple of museums. i went to the torture museum and the sex machine museum. the funniest thing was, that the devices in both museums looked pretty similiar. i took lots of photos and i want to play the 'sex of torture' game with you all. so when i get to a computer that i can plug my camera into ill put the photos up and you can guess which museum thez came from. also in the sex museum was a little cinema where thez wer plazing spanish porn from the 1920's. one of the funniest things i have ever seen. especiallz the bit where the guz goes honk honk on the girls boobs so then she pulls it out the top of her dress and he starts playing with it like hes trying to open a jam jar.

so after prague i went to kutna hora which is where the bone church is. from the outside it looks like a pretty well-kept old church. then you walk in and the place is decorated with 30,000 human skulls! it was so cool, they were all strung across the ceiling and there were skull candlesticks and a skull candleabra. when i was in there there was these american guys with long long hair and their black metal t-shirts. and thez were all like 'man, this is wicked. i've seen pictures of this place on so many album covers'. ah, they made me laugh.

so after kutna hora i went to go to czesky krumlov, but i missed mz connecting train and ended up stazing in jilhara. but that was ok, it was a cute town and had some nice hiking tracks that i did the next daz. the hotel i stazed in was funny too, it was like a cross between an art gallerz and a prison cell. there was a big wide hallwaz with all these massive paintings down one wall and the room doors down the other. and it was so echoy that when in zour room you would here the stomp stomp stomp of footsteps and then this big loud click clack of the lock and bang of the door.

so then i got to czeskz krumlov. it is the prettiest little town, like a smaller version of prague. and because it was out of season you felt like you practically had the place to yourself. and there were some really nice hiking trails around there too. (notice a pattern with all the hiking - just trying to get in a bit of practise before having to climb mt kili next month). so i spent 4 dazs there and got in some drinking in some of the cute little bars and ended up in one of the dodgiest clubs ive ever seen. but it was all good, i have more stories, but couldnt be bothered at the second. so will write again soon, and if i dont have a merry christmas and good new year and remember if you cant be good, be good at it!!

I saw my tour guide nude

I've moved on again and am now in Budapest, which is a very cool city. Belgrade was alright, but there was no-one around really and not a hell lot to do. Budapest is great though. Last night I went out with some people who were on my tour. We started the night with vokda shots and it all went on from there. I had a slight case of alcohol-induced kleptomania and came home with a ceramic ashtray, a jar of ketchup, a cd from a budapest dj who we hitched a ride with and some guys phone number on my arm. I also had 10 grand less in my wallet. Luckily, the exchange rate is 140 to 1 so it's actually only 70-80 dollars. But it sounds pretty cool to say, 'whoa, i blew 10 grand last night!' anyway, Budapest has been great, i did a walking tour, went to the house of terror museum, went to the christmas markets and have been to the thermal baths twice, but the best was the caving. we got to wear these sexy overalls and get all covered in clay and dust, sliding on our arses down the wet rocks and only your headlamp to guide you. and some of the places were so small you had to crawl through on your belly. one bit was called 'the sandwich of death'. and you had so slide on your belly for 10 metres between these big slabs of rock that were so close together that i had to take my helmet off because it would fit through when i was wearing it. and the tour group were great, there was about a dozen of us and everyone was always keen to take the hard road when the tour guide gave us a choice.





















There is a quote on the flyer that says 'I have just been reborn 5 times'. I sure know what Steve from Ontario, Canada was talking about, we had to squeeze through some pretty tight holes.

Anyway after the tour, we got changed and went to bar next door where one of the guys bought a big bottle of vokda for us to celebrate the fact we made it out alive. I suddenly realised i'd left my rechargeable batteries in my overalls, so went back to get them. I knocked on the door and wandered in and was all 'hey anyone about?' looking for the tour guide and then i opened this door and he was there NAKED, because he was about to hop in the shower when i walked in. I was all 'ohmy god' and back-pedalling as fast as i could, and he like followed me out and was just holding some clothes over his rude bits and was 'can i help you?'. so i said i forgot my batteries, but i'll come back. but he went back in and threw some pants on and then we started to go through all the overalls looking for mine, luckily they were the second pair we found as i couldn't wait to get out of there, i was so embarrassed. but i went back to the bar and told a couple of the others what happened and they all thought it was very amusing.

but anyway, tonight and tomorrow i am still in budapest and then i am off to prague. yay.

Bulgaria

hey guys,

i have finally got some photos up. some from turkey and bulgaria. so check them out

well i didn't quite get up the mountain in sophia. i took a tram out of town to where you get the bus then wait an hour and a half for a bus that is supposed to come every hour. then because it was about 2 degrees and i was freezing i was like 'screw this!' and headed back toward the tram stop. and of course half way back the bus went past. so i swore at it and then headed back to the hostel. after thawing out i wasn't grumpy anymore so i made friends with a canadian guy called john and we went for a look about town. we came back to the hostel where i made friends with a japanese dude and told him it would be a great idea if we played scrabble. funnily enough i won. i'm so clever.

the next day john and i headed up (or is it down?) to the rila monastery. it should be down because it's south, but it is in the mountains so it is up. i digress, rila is this georgeous little monatery with an outcrop of little old buildings to support the tourism it creates. it is in the middle of the mountains and you can actually stay at the monastery. so we did. we also got there early enough that we could go for a bit of a hike in the hills. we followed this ridge up and at the top we could see all the mountains out behind, all snow-topped and looked clean and bright in the afternoon sun. i got some top shots. it was also fun walking up there because it is the end of autumn so all the leaves are thick on the ground and there are no birds or anything so the only noise you hear is your feet through the leaves (oh and the heavy breathing, kelly is very unfit. - kilimanjaro here i come!) at the monastery though the night life leaves much to be desired. the restaurants closed at 5.30 and there is no tv, so it was cards and books til the late hour of 9. i'm sure all the monks had a little room somewhere where they were sitting around smoking cigars, sipping beers and playing ping-pong, but we couldn't find it.

so the next day we trekked back to sophia. at the hostel a few people were heading out so i invited myself along. we played a few drinking games at the hostel and then headed out. we were looking for a club we had heard of when this local chick told us 'no, come with me. i know the best club in sophia!' so we went. the club was ok. but the chick was messy. she was grabbing guys butts, skanky dancing with whoever was game enough to get on the dance floor and i was in a fantastic position to view the crutchless stockings when she decided to take a short-curt straight over the table.

but it was fun anyway, i had a bit of a jive on the dancefloor, practised my karate kid dance moves (wax off, wax on, paint the fence, paint the fence) and then we went for pizza.

so that was sophia, i didn't make it up to mt vitosha, but ah well. i am in belgrade now, i don't think it has a mountain, but i spent today wandering about the fortress, it is really cool, then i had plans of visiting a couple of museums, but accidently found myself in the main shopping district, so spent a few hours in the various bookstores flicking through all the books with the funny letters.

well, i hope everyone is fine and dandy in their various homes, keep in touch!!

hindi hindi gobble gobble

hey guys,

i am writing today from sophia in bulgaria. it's a cute little city about the same size as perth but at the bottom of a mountain. i am going up the mountain tomorrow. i left istanbul yesterday. the tour had finished a couple of days before but i spent an extra couple of days wandering the bazaars and all the little antique shops. i can't wait til next year when i'm a millionaire and i can come back to turkey and do a big road trip around the whole lot and then buy my antique mother of pearl binoculars and a 50,000 euro silk carpet that will probably look dumb in my house so it will live with mum and lots of handmade turkish pottery that is only like 300 euro for a plate or 500 euro for a handbag wine bottle.

what the hell is kelly on about you ask. what the hell is a handbag wine bottle. well my friends, kelly is not insane...yet. although talking about yourself in third person is usually a good sign of up and coming maddness. but what i call a handbag wine bottle is a ceramic wine bottle that has a circle bit that you put your arm through and then you wear it on your shoulder to pour drinks. a nice step up from the old hip flask i reckon. i probably didn't explain it to well. i will try to get a photo of one up.

anyway, turkey was great. it is a beautiful country. istanbul is a very modern city and all nice and clean and big step back towards normality after the chaos of cairo. our tour was fairly small, there were 10 of us and 2 of them, saffa's ruth and miles, i already knew because they were on my egypt tour. coincidence, i think not.
the others on the tour were the usual influx of aussies and kiwis and a couple from bahrain which was pretty cool.

so the 10 of us, our tour guide gokhan (damn i kept forgetting to wear my dragon ball z tee when he was around) and out bus driver zekki set off. we went to gallipoli which was good to see but bloody freezing, but i didn't let that stop me from running about getting photos of myself hiding in trenches.

um, i couldn't be bothered writing the whole lot and you are probably getting bored by now, so i'll just do the highlights. gallipoli i already mentioned, the blue mosque was pretty impressive and the basilica cistern i liked. ephesus was good, it's old ruins but a lot of them have been restored and look really good, my favourite part is the public toilets. a long slab of marble with a number of holes in it and water flowing underneath to get rid of everything. some quality photo opportunities there. Hieropolis the necropolis was pretty cool too along with the calcium pools which are these hot springs flowing into these big white calcium cliffs and you can wander about through the water bare footed.

cappadocia was the big favourite though. it looks just like something out of star wars (probably because it was in the first (episode iv) star wars. all these big massive cliff and ravines and there are buildings cut into the cliffs everywhere. it looks like a big human ant hill, especially from the hot air balloon. the hot air balloon was awesome.

anyway, again i am promising photos. but really turkey was great and i would love to go back or have stayed longer, but there are other places to get to. so i am in bulgaria for probably 5 days and then probably belgrade or budapest or somewhere like that. i did want to go to romania, but you need to have a visa before you leave for that, so poo on that plan.

well, keep in touch kids.