What's happening now...

It's Soph here- I have just waved Claire off at the airport with a few tears, but we thought people would probably want to kno what's going on... As it stands now Claire is now on her flight to Melbourne. She will then fly to Bangkok and to her tour around south east Asia. My plan is to stay in Sydney a bit longer (Christmas and New Year might be quite nice here-with fireworks over the opera house and harbour bridge! Although obviously won't be the same without Claire...) I'll then stay in Australia for much longer and do lots more exploring here.

I have had to make the extremely difficult decision not to come to Asia due to lots of external factors beyond our control- I have been split between loyalties, and it's been an incredibly hard decision, but we both feel this is the best way forward...

We'd rather have many years of friendship rather than a short amount of time left attempting to travel together. Although it would be good to share further experiences with each other, external factors beyond our control have made this impossible - it's such a shame because we've got on so well so far and have amazing memories. At least we're not separating because we feel we cannot travel together. This could even make us stronger.

It's really good and such an achievement we've got half way through our travels without killing each other! It's so sad it's ended up like this - we never would have expected it. We are glad we are departing with no hard feelings towards each other.

Our last day together yesterday was good fun though, and very eventful! We caught the bus into the centre equipped with our frozen burgers and baps for lunch. After sorting a few things out we decided to sneak into the Sydney Central YHA (our YHA is an hour out of town!) to cook our burgers. It was extremely random- we literally cooked them, then put them back in our bag and went to the park to eat them! Good times! *chuckle to myself*

That afternoon we spent soooo long (over an hour!) in the Post Office trying to send our huge parcel home (we sent it by sea(!!) because it was over $60 cheaper to do it that way!) After many coffuffles (sp?!) we finally managed to leave... until I looked at our receipt and discovered one of our parcels was being sent to FINLAND!! Goodness knows why... so we had to go back to the Post office (which was like Picadilly Circus by this point) to sort that out with the member of staff who made us laugh so much! (that's another thing... we will no longer be able to share inside jokes about our travels...) We had a laugh about it afterwards over our coffee and chats- and decided it wouldn't have been the end of the world if it had been sent to Finland as PJ (the Finnish guy Claire went Crab Racing with) could pick it up for us!!

Spent literally hours in the cafe chatting and watching the world go by, until it got really late and we decided we must go catch our bus back to the hostel, as it is a 1hour journey from the centre of Sydney! We were chatting so much and very preoccupied that we missed our stop... OOPS! The next bus stop wasn't for ages- we were driving up the long road for what seemed like ages- it must have been miles! Giggling to ourselves, we got off but didn't have to wait long on the other side of the road until another bus came to take us back to the right bus stop (at no extra expense- thankfully we had purchased day tickets that morning!) Although we almost missed that stop too... and had a mad rush to get off the bus! Rather eventful...

It was just gone 10pm by this point so we were very hungry, so arrived at the hostel only to find the kitchen closed at 10pm! *Uh-oh* There were some cleaners inside, but the door was locked... we literally had to beg them to let us cook our tea... after thinking they weren't going to they finally gave in and gave us 15mins to cook our filled pasta and sauce. So in true Sophie and Claire fashion (and because we were parched!) we cooked all of it- on the packet it said it was enough for 4 people! But we managed to eat it all up *yum yum*

So this morning we caught the bus (with our very cheerful and friendly bus driver) and the train to the airport, where I waved Claire off...

Now we're continuing on our different adventures, but we are to keep thinking positive- and hopefully we will be swimming after being thrown in at the deep end!