Jen Down Under

Whats next after Adelaide?

Oh Hi. It’s Ben again. I should really change the name of this blog to “Ben Down Under” haha.
Anyways, What’s next after Adelaide? A car ride to Alice Springs? No. A flight to Alice Springs? No. A small vacation to Fiji? Hopefully. A car ride to Brisbane? Probably.
We just missed the cheap half off seat sale to Alice Springs that we wanted to get. Earlier this week we learned that the highway was flooded and unsafe to drive… (it’s also not to safe to drive in the out back anyways, and i was a little nervous about that).
Anyways, We have two more nights in Adelaide with our lovely host, Di, untill we have to get out of this city.  We’ll have to figure something out before then!
Untill then, Don’t worry about us. We like to pretend we know what we are doing.
Cheers.
-Ben

P.S. Jen picked up a new nick name tonight that sounds a little like ” Ginga Snapz!”

Hey Everyone! Since Jen doesn’t write in her blog very often,  I AM GOING TO WRITE IT IN! (I’m Ben) haha.

In case you didn’t know, which i’m sure you all do.  I am the boy travelling with Jennifer.  Haha, Today Jen came home from work gasping for breath since she apparently RAN home from work and SPED through her entire clean up so she could catch me before i went to work.

Why is Jen running home to see me ?! Because at work today, a man was calmly eating his lunch and pulled jen aside.  He asked her if she was from Canada.  And then Manitoba. and then asked if she was from Winnipeg.  and then asked the area she was from.  At this point, she was a little creeped out. but got even more creeped out when he asked if her dad’s name was Les Bergen.   He then Pulls out pictures from Jen’s facebook of her. and then he pulls out her LAP TOP.  The man is one of Jen’s dad’s co workers. and her family sent him with her lap top, some christmas cards from her sisters and some baking from home.  Jen cried from this point on out of happyness. and gave the computer a nice big hug! 
We are both very thankful for her family sending the computer out here, since we are in NEED OF NEW MUSIC. haha.
Anyways… she came home today and told me that, and i was pretty excited as well… but then i had to go to work. 
After work today, i came home and see jennifer on the computer… but she has some bad news…. She asked me if i could smell something…. and i noticed that the room smelled like burning rubber… or maybe it smelt like our power adapter had burned.

BOO.

but the computer is working fine, which is great :D and were happy!!

but now we can’t charge our camera’s. So there will be no more pictures on our entire trip….






JUST KIDDING! SETTLE DOWN EVERYONE!!!
We’ll just have to find a new energy converter, and in the mean time, we’ll just eat some of Jen’s mom’s christmas baking :D WOOT WOOT!!

Well… anyways.

it’s late. and i should go to sleep. 
Bye :)

-Ben Plamondon

Ben and I got an apartment today! Its in kind of the same neighbourhood as we’ve been staying in. 3-31 Birriga Rd is the address. Its in a mainly jewish residental neighbourhood that has really neat looking houses, and has lots of families walking around. We met the people living there now, it is a 40-50 year old jewish lady who lives in the apartment room and rents it out to people our age that are traveling. Right now she has a guy from Ireland named Kenneth that is staying there. We met him today too. He’s been living there for 4 months already and seemed really nice, and maybe a couple years older than us. Kenneth is going to be living there for approximately 4 weeks, maybe shorter, maybe longer. And the lady that actually lives there, Ann, is traveling to Israel for her daughter’s wedding for 5 weeks. So we will be there in her place for those 5 weeks for sure. If Kenneth moves out after that, then we can stay for the entire time that we’re in Sydney!

Its a really small apartment with a functional kitchen, a living room with a nice tv, one bathroom and 2 bedrooms. Ben and I will be sharing a bedroom. We also will have free access to the internet there, and the newspaper is delivered for free there as well.

Both Ann and Kenneth seemed so nice and easy to get along with. Ann seemed very motherly and wanted to make sure that everything will be okay for us, and Kenneth is apparently on the shy side, but a good guy.

The place is really cheap too. Cheaper than we’ve been paying for hostels. We’re going to be paying $115 per week for each of us, for 5 weeks. Plus today we paid a 2 week bond that we will get back when we leave if everything is okay.

We move in on Oct. 5, and if we have to leave after the 5 weeks, our final day there will be Nov. 16.

Ben and I also got a cell phone today, for the two of us to share. It will mainly be used to find jobs/places to stay and to keep in touch with people that we meet out here. But incase of an emergency, our phone number is 04 3181 1550.

Hey everyone,

Sorry it took so long to post on here.

We arrived in Sydney on Tuesday, September 23, around lunch time (our time, not yours). Got a ride to our hostel (Sinclairs of Bondi - 27 Paul Street for those of you who want to google map it). Ben and I went to the beach right away. Bondi beach is about a 20 minute walk from our place. Tons of shops along the way to the beach as well. We’re also about a 5 minute walk to one of the biggest malls in Australia - Westfield Mall. Its huge, and the nicest mall by far that i’ve ever seen. Everything looks so high class.

We’ve been going to bed too early and waking up early, but trying our best to get on Sydney time. The first night we got woken up around 3 am by some drunk guy that is staying in our building, but last night was fine.

We went to the beach again yesterday, and found a place that had a deal on for japanese food, a glass of wine and a movie at the movie theatre at the mall. We decided to treat ourselves and go there. We ate our food, (mine was terrible) and got our movie vouchers but by the time we were done (around 7:30pm) we were so tired and wouldnt have been able to handle sitting through a movie. Maybe we’ll go tonight.

For those of you who know about the problem we had with our hostel - we got it fixed and are going to be staying for the correct number of nights that we paid for. We really like the place we’re staying at, and the people are great, and we asked if it would be possible to extend our stay for another week. Unfortunately Ben got an email from the guy that owns the place saying that we could only stay for an extra 3 days, and it would be a higher price than what we are paying right now. So we are going to look for a new place to stay for next week.

Anything else you guys want to know about right now, ask, and ill try and get back to you.

Hope everything is going okay back at home. I miss you.

Hey everyone,

I set up this blog to keep friends and family updated on my travels in Australia. This way I won’t have to separately email all of you to let you know what i’ve been up to. I will probably still use Facebook to share my pictures and talk to all of you one on one. So check back here every once in a while!