I am still in Australia, and still staying with my friend. I was originally intending to only stay a few days with Matthew before heading North or South to continue exploring Eastern Australia, however i haven't made it too far. I am having a blast with Matt, and with my dwindling money supply and being spoiled with crazy luxuries like cars, my own bathroom, bed, and laundry facilities, i just cannot be convinced to leave!!
In reality it is just having a great friend who is willing to let me crash at his house for 3 weeks and laugh and play with me which is keeping me here! We have been quite busy the last 1.5 weeks. As i mentioned Matthew is a dance instructor and is currently trying to open his own studio, so was not working when i first got here but was waiting for approval by council to allow him to start building. On my 4th day here he got the approval that he has been waiting for 3 months to get and now he is a ball of energy and work. I am really excited for him, but i was really enjoying my own personal tour guide who had nothing to do but entertain me!!
He is still doing quite well balancing finding things for me to do and taking me around with work, so i am really in no place to complain.
We have been on some fun adventures, heading out to the Hunter Valley, which is wine country about 2 hours outside of Sydney. We went wine tasting on Sunday this weekend, taking the whole day to drive out and enjoy the beautiful country side, and then explore some of the wineries they have here. The first few i was sorely disappointed, but then we struck pay dirt with a few. We were trying to discover what Matthew liked in wine, and he would always laugh at me because i would always try the same things and then go for the most expensive red they were sampling on the list. Of course i kept falling for the $50 - $70 bottles and Matthew would just shake his head. His favorite was a $13.50 bottle of white! I was making him crazy as well trying to explain all of my "expansive" wine knowledge.... i may be exaggerating slightly on how much i really know.... but I guess i miss pretending to be a wine expert to all the tourists who fell upon Summerhill.

Matthew also took me salsa dancing over the weekend with 2 of his dance instructor friends. Now if you would like to talk about being intimidated... please, go to a Salsa bar, where everyone is either professional salsa dancer, or old creepy men with shirts unbuttoned to their belly-buttons. (and they say some women show to much cleavage, i never want to see hairy old man cleavage again!) I had receive 2 lessons at this point of my professional salsa dancing career. The first included about 10 minutes learning the basic step, and being yelled at because i always try to dance on the balls of my feet. I am convinced i look better being bouncy, maybe if i just bounce up and down of my feet people will think i am a pro..... Matthew disagrees.. So i have less than 40 minutes of salsa under my belt and after watching people eat up the dance floor, was quite content to suck on one beer all night and crawl under the table and cry. Unfortunately that was not permitted. I danced one salsa dance, then crawled under the table and cried! After the dance instructors all got up and started dancing. I realized that they all waited for me to go first because after i saw what they could do, i did not feel like dancing any more. My jumbled shuffling feet remained glued to the floor.
We eventually moved to another bar when no one could take the Latino version of N'Sync and other 90's music any longer, where i danced the night away. And by dancing i simply mean jumped up and down and shook my hips now and then. Matthew and his dancer friends dance differently... but i could at least blend in with the rest of the crowd who don't know the difference between their left foot and their right.
I haven't seem much of the local wildlife save a bunch of spiders and lots of different types of birds. The strangest thing is watching parrots, and parakeets, and cockatoos fly around wild. I keep waiting for one of the parrots to say hello to me, but they never do! Maybe they don't understand my North American accent.

I am also working for my keep here. I have been helping Matt paint and clean his new studio, which is where i have come across the majority of the spiders. Mostly just daddy long legs, but a few others i have either attacked with long handle brooms or long hosed vacuums. Anything within to close of a proximity and my squealing alights Matthew or his friend Mark to spider killing attention. The best part of one of my days beyond the spider patrol by the boys, was when in their attempt to paint the wall of the stairs, and without a proper ladder to stand on the stairs the boys devised a multitude of ways to stupidly stack or lean the ladders against things. In my last attempt to help, Mark was holding one ladder, and i had to hold the paint bucket as Matthew scoured the other and didn't have a free hand to hold the can. When the ladders collapsed because of the stupidity of the boys, fortunately it fell against the stairs landing, but not before smashing my paint can held arm and pouring 90% of the paint down my hair, face and shirt. Thank God it was a water based paint otherwise i would have been scalping the two boys for my new hair! Needless to say i was done helping for the day and started cleaning up instead after giving myself a full bath in the smallest sink imaginable. The boys were too afraid to come near me after that!

One of the best things we have done so far was last night Matthew and I got dressed up in full fancy-shmancy gear and went to the Sydney Opera House and went to see a symphony. There was the full orchestra, a choir, and 3 opera singers. 2 of the opera singers i could have done without, only one of them i really enjoyed, but the orchestra and the choir were both amazing! I am such an old fart but that stuff absolutely amazes me. Almost as great as the symphony was during the intermission, we were in some really great seats (thank you Matthew!!) which opened up onto a bar that overlooked the whole harbor, bridge and Luna park ( a famous amusement park) which were all lit up. It was an absolutely gorgeous view of the inky black water with a few boat lights on it, and a close up view of Northern Sydney.

In total i think you can tell i am having a great time here. I really enjoy Sydney and could only ask for a bit of sun because i am drastically loosing any tan that i had gained! I know all Australians would curse me (as they have had a 6 year drought) but i don't want any more rain! Give me Sun! (Don't worry Father i have been wearing 30 sunscreen everyday!)