Mexico City

I went to Mexico City for a wedding recently and it was absolutely fabulous!



The city is so much greener and cleaner and nicer than I was expecting.



We went to Frida Kahlo's house and wandered through the neighborhood.



We also visited the National Museum of Anthropology, very very hung over.



And there was street art everywhere.



The city had a fantastic vibe!



The wedding was held at the Club de Banqueros and it was stunning!



As were my dates for the evening :D



They are both friends with the bride, Tanya.



We made lots of new friends.







We danced till 4am!



We drank a lot of tequila, I won't lie.



The DJ handed out slippers, which were life savers!



I had such a good time!



I would love to go back and spend a week and ride bikes and visit the pyramids. Nexxxxxxt time.

home sweet home!

It took about 18 hours sitting in an airplane seat and another 10 hours in transit to get home from Australia. It was a great trip, but I'm so so happy to be home. It's the little things that I'm appreciating most like taking a nice long shower, sleeping in my own super comfortable bed and eating a delicious peach for breakfast. It really makes me realize how freaking great life is for me here in San Francisco.
Coming home after being gone for 3 weeks also sort of gives me the opportunity to press the reset button on life a little bit. I can't wait to get back into a regular yoga practice and routine. I want to try to cook more meals at home, and actually eat breakfast in the morning instead of just drinking coffee. I'm hoping to start back up into a little bit more of a healthy lifestyle as I get back into the swing of things here at home.
Thanks for reading my blog and following along with me on this latest trip to Australia. Much love <3!!!

More Roobaix goodness

Nothing like having your portrait taken after you've been out riding bikes all day. Heh. But I guess that was the whole point. Before I took this photo I asked if they had a mirror I could borrow, and they had no idea what I was saying because of my accent. And they didn't have one.

This portrait was taken by Peter Bongiorno at the Roobaix finish. Here is a link to more smiling faces at the finish:
smiles-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see

And here are a couple videos from the 2011 Melburn Roobaix:


In this second video, they zoom in on my name on the registration list and I won the prize that he mentions for having traveled the farthest to attend.

The Roobaix was such a good time! Definitely one of the highlights of this trip!

Fraser Island

This was my second time on Fraser Island.
The highlights once again were:
Lake Mackenzie, with it's amazingly clear blue water.

Catching the sunset down by the beach.

And of course, the dingo bar.


There was a really cute girl on our trip named Iris and she was from China and she cracked us all up with her antics (she would pretend to be so sweet and innocent and then she would drink more and stay up later than anyone else, lol.) She wrote my name in Chinese on this cup for me.

It was cold on Fraser Island. The morning we left it was 2 degrees. It was the only time I was really cold in Australia. Everywhere else, their winter just felt like summer in San Francisco to me.

State of Origin

Queeeeeenslaaaanda!!!
We spent the night in this small town called Emu Park on the way to somewhere else, and it just so happened to be the night of the 3rd and final, deciding match in the State of Origin rugby competition. This was a big deal! It was kind of like our All Star games or something and it was the state of Queensland vs Victoria. We were in Queensland and surrounded by Queenslanders so of course we were rooting for their team. The series was tied 1 to 1 so this was the deciding match, and people had been talking about it for a week leading up to it. It was also our friend Cody's birthday.

We were told to wear maroon or red, absolutely no blue or risk getting beat up. They even got Cody a cake in proper Queenslanda colors.

The bar where we watched the game/match was owned by a lady named Pammy and she must have been Queensland's #1 fan and she could yell as loud as anyone I've ever known.

Everyone in the bar was rooting for Queensland.

Rugby is actually really fun and exciting to watch. I had a great time hanging out and drinking and watching rugby with the locals.

There was one really bad knee injury but the Queenslanders won! Whoo hoo! Shots all around :P It was a really fun night!

the animals of Australia

This is about as close as I got to any animals on this trip. Ha! You know me... but my friend Jessica did the thing where you get your picture taken holding a koala and let me tell you, they are NOT furry and fluffy like you might think. Their fur is like wiry and not really soft. And they have giant claws that they will claw you with. And they sleep most of the time, so when you wake them up to get your picture taken, they are not exactly thrilled. But she got a really cute photo and I guess in the end that's all that matters, right? lol.

I wanted to buy some of this weird jerky to bring back to my co-workers, but it was too damn expensive so I just took this picture instead. I bet it's gross anyway. Ick.

crazy lil crabs

Along Whitehaven Beach these crazy sand crabs roll up all these little sand balls. It looked so cool!

Whitehaven Beach

This is winter in Australia... not half bad :P

On our sailing trip we made a stop at Whitehaven Beach, which is supposedly the 3rd nicest beach in the world. Not sure who named it that, but... I believe it! The sand is like 98% silica sand and it's so nice and clean and can even polish your silver. The water is crystal blue and there is no development on or near this beach. I definitely could have stayed there all day.


It was pretty amazing!

4th of July Sailing around the Whitsunday islands

We spent two nights on a yacht sailing around the Whitsunday islands, which is sort of near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Boats are cool I guess, but I'm not really a boat person and I don't think I would have wanted to be on this boat for more than 2 days. But for 2 days it was cool. In fact, it was really fun! We had great weather and it was a good group of people. On the 2nd day our boat broke down, so the boat company called a sister boat over and we hopped on that boat and were going to go snorkeling and then that boat broke down. Turns out they had bought some bad fuel or something. So there was a little drama on this sailing trip but everyone kept their heads and kept a good attitude and in the end it all worked out fine.
I took a few pics:






At night you could see so many stars and the milky way. I don't know if I have ever seen so many stars! And I was able to catch the sunrise the next morning and that was also amazing!

shoe tree in the Cairns skate park

We were walking along the esplanade in Cairns and came along this skate park and there was this tree with all these shoes hung up in it. I'm guessing that when the skate boarders wore out their shoes they threw them up in the tree. I thought it was kinda cool. I miss hanging out at skate parks. heh.

please standby

I've been out sailing in the Whitsundays and now I'm in the middle of no where with no wifi so it's been hard to post. But I'll catch up soon. My allergies are going nuts which is kind of annoying but not really a big deal, just annoying. Hope that all stops before I have to get on a plane in a few days. Starting to get excited about coming home to SF :D

Canada day!

So apparently Canada day is huge in Australia! Lol.


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Cairns!

So I got up at 3am today to make a 6am flight to Cairns. I met up with the other 4 people from STA at the airport and we caught a cab to our hostel. We went to check in ... and we didn't have a reservation. STA gave us this free trip and then forgot to book us a place to stay on the first and last night apparently. Smooth, eh? The hostel said they were booked full but I asked them to make a phone call and see if something couldn't be worked out, and they moved some things around and found got us a room. But we couldn't check in for a few hours so I sat by the pool with my book. It's warm here and I'm looking forward to wearing to being in flip flops and hopefully getting a tan.


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Pay phones that text

Yup.


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More pics from the Roobaix

Big thanks to Sam Allan from Onfire Design in Auckland for these pics!