USA '11.

i apologise for being incredibly slack! i know i promised lots of posts for everyone but i haven't been able to get internet for a long enough period. only random free wifi in starbucks or urban outfitters for 10 mins or less on my phone. seriously haven't stopped and not done anything until right now. it's almost 9pm and the sun hasn't set yet, waiting for my sisters to finish their skyping and probably going for a run. something has got to give in this country of AMAZING food. but pretty much, i arrived in melbourne last wednesday and had the best day exploring by myself taking photos on a super cool minolta camera that my sister may or may not give to me by the end of our trip. friday, my sister and i departed melbourne and flew to new zealand, and then to san francisco. my dad was telling me how he had a surprise waiting for us, but especially me, when we get there. so we arrived and he took us to the bay where we went sailing. it was incredible, we went for hours all the way under the golden gate bridge! not long after sailing we finally got to in n out. if you don't know what that is, you haven't lived. so from san fran we drove straight to ashland where we stayed at my aunties house for the night, and the next morning drove all the way to portland and were reunited with the family. the whole four days we were stuffed with amazing vegetarian feasts and we got to hang out with our american family, most of which we hadn't seen for seven or so years. we went to amazing places, had amazing picnics, saw amazing fireworks while celebrating the fourth of july, and had amazing coffee!! we left the next day at 3am and drove all the way back to san francicso, met my other auntie and uncle, ate another feast, then hired bicycles and rode all around san fran, and accross the golden gate bridge. it was really foggy and sunny at the same time, it was stunning. we then hurried back and saw the giants vs padres. my first baseball game that i can remember. it was so fun and cold and just super awesome. we then drove to monterey to my dad's house via san jose airport to pick my sister, cydney, up and bring her with us. the next day we ran my little sister around to her various summer sports programs in between exploring monterey and revisiting childhood memories. we planned to go the big sur for dinner, which according to my dad was spectacular and we just had to go. so on the way, we decided to drive past our house that we grew up in and lived in until my mum took us to australia and it was incredible. the house was abandoned, no one lived there. so we took photos and explored. it is the best little house and we were all feeling weepy with nostalgia. we continued on to the big sur and the drive up through the mountains was so cool. we finally got to this secret luxury resort at the very top of the mountain, and our dad took us to the most amazing restaurant any of us had ever been to. words cannot describe how amazing it was, dining ABOVE THE CLOUDS! staring down into an abyss of fog and wonderful sunset. the food was amazing and we may or may not have had two bottles of ridiculously expensive wine. and on the way home i think we all realised how good life was at that moment. and today we visited more places from our childhood and then went hiking in the mountains. so wonderful. i need to learn some more descriptive words because as you can probably tell, i'm being super repetitive. tomorrow we leave for our road trip in the camper van, which i am pretty much jumping out of my skin about. hopefully i'll be able to post photos soon, i got all of my film developed and put on my computer, i just have to find some internet that works. otherwise, this was the longest post ever, and i probably missed heaps, but this is USA 2011 so far.
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