Happy New Year

So today is NYE and I'm heading up to the city for a couple of days just to see some of the friends from the past month I was up there and go wild in the city with River. It should be a lot of fun and I will be alright since I know how to take care of myself so no worries there. We are going to just jump from house party to house party trying to find whatever it is that you look for in a party and then I will attempt even though I know I won't succeed to stay up another 17 hours past my new years and give someone a call and enjoy the countdown with them by phone. Unsure yet who but I will definitely give someone a shout. Um lets see what could I tell you, I haven't been up to much, I haven't been to the beach yet to swim because even though you might have a warm day once you get to the beach its very windy so still no good summer days yet. I do eat tons of meat pies though which make me happy and I have been learning a little bit about the guitar, very frustrating instrument to learn how to play. This will mark the first NYE spent without a MN friend because I did go to Jamaica for NYE back in '04 and man that was a crazy 3 days. What a funny trip, me Jack, and Charles and those two didn't know each other but I planned a trip and those were the only two friends who decided to go and we had a great time. I wish I still had all those pictures but my hard drive crashed and I lost all those. I snuck a bottle of Jack Daniels on the plan on the flight home and every 30 minutes it was, BOOP(Noise to get a flight attendant) excuse me could we have 3 more cans of coke please. We ended up drinking the whole bottle and Jack even spilled his drink in the middle of the aisle and the whole plan smelled like Jack and Coke. Obviously it was us because we we relatively quiet at the beginning but by the end of the flight we were loud and obnoxious. funny at the time, we were 19 at the time I believe. Well tonight it will be a bottle of Grey Goose to do some destruction on me and my boys and the house parties we go to will be BYOB, I'm not a huge fan of BYOB I believe in Kegs and the fact that they're cheap enough to make your money back and the party is just great. That reminds me of NYE 2005 where I through a 4 kegger right in the middle of "the hood" only to have the cops come and bust it and we took the kegs into Kyles van and it was like 6 of us with Kegs in the car and we drove to another party where all of our time there was spent laughing at Kyle and Greg for not holding there liquor into a double sink respectively. Ahhh those where the days, last years New Years was a lot of fun for me and it was my roommates birthday so we had a party bus and went to my favorite bar the library and not only did we countdown the new year but that was also the countdown for my memory cause I do remember saying 3...2...1...HAPPY NEW YEAR but then I wake up the next day at Manvel to people scattered all over the house. That was one of my favorite mornings, we had champagne and went back to the library only to have them tell me stories of our gang from the previous night. Ahhhh those were the days, sorry to reminice but I just loved those times and they happen very rarely where I am. I believe Common said it best "Where drunk nights get remembered more than sober ones" Adults should be able to step out and agree that some of their favorite memories are sitting around with close friends and telling stories of their fruitful past over some drinks. Well I would love if you read this blog to just leave a comment telling me and appropriately everyone a favorite New Years Eve memory from the past. Don't be a jerk and not do it it only takes about 30 seconds, I'm looking forward to hearing from someone I didn't even know followed this blog, keep it semi appropriate also. Also a quick I love you to my grandparents, all of them. I will try to save up money to get a ticket back to the states just for a week or two this next year and then go back to my travels. alright then everyone have a great closing to '08 and may '09 be sublime

Its been a long time, I shouldn't of left you, without a dope blog to read too

HO HO HO Merry Christmas and all those other holidays that I have left out which leaves many. I am doing just great down here in Balnarring and have done so many things since I have been down here. Finding time to sit down and blog for an hour has proven to be difficult while facebook and fantasy updating has been pretty easy to do. Speaking of fantasy sports, football is over only to lose in the finals to my good friend Joel who is my old roommate. We both started 0-4 only to come back and his team blew mine out of the water and I benched DeAngelo Williams but even started it didn't matter which lets you know how bad it was.
So James what have you been doing, well I knew you would ask that question so I made up a song in the tune to Run DMC's its tricky...Alright no I didn't but that's the kind of things I have been doing. Down here in Balnarring its a super small town, like 1 class per grade which would be like 20-30 students, and there is like one major shop of each kind. 1 place to fill fuel, buy groceries, buy booze, breakfast, pizza all that stuff. I have spent most of my days waking up, eating a light breakfast and hanging out with Tree, then he takes me to a different national park. I've been to wetlands, and protected areas, that people can just walk on and it has been pretty cool. Just relaxing and thinking to myself and enjoying silence, Tree is a different type of guy that rubs off on me because he just sits back and comes up with some crazy thoughts and I laugh at him all the time. Also the families are just so nice to me and cook food all the time, I eat and eat well. Meat Pies have also become something that I truly enjoy which is basically a little tiny pie filled with different things and my favortie so far has been steak tomato and cheese, soooooooo gooooooddd. I have been hanging out with Australians now too so I have been getting the Aussy accent and different pharses down and I have even been driving. I drive all around actually with roundabouts and left side of the road and turning and all that. I can now drive anywhere in the world.
The weather down here has been alright for a couple days but then it's strating to turn to summer and we have had a couple days in the 80's and on Christmas is was probably around 78 or so and I spent my time in a pool and drinking, and playing on the biggest pool table I have ever seen. I even recieved presents which was very shocking and Rivers family was amazing. His mom and dad are sooooo good to me and so are trees family and they have made me feel very welcome. For Christmas I got a pair of thongs(flipflops), a singlet, some bonds undies(Aussy brand,very snug), and a key chain of a wombat. All in all I would say a very successful Christmas and also the first one I spent away from my family. that was weird but I don't know if it was, I just kind of didn't think about it and if I didn't have such nice people around me than maybe it would be a little different but I had a good time here. I will update the blog more frequently with just some random thoughts from now on and won't keep so much distance. Sorry this is soo short but I feel guilty being on the computer this long because it is a beautiful day, miss everyone and will write again soon

I can make it good, I can make it hood

Lyrics off of the new Kanye CD that I have become to really enjoy so let me update you on a few things. I have just got back from 2 days down in Balnarring which is where River and Tree live my two boys from camp. So Melbourne Central where I have been living is on a bay and then if you follow the shoreline southeast you will come to a peninsula and n the east side of that is where the boys live a short walk away from the beach. Now to get down there I had to take a hour long train ride which I spent my time watching Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and quickly arrived to a town called Frankston. From there Tree picks me up and we have a 25 minutes drive to his town and head straight to Rivers house. Now River just got back from Thailand that day and didn't know I was coming so it was meant to be a surprise and also River had to deal with some crazy things in Thailand himself. Got falsely accused of stealing and was arrested by people who didn't seem to be cops and took them to a place that wasn't a police station and made him and his friend pay $1000 Australian dollars to get out. After that they had to leave 3 days early because there was some civil unrest there in Thailand and grenades went off at protests and things of that nature so needless to say is adventure was exciting.

So I'm at Rivers place and after he shows up we have a nice dinner with his family, while his Dad(Sparky) tries to see if he can get me on their basketball team that evening because they have a game. I'm quickly recruited and play a miserable game and I will blame it on the fact that I was so tired from the game I played the night before. Yes that is right friends and family I am being careful but I have joined 2 basketball teams and have big hopes of winning some championships while I'm out here. I won the game I had on Tuesday before heading to Balnarring but lost the game with Rivers team. The game that I won it was a tie game, 40 seconds left, ball was taken down to the baseline the guy got trapped, I'm at the top of the key with two guys behind me just waiting for this guy to pass it out. I jump the pass steal the ball, a guy tried to get the ball also so when I grabbed it spin move towards center court. The other guy who I was guarding came over right then, crossover, take off for the hoop and its 3 on 2 dropped the dime for the win. Basically I'm a beast but the beast was tired the second game so he didn't take over. Also got wacked in my nose and it might be fractured but we'll see what happens. I'm not as young as I used to be hahaha, well that night I just went to sleep at Trees house and the next day we woke up and went to the bakery for meat pies which is huge hear. Just a pie filled with Steak and Mushrooms or whatever you want inside so they're grubbin. After that just had a relax day and went on a walk around their city and I saw my first wild Koala Bears and the first one was a female with a little baby in her lap and then we saw a big male just posted in a tree above us. If this were the states kids would throw rocks at them or something like that but here never would happen, everyone just loves the beauty that they have here. We kicked back on a 700 year old tree for awhile and then headed to the beach and just sat there and they told me stories of the summers and why I should look forward to them. After chilling and walking back they called up some of the boys for a little park basketball and we hooped for a couple hours and then decided to have a barbie(BBQ) and beers so we went back to Trees place and his dad Nigel Fired up the grill and we all sat around having a couple beers and laughs just chatting about everything from the lack of water in Melbounre, the ozone layer hole above Australia, MN gun laws, told stories of camp the past couple years and just bs for awhile and I had a nice time over there. Tree and I then stayed up for 4 more hours playing video games and talking plenty of smack to each other.

So after my visit there I have decided that the next Wednesday for our basketball game I would then move down there for the holidays and into the new year. River has told me I could get some manual labor work like 3 days a week and then I would just hang out and chill with those guys and their families which I have a great time with. The also have a good group of friends and I'm finally kickin it with Aussys, I had a jumbled conversation with a vendor which just proved to me that even though mate, sweet, no worries, and ta are all in my vocabulary now I still am so far from the real Australia. After I spend a month + down there I will come back up to the cities and well actually don't let me act like I know because I don't have any clue what I will be doing when that time comes. I'm just enjoying it as it comes. After coming back up to the city I realize why I love it so much, you don't have to think what am I going to do today, you can just walk outside, it's always crazy to just walk around and see so many people. The friday I get back I saw a concert because Melbourne is the hotspots for good art, music, bars, Kanye West and Nas did an all age show and I seriously rocked out at a concert harder than ever. I have never seen Kanye before live and I saw Nas just a month or so before I left the states so I was excited about that again, Nas rocked it as usual and I wondered if Kanye having just released a CD would perform some of the new tracks. My man comes out to Paranoid one of my favortie tracks on the new CD. He is definitely on his new thing right now because he was jumping and dancing around and had the audiotune vocals goin on and he killed it. He would tell the band what parts of a beat he would want and then he would just talk to the crowd and be freestylin sayin that he enjoys the city so much and all this stuff. It got old after a little but it was still a good show and he was scheduled for a hour and a half but was out there for almost 3 hours. Killed it, one of the best things I've done since I have been hear. Atmosphere, Murs, Brother Ali are all giving a show in like mid january and for those who don't know they're like some of MN's most locally famous hip hop artists so that is going to be nuts to see them in Australia. I hate your boyfriend is one of my favorite songs so check it out.

Well what else, the weather here is actually 4 seasons in a day and there is no way to predict the weather. It can rain at any given second, clouds will be out but it will be hotter than if the sun is out, its a crazy place. Also I don't think I told this story but I thought I would real quick. Flashback to me surfing at Mojo and I'm on the surfboard and the all of a sudden a wave in front of me has a big black mass under it. Hmm I think to myself, that couldn't be, then the guy next to me says the same thing. James do you see that big black thing, I lay as flat as I can on my board and the next thing I see is a fin coming out of the water. Oh my god I start freaking out because I'm not the best paddler on the surfboards, the its two fins, I'm freaking out at this point just thinking please shark attack someone else please. Then one of them jump in the air and it was a dolphin and also one of the most amazing things ever, I also saw a huge whale, not killer, jumping off in the distance while I was surfing. Well I will keep you posted even though I wont be on the internet that much when I leave. Everyone have a good thanksgiving I hope and what do you guys want for Christmas?!?!