The Adventures of a 23-year-old...

Hello! Well, the birthday weekend in Hunter Valley was great! It is a beautiful part of the country - rolling green hills, lots of huge stables, vineyards everywhere! The Valley has over 100 wineries!! The tour we were on took us to four, each was very different...Our first stop took us to Draytons, a family run winery that has been in the valley for 155 years (probably the oldest), our second stop to Rosemount one of the larger wineries that exports to over 100 countries, the third stop Lucy's Run (named after the owners dog) which only makes 600-800 cases a year so is very small - the also made delicious olive oil from their olive trees! The fourth stop was Macquariedales, a biodynamic winery that does everything based on the schedule of the moon - they are all organic. Each winery was really cool, and very tastey!

We then headed back to our hostel (which was a cozy family fun home). We made pizzas in the stone oven that night and then walked to the local pub, Potters, were we sang and danced the night away to karaoke! Although I just met everyone (except for Adam) that night they made sure I had a great birthday! I celebrated with a few aussies, a couple consultants from London, a couple from Ireland, a German and a bachelorette party that was also at the bar. It was a unique birthday but very fun.

Then on Sunday Adam and I rented a couple bikes and went around the national park and to the zoo in the Hunter Valley, okay, we didn't actually go to the zoo - we biked around the fence and were able to see all the wallabies, dingos, ostriches, emus, etc as if we were paying customers :) We then biked (well I biked - Adam walked his up the hill ;) to the Hunter Valley Gardens where they have lots of fun little shops and such. Yesterday, we went with Tina (a really cool 40-something year old who was staying at the hostel - she was pretty inspiring talking about the importance of never burning out in life) anyways, she was headed out to one of the small coastal towns and we tagged along - every town is so beautiful here!

Now, I'm by Balmoral Bay staying with an Aussie friend Nathan while he is between flatmates! If you hadn't heard, the nanny thing didn't work out for me - it was fun to be submerged with a family but a little tough being on someone else's schedule 24/7 and the family was nice but I didn't always appreciate how they treated me. So I'm looking for a waitress gig around here and in the meantime I'm all confirmed to head to Bali on the 27th for ten days!! I'm so excited to experience something completely different from here or the states! Should be cool!

Hmmm, I know I'm missing stuff but this seems long enough for now! Miss you all so very much!