Miss Mandie

One of the best things about my time volunteering with CouchSurfing this year is most definitely the friends I have made. Charish and I are currently with staying in San Diego with Andy, a guy we both volunteered with at the CouchSurfing Thailand Collective. Our friendship now spans the entire year and being around each other is like the familiar comfort of a favourite pair of slippers. We can entertain ourselves with little more than each other and a couple of drinks. The other night we stayed up to 3am doing nothing but playing pool and punching artists or songs into Pandora.com and making the others guess what we had put in based upon the play list the website created. Seriously, this had us entertained for HOURS! And last night the camera with a timer beckoned us to use whatever props we could find in the garage to entertain ourselves. The album is the result – enjoy!

It was always going to be a tough undertaking. A 60 hour trek from Boston to San Antonio. But with a two hour delay on my second train, and multiple breakdowns on my last, what transpired was a story of human endurance that would have tested the patience of even Mother Teresa.

My sanity is indebted to the people that shared the journey with me…

Tina, who from the moment she stepped on the train was offering whatever she could – what was hers was ours (including a very generous lunch for me) and reliving some of my teenage years by sneaking in a ciggie break out of the train window, Steve – if I closed my eyes when he spoke I could swear John Goodman was sitting next to me chuckling, his lovely wife Vicky and son Scotty – who succeeded fervently in scoring us all extra ration packs, Raymond Jr who helped inspire me to get this movie on YouTube and Raymond Snr who touched me by his concern as to whether Australia did anything special when Steve Erwin died (he seemed satisfied that we renamed some of the highway near his zoo after him!), and Gia and her two gorgeous kids (Angel and Deangelo) – a 21 year old young mum who amazes me what she has achieved (in just attitude alone) from where she has come from…she is an inspiration and someone I hope I will remain friends with over the coming years. Once again, I am left feeling in awe at how many wonderful moments of connection, laughter and fun can come out of something that should have been essentially one hell of a torturous event.

Hope you enjoy the video of it!

If it doesn’t load, you can also view it by clicking here…

After much deliberation about what could excite me the most when I look ahead to future plans, I have decided that spending a summer back home in Australia is what is going to do it for me! Its been almost a year and half since I packed up my life back in Brisbane, Queensland and I am looking forward to reuniting with friends and establishing a bit of “normalcy” into this fun life I lead. It’s also my very good friend Sparkle’s 40th birthday at the end of December, and with the entire London contingent of our crew heading back for it, how could I not follow suit to complete the set!?

I cant wait to reconnect with all my wonderful friends back in Oz, spend time with my family, see all the babies that have been born in my absence, witness my bank balance increase from a job that actually pays me money, trips to the beach, have awesomely warm weather every day, try my hand at something new, get involved in the local Brisbane Couchsurfing community and host travellers, explore new areas  I haven’t seen, finally catch up on all my emails, spend time being creative, get back into Les Mills classes at the gym, visit the hypnotherapist to give up  smoking again, wake up to Triple J radio each morning, have fun listening to the travelling adventures of all my overseas buddies and just generally continue to enjoy life from the different angle of being “back home”.

I fly out of San Francisco on 3 December, will spend a weekend in Auckland and hope to land in Sydney on 8 December. Christmas with “the fam” is on the cards and all Brissy friends can expect to see me back there on Boxing Day.

I am currently hanging out in Salem, Massachusetts, with Liz – a girl I met while volunteering in Romania. When we met last year she was just finishing off her studies in photography, and I am well impressed with how far she has come in that time!

Check her out: www.lcurtisphotos.com

You can also see the photos she took in Romania by clicking on “client proofing” and entering the password “romania”.