2 weeks to go!

Oh my gosh, where has the time gone? It's only two weeks and two days until I have to be ready to go to the other side of the world. Scary? Maybe a little bit. As I booked my flights in August about 3 months ago I thought I have enough time to do everything before November because it seemed to be "far away in the future". But oops, all the weeks have gone so fast and I haven't even thought about packing my backpack yet. What do I have to take with me when I'm going to Australia and don't even know when I'm coming back? Any ideas?

It was absolutely lovely to visit England last week and the whole week there was awesome. It was so great to see all the people again and visit the places where I spent my time when I lived in the UK. Yes I spent quite a lot of money and I couldn't resist shopping in Primark (I realised that I should've stayed in the UK instead of moving back to Finland because I think many things are nearly free of charge in the UK compared to the prices in Finland... I simply can't afford shopping [or drinking] here) but it's okay because it was worth all the money I spent and the week was just perfect thanks to one special person :)

A couple of weeks ago I started panicking about going to Australia but now for some reason I don't feel very scared anymore. I know that I still have some things to do but it seems like I'm leaving everything until the last minute. I hate panicking so I have to calm down and believe that everythin's going to be alright.

At least I've finally booked my hostel in Hong Kong! It took quite a while to find out where to stay but after searching some cheap hostels on the internet I chose one that seemed to be okay.

Three months ago I even got some Australia guide books from the library but have I read them? No I haven't. I've found out a few things about Australia, including the fact that there are a couple of world's most dangerous spider species in some areas. Nice.

 But anyway, in two weeks I'm hopefully more ready to go than I'm now and maybe also more scared and excited! And probably thinking "what the hell am I doing".

Enjoying autumn in Finland

I love autumn in Finland. Not when it's grey and wet and boring in the early winter, but when it's an early autumn and the weather is getting cooler and the leaves in trees are yellow and orange and red. I also like the rain sometimes when it's not windy. I want to enjoy autumn here before I go away and that's why I've been hoping that the weather would get a bit colder soon. I love it when the sun is shining but it's not too hot anymore. When I go to Australia it'll be hot anyway so I don't care if it starts snowing here some day soon! But I don't think I'll see any snow before I go.

Actually I haven't seen winter in Finland for a long time because last winter I lived in the UK and the year before that I only saw half of the winter time here. But last winter in England was just like in Finland really because it snowed that much. The difference was that in England it only last for a little while but nothing was normal while there was snow on the ground. I thought it was very nice and normal but to the local people it was a disaster. Trains didn't go normally and many airports were closed but I still managed to go to Dublin with my friend!

I'm getting a bit scared about going to Australia because it feels like it happens too soon and I don't know if everything's going to go well when I get there. I could just stay in Finland and work for a few more months and save more money... But I'm also excited and I hope I don't want to come back home after a couple of weeks!

One of the reasons why I'm quite nervous when I think of going to Australia is that it's full of big, dangerous and horrible spiders! The problem is that I hate spiders, all of them, any size and any colour. I hate them very much and I don't care how big or small they are, I just can't stand spiders. Okay, the smallest ones are okay but if it's bigger than 0,5 cm I hate it. In Finland I get a heart attack when I see a "normal size spider" inside a house, so in Australia I'll definitely die when I see spiders as big as a dinner plate!

I've heard stories when somebody has woken up at night with a huge spider next to them. If that happens to me, I don't know what I'll do. It's just too horrible to think of.

Now my suitcase is packed again because I'm going to England tomorrow! I'm so excited! I miss everything there so much that probably I don't want to come back home after one week. It's lovely to go back to those places where I spent so much time during the 1,5 years.

I thought I wouldn't need many things to take with me but my suitcase seems to be quite heavy again... And the weight limit on the plane is 15 kg. How am I supposed to do shopping without the weight being more than 15 kg when I come back? I also left some clothes and other things in England when I moved away because I couldn't take them all with me. So I have to have some space for those things in my suitcase too.

So anyway, I'm really going to enjoy my week in the UK!

Before the adventure begins

I can't believe how long I've been planning to start this blog and still haven't done it until now. For some reason I've never wrote anything in public before, even though I could've done as there have been soooo many special and amazing things that have happened to me since the beginning of the year 2010 when I moved to England for 1,5 years which was the best time of my life and it would have been worth writing about! 

It's too late to tell about all those things now, but as I'm now going to start a new adventure I decided that starting this blog might be a good idea.

I'm now back in Finland again, after that wonderful time I spent away from here and I only visited Finland twice during all that time I stayed in the UK. But I'm not going to be here too long anymore, which is not a big surprise. I don't mean that I don't like Finland because this is a good place to live in. But there are so many other places in the world and now it's a perfect time to see some of those other places so why stay here? When I'm older I can be stuck in Finland IF I want to. Maybe not, but who knows. The point is that now it's time to go wherever I want to. 

And very soon I'm going somewhere I've always wanted to go: I'm going to Australia. Actually it's going to be a bit too soon when I go and now I've realised I don't have enough time to do everything and time is running out! Maybe I shouldn't have booked my flights for the beginning of November... Time just goes too fast all the time.

I spent more time planning to start writing in this blog than planning my trip to Australia. Honestly, I haven't planned the whole Australia thing very much at all. As soon as I got back to Finland last June I decided that I want to go somewhere else soon again. I got a job here very quickly so I decided that I can work here for a while and save some money and maybe go somewhere again. And in August I had already booked my flights to Australia. Maybe I didn't think of that very much and maybe I decided it a bit too fast, but so what? I'm so bad at making decisions that if I had thought about that too long, maybe I would have decided not to go at all... It might be a stupid decision to go now and leave my job and everything but if I don't go, I'll never know if it's a good or a bad idea :D

I hate planning and organising things which is not very good because I love travelling and going to places and now I'm going to the other side of the world so it would be great to be able to plan things very well. I mean I like planning to go somewhere but I hate organising some things such as where to find a job, what I have to do first and how to do different things etc. I just want to go and hope that everything's gonna be alright! :D

I booked my flights and got my visa through Kilroy company because it seemed easy enough to do that. Okay it was also more expensive because I got the starter package which means I get some help with some things at first and I can stay 4 nights in a hostel and I can attend the Blue Mountains day tour and some walking tour in Sydney. To be honest the flight tickets and the starter package together were VERY expensive but oh well, I hope it's going to be worth it! 

I got the working holiday visa which means I can stay in Australia up to 1 year and I can find a job and work there if I want to. The idea of the working holiday is that you can travel around and get some money if you work somewhere for a while and then you can travel again. I don't know how other people organise all that and I have no idea how I'm going to do it :D but I just know that I should try to find some job and get some money and hopefully travel in many places and enjoy Australia. It sounds easy but I know it's not going to be that easy...

That's all I know and I can't say if it's going to work like that and I have no idea what really is going to happen, but hey, that's the whole point when you talk about adventure!

I think it's better not to make too many plans because you can't really plan working holiday very well (that's what I think....). Anything can happen and you never know what happens next. Maybe some people do but I don't.  Luckily I don't have to be alone for the first 3 weeks because my good friend is coming too :) She's arriving 4 days after me so I still have to travel all the way to Australia alone and try to survive at the airports and find something to do on the plane.

I also have to survive in Hong Kong for 2 nights because I'm going to stop there before I fly to Sydney. That's a bit scary but also quite cool, it's great to visit Hong Kong and see a little bit of China. I have no idea what to do there or where to go but Hong Kong sounds nice so I decided to stop there. After that I'll fly to Sydney and that's where my Australia adventure begins.

It's going to be a long long long flight from Helsinki to Sydney. It means I'll have to travel about 4 days including my stopping in Hong Kong. So it's going to be quite a journey! 

I don't want to plan the day when I'd definitely come back from Australia. I've got return tickets but luckily they are flexible which means I can change the return date if I want to.

And on my way back from Australia (which is going to be sometimes in the future) I'll stop in New Zealand for about 1,5 weeks. Yayyy :) It's one of those places I've always wanted to visit! I've never been a fan of the Lord of The Rings but New Zealand looks amazing... 

So now I only have to save a lot of money! But oops, I just bought a DSLR camera and I'm going to go to England next week... :D so I don't think that's the best way to save money...

But I've wanted that kind of camera for a long long time and I've been planning to buy one so I really had to buy it! I want to do photography and I love taking pictures especially when I'm travelling so there was a good reason to buy a good camera before I go to Australia.

And visiting England is also a thing I just have to do, there is a good reason for that too :) 

I just have to try not to spend money too much... Okay, I'll have to do some shopping just because it's much cheaper to buy some things in England than in Finland. But luckily I got the flight tickets quite cheap because I decided to be brave and fly with Ryanair. Even though last year I decided not to fly with them ever again... And just because Ryanair is rubbish and they steal your money, the flights weren't THAT cheap in the end. But they were the cheapest ones I found so it's okay.

Thanks for reading my text this far, and hopefully it wasn't too boring :) I'll try to keep writing in this blog as much as I can in the future, well I hope so.