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Photos from my time in the US can be found here

I left Sydney on the 13th and headed for Newark Airport via LAX (with a short stopover in Atlanta).
The flight to LA was uneventful; I got a whole row of seats to myself so that made sleeping much easier. I spent some 13hrs in LAX while waiting for my flight, than god for laptops and WiFi.

When I finally arrived in Newark some 36hrs after I had left Sydney I was a little exhausted, thankfully Vlad had given me very clear instructions on how to get to the house so I jumped in a cab, gave them the instructions and tried not to fall asleep in the back of the car.

I arrived at the house, dumped my stuff in what was my room for the next few weeks (thanks Ella) and met the family.
We went out for some food and a short sight seeing tour of Jersey City, when we got back I took a short nap before we headed out for some sight seeing in New York City.

I spent the next week or so doing as many tourist/sight seeing things as possible. NYC is simply an amazing city, it is huge and I really only saw a small portion of it. Having Vlad as my tour guide helped as we both share similar interests so I did not get stuck seeing a bunch of crap I really didn’t care about.
I did an open top bus tour of basically the whole city over a period of about 3 days, also did a boat cruise on the river and got some cool photos of the Statue of Liberty.
Add to all the sight seeing the crazy range of exceptional food choices and it is easy to see why everybody I talk to says that NYC is their favourite city in the world.

After a little over a week in Jersey City/NYC I was on a plane heading south to Orlando, Florida for the PSP Paintball World Cup at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex.

I scored a ride to the airport from one of Vlad’s nieces and a few hours later touched down at Orlando International airport. A short shuttle bus ride later and I was checking into my hotel in downtown Kissimmee.
I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in my room trying to get over the lack of sleep from the previous night.
The next day I caught a taxi to the Wide World of Sports complex to see day one of World Cup.
Caught some great paintball games and saw some awesome new products. Eventually got a taxi home once the day was over and had some food and watched some TV.

For the next few days I caught up with Mike and Adam, they picked me up and took me to the event which saved on taxi fares. We also ate out at some restaurants.

On the final day of the World Cup we caught some of the finals, Mike sorted me out with a brand new GEO and we then headed out to a local gun store to shoot some of the US’s finest firearms.
$100 USD each later and we had spent a good hour shooting at Osama and his Taliban cohorts.
We grabbed some food on our way back to the hotel and they dropped me off.

The next day I was on a plane back to Newark so I had an early night.
I had arranged for my shuttle to pick me up with plenty of time to catch my flight. Due to the time of day (4.15am) there was no traffic and we were soon at the airport.

I checked in and then went and got myself some food for breakfast and tried not to fall asleep before my plane was called.
An few hours on an uneventful flight later and I was back in Newark. I caught the train back to Jersey City and walked back to the house (much cheaper than a taxi that is for sure).
Vlad let me in and I then grabbed a quick nap before we headed out for some more sight seeing.
For the rest of the week we did more touristy things, ate lots more food, saw lots more sights and generally had a great time in the city that never sleeps.

Towards the end of the week Vlad had some bad news from home, he needed to head home as his father was sick and required heart surgery so he was then on a mission to figure out his cheapest options for getting back to Aus.
That didn’t stop us enjoying the rest of the week.
We caught an NHL and NBA game in Jersey and while we missed seeing an MLS game live we saw plenty more sport on the 1000’s of channels on the TV including the MLB World Series.

Eventually it was time to head back to merry old England, we had arranged to be dropped off at the airport by Vlad’s niece again and we made it with plenty of time to our flight.

A mostly uneventful flight back to London and a fairly quick trip through immigration and customs and we were home… Well sort of.

More on our return back to the motherland can be found in my back in the USSR… I mean UK report.

Photos from my short time at home can be found here

On my way home I stopped by Hong Kong for a day and caught up with Fran as she had just moved there from Ireland.
Had a good time with her in HK and then was on a plan again the following night.

I landed in Sydney early in the morning on the 3rd of October, Katrina picked me up after a little drama and we headed for her place.
What was supposed to be a quick stop at the shops turned into several hours, but eventually we made it to her place.
The whole previous few days mum had been sending me SMS messages trying to find out what I was up to.
Since I was in a different time zone I did not want to reply and blow my cover so I opted to just ignore them.

That night we had a BBQ for dinner; it had been far too long since I had had a BBQ so I had warned Trina that I expected meat for dinner.

We ate, drank and talked and eventually called it a night when all 3 of us started falling asleep on the couch.

The next night we were going out to dinner for mums birthday as Jared had other plans on the Sunday (mums actual birthday), but we had some time to kill during the day.
Kat and Scott went to the gym in the morning while I slept. I was woken by a phone call asking if I wanted to come get some breakfast. Since it was time to get up anyway I got out of bed and they came and picked me up.
We had some food and then headed home for showers and then went out for a drive to get some apple pie, when we finally got to the shop they were not making any fresh pies so we decided against it.
By the time we got home it was time to start getting organised for dinner.

We headed out to Parramatta and found a place to park, on our way Kat called dad to find out where they were. Turns out they were already at the restaurant (trust them to be early for the first time in history).
Our plan was simple, Kat and Scott would go in as expected and say hello and sit down. I would follow a minute or so later.
As I walked into the restaurant mum was busy reading the menu so she did not see me until I was almost standing on top of her. When she saw me she let out an almighty scream “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!!” and then proceeded to hug me and burst into tears (in the middle of the restaurant).
After calming down we had a very nice dinner and then headed back to mum and dads place for cake/coffee/whatever.

The next morning we had breakfast with the whole family and had presents, with the exception of some drama from the resident drama queen the day was great.

I spent the rest of that week not doing much (sound familiar?).
The following weekend we had the big party, I helped clean up and setup for the party. The night was very good and I got to see most of the family and friends.

Next up we have the trip to the US of A