Day 277! Today’s an exciting day! I got to see two of my friends I met in Koh Tao! And to celebrate one of their birthdays too. But the night unfortunately didn’t last super late for me since I have an early morning work shift tomorrow…

After a long day yesterday, I tried sleeping in as long as possible… but as most days, I wasn’t super successful. I woke up at 8:30am and lied in bed as I worked on my blog post from the day before.

Even though I couldn’t sleep in, I had the day off. So I woke up, made myself breakfast, and thought about what I wanted to do today.

I then went to the TV room, where I played a little guitar and started reading the second part of the first book of the way of Kings series!

I had some errands I’ve been meaning to run, so I thought my day off was a perfect day to do them. The main one was getting the security tag removed from my work boots I bought last week.

I first went on a 15 minute walk to K-Mart. Unfortunately I didn’t have my receipt anymore… so I was hoping they’d just believe me and take the tag off. But, they of course asked and when I said I didn’t have it I tried to open up my bank account to show them the transaction. But of course it wouldn’t load. I told the lady working “I swear I bought them” and she took it off.

I then wandered around the store, looking for working gloves. I don’t want my hands to get hurt again, so I thought it’d be a good investment. But even after asking multiple staff members, it appeared K-Mart didn’t have any.

So I left, trying to find another store that might.

I found a nearby store called Big W and luckily they had a pair for $8. Hopefully they do the trick!

I was directly next to the cheapest sushi roll shop in Melbourne, so I thought I’d treat myself to two very cheap sushi rolls.

I sat, people watched, and snacked on them before returning to the hostel for the rest of my lunch.

By the time I finished, it was 1:30pm and my friend Dom said he’d pick me up at 2pm! So I had about 30 minutes to do a bit more reading. And pretty much promptly at two, he was in front of the Mansion with his car.

But… it was torrentially down pouring. So I got pretty soaked going from the hostel to his car.

It’s been a bit since I’ve seen Dom! I met him and his girlfriend Casey at Taco Shack in Koh Tao. I taught his refresher course and did a fun dive with him as well and Casey was the hostel volunteer after me!

We caught up on the car ride over and it turned out he was living at his parent’s house. So add this to the list of friends parents I’m becoming friends with in Melbourne.

I was the first of his friends to come over because I wasn’t planning on going out with them. But we had some beers and chatted while we waited for his other friends to arrive. Casey, Dom’s mother, Dom’s father, and I all hung out. His sister, his brother, and his brother’s wife were all there too! It was a packed house at the moment.

Dom’s parents were super kind, his father is actually currently looking into some hospitality work for me and his mother is an avid Queen fan. So I chatted with both of them a lot about Melbourne and music.

Dom’s friends slowly started showing up, we drank, chatted, played beer pong, and ate some pizza for dinner! It was Dom’s 30th birthday celebration so all of his closest friends were there. He was very excited to introduce me to them and I was very excited to meet them. They were all super nice and were very welcoming. They also were excited to “meet the foreigner.”

Casey and I took a picture to send to our Taco Shack manager, Yi! We both miss him a lot and he was happy to hear from us!

Eventually it was time to head to the bar, where they were going to start the rest of their night. I decided to be responsible… so I joined them on the Uber ride and then found the nearest bus station to make the 15 minute journey back to the hostel.

Tomorrow I have to be up at 3am for my 4:30am shift… sooo it was time for bed. I’ll be able to sleep more after the shift, but I’m not looking forward to such an early morning with such hard work. We’ll see how it goes and how long it is… adventures!

– Elie