wales

it's early saturday morning. the house is silent. the little welsh town i grew up in seems to still be asleep. i look out the window at a view almost the same as the view of my childhood bedroom window - small mountain to the right, little town below and beyond that the sea. the sea is grey and the sky is grey and they blend into one another, but i'm nice and warm.

saw my grandma and grandad yesterday. love them so much. when we were staying in the orphanage in Kenya i thought about grandma alot. when she was 2 her and her brother were put in an orphange in London. they lived together until they were 11 when they were separated and no longer allowed to see one another. grandma said that broke her and from then on she was a naughty girl. one of her jobs in the orphanage was feeding the babies. they weren't allowed to show any love or affection to the babies, but she didn't care about the rules any more and would sneak them off and cuddle them.

austria

sitting in the hostel, using the free internet!! casey's watching germany verses costa rica in the first game of the world cup. the score's germany - 3, costa rica - 1. our next stop is munich (back in germany). apparently the whole city is completely booked out with soccer nuts and there's no way we'll be able to find accomodation - except for our trusty camping gear which is going to come in very handy.

the last 2 weeks have been a whirl of partying, site seeing and bus trips. quite a change in life style after staying in the children's home. we've met loads of fantastic aussie's that we've become good mates with virtually over night.

we're loving this type of travelling but it's become really obvious that people are kidding themselves if they think travelling around western europe is going to open their mind to what's going on in the world.

perhaps i'm being to harsh? if we actually listen to the history of some of these places we might manage to stir ourselves from our consummerisitic money mindset. education is truth, and traveling is definitely education. i quess it just depends which bits of truth you want to learn. some are much easier to swallow than others.