fun times

just thought i would give you guys a few more photos to get a feeling for the weather and landscape. we went to a few beaches and looked at rock pools which was really neat, it was like snorkelling, but you're standing on rocks looking into the little pool of water for creatures. there is a photo of a large starfish. it was about 30 cm wide, and stuck to that rock without water, so nicola saved it and put it in one of the pools. and then keith and i found a little white starfish, it was relly cute. at the moment i am still in new zealand, but i was supposed to have flown out this morning to sydney (i really miss that city, its such a wonderful place). but because my visa is taking longer than expected i am flying out on the 26th instead. so that only gives me a day before school starts to get settled and all ready to go. but i can do it i know i can. oh, and the bad weather has followed me all the way here. as you can see in the photos, it just doesnt make for super sunbaking weather and my tan is quickly fading away :( that last photo is of me in my capers jumper, and my pants are absolutely amazing. i found them on the roadtrip with sarah. i needed new jeans because one of my last remaing pants that fit me ripped in the rear. but the amaizng thing about them is that they were only 15 dollars and they are long enough that sometimes i even have to ROLL THEM UP!! how exciting! you have no idea. i dont think that i have ever owned jeans that i needed to roll up, or that dragged on the ground if i wear small shoes. sigh* its a dream come true. they're rolled up a little much in the photo because we were puddle jumping and i didnt want to get them wet.

Hey guys. the day came that was bound to happen but i wasnt really looking forward to; sarah and i parted ways. its the first time in about 7 months that we havent been in the same city together. it was a pretty hard flight over to melbourne and then to auckland NZ. on the way from melbourne to aucklan there were very few people on the plane because it was a pretty late flight which meant i was able to have the whole row to myself to sit and have a good cry. it was also the first time in 7 months that i was alone. werid ay? But now here i am in NZ with Nicola, Keith and Liz. they all came to the airport to pick me up and then we had a late drive to Hamilton which took about and hour and a half. their house is so cute (its the red one in the photo)and they have a cat that looks just like oreo. we went to go to a cave yesterday and it was really cool because there were glow worms in the cave and it looked like there were constellations up on the ceiling. but those are the extent of my adventures as of yet. we are going to the beach today and im looking forward to soaking in some rays again. ps the pretty sunset pics are from albany. we went out to look at the wind farm on my last night and it was realy cool.

Just a quick update with other aspects of my f life here. My toe is healing up nicely and the skin flap that was stitched down is now cut off because it was all dead. so really there was no need for those nine nasty stitches and hefty medical bill which i will hopefully get a refund for. mmm yep. then there is a photo of sarah on her dad's motorbike. it looks beautiful and he keeps it looking that way. then theres a random photo of me behind their little cottage out in the back. i really liked the colors of the wall, and for those of you who know that i like to take photos, i thought it was ag reat photo oportunity. im really happy with it. ahhh, and the swing photo. i really really like this photo and i almost want to make it into a poster or something. i dont know what it is about it, but i really love it. oh, and so i'll be flying out to new zealand on tuesday the 16th, and then once my working holiday visa goes through i will be heading back to sydney on the 22nd. so i have pretty much 5 days in New Zealand. not a whole lot but enough to say that ive been there. i hope you are all doing well back home.

Road trip!!

Sarah and i have mostly completed our roadtrip of the south west of Australia. it's been
a really fun time and we've done some interesting things along the way. We went to the valley of the giants for the tree top walk, went to some caves in margaret river, went to a beautiful winery, shopped in Perth, fed a lot of birds, did some mild offraoding in the 4WD, checked out some beaches, went to the drive-in cinema, and all this while living out of the back of the 4WD. it was so cool. we had our bed all set up in the back, had a fridge, surfboard (which we didnt actually get a chance to use unfortunately), stove, you name it, we had it. the weather really didnt cooperate until this afternoon in Perth so we finally got to do some sunbaking on our holiday. I got to be the navigator with the big maps and directories. i didnt even have to turn the maps around like us women are known for doing at every corner we turn haha. but it's been a really good time and im so glad that we were able to get a chance to hang out before i head off to NZ because we really dont know if or when we will see each other again. im hoping it will be a when issue, not an if, but we will see what God has planned. And for one of our last things we had planned for our road trip was to see Ela, one of the students who is living in Perth as an Aupair for a while. it was really good to see her again and have a good chat with her. i miss all the accents from school. but wow, next semester is going to be even more choc bloc filled with accents. im really looking forward to it. So now we are heading back to albany bright and early in the morning and then we will dye sarahs hair and put some streaks in it, who knows, i might do some streaks too now that im not shaving my head! wooo.

Camping with the Wilsons

This is a little late in coming but its been pretty busy over here so i hadn't had a cahnce to update it with photos and a little blurb on our camping funtimes. I think that we discovered that if you ever want it to rain you just have to plan a camping expedition and it will pour. Sarah and i lived in our massive tent for 3 nights, two were spent wet and windy. it started off alright with the weather and such, but the next day it was just cloudy and rainy and windy. We went for a walk in a gorge where it was a little less windy and more enjoyable. the brown mass that brad, sarah's brother is holding up is grasshoppers. they were all over the beach. at first we just thought it was seaweed but then we looked closer and they were all dead locusts. and it stank so bad. then we listened to the weather reports on the radio and they were advising all campers who were near the ocean to evacuate (sarah and i were pretty much sleeping right on the beach in our little tent.) we were unsure if we would stay on the third night, but in the end we did stay and it was so windy! That day we went on some 4WDing trails and it was so much fun. its like quading but fun in a different way. we hardly got any sleep at all and at some points the wind blew the tent so hard that it would lay out flat on top of me! then the fly (cover) came off the tent at about 6 am and so we went out to take the tent down in the rain and wind and we were just so miserable to have been woken up so harshly. but we played lots of kitty poker in those few days of camping which is a really fun game. it was great bonding time with the family and fun to see another side of australia. maybe one that i hope i dont see too often.