Eeeewww

This is vile, and thanks be to God that they have not made it to Melbourne - or else I think I would have gone a little insane by now. Yuck, I shudder even thinking about it...


Bogong Moth Invasion


C

I'm a student again!

Well, I never thought it possible - I have become a student again!

I am probably the least academic person you are ever likely to meet, and for me to voluntarily enroll on a course is out of character!

So, what's this 'ere course I hear you ask???

Since we have bought a flashy (pardon the pun) camera, I thought it would be pretty cool to do a photography course....

Never thought I'd be a 'mature student'!

C

We're still alive and well!

Gosh, it's been 6 weeks since I last blogged, and that's in spite of the protestations of certain family members!

So what's new?

Well life is chugging along quite nicely, thanks for asking. We've had some important landmarks in the last month, all of which are worth a celebration of some sort.

August 25th saw the 2 year anniversary of our arrival in these scorched shores. It amazes me how fast the last 2 years have flown by, yet in some ways it seems a whole lifetime ago that we said farewell to everything we know and loved. We have had a fair amount of time to reflect on these years, and whilst there have been some pretty tough times, we both know we did the right thing to come here.


I recall our first Christmas here, and subsequent months, when we were both having a hellish time missing our family friends - we talk about those times as our 'dark days'. It seemed almost a daily event that one or both of us would be pining to be home, amongst familiarity and security.


Looking back know, I feel that both of us have grown - emotionally, physically and spiritually. It's only when you are off your map that you begin to realise you need help.

So, looking forward now, we are into our third year in Oz and we still see a number of challenges ahead, but we both feel that we have been (and indeed are curerntly being) equipped to rise to those challenges as we meet them. The year ahead will mould us even more, and to that I say "Bring it on!"

we also both celebrated out birthdays in early september, just 2 days apart which makes for a double celebration! As both our days fell on a weekday, we still managed to make each other brekkie in bed, even if it was rushed. I was woken with two hot english muffins, with a solitary candle, and a steaming mug of fresh coffee. it's a real treat to have this as we have a fairly strict policy of 'no bread for brekkie' on weekdays!

We asked or families to send us cold hard cash for gifts this year as we had set our hearts on a fancy camera. We were blown away with all the gifts - THANKS EVERYONE! And we were able to get a very lovely Canon SLR.

So watch this space for some fancy pants pictures in the coming months!

we are looking forward now to our next trip - the school end-of-term holidays start this friday, so Helen has 2 weeks off. So, we are heading off back to tasmania. We had such a lovely time there for our birthdays last year, that we decided to go again. This time we are heading to Launceston and plan to head over to Cradle Mountain and the (wild wild) west coast. I have heard that is is the last real wilderness, truly unspoilt, so we are really lookign forward to that...

I guess that's about all, so look out for more updates soon - I promise!

Secret night out...

Things have been mental of late. We both seem to have gone exponential with the busy-ness of life, and we seem to have little downtime recently.

So in order to redress this, I taking the day off on friday, I have booked a special deal at a city hotel and am taking my sweetheart out for the night... I can't give any more away as it is a surprise, so watch this space for an update over the weekend...

Suffice to say it involves fine dining (of course) and a few shenanigans along the way!

Cacth you later!

C

2 of us

Hello everyone, it's been a while again, sorry!

We're slowly but surely getting back into the swing of things after our fab holiday to Noosa at the start of the month, and winter is really biting here - Melbourne has really lived up to it's reputation of 'four seasons in one day' today. It started of a clear crisp morning, and by lunchtime we had had thunder and lightning, hail, sleet, glorious sunshine and then more rain! It's currently hovering around 6c, and will be dropping to zero overnight. We saw the funniest thing today on the news - kangeroos hopping through snow, in Ballarat, just north of the city.

Anyhow, as you may or may not know, helen has taken up a new hobby - scrap-booking! It seems to be taking up a fair amount of her spare time (what she has of it) and it's actually a very creative process, and is great to see all our memories on paper.

The book is slowly being filled with all the exciting things we have done here in Australia. However, her most recent project is especially good.

Let me explain. We have started a bit of a tradition in the last year or so, of me heading out early on saturday mornings, getting the paper and settling in for a long lie and with fresh croissants. One of the magazines that comes with the Melbourne Age on the weekend is called 'Good Weekend' and it has a regular weekly section called "2 of Us". The basic theme is that it is a story of two people's life, linked in someway, either by marriage, work colleagues, best friends or such like. The two people featured each week speak of their relationship, how they intertwine. It's always ery interesting to see a little snapshot of people's lives.

So, Helen has set about to create our own 2 of Us article, and I have to say it is very good, and I want to send it to the Melbourne Age to get published! I'm going to try and get it on blogger....

See the article here!

Catch you laters...

Chris