IF YOU READ THIS ON MYSPACE ALREADY, I'M SORRY BUT I COULDNT BE BOTHERED WITH CREATIVITY AT THE MOMENT...READ IT AGAIN OR NAVIGATE AWAY FROM THIS PAGE...this is a story about driving. it has a few elements that are vital to the telling which i will break down for you as follows:
{1 overly picky car owner (nick) 1 excited/terrified driver (me) 1 impatient bus driver x numerous minor insanity-inducing problems} = one wild ride
so here we go. nick, who NEVER lets anyone drive his car, decided to let me drop him at the train station and take the car home. this was fine; i have been wanting to drive his car for ages and he always says no, so i was stoked. and at the same time, i was a bit nervous. ok, i was terrified. terrified that i would do something stupid and somehow break his car to bits, but there was no way i told him that, no siree. now let it be known that i have no trouble driving over here. i drive kims car occasionally, i've driven hannah home from the pub a few times (her car is a total bomb and a stick to boot), and the concept of being on the wrong side of the road and wrong side of the car is not an issue. its been 9 months for crying out loud. so this was not a concern.now, fast forward to the train station. nick drove there and stopped in front; the plan was for him to jump out, me to go around and jump in and take off for home. i did not plan on him stopping directly in front of a city bus dropping off passengers. this being about 6 pm, the driver was not in a particularly good mood, nor were his passengers...and they were sitting about 8 inches off the back bumper. so nick hops out, i scramble around to the drivers seat and proceed to attempt to take off. i say 'attempt' because it did not happen. and i'll tell you why. nick is 6'3"...i am 5'2" on a good day. the first thing i had to do when driving his car was scoot the seat forward. this doesnt sound like much of a problem, except that he has a nasty habit of shoving the floor mat back under the seat so that it doesnt get caught under the clutch. this particular time, it happened to be all jammed up around the lever that scoots the seat forward and i was screwed. he's standing on the sidewalk shouting for me to just GO, just DRIVE, dont worry about the seat...obviously he has never been a short person. if you happen to be short then i'm sure you can sympathize with me here. there is no way to drive a stick without a seat fully behind you; you cant shift properly because pushing the peddles only pushes you back against a seat that isnt there. so i'm trying desperately to get my sorry self out of the path of the bus and decide to take nicks brilliant advice and just GO. i throw the damn thing into gear, peel out and burn down the block in first...lame i know, but there was a roundabout at the end of the street that i would have to downshift for anyway and given the seating arrangement, shifting was the last thing i wanted to do more of. so i go screaming by the entire station, heaps of people milling about, with the car doing that amazing high-pitched whine that it does when you obviously need to up-shift. how embarrassing. or it would be if i werent so concerned with clinging to the steering wheel so that i can actually push the peddles in. now, just after the roundabout, there is a big sweeping hill that curves up toward a stoplight. going up a hill, trying to shift and not slide backwards in the seat is terrifying. when clinging for dear life to the wheel, one cannot turn properly; a hill only makes the sliding worse. and this time, i did have to shift. i was praying for a red light at the top of that hill, praying with all my might. the bus was right on my tail, bearing down with vengence, having left the station right behind me and i was trying to avoid the pissed off driver at all costs. oh how i was praying. and for the first time since this debacle started, god answered. the light was red. hallelujah. i threw it into neutral, pulled the handbrake and figured out the bungled mess under the seat, got myself situated and collected...and the light turned green. and from there on, the drive was a breeze. but oh my GOSH that first bit was harrowing. when i pulled into the drive, i thanked god for my life and promptly decided not to tell nick about the issues, lol. but my family sure got a kick out of hearing about it.
lace posted at 9:42 AM
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mmm ok, well not too much to report aside from school starting again and going fine. my scheduler isnt too gruling, in the ozzie sense because of the way we do school over here, only going to class once a week and all. but i guess if you spread it all out like normal i would be in class all day every day aside from fridays. mondays i have 6 straight hours of photography, which, as much as i love shooting, gets kind of tiring. only one class each on T W T, three hrs apiece and free fridays...boy, thats nice. add to that one intensive adventure-based camping ministry class and you have my school life for the next few months. i'm stoked!
thats pretty much it, i guess. just thought i'd leave you with some new pix. the top one is from a 21st birthday party this last weekend. funny thing: over here, 18 and 21 are both huge deals. like you dont go out and get wasted with your friends, you actually have a birthday party thrown by your parents and/or grandparents honoring your entrance into adult society. they are massive big bashes, themed and everything. the one we went to was a fairytale/disney thing, so we had to come up with costumes. kim and i werent really into the whole princess/fairy/frufru la la thing so we went as the Fates, the women who cut the thread of life. watch herculse if you dont know what i'm talking about. anyway, that was my Fate costume; all black with hot high heels and a sweet fedora, lol, go me.
and now for the other one...some of you have already seen this pic, on myspace or just email. i got this piercing when i was in melly with kim. its called a surface piercing and yeah, it goes thru my arm, lol. didnt really hurt, but i get such a huge adrenaline rush whenever i get something pierced that i wouldnt feel it anyway. its just a semi-curved bar under the skin and it took forever for the guy to get the needle thru. anyway, thats all.
lace posted at 1:59 AM
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NOW SHOWING: scenes from past episodes, escapades and encounters...so i thought you guys might like to see some pix from over here. now that blogger has made it so darn easy, i can actually be bothered to try and put them on here, lol. enjoy!
this is from our outback trip...the only digital i have is the group shot, so that will just have to do till i can scan in some printed ones. incase you cant pick me out of the oh-so-filthy crowd, i'm in the front row on the ground just left of the center...look for the blue bandana.
this would be becks and i playing indians while splunking in jenolan caves. our guide thought we looked hot with the warpaint. i would have to agree.
here we have the required shot in front of the opera house. as you can see from the sparkling water and warmth radiating off the sidewalk, this was taken during summer, right after i got here. thats kat and sunny with me, two rad chicas.
and here we have kim and i, the two most killer toolgirls you ever did see. those waders saved my life more times than i know, from being sucked into the abyss of mud we were 'forced' to play in, lol. by the end of the first day we had given up on staying clean and walking was almost too much to bother with...more often than not, if it wasnt a far distance we would just crawl or roll. at the end of the day, a dip in the ice cold lake got the waders all purdy-clean again.
thats all for now...i dont have a dige camera (yet, hopefully. feel free to send one if you happen to have a spare *eye roll, wink, grin*), so until i get around to scanning...this is gonna be about it.
lace posted at 9:51 PM
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4th of july? whats that?my july 4th... one of my very favorite holidays passed without so much as a spark this year. i spent it crying for the first few hours, then packing, then sitting/sleeping on a plane and waking up in the middle of nowhere. seriously middle of nowhere. the plan was to fly to melbourn to stay with my friend kim for a few weeks. she was to pick me up at the airport at the disgusting hour of 7 am and then we were going home to sleep. or so planned. if you know me then you know that i dont ever have plans that work out smoothly. who am i to break a perfect record? the guy next to me shook me awake, and with much confusion i managed to collect my stuff and get my self off the plan. the first thing i noticed was the freezing wind. ok, noticed might be the wrong word to use here. let me put it more succiently: i had been awake for 32 straight hours and was just waking from the first hour of sleep i had snatched...so foggy and 3/4 snoozing would describe me perfectly. when that wind hit me i was instantly awake. there wasnt a cloud in my mind...i could have done the quadratic equation or quoted poe i was so awake. melly is pretty much on the bottom of australia and therefore pretty much on the bottom of the world...which would mean antarctica. i hear its cold there. they share their gentle breezes with melly, quite generously in fact. so yeah, i'm blasted by the wind and it shocks my brain into realizing that i'm in the middle of a field with a small building made of metal in front of me and a plane behind...and that was it. somehow this didnt look like melbourne to me. the only thing to do was get off the tarmac and away from the breath of something frozen to death, so i trapised inside with the rest of the passengers who seemed to know what they were doing. the whole time i was thinking "maybe i should get back on the plane. maybe this isnt melbourne, maybe its just a stop and i wasnt supposed to get off yet." too bad the plane was leaving and the door was beckoning me...in i went. the inside wasnt much more than the out. basically it was a room the size of a basketball court with 3 rental car counters, one baggage track, 2 vending machines, 10 chairs and about 15 passengers. there was literally nothing else in there. one of the car rental guys informed me that i was at avalon airport, about an hour outside of melly and that the airline i flew on always came in to this airport instead of the big, main, regular one...the one kim was waiting at. so out i go, to the pay phone (into the frozen tundra again) and a call to kim goes like this:kim:
hello?me:
hey...are you at the airport?kim:
yeah, are you?me:
well, i'm at an airport but i couldnt tell you really where it is.kim:
huh?me: some guy said it was called avalon...kim:
what do you see from where you are?me:
a tin shack and fields as far as i can see. some cows out there i think.kim:
crap, you are at avalon.me:
yeah.kim:
i'll be there in an hour.so yeah, i sat in the "terminal" by myself, totally alone, for 45 minutes till another plane load dropped in, then through their departure and another 10 minutes till kim wandered in. we made it home around 10. i was struggling mightly to remain awake but for kims sake i couldnt just crash. her brothers and the two of us went out to play footy in the street until about 1 and then i couldnt take it any more and wandered off to bed. it was nice. so my past two+ weeks have been spent in the dewar household, working for kims dad landscaping their retreat center, and just chilling with the whole family. seriously cool folks. the parents, janice and craig, are rad, some of the most welcoming people i've met. kim's brothers are great. david, 15, is pretty much my clone when it comes to music and movies...something we are both thrilled about. me because not many people agree with me on so many things media-wise and him because he is terribly misunderstood in his household when it comes to artistic things, lol. it was good for us to stand against the forces of the rest of them. i made a real friend in him and i'm a better person for it. the other brother, michael, is something else altogether. he's 17 and way too cool, lol, but i like him anyway. we went to one of his footy games and the guy is tough. he's one of the smaller players but he is so determined that it makes up for it. i loved watching him play. we watched cooking shows together and he would tell me all these recipes that he had concocted; he's considering becoming a chef. his career options are between the army, mechanical engineering and the chef thing...talk about diverse, lol. he and kim fight like dan and i do; it was great to be part of that again. i had a blast. coming back to sydney this afternoon wasnt the greatest thing ever. i would have liked to have stayed down there for at least another month but alas...school beckons again.i still miss my family a lot, especially since i was getting that experience again, but i made it through a phone call with my mom this morning with no tears. actually, the only time i really cry is when i talk to my dad. somehow he breaks it all loose with things like, "are you sure youre all right, sis?" its hard because i almost avoid talking to him so that i dont cry so he doesnt know how much i miss him. which makes me miss him that much more and hurts him i'm sure. the cycle really sucks.happy news: 1) kim's going to be back in a few days. 2) we are going to see billy corgan's concert in about a week. 3) MrNik has another gig next thursday and that is just so freaking rad. yay.listening to:a perfect circle/mer de noms/ renholderchevelle/wonder what's next/ comfortable liarthe unicorns/who will cut our hair when we're gone?/ sea ghost
lace posted at 6:44 AM
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I Really Seem To SUCK @ This Goodbye Game
ok, so i just said goodbye to my final americans about 20 minutes ago and can i just say that it hurts like hell? last saturday i bid farewell to most of my fellow ASC students headed back to the states, but a few of them stayed behind for various reasons. i havent cried that much since i was a little kid...even leaving scott, home, family and tiff didnt hurt as bad as the pain of this goodbye. maybe its because i knew i would see my home things/people again and these friends i know i will probably never see. there are a few who i will make a point of hunting down but for the most part, lets just be honest here, we're not going to make eye contact again. so the first few days of my week were spent alone in my cold hostel, sleeping, crying and sleeping some more. thats pretty much all i did for about 3 days. then the guys who had stayed behind moved in with me (andy & luke) and things got much better. in the back of my mind i knew i would have to say goodbye to them sooner or later but the whole week i have been kind of doing that in little ways, hoping it wounldnt be so bad when the time finally rolled around. not so much. i'm flying out to melly in the morning and they leave for the states on wednesday so tonight was to be our last night together. unbeknowst to me, they had made plans with some friends from home to go out tonight. so about 30 minutes ago, they come into my room and say goodbye...hugs, keep in touch, the whole nine yards. totally blindsided me, i had no idea they were leaving. i just hugged them and blinked back some more tears (i had thought i was out of those) and they dashed out to catch a bus. i'm supposed to be packing to leave in about 5 hours but instead i just keep wandering around the house aimlessly, looking for something but not knowing what, trying to not lose all control and failing miserably. i'm starting to really hate saying goodbye. its more painful than anything i could have imagined and i really blow at it. i have never felt more alone in my life than right now. my family is back home getting ready to celebrate 4th of july in their huge fantastic fashion, my best friend is in the states living it up on her 21st birthday, my australian friends are all gone home and the americans i came to love have all taken off as well. i'm in this weird limbo in life right now and i really dont know what to do about it. pray for me. thats all i can think of.
lace posted at 6:07 AM
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Don't Cry For Me Australia...or America, actually, i guess...ok, so here's the scoop: i'm not coming home. well, eventually, yes, but not at the end of the month like i was supposed to. i'm staying here, in ozz, for another semester *does a little happy-happy-joy-joy dance.* yeah, thats right, i'm going to go to school over here for a while more because, can i just say this? its amazingly rad. i love this country, these people, everything about it. even if they dont have real orange cheddar cheese. boy i miss good ol' california cheese but australia is worth it people. so now that you all know...you can send me letters of engouragement and videos of you and your/my/our friends doing crazy weird summer thing. its winter here, by the way. in case you all didnt know that its in the southern hemi and that equals winter equals cold equals no summer for me for over a full year, lol. gah. i'm not really complaining all that much. i like cold.
okay...that was random and strange. and i'm gonna leave it and move on. the next item on the list would be...*consults huge long list of possible blog-worthy things*...oh yes, TIFFANY'S VISIT!!! can i just say that this was the raddest week ever? it was so weird, i made it to the airport all by myself (that wasnt the weird part...well i guess maybe, considering my fear of airports, it was kind of weird. anyway) yeah, i made it to the airport, found tiff in a sea of people, hauled her out to the bus and began the long trek home. the whole time leading up to her visit people had been telling me that "things will be different" and "you are two different people now, dont expect to just pick up where you left off"...well i'm here to tell you, WE SURE DID PICK UP JUST THE SAME AS ALWAYS!! there was nothing different about it/us/our friendship/whatever. i was all freaked out that we would get back together and have nothing to talk about, that it would be like a bad sitcom and we'd just look at each other and think 'i even know you anymore' but no, we just jabbered on in our same random crazy fashion, first talking about gregg > scott > libby > dutch bros and eric...it just went on and on. no awkward pauses, not a single thought of 'i cant believe i was ever friends with this homeschooler.' i still love my tiffy and her me. or however that saying goes.
so we had a great time. we went out to phil's gig the night she got in and i have to say, the kid impressed me. she had gotten up to leave that morning at 4 am and was still going strong at 3 am when we went home. after 15 hours on a plane and a full day of shopping and whatnot, shes got some staying power, lol. she loved nick and paul, which was huge for me since they are pretty much my favorite australian and i have to live with them so if things were bad, i would be plenty upset. no worries, they got along great and i both parties are missing each other even now.
the rest of the week we kind of mucked around at home, didnt do too much, went to school for some classes and whatnot, saw a movie, hung out with the boys. we shopped, talked, cooked eggs (something i havent done since i left her in january cause i just cant bring myself to cook eggs without tiff) and found hot shirts to wear to nick, kim and lara's gig with phil that friday night. and speaking those hot shirts...tiff bargined hers down by almost half in a department store. how does one go about doing this? i'll tell you, it went something like this:
TIFF: umm, how much for this shirt?
SALES LADY: oh, let me just check. yep, right, that will be $65.
TIFF: *blanch* okay...well, i'm going to go look around some more and maybe i'll be back to get it later
SALES LADY: we close in half an hour
TIFF: well then i guess i probably wont be getting it *we turn to leave*
SALES LADY: *quickly, almost desperatly* well how much were you thinking of paying for it?
TIFF: *looks at me with a "what the..." expression* umm...i was thinking $30
SALES LADY: $35?
TIFF: ok.
and that, folks, is how it is done. i still have no idea how it worked, especially since we werent really trying to bargin. we were just going to leave, a little sadly cause it was a great shirt, and then bam! this woman is practically giving tiff a shirt. wierd. i had to tell her that isnt how it always is, australia isnt quite that cool, lol. but i guess it shouldnt really surprise us, we always tend to get free and/or cheap stuff when we are together. always. free coffee, free pizza, free drinks, birthday cake when its not our birthdays...the whole enchalida. times have not changed, yay.
MrNik's gig (kim, nick and lara) was awesome. we had a blast, tiff and i, dancing all night long and generally having a blast. we trooped down the street to get pizza since they closed the kitchen on us and we were starving to death. an attempt to win free chips off of the bus boy didnt work out even though we got him stammering and blushing red, so we got the pizza and brought it back to the pub to eat on the doorstep with the bouncers cause they wouldnt let us in with outside food. they were cool. good times.
sunday was tiffs last day and we wanted to do something great and worthy of last day fame. that meant something wild and goofy, something only her and i would do...we couldnt think of anything suitable within our limited price range so we settled for going on a jetboat rip around the harbor. that was totally rad, it was amazing, we had a blast and our guide was fun. we got salty beach hair and soaked clothes, pictures of wild rides and general great memories. afterwards i introduced her to the wonders of pancakes on the rocks...ahhh amazement. we had nachos (very un-mexican) and strawberries n' cream pancakes with ICE CREAM! yum. sigh. we were very fatly sick and ready to puke when we finally left. it was good.
taking tiff to the airport was sad. we really suck at saying goodbyes and true to form, we were terrible at it this time too. we ate a quick lunch and about halfway through it tiff realized she needed to go. she jumped up, hugged me hard, tossed her sandwich in the rubbish bin and walked backward down the hallway towards america...i made it to the bus and my ipod before i cried. and that started a flood of tears. i cried all the way home. for tiff, for my family, especially my dad and just general crying to get things off my chest. it was a hard bus ride, and a hard day and i came home to sleep the rest of it off.
lace posted at 8:04 PM
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The Outback, kangaroo hunts, The Amazing Race and God-only-knows-what else...holy crap a lot of stuff has happened since last posting. um...i'm going to try to begin at the beginning but more than likely i'll end up remembering halfway through, something that happened before and in the end this post will be all disjointed and out of the time-space continuum...i dont know what that even means but it sounds cool if you just read it once and move on.
first off....
TIFFANY IS COMING TO SEE ME IN 7 (SEVEN) DAYS!!!! how freaking awesome is that? i miss her so much and she is going to be here HERE in sydney in a week. can you tell i'm just a little bit excited? the sneaky little bugger told me a few weeks ago that it might be a possibility, her visiting...and then she said it was for sure and that she was looking for flights. i was bouncing off the walls, driving my housemates crazy with copious amounts of joy. yay. and then...i get an email with these words:
"gosh dang it lace bad news first, yes? well I was looking around for tickets and all that and it wasn't working out. so basically here's the deal, geez don't be bummed okay?"and my heart hits my stomach, i'm almost in tears, i'm cursing angelina jolie and your mom and anyone else i could think of...and so, in true best friend fashion, i press on to the rest of the email of my doom...
"yeah, so you have to get up at like 6:10AM to get me at the airport on Sat. May28 . . . laughing"what a little wanker, lol. i could have killed her for that but at the same time i was cracking up and so, OH so relieved that it was all a mean nasty coldhearted joke. so yeah, yay for tiff coming to see me and stay for some days. yay. YAY.
oh yeah,
The Outback. wow. yeah, its real. and it really looks like you see it on tele. go figure that one, huh? but seriously guys, it was rad. ok, heres what happenend. we (the ASC students) took a 'cultural' trip to the outback a few weeks ago. it was part of our ozz history/culture class, you know, seeing the origins and meeting the aborigines and whatnot. so we camped in hardcore canvas tents that were staked out with actual sticks and rope (no coleman here, nosiree) for 4 nights.
no showers, no AC, no tele, no phone...it was beautiful. i wore the same clothes for 5 days...changed undies and socks and swapped my two t-shirts out, but it was living out of a backpack for 5 days. that included any extra things you might want to bring; i personally chose to bring a football and a book instead of a second pair of pants. thats just me.
we had some rad aboriginal guys out there with us, one older dude named ralph and then like 5 15-17 year old guys. they were so cool, we totally loved hanging out with em. becks and i went out in this tiny piece of crap boat with two of them and found a haunted house on the river. they wouldnt go in cause of the spirits and whatnot; the aboriginal race is pretty superstitious. we learned how to make dijeridus, clap sticks and i have both to bring home and show off. cant play the dig yet but i'm working on it. actually, thats one of the big taboos in their culture; women arent allowed to play the dig. apparently, if you do,
you get pregnant and its a bad-luck baby. interesting.
so after almost 4 months none of us had really seen a kangaroo. contrary to popular american belief, they arent just frolicking about in the streets of sydney, lol. this was our big chance to view some ozzie wildlife. however, the roos werent all up on that particular memo and failed to realize that they were expected to come barreling through our campsite every night. thus we ended up on our great Roo Hunt. and what a hunt it was. about 25 of us piled in two land cruisers and a ute (basically just a beater pickup with a flatbed on the back - ute is ozzie of utility vehicle, lol) and headed out into the sunset. the guys whose ranch we were camping on went ahead on dirtbikes to roust the roos out of the bush so that those of us in the 4wheeldrives might catch a glimpse and get some good shots. oh yeah, this was a photo hunt, not like guns and ammo. they dont actually shoot roos when hunting them; its illegal. instead the set these huge dogs that look like wolfhounds on them and when the dogs run them down, the guys race up and cut their throats to bleed them out. we didnt do that. we took pictures. unfortunately i didnt have any film so i have none. ANYWAY. the guys were rousting, we were waiting, it was all peaceful. i was on the back of the ute (of course) and i have to tell you, we looked so rad. there was 8 of us standing up there, clinging for dear life to the bars of a frame they had on the back to hold two large cages (these will come into play later) and we kept having to duck to avoid branches as we raced through the bush. as dirty and wild as we looked in our haphazardly picked clothes,
you would have thought us a bunch of political rebels racing to an uprising or something. the only thing missing was the m-16s and bandoleers of ammo. we had the rebel yell down pat. and steve had a spear.
this is a side note but its important in a minute. the two of us had talked the aboriginal guys into teaching us how to make spears; the burning of the end in the fire to harden and sharpen it, the whole nine yards. steve and i had gone on a few of our own roo hunts already, usually at night so we could startle them, but to no avail. once we saw some eyes under a tree but we were like 2 miles from camp and thought it best not to disturb something lest it be not a kangaroo or an angry kangaroo, whichever is worse. all this to say, steve was determined to spear a roo. i had forgotten my spear on this hunt, so sad.
we ended up in a little draw, the 8 of us, walking around while our ute driver went back to find the others and all of a sudden, about 50 roos were bounding across the horizon not 25 yards from us. we freak out and look for steve but he had gone into the trees and we couldnt see him. thinking the roos were going to be gone soon, we start shouting and .... they turned and hopped straight toward us. it was intense. as they go by we all stand breathless, amazed and whatnot...and then we see steve come busting out of the bush, spear over his shoulder and he runs to head the roos off before they get to the treeline. i have never seen anything so funny in all my life. i damn near peed my pants from laughing so hard. the thing is, he came within a few feet of one of them, totally could have hit it but for some reason he didnt loose the spear. it was hilarious.
in the meantime, one of the ranchers, kevin, comes back on the bike and he's herding a wild pig out of the bush so we can see her. she is pretty riled up, not too happy and after about 30 seconds of being told where to go she gets fed up and charges the bike. he runs her over when she dives under the wheel and we are all shocked at what is going on, lol. this happens a few more times and then she gets really angry and goes full on for the bike, bites the tire and pulls it over on herself. he bails off, she is stuck under it and squealing cause of the radiator that is burning her and we are just standing there with our mouths open. kevin yanks the bike off and wrassles that pig down until the ute gets back and he can bundle her into the cage on the back.
we named her almuerza, which means lunch in spanish.
there was a bit more roo hunting, we found some more and swarmed them with the 4wheeldrives but i think you get the idea of what it was like. so much fun and my brother was so incredibly jealous when i told him, lol. and thats the end of my outback adventures. except to say that the aboriginal guys did traditional dances for us one night around the campfire with the full tribal costumes and body paint. it was truly sweet.
what else has happened...oh yeah
THE AMAZING RACE, duh. ok so my friends luke and andy are awesome and a while back planned this thing they called The Great Sydney Game Night. basically, a bunch of us went into the city and played card games at various public locations; reverse fish at town hall, BS in the middle of the queen vic building (i won, anyone surprised?) extreme old maid at the martin place fountain, etc. we were divided into teams, there was challenges between each location and a quite elaborate points system, rules and the whole nine yards. it was a smashing success, i ended up being in the final two playing spoons on the steps of the opera house against luke and only lost because i was too close to the edge in the final battle (quite a physical match) and almost fell to my death off the side. luke saved my life. after getting the spoon skittering out of my grasp, of course, lol. after that, we told them they should plan something like the Amazing Race because they are incredible at that sort of thing. so they did.
we had 6 teams of 4 or 5, everyone put in $10 and there was a cash prize of $124 at the end. we started at town hall at 9:30 am and had to follow 7 clues all over the city using only public transportation. it took us to manly beach, the new south wales library, a deserted platform at central train station, the cricket fields at aussie stadium, the
freezer section of coles at burwood shopping center, the 26th floor of the four seasons hotel and hyde park. there was a photo scavenger hunt as well, bonus points for items found on that list and luke & andy made pizza (from scratch, dough and all) for us back at the house. at the end of the night, when all points were totaled, my team,
TEAM KEITH SUTER (keith suter is our ozz hist/cult lecturer and quite the celebrity over here, kind of like having dan rather teach your class or something) came in 2nd place by less than 100 points.
it was a rad game...
people kept coming up to ask us if we were on the tele, like that Amazing Race and we had to say no, we were just making our own up. but we made team shirts, had our backpacks and bandanas, were running everywhere and sweaty as all hell. it would be logical to thing that yeah we were on the real deal, lol. it sure felt like it. we didnt finish till 6 pm and by then had
blisters and pulled muscles and were just so weary that we just sat for a bit and then got in that stupid goofy kind of tired mood that makes everything hilarious. that continued till about midnight when we paid a taxi driver extra to pile more people in his cab than was legal. we got home...and crash hit. i could have drowned in the shower for how many times i fell asleep but afterwards, nothing but a tube of IcyHot and my bed...bliss. burning skin, but bliss nonetheless. and thats the end of it.
good night moon.
lace posted at 7:08 PM
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mmm ok, well not too much to report aside from school starting again and going fine. my scheduler isnt too gruling, in the ozzie sense because of the way we do school over here, only going to class once a week and all. but i guess if you spread it all out like normal i would be in class all day every day aside from fridays. mondays i have 6 straight hours of photography, which, as much as i love shooting, gets kind of tiring. only one class each on T W T, three hrs apiece and free fridays...boy, thats nice. add to that one intensive adventure-based camping ministry class and you have my school life for the next few months. i'm stoked!
and now for the other one...some of you have already seen this pic, on myspace or just email. i got this piercing when i was in melly with kim. its called a surface piercing and yeah, it goes thru my arm, lol. didnt really hurt, but i get such a huge adrenaline rush whenever i get something pierced that i wouldnt feel it anyway. its just a semi-curved bar under the skin and it took forever for the guy to get the needle thru. anyway, thats all.
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