Chillin' on Koh Lanta

Hi Guys,

Last post of our holidays here... we are at our last stop right now, the southern island of Koh Lanta (Koh means island in Thai, so all the islands here are Koh-something).

This has definitely been the most relaxing stop so far as this island isn't quite as touristy, and the beaches are great. We are not doing much at the moment apart from relaxing... no more crazy tours or rafting, etc! Just writing a few postcards, swimming, suntanning, etc.

We are staying at a little guesthouse which is built on top of a pier, so if you look thru the cracks in the floorboards you can see the ocean right beneath you. Unfortunately we are not staying really near a beach, but if we rent a motorbike we can be there within 5 minutes.

Yesterday we found ourselves a nice beach, had lunch at a hotel restaurant right on the beach, and then swam in their infinity pool all afternoon... good deal!

In 2 days from now we head back to Phuket (2 hours by ferry), and spend one more night there before flying back to Brisbane late on Jan 3rd. We land at lunch time on the 4th, and will start looking for apartments right away. Our first appointments for viewings will be on the 5th and we've already looked everything up online and have shortlisted our apartment options.

So hopefully we'll have a nice place for you to stay when you come for a visit! :)

We will def be posting pics of our trip once we get back to our computers next month, so stay tuned...

Love you and miss you all, family. Happy New Year for 2012!

~Team AC

Thailand so far...

Hi Guys,

Just a quick note to catch you all up:

We've been in Thailand for a week now and are having a great time. We started out in Bangkok for 6 nights (too long if you're ever thinking of going), and saw heaps of temples, markets, street vendors, massage places, etc. We also got to visit an orphanage that some friends from Abbotsford run there.

Yesterday we flew up to Chiang Mai (in the North). If you know anything about Andrew, you'll know that he likes to be at the airport VERY early... so we were there 3.5 hours early for a domestic flight... the check-in counter wasn't even open yet. That pretty much made for a full day of traveling by the time we got here.

Our hotel here in CM has a really nice (cold) pool with lots of trees around it. We spent most of today just swimming, reading and relaxing.

Today we booked the stuff we're gonna be doing for the next 3 days: a big ziplining thing, elephant riding, trekking, white-water rafting, and a cooking school. Really looking forward to all that.

Sorry there's no pictures with this post... we left all that stuff behind in Oz (the camera cables), so we'll post all those next month when we get back.

Hope you're all doing really well and getting ready for Christmas (and your 60th next week, Dad!).

Talk soon,

~Corinna for the Team

Thailand Plans

As promised, here are the basics of our trip to Thailand, which is coming up in less than 2 weeks from now!

I've put shapes on the map of Thailand above (Thailand is the yellow country) so you can quickly find where we're going.

We arrive into Bangkok (star shape) on Dec 8th and stay for nearly a week. Then we fly up to Chiang Mai (paw shape) and spend about 5 days there. Then we fly down to Phuket (happy face) and spend the rest of our time there and the surrounding islands. In early January we fly back up to Bangkok, and then back to Oz on Jan 4th. So we'll be there for nearly a month... perfect!

At first we were only planning to go for about 2 weeks, but when we priced things out, it'll cost about the same amount to travel in Thailand as it would to live in Oz, so why not go for longer and have some more fun adventures??!

Some of the things we're looking forward to most are:

-ziplining
-surfing
-taking a 2-day kite-boarding course
-rock-climbing
-checking out the tropical islands and beaches
-Thai food
-elephant rides
-Thai massages
-taking a Thai cooking class

We will be going by ourselves... our friends Bonnie and Shane from China were planning to meet us there, but the plans fell through... so we're a bit sad about that, but will have a great vacation anyways. I'm sure we'll meet plenty of other travelers to hang out with!

We will try to keep in contact with you from time to time, but won't be bringing our computers with us, so don't worry if you don't hear from us for a bit.

We will also try to be in touch before moving to the coast and flying to Thailand, but be warned that this upcoming weekend will be SO busy that I'm not sure we'll have time to phone much, so it may just have to be a few emails here and there.

Alright, gotta go... have a good one!

~Corinna for Team AC

More November happenings

Alrighty, so it's been another super busy week down here as we are winding down to the school holidays.

Last blog post I shared how Andrew was doing Movember, and this past Friday the kids got to shave off his "beautiful" mo in front of everyone at school. They also got to dye (hairspray) his hair white, which took about 3 washes to fully get the smell out. He was a great sport about it, and our school has raised just over $1000 for prostate cancer research now.

On Sat morning Andrew got up at 5am to join a bunch of other guys from school at 5:30am to hike up a nearby mountain. It's SO hot right now that if you want to do anything physical, you really have to do it before 8am, or after 6pm.

The other morning I woke up at 5am to hear Andrew taking an ice-cold shower... that's how hot it is in our room. Oh well, not complaining... it's just strange when normally we'd be freezing our pa-tooties off in November!

On Sat evening we had our friends Greg and Sunelle over for dinner, and then on Sunday we got up early-ish and went to the beach for a walk. Usually it's a bit breezy by the ocean, but not now... it's sooo hot, and the water isn't really refreshing either since it's bath-tub temperature. Beautiful scenery though.

After the beach we were invited for lunch at the family of one of my students (near the beach). We had a great time with them, and ended up riding various skateboards on their driveway afterwards.

You can see I'm not quite a pro-rider yet... but just you wait!!




Sunday evening we were on worship team at our church for the last time and said our good-byes there. Next weekend we will be busy packing and cleaning our rental house, as the movers are coming on Monday, so don't think we'll be going to church then.

We are now in our LAST week of school (yipppeeee), then Andrew has his final for his Masters course on Sat morning, and then we are gonna start to really hit it for the rest of the weekend with packing and cleaning... I think it'll be a big job, but at least we get a good reward at the end of it it all... a holiday!

I will do a quick post on that soon so you know where we're off to.

Mo-vember

I forgot to mention something kinda important in yesterday's post: Andrew's new look. He's taking part in Movember, which is where you grow a mustache and raise money for prostate cancer research during the month of November. Men all over the world do it, and this is Andrew's first year.

I don't really know whether to be horrified or proud to be honest. To wake up every morning looking at this face....

Anyways, he has raised over $130 from his homeroom class at school so far, which is great. December 1st it all comes off though... just 10 days to go!

November in Rocky

Hi Guys,

It's a been a couple weeks since a blog post from us, so here you go: The first pic above is from when we decided to have a picnic dinner on the top of Mt. Archer, the tallest mountain around here, which overlooks our town. We grabbed some pizza and drove up, but we kept being interrupted by these annoying magpie birds that were swooping in for our food... that's why Andrew looks so wary in this pic :) We soon gave up and went home.


The next couple pics (sorry, out of order), are from our church picnic which was held on someone's property in the outback. He had this massive lean-to where we all ate in, and then there were games outside, a giant waterslide down a hillside, and "bush-dancing" to end off the night. It was our first go at that, and it turned out to be a lot like square-dancing. We even did it in a empty field, so it was pretty authentic.


Last Sat Andrew and I had to re-certify our CPR certificates, so we spent the afternoon pumping the chests of dummies. The guy across from Andrew is our friend Will from work, who's a total legend... they were having a little too much fun together, but I think we all still passed anyways!



Last Sunday we went to the beach for the afternoon with our friend Chris from church... it was so great walking along the bathtub-temp water and just relaxing... life can be pretty hectic with work and stuff, so it's nice to just breathe in the ocean air and chill out once in a while :)


Later that evening Andrew and I were playing on the worship team at church... you can see him at the back left in the pic above playing his bass. It was really good night.


On Monday I took a few of my girls to the beach (same beach as the day before) for some beach volleyball and swimming. Our school is a bit budget on sports equipment, especially beach volleyball stuff, so we ended up having to take two high jump standards as our posts, and just tie a rope between them as a net. The girls had a blast anyways. I love it when girls this age get into sports... makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something :)



Lastly, we had some concreting going on in our Middle School area at school this week... the kids were running out of room to play handball at lunch (the most popular lunch-time game here), so they paved another area and are gonna paint the lines soon.

One of the yahoos in my class decided to write "I was here" in the concrete as it was drying. Big trouble for him.

Anyways, that's life this month. Two more weeks till we are done school, and then we'll be packing up, moving to the sunny coast, and flying to Thailand all in less than a week. Can't wait for the adventures!


Ciao for now...

~Corinna for Team AC

October

Hey Guys,

Hope you're all doing well. October has been great for us, and things are really starting to heat up here. Today it's 30 degrees, and I'm sure we've each had 4 litres of water already... so hot!

Andrew is doing well with his Masters... working on courses #3 and 4 and getting A's on everything. In fact, he's sitting right next to me, typing up his midterm assignment, so we're side-by-side on our laptops... how romantic :)

Sometimes I find him sleeping (like above) when he's supposed to be reading... some of the stuff he has to read is pretty dry, so I don't blame him!



This has been an exciting month for me as I got my first cheque in the mail from Google. As you might know, I put up Google Ads on my website a few months ago, and every time you reach a certain income they pop your money in the mail to you. It took ages to come as it was from the States, but ordered in Ireland and mailed from Sweden to Australia... I thought for sure someone had robbed it out of our mailbox, but nope, just slow snail-mail.


Since it's getting hot out, I'm making more salady-stuff to eat. Somewhere in my subconscious memory I could "taste" this salad that my mom used to always make and take along on picnics with us to Cultus Lake when we were little, so I tried my best to remember what was in it and copy it, and it tastes great.

If you want to try it, it's just a can of chick peas (garbanzo beans), lentils, large can of tuna, about 30 green olives sliced into thirds, parsley, a bit of olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. It makes about 3 portions, and since Andrew won't go near it, I'm good to go for 3 days!



Last night we went to a 30th birthday party for our friend Monty, whom we work with. It was an 80's themed party and people did a great job dressing up. My favorite was Julian's purple mo-hawk (above) and Arno's Super Mario costume... didn't get a picture of that one.

Monty's father-in-law, Ron, did a great job BBQ'ing in a somewhat-80's chef outfit. There were about 30 people there, so he had a big job! The party was really well done with slinkys hanging from the walls, 80's expressions, rubix cubes, and a huge outdoor screen playing 80's music videos. We also had to do a quiz on Monty's life and the winners got goodie bags. Fun times!



Last but not least, our friend Steph from work had her second little baby girl this month, Penelope May, and I went to visit her in the hospital the next day... isn't she cute?! Andrew and I took a meal to her house a few days later and played with her other daughter, Lillian who's nearly 3, so we definitely got our fill of little kids for the week!

Penelope kept on crying whenever I held her, so I got lots of practice jiggling her up and down to quiet her down. I think I got the hang of it after a couple hours.

In other news, we've pretty much got our move organized for December, including a moving truck, carpet cleaner, etc. Hard to believe we'll be outta here in just over 5 weeks... can't wait for the next adventure!

Talk soon,

~Corinna for Team AC

Happy 1st Anniversary, Austin & Heather!

First of all, we just want to congratulate Heather and Austin on their 1-year anniversary this weekend! Hope Year 2 is double as good as the first!

You can see I think of you guys all the time since your wedding picture is hanging on the side of our fridge. It's funny because you mailed us a thank-you card and pictures last year, and it arrived while were in Vancouver at Christmas. Well, somehow our mail got blown out of our mailbox, and since we had all that flooding, the photos and card were in pretty rough shape when we opened the envelope in January after we got back. I think we managed to save one pic though, and that's the one on the fridge (see above).

In other news, remember when we first moved to Rocky last year and I posted a picture of the neighbor's pool? It looked like this:


Crystal blue waters, inviting, wonderful. Well, fast-forward 15 months, and she hasn't used the pool ONCE! In fact, she's totally given up on even cleaning it, and it now looks like this:

Disgusting. There are pretty much lily-pads growing on top of it now, birds regularly wash/poop in it, and there are all types of insects doing breast-stroke across the water. Since our house is a couple feet higher than hers, I don't think she can see the water from her windows, but we have the perfect, un-appetizing few of it from our kitchen window. Gross. O well, only 8 weeks till we move out of here... shall not make a big deal out of it.

Speaking of our yard, here's Andrew enjoying lunch outside today on our patio (and yes, he is wearing pants, not just a necklace!):


This week it went from our winter weather (comfortably warm) to boiling hot almost overnight. We have officially removed the blanket from our bed for the rest of the year and are now just using a thin sheet at night. We're also wearing as little clothing as possible, and have the overhead fans on all the time to keep cool.

It's really nice to have warm temps as long as you don't have to do too much, otherwise you really start sweating. It's 31 today, and pretty much meant to stay like that for the foreseeable future on the forecast.

We haven't had ANY rain in about 2 months now... not that we miss it, but everything is super dry outside, and if even just one yahoo drops a match or cigarette outside we'll be having massive forest-fires. Surrounding towns have already started having them, so sometimes we get smoke blowing into Rocky, which can get pretty stinky.

With all the dryness, my skin is getting totally lizard-y, despite exfoliating and lotioning regularly. I've finally had to resort to rubbing Jojoba oil onto my legs because they looked so nasty. And it's not from being out in the sun too much... just from the dryness.

Finally, a couple pics from our soccer awards night last night. It was fun to get all dressed up with the girls on our team... funny because normally we just see each other in soccer gear, so this was a nice change.


It was basically a dinner (not so tasty, unfortunately) held in a big tent outside our soccer club, and then speeches and awards for best player, most improved, etc. A bit boring since there were a lot of teams there so I didn't know most of the people getting awards, but it as fun when it was our team's turn.

That's all for now, folks... talk soon! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and hope Mum & Dad have fun in Osoyoos, and Mom & Dad have a blast in Las Vegas! Woo hoo!

~Corinna for Team AC

Our Sept School Holidays

We're just at the tail-end of our 2 weeks of Sept school holidays, which were very needed after an extremely busy 3rd term. We were both SO ready for some time off, and have spent the past couple weeks sleeping a lot, and also getting heaps of things done. I just looked at my to-do list yesterday and counted over 30 things I've accomplished over the past 2 weeks. I love ticking things off lists!

The first weekend of the holidays we drove down to the Sunshine Coast, which is where we'll be moving in a few months. We couldn't be more excited, as this has always been our "dream location" in Australia! To give you an idea, the Sunny Coast is about 100km north of Brisbane, and about 700km south of Rockhampton, so it took us most of the day to drive down.

The first night on the Sunny Coast we stayed in the prestigious "Palms Motor Inn," which would have been more accurately named the "Runway Motor Inn" as we soon discovered we were directly under the flight path for planes taking off from the small regional airport nearby. They were seriously about 20 feet overhead... slightly loud! Here are a few pics of our fancy accommodations :)

When we woke up on Mon morning we were in a rush to get to my interview at Coolum, and Andrew was preparing my breakfast... oatmeal and strawberries. He served me strawberries that looked like this:

... the tops were all bitten off. When I asked him what was up with that, he said there was no knife, so he had to bite off the green parts. I had to laugh... especially since there was a knife right under the sink!

This pic is of Andrew holding up our lunch which we purchased at IGA (behind him) on the drive down the coast. We tend to do things like lunch pretty simply and just get back on the road.

After the Runway Motor Inn, we spent the rest of the week at our friend Line's house on the Sunny Coast. Here's Andrew watching her kids, Max and Isobel, play computer games. They are great kids and we had a good time hanging out with them.


We also got to spend some time on the beach, and exploring the neighborhoods where we hope to be renting next year. We now have a much better feel for what we're looking for.

The beaches down there are SO beautiful! Fine white sand, blue waters, etc!

To give you a bit more information on what the deal is for next year, Andrew just got a job at a private school called Suncoast Christian College... you can check it out at http://www.suncoastcc.qld.edu.au/ He'll be starting in Jan and teaching Sr Math and Science.

I'm still looking for work in the area, and had an interview at Coolum Beach Christian College a couple weeks ago (that's why we drove down). It went well, but they don't have any positions available (it's a super small school). I asked them to keep me in mind in case anything opens up, which they said they'd do. If I really can't find a teaching position, I can always sub for a while. I'm really not too worried about it at this point.



One more pic that I recently came across: while I was in Canada at Em and Brendan's wedding in April, Andrew went camping to the beach with his friend Dave, and here was his message in the sand to the newlyweds:

More blogging to come in a couple weeks :)

~Corinna

Andrew's 35th Birthday

A couple weeks ago Andrew celebrated his 35th birthday... fun times! It was a Wed morning so we had to go to work, but we started the day with a few presents and cards.

I did a travel theme and got him a carry-on suitcase, and filled it with little things he'll need for our upcoming trip to Thailand. I had a lot of fun planning it and putting it together, and he had a good time opening it and unwrapping all the little things inside.



On the Friday night we had a party at our place... it ended up being pretty tame as a lot of people couldn't make it due to leaving on holidays that night (it was the first night of our school holidays and I figured people wouldn't be leaving town till Sat or Sun, but I was wrong). Anyways, we still had about 10 people over for pizza and dessert.



The pic above is of our friends Sarah and Julian who are expecting their first baby in January. Julian was trying to feel the baby kick for the first time, but he kept missing it, so Sarah was trying really hard to get his hand in the right place... exciting times for them!

ps- if you sent a card, see if you can spot it in the pic above (on the windowsill in the background)... they're all there! Thanks so much to those of you who made Andrew's birthday special by calling and/or sending a card... he felt very loved and remembered!

Year 7 Camp, 2011

Andrew and I just got back from our camps yesterday... it was a super full-on week, but the kids had a great time. Andrew went on the Year 10 camp to the Sunshine Coast where they did raft-building, zip-lining, and surfing... a very outdoorsy focus.

I went on the Year 7 camp to Brisbane where we did heaps of different activities. Andrew didn't take any pics this year, so all the pics on this post are from my camp. To start out with, one of our two buses broke down an hour out of Rocky (see above).

When it became evident that it couldn't be fixed on the spot, the other bus kept going with most of the kids, and a few of us stayed behind with the broken down one, waiting for a replacement bus to come pick us up. The only problem was that it was quite hot out (and the air conditioning wasn't working anymore), so they opened the luggage compartment underneath the bus for whoever wanted to sit in there to wait it out (see above).

One kid started having diarrhea around this time, so he's the one in the pic lying in the background, moaning and wanting to go home... I told him to suck it up, and he ended up having a great week!

Eventually we got a new bus and caught up to the first group. Altogether we spent about 9 hours on the bus that day.

Our first night was spent at "Underwater World" on the Sunshine Coast where we all got to sleep on the floor amongst the fish tanks, which was a cool experience for the kids (not so much for us teachers who are a bit past our sleeping-on-the-floor-is-fun days!).

They took us on a big tour of their facility, including a cool underwater tunnel (see above) that has a moving sidewalk. So you stand there, being moved throughout the tunnel, and watching all the fish, sharks, and stingrays swimming above and beside you. Most of the lights are turned off, so it's kind of dark, with a real blue, underwater feel. The kids also got to feed chunks of meat to the sharks from above the tunnel, which was really neat/freaky!


The next day we got on the bus again and went to the Abbey museum where there is a bunch of ancient stuff. I still think museums are boring, but I faked it for the kids since they were supposed to be interested in all that old stuff.

Outside the museum they gave us all archery lessons, which was fun. Us teachers also got to have a go for a while... we tried to see who could get the arrows the furthest. Thankfully all the arrows had rubber stoppers on the end (instead of the pointy tips)... always good when you're around 60 kids with bows and arrows!

From the museum we drove to our accommodation for the next 3 nights, which was a Baptist camp/conference center. After having dinner there, we got back on the bus and went ice skating. It's funny because ice skating is a normal thing for me, but for most of the kids it was their very first time, and they were pretty enamored by it. They all did well and there were thankfully no injuries. Didn't get any pics of it, unfortunately. I was too busy doing my triple axles. :)

The next morning we got back on that wretched bus and drove to CSIRO, which is a big science centre in Brisbane. They have a fantastic kids program where they have all these experiments set up for the kids to do. It is really well prepared, the kids have a great time, and the teachers get to sit back and watch for a little while. Good times.

Later that day we went for a tour of the Parliament House in Brisbane, which was very interesting. Similar system to ours in Canada. The kids had to wear their formal school uniform on this day of camp only, as parliament is a formal place.

They even got to go sit in the actual room where parliament is held (it wasn't in session that day). The kids all chose a seat to sit in, and then tour guide told them who usually sits in that seat. They all thought it was pretty funny when it was a man who usually sits in that seat, but a Year 7 girl was sitting in it right then (and vice versa). (See below)

That afternoon we also took the kids shopping to Indooroopilly, a huge shopping mall in Brisbane... the kids loved it and bought lots of presents for their families. In the evening we took the City Cat (like the SeaBus) up the Brisbane river so they could see all the city's sights lit up at night.

The next morning we got back on the bus (you guessed it!), and drove nearly 2 hours to Sea World on the Gold Coast. Here we got to watch the Sea Lion show, followed by the Dolphin Show, both of which were great. Then the kids had the rest of the afternoon to ride the roller coasters, see the displays, and eat cotton candy, etc.

At Sea World they have lots of different displays, but the new one this year was the Penguin Encounter... I'd never seen penguins so up close before... very neat. They have the prettiest color of yellow on their chests.

On Friday morning we got on the bus very early and headed back to Rocky. It was a 10.5 hour trip, and as soon as we got back I had to rush off to my soccer game. It was the semi-finals game, and we won 2-1, so now we are in the preliminaries game next Friday. If we lose we come 3rd overall. If we win, we play again the following week for 1st or 2nd place out of the 14 teams. Then it's all over after that. It's been a great season and I've learned a lot about soccer. Such a great game!

Regarding our job-search, it's in full swing. We've both applied for a number of positions, and hope to be interviewing during our school holidays in a couple weeks. That means another drive to the Brisbane area, but at least this time it'll be in our little blue hot-rod, not on that bus!

That's all for now... back in a week or two with another post hopefully.

~Corinna for Team AC

August in Oz

Hi Everyone,

Just a few photos of our August here so far. It's been a lovely month, full of sunshine and blue skies. The picture above is a little gross, sorry, but at the start of the soccer season a few months ago, a couple fat chicks stepped on my feet as they were marking me. My big toenails have been getting darker and darker ever since... not so pretty, but playing is so much fun that I don't care that much.

A couple weekends ago our soccer team had a fundraiser called a "sausage sizzle," which is basically the same thing as a hot dog stand, except they serve them on slices of bread instead of buns... I guess it's the cheaper way of doing things, and a big Aussie tradition. We made lots of money for our team, so that was good.

And then last weekend our friend Chris from church had a "Where's Waldo?" themed birthday party. We all had to come dressed up like Waldo, and had a big scavenger hunt around town in teams of 4. It was all on foot, and we had to do things like count fence posts, find road-kill, bring home the largest branch, calculate random admission prices at the pool, buy the largest item we could find for under $2, etc.

Our team had a couple really fast running guys on it, so they ran ahead for lots of the answers, which helped us as there was a time limit of two hours to complete all 4 sheets. In the end our team won and got a couple boxes of chocolates as a prize... fun times!

That's all for now. This week will be a normal teaching week for us, and then next week we'll both be away on camps with our kids for the week. I'm going to Brisbane, and Andrew is going to the Sunshine Coast.

Talk soon,

~Corinna