Life in Rockhampton (Rocky)

I thought you might like a little tour around Rocky, so we'll start with the best pics: the pools! The one above is the pool at the university near our house where we go to swim laps. It's a 25m pool with 8 lanes which are usually pretty busy with swim clubs, but we squeeze in there, and it's good times. This is also where our school had their "swimming carnival" which is like a big intramural swim competition day that ALL the kids get involved in. They dress up in their house colors and go all crazy... a very exhausting day!


The next pool is about 45 minutes from our house at a little resort near the beach called Zilzie. We were at a sport expo and were given free promo tickets for a day on their grounds, including the gym, tennis courts, and pool (of course they were hoping we'd join!). We lucked out and had a day where we had the place almost entirely to ourselves... a great little place, but we ended up not joining, as it was a bit too far to drive.


This last picture is of Andrew washing our windshield at the gas station. A funny thing here is that they don't call it "gas" since they say gas is really a vapor. They call it either fuel or petrol, and there's some kind of a difference between those two as well. Our car uses "fuel," and that's all I need to know! Since we walk to school and don't drive much, we only have to tank up about once a month anyways, which is nice seeing as gas prices are just going up and up. In the above pic we paid $149.5 a litre... ahhh!

That's all for now... more to come I'm sure!

~Corinna

Em and Brendan's Wedding

As you know, I came home for Emily and Brendan's wedding last weekend, which was wonderful. It was so nice to see my family again and be part of such a wonderful day!

The bridesmaids dresses, which were a very beautiful color, were, shall we say, an interesting style (thanks to an interesting seamstress, as I hear). The dresses had big fold-out pleats in both the front and back, making us look like big-bummed pregnant ladies... see below for example!

The most eventful occurrence of my trip back to Oz happened at the Sydney airport security. I had checked two bags from Vancouver to Sydney, but on my next two flights home (on a smaller airline), I was only allowed to check one bag, so I took the second bag as a carry-on.

I should mention that this second bag, although brand-new, had never been traveled with- only used to store some clothes and stuff in (which all lives in the Nairns' basement). So I had unpacked the stored stuff, and put in the things I wanted to take back to Oz with me.

Fast forward to the security check. They put my bag through the x-ray, then stop it, have a closer look, etc. Next thing I know, this security guard (called "Muhammed"), is accusing me of packing knives in my carry-on. I was like, "Ummm, no, there are NO knives in there," thinking he must have seen wrong on the x-ray screen. He was like, "Yes there are, and I could call the police right now." I was like, "Well, even check for yourself."

So he starts going through my bag. No knives. YES! Then he opens the side pocket (which I hadn't checked), and pulls out two of Andrew's pocket knives. O ya.... oops. They were stored in there in the basement... guess I hadn't been thorough enough in cleaning the bag out!

So I went back out of security and checked the knives with the airline so I wouldn't have to throw them out. Luckily when I went back through security for the second time, I was directed to a different line-up and didn't have to face Muhammed again!

So here's to carefully checking ALL your pockets before you fly!

~C