Track & Field

This past weekend I've been competing in a big track & field competition (they call it an "Athletics Carnival" in Australia) here in Rocky. Some of my students at school do track & field and invited me to come be in this competition. I didn't really want to at first, seeing as it took up the entire weekend, but then I realized it was on the first weekend of school holidays, so I've got two weeks to rest up after the competition.

Last week we had to "nominate" for events (that means "sign up" here)... since I haven't done most of these events this high school, I figured what the heck, I'll just sign up for pretty much every single event! It seemed like a good idea at the time (when I was checking off the little boxes on the paper), but after actually doing all 11 events this weekend (after my soccer game on Friday night), I'm a little sore.

I've never been that awesome at track & field, but since having my big birthday I'm officially in the "veterans" category now. The sad part about this is that it sounds like I'm old now, but the good part is that there's not as much competition in this category, meaning I can get medals more easily... woo hoo!

Overall it went really well. To put it plainly, the fat chicks were better than me at the throwing events (shot put, javelin, and discus), but I was better at the running and jumping events (60m, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, long jump, triple jump, and high jump).

Actually, to be honest the high jump didn't work out so well for me. I was the only woman veteran who entered, but I managed to knock the bar off onto the flop mat a couple times (as I was jumping), and then landed directly on the bar! It KILLED!! I have some nice bruises on my bottom and back now to show for it.

Luckily I got some rewards for all my efforts this weekend though: a sweet sock-tan, and:


Andrew and I are really looking forward to our trip to Cairns... we leave tomorrow morning for the week, and will be checking out the Great Barrier Reef, etc. It'll be great to get away together, especially since Andrew's been working really hard on his masters and we haven't been able to spend as much time together as we usually do.

... so watch this space for a Cairns post in a couple weeks!

Becoming Citizens

A few weeks ago, Andrew and I had the privilege of attending an Australian citizenship ceremony as our friend Karen and her family (from South Africa) were becoming citizens. They have been in Australia for 5.5 years now, and it was finally time for them to get it.

The ceremony was held outdoors at Rocky's "Heritage Village." The mayor and officials spoke from underneath the gazebo, alongside a huge cardboard cut-out of Queen Elizabeth... see if you can spot her above.

All the people becoming citizens (and us, the audience) sat underneath these huge tents facing the gazebo. The people becoming citizens were broken into two groups: those who had "under God" in their citizenship oath, and those who didn't.

It was interesting b/c many of the people becoming citizens wore clothing from their original countries (eg- see the guy in the yellow shirt above?... he's wearing this skirt/wrap... not sure where from). In the mayor's address, he made sure to say that becoming a citizen of Australia does not mean that you forget your original country, or that those memories are lost. I bet this was comforting for some of the people who came to Australia b/c of unsafe conditions in their home countries (as opposed to us who are here purely for the awesome warm weather!)

Here's Karen, her husband, and three boys getting their citizenship certificates and shaking the mayor's hand. It was a bit of an emotional experience.


Andrew works under Karen (she is the Math coordinator at our school) and she's been a great friend to us, so it was special for us to be there for her.

After the ceremony they had a "parade of nations" through Heritage Village... so many countries carrying their flags and dressed in their national dress.

All in all it was a great experience to witness!

This is Winter?

A couple weeks ago Andrew and I went to the beach for the afternoon. We were just going to go to the main beach, but then we bumped into our friend, Therese, from work. She has a 4x4 and was just about to drive up the beach with her family, and invited us along.

Driving on sand feels similar to driving in snow... it skitters around a bit. We drove up about 8km to a place on the beach where there were hardly any other people and hung out there for a bit. We still can't get over the fact that "winter" here is about 23 degrees during the day. It's also the dry season, so almost every single day is sunny with blue skies... you can definitely get a good tan in this! (It does get quite a bit colder at night and in the early mornings, but that's okay).

We were trying to take a self-pic on the beach that day, but it's a bit tricky with the iPhone b/c you can't feel where the button is, so you don't always really know when it's gonna take the pic. I think Andrew wobbled the camera a bit here, so we ended up looking a bit weird:


And here's a pic of Therese, Alex, and baby Lily:


Yay for "winter"!!

Batching

Andrew and I recently read this book called "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss. If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend it. I don't necessarily agree with everything in it, but he has some great ideas, one of them being "batching."

The idea behind this concept is to do certain things all at once in order to save time. For example, in the book Tim shares that he only does his laundry once every two weeks, deals with his mail once a week, and only checks his email twice a day.

I thought it was a good idea, but not all his examples would have worked for Andrew and I, so I started thinking about changes I could make to incorporate batching into my life to save time. One of the major things I thought of was making meals... I realized I was pulling the SAME things out of the fridge every night to make my lunch for work for the next day. So I thought, "why not do it all at once for the week?"...


... so I did. On Saturday afternoons I have started making 5 containers of veggie-styled lasagna (it keeps fine for Mon-Fri). I hard-boil and peel all the eggs I'll need for breakfast for the week. I bake all the muffins, granola bars, whatever and wrap them individually, I wash and cut up a huge ziploc bag of celery, etc.


Then I stick it all in our midget-sized fridge and just pull it out every morning before work. True, it makes Sat afternoons a bit annoying (when I'd rather be relaxing in the sun), but it is a big time-saver, and it makes me feel like I have some "time off" on weekday evenings after being at work all day already.

Good times!