Last weekend Andrew and I flew down to Brisbane to hang out with our good friends Erica & Alan for the weekend... these are some friends we met in China. She's Australian, and he's American, and they're trying to get citizenship in each others' countries, and therefore flying back and forth a lot. This has got them an over-abundance of frequent flyer points, which they are very generous with: they flew us down from Rocky on their points... all we had to pay for was the flight taxes not covered by the points... a very good price for us!
Our trip began with us driving to the Rocky airport where parking is $20 a day... so we conveniently parked our little car in a field near the airport... only in Rocky! (see pic above)
Once we arrived in Brisbane, we were supposed to drive up to a little seaside town called Noosa , but our accommodation there fell through (long story), so we just stayed with A&E at her uncle's big house in Brisbane. From there we drove down to the Gold Coast and hung out at the beach, ate ice cream, etc... good times! You can see from the picture that it's beautiful weather, but not quite real hot beach weather, especially as it was a bit breezy by the ocean.
The highlight of the trip was connecting A&E with our other good friends in Brisbane, Dave & Niki. Have you ever experienced that where you have some great friends who've never met each other, but you just know they'd get along so well? Well, this was the case for these 4 friends of ours, and it finally worked out to connect them all.
We all went out for dinner together to a restaurant called "Hog's Breath," (appetizing name, I know!), and everyone had a great time, just as we predicted. We hope to make this more of a usual event in the future... it is so nice to be around like-minded people where everyone has a great time together.
After dinner we went to "Cold Rock Ice Creamery"... this place where they make whatever flavor ice cream you want... delish!!
Here is Erica's uncle's house in Brisbane... it looks like a normal sized house from the front, but it goes WAY back from here. It has 8 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a huge kitchen and family room.
The downstairs bathroom is rather small though... check out the toilet: when you push the flusher, the sink automatically turns on (which is part of the top of the toilet... as you can see). Good idea, but kind of awkward to use, especially when you're trying to brush your teeth and have to lean over the toilet... hope you don't drop your toothbrush! :)
On our flight back to Rocky, we thought it was interesting how you check in at the airport. You know how when you fly, you can use the self check-in at computers in the terminal? Well, they
used to just have one or two self check-in computers and heaps of real check-in staff at the counters, but now Qantas has the reverse: only two real check-in staff, and mostly self check-in computers. I guess they're trying to give you very little options
but to use the automated systems. Bye bye jobs.
On another note, this past week I organized a huge field trip for all the Year 7s at our school. We are learning about the Great Barrier Reef, so our field trip went to a lot of related sites near the beach, which was cool...
...until one of our kids went wacko out-of-control and ran down the mountain we'd just hiked up. A slip and a collision with a tree caused him to cut his cheek open. Ron, (a teacher I work with), and I gave him a quick first-aid clean-up, but the cut looked rather deep and wouldn't stop bleeding, so it was off to the ER... me and the kid (while all the other kids went off to the next site).
The hospital I took him to near the beach had a quick look at him and confirmed that he needed stitches, but couldn't get to him for 1-2 hours they said, so we ended up taking him back to Rocky on the school bus with the rest of the kids... his mom picked him up from there and has hopefully got him all stitched up by now! I wouldn't know as he didn't appear at school the next day (Friday)... hope he's alright!
(Check out his sweet bandage-job I gave him on his right check... I almost taped his nostrils shut by accident, but adjusted the tape so he could actually breathe!):
Well, that's all our news for now... stay tuned for the next installment in a week or two.
~Corinna (for the Team)
Hi Everyone,
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.
