June 2012

 Hi Guys,

Time for a little June update, shown in pictures.  First, I got my cert 3 certificate in the mail for my personal trainer course.  This means that I'm half-way thru the whole thing (still have to finish my cert 4).  Sorry for looking like a sweaty mess in this pic... had just finished a work-out when it came in the mail.  (Mum, I'm wearing the Lulu top you got me here... love it, thanks again.)

 We are now half-way thru the school year here, and had planned a date with our good friends Dave and Niki for a big canoe trip on the first day of the holidays.  Unfortunately, the weather was cold and rainy (which is rare), so we ended up having a Subway picnic by a lake, and then going bowling near our house. 

This past weekend we drove 3 hours south-west to visit our friends in Toowoomba.  Karin and I are good friends from high school, and she married an Aussie guy 5 years ago and moved here as well.  They have two of the cutest little girls ever.

 Here's Ellie singing "Jesus Loves the Little Children" with her mouth stuffed full of yummy home-made pizza... sooooo cute.

After the girls went to bed, it was time for some adults-only Dutch Blitz... Karin whooped us all  :)

 Karin, Andrew, and I also got to go out for coffee at the Chocolate Cottage to catch up, which was good fun. 

It was sooo nice connecting with a friend from way back and re-hashing all the funny things that happened in high school... feels good when you're in a country full of people that you haven't known that long. 

 I've also been leading free fitness classes for friends and neighbors in the parking lot of our building... fun times.  Everyone gets quite into it, and we even have other neighbors watching from the balcony, so I always shout up at them to come join us.  :)

 We've been going to a church in our neighborhood for the past 5-ish months now, and are really enjoying it.  We're also playing on the worship team (Andrew plays bass and I play keys).  The church is held in an industrial park... you would never know it's there if you didn't know to look for it, but inside it looks pretty much like a normal church. 

 Here you can see the sign behind Andrew's head... 27 degrees in WINTER... woo hoo.  Winter here is freezing in the early morning and night times (like 6 degrees), but warm and sunny in the afternoons, although the air still has a bite to it.  If you're running or walking quickly, you can get away with wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but if you're just sitting around you need a light sweater. 

 Here's our crappy car on our road-trip to Karin's... you can see that the hood of the car doubles nicely as a picnic table.  :)

 After our time at Karin and David's house, we drove another 2 hours to Brisbane for a Canada Day celebration in the park.  Altogether there were about 80 Canadians there, none of whom we'd ever met before (we found out about the event on the internet).

As you can see, they hung up some Canadian flags between the trees, until this security guard came along and asked us to take them down.  We were like, "Ha ha, okay, cheers mate, happy Canada Day."  And he was like, "No, really, you have to take them down.  It's illegal to fly foreign flags in any public Australian place."  So down came the flags, sadly...

 ... but that didn't stop us from tatooing our hands with Canadian flags  :)

After the picnic we wandered into downtown Brisbane... and what did we see?...

 ... a "winter carnival," complete with outdoor ice-skating at $25 a pop.  It was so funny for us to see this ice rink melting in the sun, people skating around in t-shirts, and people being barely able to skate... most of them were hanging onto these orange bars for dear life and slipping and sliding all over the place. 

And lastly, we saw this really cool massive 3D mural at Queen Street Mall, which is a huge outdoor shopping area (it's not an indoor "mall" like we'd have in Canada, but rather a pedestrian-only walking street with shops on either side.) 

That's all for now... talk soon.

~Corinna for Team AC

Congrats, Music & Friends

First of all, a massive congratulations to Steve and Christina on their engagement on Friday night... congrats guys, we love you and are so excited for you. 

Now, on to the last couple weeks here... last night we had our good friends Mark and Michelle over for dinner and Dutch Blitz.  Michelle teaches grade 1 at Andrew's school and Mark subs, just like me.  They live just 2 minutes up the hill from us and we always have good times together. 

My latest "big" purchase has been a keyboard... I've been really missing mine in Canada, but since it's WAY too big to fit into a suitcase and bring over here, I've settled for a cheapy version... I got this one second hand and it sure isn't the best keyboard that ever lived, but it does the job for now.  

And yes, that is our ironing board being used as a piano stand.  Since we have barely any space in our apartment, when it's not being used, the piano goes under our bed and the ironing board folds up and fits in between the fridge and the wall.

The reason I wanted to start playing again is that since Andrew joined this band, they said I could play some keyboard and sing back-up... if I learned the parts.  So I've been practicing along with the cd's and we've had a couple shows together so far (none with the piano yet). 

One of our shows was this afternoon at a street carnival in Brisbane near the Ascot horse races.  It was a really nice stage with good sound equipment and lots of seats, but unfortunately because of where the stage was located, there weren't too many people in the audience.  Had we been one or two stages over, it would have been a lot better. 

Oh well, good for the stage experience and the fun of playing.  (Drew, the main guy, was on guitar and vocals, Andrew was on acoustic guitar, Lucas was on bass, violin, and backing vocals, and I was singing back-up too). 

Last Sat night we played at a little venue called the Sol Bar near where we live.  It was a really nice atmosphere... kind of a living room kind of feel with lots of couches, old lamps, and chilled out people.

Drew played the first set on his own, and then Andrew, Mark, and I joined him for the second set.  The crowd seemed to enjoy the tunes. 

In other news, Andrew is right in the thick of doing report cards, which are due this Tuesday.  His school requires him to write a one-paragraph comment for each kid in every one of his classes, so the poor guy has to come up with about 125 paragraphs, on top of all the marks and other stuff that go on report cards.  He's been at it for about 20 hours already, and probably has at least another 25 to go.  (And that's on TOP of teaching full time.)

He is also working on his final assignments for course #6 of his masters, so between that and his report cards and marking, he is in his little home-office for hours on end.  So proud of him, but can't wait till he gets a break in a few weeks so he can relax.

(It's times like this that I'm really super glad I'm a sub and don't have to do report cards.)

3 more weeks till the term is over and we get 2 weeks of holidays.  We don't have plans to go away this time since we just bought tickets to Canada for Christmas, so will probably have a bit of a stay-cation with possibly a couple nights away. 

That's it for now, talk soon,

~Corinna

ps- if you're ever wondering how many meatballs you can make out of 900 grams of organic ground beef, 2 eggs, some bread crumbs, and parmesan cheese... this is how many.    :)

May 2012

 Hi Guys,

A quick update on our life: first, it was my birthday last week, so Andrew and I went out for dinner (with a generous GC from Gill and Tony) to Poets Cafe in Montville, a little town in the mountains, 40 minutes from our place.

I'd have to say it was, hands-down, the best dining experience we've had in Australia... it checked all the boxes: nice atmosphere, delicious food, good service, and great live music.  A lot of restaurants in Oz check maybe 2 of those boxes,  but this was a solid 4/4. 

 Here's a view of the dining room... the other direction is an amazing view across the valley to the ocean, but it was dark so you couldn't see it this time.  Below is a pic of the outside... I think it must be a very old building. 

Then  the night before my birthday we invited all the neighbors our age from our building over for cake... it was funny b/c we hardly knew some of them, but thought this would be a good chance to change that. 

We played a game of charades/pictionary... at first when Andrew announced the game everyone was a bit leery of it... but 2 minutes later everyone was laughing their heads off and having a blast.  (See pics above... Blogger has changed their format again, so just getting used to the new picture settings). 

Here were the birthday party invites... sticky notes on everyone's doors since no one was home when I went around to invite them.

Then last Sunday Andrew had a gig with his new band... it was a show at a beach, and sounded great... I love their music.  It was just a 3-man show this time; usually it's 4.  The guy in the middle is Drew Wilson who wrote all the songs... he's the main guy and super talented.  Andrew was to the left, and the drummer was to the right.  The backstage area was just a bunch of bushes... that's what you get with an outdoor venue.  :)

 Here's the view of the crowd- and it went way back, probably around 1000 people.  It was funny b/c a lot of the people were total hippies who started dancing near the stage with hula hoops and flowers in their hair.  Good show. 

And just to break things up a bit... here's a view of the sunrise from our living room these days... not too shabby.  :)

Tony & Gill's Aussie Visit

Well, Tony and Gill's big visit to Oz has come and gone, so I thought it was time for a quick re-cap for the rest of you who didn't stow-away in their suitcases :)

The 4 of us had a great time together, and here are a few pics to show it:

The first night we had a little present-opening session... some very generous gifts from Tony and Gill, as well as from my parents. Andrew got a new work shirt, a Whistler magazine, etc, and I got a couple Lululemon tops, lotion, and Clinique stuff. So happy!


Tony enjoyed reading his book on the couch every day. It was funny b/c at first whenever I'd look over from the kitchen I thought for a split second that Andre Agassi was lying on our couch... and then I'd realize it's just Tony!


We climbed Mt. Coolum one day... you can see where we live on the coast in the background. This is the same hike we did with Emily a couple of years ago.


After the hike we headed to the Hyatt Coolum Resort which is open to the public for swimming and hanging out... we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Tony and Andrew could model for Sears, don't you think? ;)


As soon as we picked them up from the airport we had a swim in our pool, then a long beach walk... trying to keep them awake till Aussie bed-time. (Sorry these pics are out of order... blogger is weird these day... let me know if you know how to fix it.)


Another day we rented kayaks and cruised around the canals near our place. There are heaps of multi-million dollar homes in this area, so it was interesting to see their backyards and "how they live" from the canal. (You can see one in the background here, behind the grey pillar.)


A couple days later we rented bikes from the same place and rode up and down the coast... most of us used Cruiser bikes (like the yellow one you see above), which were quite fun. You can see the water/beach in the background; the water is the most beautiful colour of blue-green at this point of the coast.


Our last 3 days we headed up to Noosa where Tony and Gill generously took us for 3 nights at an apartment-hotel. The weather wasn't as good as the previous 2 weeks had been, but we still got to do some hiking and body-boarding. Look how brown Gill is... she beat me in the tanning department, hands-down, after being here for less than 2 weeks! (Steve and Austin, I think your Michelle Obama line in your birthday song for Gill is dead-on!)


And all good things come to an end... here they are waving good-bye before leaving for the airport.


Another out-of-order pic... playing pool-side ping pong at the Hyatt... every time you hit the ball too hard you'd have to fetch it out of the pool!

When we asked them what their favorite part of the holiday was, Mum said her long beach-walks at 5:30 every morning, and Dad said watching the surfers.

It was great having you, Mum and Dad, and truly hope you had a wonderful holiday.

Now it's time to get some representatives from the Hiller side over here... hint hint!

Our 5-Year Anniversary

Well, it's been 5 years since that rainy March 17th, 2007, and we are at least 5 times happier now than we even were that day!

We celebrated by spending the day together and doing some fun stuff. First we had a pancake breakfast at home (see last pic... sorry they're out of order- Blogger is mixing things up).

Then we headed off to the cable ski park for some wakeboarding.


If you've never seen/heard of this before, it's basically a big man-made lake in the middle of some farm fields. The lake's perimeter is about 500m and has a cable going around it, about 20 feet above the water. The cable moves in a circular direction and has 8 equally-spaced tow-ropes hanging down from it, which you hold onto and wakeboard around the lake.

There's also a bunch of jumps and ramps you can go off of, but we decided to play it safe for our first experience. Every time you fall, you have to swim to the edge, then walk to the starting point and wait in line for the next available rope to come along... so you don't want to fall too much or else you'll waste your time waiting in line.

If you want to find out more about it, check out their website: http://www.gowakesunshinecoast.com.au/

After wakeboarding we went to see a movie called Safe House with Denzel Washington... it was good, but pretty violent. If you like Mission Impossible type of movies (but with way more shooting), you'd like this one. Normally we would have spent the entire day outside, but it was raining, so this was a good option.


After the movie we went out for dinner to a Thai restaurant, courtesy of Andrew's parents (thanks, Mum and Dad!). We hadn't had Thai food since Thailand a couple months ago, and it was just as good as we remembered it... yum!

Climbing Mt. Death

Hi Guys,

Let me share with you an extremely crazy experience we had this past weekend...

Our good friends Dave and Niki (from Brisbane) had invited us on a hike and we'd been looking forward to it for a whole month. We met up with them about half an hour from our place at an area called the "Glasshouse Mountains," which is comprised of 3 mountains, one of which we were to climb (Mt. Beerwah).

There were 7 of us who started the hike...

...but only 5 continued when the "hike" turned out to be more of a mountain climbing expedition (minus the ropes, helmets, and safety harnesses).

The climb was at least 45 degrees steep, with much of it being way steeper than that. 'Why did you continue?,' you ask. Well, I guess we thought that just after the first steep part would be the promised "hike"... our definition of hike- the one where you walk up a steep mountain (not rock-climb up it!). But that kind of hiking never came, and it was pretty much straight up the whole time.



Here we are eating the most well-deserved Subway sandwich of our lifetime at the top...

... and from the top you could also see the other 2 Glasshouse mountains, and the ocean in the very far distance.

Here's Niki and I posing at the top... you can see how sweaty I am, and also the dirt on my shirt from where I wiped out and landed on my ribs on a muddy patch on the way up... ouch!


Coming down the mountain was whole other adventure. We basically crab-walked the whole way down, finding little ridges for our feet to prevent us from tumbling all the way down. It was so scary, and totally killed our wrists and knees!

In this last picture, you can see Dave helping us down the last little bit, showing us exactly where to put our feet and creating hand-holds for us where there were no ridges in the rock.

In hindsight it was actually a lot of fun and a good memory with great friends, but it could have ended very badly had one of us slipped or miss-stepped even a little bit. The funny thing is that Dave has done this hike 30 times, and has taken over 100 people up it, and it's always been okay.

Never again! I thought I was in decent shape, but my quads and pecs haven't been this sore in ages... they are like rocks and I can barely get down the stairs now!