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