February Pics

Hi Guys,

Time for another little blog update- this one will be mostly pictures so you can get a better feel for what we're up to and who we're hanging out with.

The pic above is our friend Britta with her baby Petra on the beach. We met Britta and her husband David and 2 kids at one of the churches we've visited here. They are from Idaho, USA and are working at the church here. We get together with them every few weeks. It's funny b/c people who hear us talk think we're related... Aussies can't tell the difference between Canadians and Americans!


It's been so nice to just come home from work, grab our surfboard, and hop into the ocean for a surf. Above are our friends Michelle and Zach who I was surfing with last week. Michelle works at Andrew's school (teaches grade 1), her husband Mark is a supply teacher (like me), and Zach lives in Brisbane and just comes up to visit and surf.

Speaking of work, Andrew is really enjoying teaching his grade 8s, 9s, and 12s. I have been getting 2-3 days of work a week, except this week has been slow: only 1 out of 4 days so far. But that's okay since when I'm not working at work, I'm working at home on both my website and my personal training course that I just started 2 weeks ago.

I try to stay on a pretty strict schedule, getting up early with Andrew and starting my "work" as soon as he leaves at around 7:30am. That way I get lots done and don't feel like I'm slacking. It also earns me a nice run, surf, or swim at around 4pm, "after work."


Here is where we dine most evenings... although most evenings don't include the wine... just on weekends usually!


Last Saturday we drove down to Brisbane to visit our friends Erica & Alan. You might remember that these are the friends we met in China... she's Aussie and he's American. They met and married in our church in Shanghai, and we sang at their wedding.

Anyways, they just had a baby boy last month, so we went to see him. His name is Ezekiel and he has SO much hair... it was like a cloud floating above his head- amazing! He was also born unexpectedly with Downs Syndrome, which is really sad, but if anyone is up for the challenge, it's Alan and Erica. They have a terrific outlook on it, and are so strong.

If you'd like to see better pics of the little guy and to hear more of their story, check out his birth announcement website that Erica created at http://www.west.reinosites.com/



A couple weeks ago we had our friends Dave and Nicki come up from Brisbane for a visit. These are the friends that we met at our church in Vancouver while Dave was studying at Regent College. He is now doing his PhD in Brisbane.


They have been amazing friends to us and we love them so much.

Andrew was lending Dave his rashie shirt for surfing... Dave had a nice surf and it was just about my turn when it started POURING... not that that matters when you're surfing, but it does for the rest of your friends on the beach, so we packed up and headed home. Soon after that the sun came back out and we walked to Mooloolaba for coffee, then had a swim in our pool, and then dinner on our patio. Great day!

Hope you're all doing well... stay in touch!

~Corinna for Team AC

Surfing & Work

Hi Guys,

Another little update from Team AC in Australia:

We are loving living here SO much... we feel so blessed to wake up every morning to sunshine and ocean views!


A couple weeks ago, after a lot of research, we bought a surfboard, which was really exciting for us. We'd taken lessons here and there before so thought we had a general idea of how to surf, but now that we're trying it without a teacher by our side, we are sucking! It is a REALLY hard sport!



But we are determined to keep going with it. The other day we chucked it in our pool and did a few drills, just so we could learn how to stand up on it a bit better. It was helpful for the next time we went out in the ocean, and today I had a great little surf session!

By the way, thanks to Mom and Dad Hiller and Oma Hiller for the surfboard... the Christmas money we got from them went towards buying this new toy!


Workwise, Andrew is really enjoying his new job. He is teaching Math 8, 9, and 12, as well as Science and Careers. Between that and working on his masters at night, he is really busy. He is also playing music with some guys, so that keeps him extra busy!

I didn't have any teaching work for the first 2.5 weeks of school, although I'd emailed my resume to nearly all the schools on the coast. Andrew then suggested I make business cards and bring them around to the schools and personally introduce myself to the principals.

At first I didn't think that was such a good idea as I didn't want to pester them after just having emailed them my resume, but he kept encouraging me to do it, so I set out and hit up 37 schools in 4 days last week! A LOT of driving and navigating and getting lost and keeping at it!



It was funny because I put on my best teacher-wear, but I was driving around in our old rust-bucket of a car (the free one). I always tried to park far away from the office so they wouldn't see the car and have it contribute negatively to their first impression of me.

To give you an example of how dire it is, as I rolled into the grocery store parking lot last week, a staff member came running up to me as I got out of the car, and handed me my hubcap that had come off the wheel! The car is in quite good shape mechanically, but just doesn't look too slick. :)

Anyways, back to the point of the story, after going to all these schools, I did get work this past Thurs and Fri, and hopefully it'll keep coming this week. If not, I guess I'll just have to work on my surfing skills!

On another note, happy 55th birthday to my mom today, and a happy 65th birthday to Gill on the 26th! Can't wait for your visit in April.

Love, Corinna

ps- in case you missed the video of our place, here are a few pics:

The main view from our living room:


If you turn 90 degrees (or look out our bedroom window), you see this:


And if you're looking up from the direction of the ocean, this is the view of our entire building. It is terraced as it goes up the hill, so each unit is 3 steps higher than the neighbor in front of them, which gives everyone a really great view- no one ends up with a view of the parking lot!

We are the top left unit, and the pool is at the very front (behind the fence and retaining wall you can see from this angle).


pps- the top pic is of Andrew getting ready to hit the beach... I know it's a bit different than what you'd wear to the beach in Vancouver, but the sun here is really THAT strong that you do have to wear a big fat hat (and a sun shirt is a good idea too), or else you'll get burned to a crisp in 5 minutes flat!

Thailand Pics

Hey Guys,

Here are the Thailand pics I promised you last month. You may have already seen heaps of them on Facebook, but if you don't have FB, this post is for you. I'll comment underneath each pic. They are in very random order.

Here's Andrew in our new house, setting up the lights we bought in Bangkok... you can see the final result in the top pic.

View from the deck of our guesthouse in Koh Lanta. Every day this big white ferry would pull up and let off a bunch of new tourists and take the old ones back to the mainland.


Fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet. You have to pay to stick your feet in here for 30 minutes, which is kinda ironic since you're basically paying to feed the fish! I did it and it really tickled and felt a bit eery, but after about 5 minutes you get used to it, and then you leave with really smooth feet.


Andrew in the pool on Klong Nin beach on the island of Koh Lanta. It was one of those infinity pools that looks like it doesn't have an edge... pretty neat!


Railay Beach in Krabi. Although this area is technically part of Thailand's mainland, it is only accessible by long-tail boat, which are these long fishing boats with a long motor sticking off the back. They just chuck your luggage in and the water sprays up into the boat if it's a wavy day. Best to pack light and not bring your laptop :)


Yummy Pad Thai... we had this almost every day, and tasted so many different varieties... love it!


Sipping coconut water at Karon Beach on Phuket... nice restaurant overlooking the ocean.



We rented this scooter a bunch of times to get around Phuket. In Bangkok it's easy to hop into a taxi since there are meters to charge your fare, but in a lot of other parts of Thailand (like Phuket) you and the driver have to negotiate a price before getting in. This means they usually charge you WAY more than the ride is worth, so it's a good idea to have your own wheels!


Going for an elephant ride, which was followed by lunch, a hike to a waterfall, and then white-water rafting... an all-day kind of tour in Chiang Mai (a couple hours north of Bangkok by plane).

Renting a kayak in Railay Beach... it was really cool b/c you could paddle through these narrow ocean tunnels which are part of the cliffs that go right into the ocean all around this area. I got Andrew to sit in the front so I could take a paddling break whenever I wanted without him noticing :)


Night market in Chiang Mai. Andrew always finds guitar stuff wherever he is, and this stall was full of little replicas and keychains. Look how happy he is!


This is at the end of our ziplining trip called "Jungle Flight," also in Chiang Mai. The guy in the green shirt was our guide and was really funny.

Jungle Flight included 22 different ziplines, suspension bridges, and abseils.... and lunch afterwards (and a free t-shirt). The first few zips were a bit scary, but after a while it was just fun! There were a few ziplines where Andrew and I got to go side-by-side. The guide called this "honeymoon style."


We also got to visit an orphanage near Bangkok. This is the one that Julia did her missions trip to last year. The houses that these orphans get to live in are brand new and look really North American... we were really impressed. The people who run the orphanage, Karen and Ricky Sanchez are from my old church in Abbotsford, and it was really great to see/hear everything they've been doing in Thailand since 2000.


At the beginning of the cooking school in Chiang Mai, they took us to the market to learn how to pick out the right ingredients for all the stuff we were going to be making. The guy teaching us was really funny with his descriptions of all the veggies... didn't know veggies could be so funny!


In Bangkok we did a big tour of the Grand Palace... really amazing grounds. Technically this is where the King and Queen live, but they actually only spend a night there once in a while, and then live somewhere else the rest of the time.


Andrew with a guard at the Grand Palace. We didn't know this, but you can't wear shorts into the Grand Palace, so he had to rent these ugly grey pants. (And I had to rent this pretty Thai skirt, which looked ridiculous with the runners I was wearing... so no pics of me, you'll see!)


At the Grand Palace... the only pic of us together where you can really tell we're in Thailand from the background.


Andrew ordering Pad Thai from a street food stand on KhaoSan Rd in Bangkok... this is the really touristy area and we were staying nearby. You could choose from a variety of toppings and noodle thicknesses... all for about $1. That's about 1/15th the price of ordering the same thing here in Australia!


Out for lunch with Ricky Sanchez, the orphanage guy. He took us out to eat at the local mall and introduced me to this really yummy "unripened papaya salad"... way better than it sounds!

Anyways, next time we see you we'll show you the rest of the pics, unless you've already seen them on FB.

We'll post a few pics of our new house soon too. I tried to take a video of it for you, but had plenty of trouble uploading it online... I think it had to do with our camera, so we're gonna borrow another one soon and try again. I'll send you the link if/when it works. If not, it'll just be good old pics!

Talk soon,

~Corinna for Team AC

Back Safe in Oz

Cooking school in Chiang Mai, Thailand... I was cooking something (forget what) that caught on fire. It was meant to, and they told me it would flame, but I was NOT expecting that high a flame. It kinda freaked me out, as you can tell by my expression:

Hi Guys,

Just a quick update: we landed back in Brisbane 2 days ago, spent a night with our friends Dave and Niki (near Brisbane), and then drove 2 hours north to the Sunshine Coast yesterday morning to start looking for a place to live.

Yesterday we looked at 5 places, and today we looked at 5 more. Out of the 10 places, 2 looked nice-ish, so we have put in applications and hope to hear back really soon, because until then we are homeless!

We are spending 2 nights at a hotel right now, and then we'll crash at our friend Line's place for a few nights, but really don't want to overstay our welcome there.

The thing we are finding with the apartments we are looking at is they all have some (but not all) of the things we are looking for (near the beach, not on a main road, nice enough kitchen and bathroom, swimming pool, and generally not dingy and manky).

Like I said, 2 of the places look okay and they are both near the beach (and are just a block apart from each other actually). One has a pool and nice landscaping, a killer ocean view, but not that nice a kitchen and bathroom. The other one has a brand new kitchen, better bathroom, but no view or pool.

Decisions, decisions! We just need to narrow down what's really important to us. Also, there are other people who've applied for them too, so we might get neither of these places. We will look at 2-3 more places in the next couple of days, but that's all that's on the rental market in our price range and areas we'd like to live in.

Anyways, if you have any useful advice, please do let us know!

Hope you're all well. Stay tuned for more Thailand pics...

~Corinna for Team AC

Chillin' on Koh Lanta

Hi Guys,

Last post of our holidays here... we are at our last stop right now, the southern island of Koh Lanta (Koh means island in Thai, so all the islands here are Koh-something).

This has definitely been the most relaxing stop so far as this island isn't quite as touristy, and the beaches are great. We are not doing much at the moment apart from relaxing... no more crazy tours or rafting, etc! Just writing a few postcards, swimming, suntanning, etc.

We are staying at a little guesthouse which is built on top of a pier, so if you look thru the cracks in the floorboards you can see the ocean right beneath you. Unfortunately we are not staying really near a beach, but if we rent a motorbike we can be there within 5 minutes.

Yesterday we found ourselves a nice beach, had lunch at a hotel restaurant right on the beach, and then swam in their infinity pool all afternoon... good deal!

In 2 days from now we head back to Phuket (2 hours by ferry), and spend one more night there before flying back to Brisbane late on Jan 3rd. We land at lunch time on the 4th, and will start looking for apartments right away. Our first appointments for viewings will be on the 5th and we've already looked everything up online and have shortlisted our apartment options.

So hopefully we'll have a nice place for you to stay when you come for a visit! :)

We will def be posting pics of our trip once we get back to our computers next month, so stay tuned...

Love you and miss you all, family. Happy New Year for 2012!

~Team AC

Thailand so far...

Hi Guys,

Just a quick note to catch you all up:

We've been in Thailand for a week now and are having a great time. We started out in Bangkok for 6 nights (too long if you're ever thinking of going), and saw heaps of temples, markets, street vendors, massage places, etc. We also got to visit an orphanage that some friends from Abbotsford run there.

Yesterday we flew up to Chiang Mai (in the North). If you know anything about Andrew, you'll know that he likes to be at the airport VERY early... so we were there 3.5 hours early for a domestic flight... the check-in counter wasn't even open yet. That pretty much made for a full day of traveling by the time we got here.

Our hotel here in CM has a really nice (cold) pool with lots of trees around it. We spent most of today just swimming, reading and relaxing.

Today we booked the stuff we're gonna be doing for the next 3 days: a big ziplining thing, elephant riding, trekking, white-water rafting, and a cooking school. Really looking forward to all that.

Sorry there's no pictures with this post... we left all that stuff behind in Oz (the camera cables), so we'll post all those next month when we get back.

Hope you're all doing really well and getting ready for Christmas (and your 60th next week, Dad!).

Talk soon,

~Corinna for the Team

Thailand Plans

As promised, here are the basics of our trip to Thailand, which is coming up in less than 2 weeks from now!

I've put shapes on the map of Thailand above (Thailand is the yellow country) so you can quickly find where we're going.

We arrive into Bangkok (star shape) on Dec 8th and stay for nearly a week. Then we fly up to Chiang Mai (paw shape) and spend about 5 days there. Then we fly down to Phuket (happy face) and spend the rest of our time there and the surrounding islands. In early January we fly back up to Bangkok, and then back to Oz on Jan 4th. So we'll be there for nearly a month... perfect!

At first we were only planning to go for about 2 weeks, but when we priced things out, it'll cost about the same amount to travel in Thailand as it would to live in Oz, so why not go for longer and have some more fun adventures??!

Some of the things we're looking forward to most are:

-ziplining
-surfing
-taking a 2-day kite-boarding course
-rock-climbing
-checking out the tropical islands and beaches
-Thai food
-elephant rides
-Thai massages
-taking a Thai cooking class

We will be going by ourselves... our friends Bonnie and Shane from China were planning to meet us there, but the plans fell through... so we're a bit sad about that, but will have a great vacation anyways. I'm sure we'll meet plenty of other travelers to hang out with!

We will try to keep in contact with you from time to time, but won't be bringing our computers with us, so don't worry if you don't hear from us for a bit.

We will also try to be in touch before moving to the coast and flying to Thailand, but be warned that this upcoming weekend will be SO busy that I'm not sure we'll have time to phone much, so it may just have to be a few emails here and there.

Alright, gotta go... have a good one!

~Corinna for Team AC

More November happenings

Alrighty, so it's been another super busy week down here as we are winding down to the school holidays.

Last blog post I shared how Andrew was doing Movember, and this past Friday the kids got to shave off his "beautiful" mo in front of everyone at school. They also got to dye (hairspray) his hair white, which took about 3 washes to fully get the smell out. He was a great sport about it, and our school has raised just over $1000 for prostate cancer research now.

On Sat morning Andrew got up at 5am to join a bunch of other guys from school at 5:30am to hike up a nearby mountain. It's SO hot right now that if you want to do anything physical, you really have to do it before 8am, or after 6pm.

The other morning I woke up at 5am to hear Andrew taking an ice-cold shower... that's how hot it is in our room. Oh well, not complaining... it's just strange when normally we'd be freezing our pa-tooties off in November!

On Sat evening we had our friends Greg and Sunelle over for dinner, and then on Sunday we got up early-ish and went to the beach for a walk. Usually it's a bit breezy by the ocean, but not now... it's sooo hot, and the water isn't really refreshing either since it's bath-tub temperature. Beautiful scenery though.

After the beach we were invited for lunch at the family of one of my students (near the beach). We had a great time with them, and ended up riding various skateboards on their driveway afterwards.

You can see I'm not quite a pro-rider yet... but just you wait!!




Sunday evening we were on worship team at our church for the last time and said our good-byes there. Next weekend we will be busy packing and cleaning our rental house, as the movers are coming on Monday, so don't think we'll be going to church then.

We are now in our LAST week of school (yipppeeee), then Andrew has his final for his Masters course on Sat morning, and then we are gonna start to really hit it for the rest of the weekend with packing and cleaning... I think it'll be a big job, but at least we get a good reward at the end of it it all... a holiday!

I will do a quick post on that soon so you know where we're off to.

Mo-vember

I forgot to mention something kinda important in yesterday's post: Andrew's new look. He's taking part in Movember, which is where you grow a mustache and raise money for prostate cancer research during the month of November. Men all over the world do it, and this is Andrew's first year.

I don't really know whether to be horrified or proud to be honest. To wake up every morning looking at this face....

Anyways, he has raised over $130 from his homeroom class at school so far, which is great. December 1st it all comes off though... just 10 days to go!

November in Rocky

Hi Guys,

It's a been a couple weeks since a blog post from us, so here you go: The first pic above is from when we decided to have a picnic dinner on the top of Mt. Archer, the tallest mountain around here, which overlooks our town. We grabbed some pizza and drove up, but we kept being interrupted by these annoying magpie birds that were swooping in for our food... that's why Andrew looks so wary in this pic :) We soon gave up and went home.


The next couple pics (sorry, out of order), are from our church picnic which was held on someone's property in the outback. He had this massive lean-to where we all ate in, and then there were games outside, a giant waterslide down a hillside, and "bush-dancing" to end off the night. It was our first go at that, and it turned out to be a lot like square-dancing. We even did it in a empty field, so it was pretty authentic.


Last Sat Andrew and I had to re-certify our CPR certificates, so we spent the afternoon pumping the chests of dummies. The guy across from Andrew is our friend Will from work, who's a total legend... they were having a little too much fun together, but I think we all still passed anyways!



Last Sunday we went to the beach for the afternoon with our friend Chris from church... it was so great walking along the bathtub-temp water and just relaxing... life can be pretty hectic with work and stuff, so it's nice to just breathe in the ocean air and chill out once in a while :)


Later that evening Andrew and I were playing on the worship team at church... you can see him at the back left in the pic above playing his bass. It was really good night.


On Monday I took a few of my girls to the beach (same beach as the day before) for some beach volleyball and swimming. Our school is a bit budget on sports equipment, especially beach volleyball stuff, so we ended up having to take two high jump standards as our posts, and just tie a rope between them as a net. The girls had a blast anyways. I love it when girls this age get into sports... makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something :)



Lastly, we had some concreting going on in our Middle School area at school this week... the kids were running out of room to play handball at lunch (the most popular lunch-time game here), so they paved another area and are gonna paint the lines soon.

One of the yahoos in my class decided to write "I was here" in the concrete as it was drying. Big trouble for him.

Anyways, that's life this month. Two more weeks till we are done school, and then we'll be packing up, moving to the sunny coast, and flying to Thailand all in less than a week. Can't wait for the adventures!


Ciao for now...

~Corinna for Team AC