The Beach!!

Aaron, Erin, Me and Tanner on the way there

It's been four long years since I've been able to feel the gold sand between my toes and smell the salty water of an Australian beach. Even though it was in the middle of the night and I couldn't see a lot, it was still wonderful. My cousin invited me to a beach bonfire from 10 pm to 10 am for her birthday last weekend and I accepted happily. I found out a little later that it was a three hour drive away. Thank goodness the drive turned out to be the best part of the whole trip. Six of us YSA got together with two cars and set out at about 6:30. Because of all the stops we made picking up people and getting food and also not being able to find the right beach, we ended up taking six hours to get there. We did a good job of keeping ourselves entertained in the car so it didn't feel that long. We were the last people to arrive at the beach bonfire and 30 min later it started to rain so we all left to our various sleeping arraignments. My group had planned to sleep out on the beach on a tap with sleeping bags, but because of the rain, we needed to come up with another plan. We got an invitation to stay with another group of three and we followed them to David's house. David had set up mattresses for all of us by the time we got there. As we all lounged around talking and unconsciously trying not to go to bed, David made us hot Milo and hung out with us.

We found out that David has a whole train car in his back yard that had been made into another bedroom with two bunk beds. I also found out that David knows my family really well and had grown up with my two oldest sisters. I couldn't believe it! Everywhere I go members of the church either know my family personally or have heard of them. It's a little freaky.

Aaron, Long Neck (Wade) , Me, and Tanner on the way home

The trip home was a lot faster and conversation was a little less lively because we only had about three hours sleep under our belt. We got home in pretty good time and I battled with myself to keep away from my bed for the rest of the day. All in all, it was a lot of fun and I met a lot of great people.

Cousins

It's really great being so close to extended family

The Blue Mountains

My sister and I finally got out to do some site seeing. It was just me and her as we drove up the mountains for about thirty minutes. (They're not really mountains, real mountains are found in Utah). The drive itself was beautiful. It was a gloomy day with thick fog everywhere. It's was mystical and magical with all the trees. We were really lucky as we got to the look out points when the fog disappeared so we were able to see for miles and miles over these valleys covered in trees. It was breathtaking to realized that these valleys go on for hundreds of miles beyond what we could see and that there were areas in those valleys that no man had ever seen before. I was aching to get down there and explore. We took a scenic drive along the cliffs and then came back to Leura, a little old town with some fun little old stores. We ate gourmet Aussie meat pies for lunch, yum yum! and then we made our way back home. It was wonderful! We've got a list of good hikes and activities we can do the next time we go see the Blue Mountains so there will be more pictures to come.

I'm Here!

I'm finally a resident of Australia. I haven't done anything really exciting yet. I've just been going around trying to get all that adult stuff like a bank account, tax file number, insurance, medicare number and a job. It looks like I'm going to have to wait a little while for the job. I hurt my back over the weekend and I've been stuck in bed for the past few days. It's gradually getting better. I got myself a really nice new digital camera so as soon as my back is better I'll get out and get some proof of how beautiful this place is. It shouldn't be too much longer.