7 weeks into the term and with Saturday morning field hockey, marking, and report cards, this has been our first chance to get away from it all. We needed this break. When the opportunity to meet with other exchange teachers in Byron Bay on the Queen's Birthday long weekend presented itself, we jumped at it! We booked our flights and rented our car right away. Sarah spent Friday in Sydney at the Aquarium and IMAX theatre with her class, and met Tom at the train station on the way to the airport. We caught our flight to Byron Bay without incident [View Full Entry]

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After travelling through hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of fields (I had no idea there were that many sheep in Australia!), we were definitely ready to see some ocean scenery. Although we saw bits and pieces of the ocean while we stayed in Robe and Port Fairy, the Great Ocean Road didn't actually start until we passed Port Fairy. The road still didn't hug the coast, but there were many turnoffs to the various geological formations. Along the entire road we were rained on (it followed us!), but we were able to find a few breaks to explore. All along the [View Full Entry]

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Our first school holiday of the year and we decided to head further south. We flew into Adelaide on Easter Sunday and settled ourselves into the Hilton for our first few nights (we can't really afford the Hilton - but you can find really good deals on the net!). Since it was Easter Sunday, everything was really quiet. And the inactivity continued into Easter Monday. No one seems to live in downtown Adelaide, and everything was closed... and then it started to rain. What a wonderful way to spend the day! We did get a nice walk in along the river [View Full Entry]

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After a couple weekends of catching up on house cleaning, yard work and marking, we ventured south to join other exchange teachers from around the world in the Shoalhaven area of NSW. Our weekend began with us heading south toward Sydney at 4:00 on Friday afternoon. We were in for traffic and we knew it! Unfortunately, the main freeway from Gosford to Sydney turns into city streets in the northern suburbs. We were stuck in stop-and-go traffic for nearly an hour before spotting our way out... the M7 toll highway, which took us the opposite direction from where we wanted to [View Full Entry]

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On the weekend of March 4-5, we took off up the coast for another exchange teacher gathering. This time we were travelling 3.5 hours north to Port Macquarie. We were lucky enough to be able to take Friday off school for the trip up the coast, but the weather didn't cooperate and it was really quite a gloomy, dreary drive all the way. We stopped at a fairly secluded site called Seal Rocks. It was great to get out of the car and just hear the waves crashing on the beach. No other sounds... just water, incredibly powerful water. We didn't [View Full Entry]

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Although school is very busy for both of us with a lot of new things to get used to, we're trying to keep at least one day on the weekend just for ourselves. We've been trying to get out and see the local area a bit and sample all it has to offer. A few weekends ago, we headed up to Terrigal Beach - the main tourist beach in the area. We watched some cricket being played in the oval nearby and were fascinated by the pelicans just waiting for the fishermen to arrive with their catch. Wow are they big! [View Full Entry]

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After two weeks settling into teaching at CCGS, we were ready for a day out. We decided to head out to the Australian Reptile Park - about 30 minutes away from Copa. The park isn't big - but it has a lot of wildlife - both in cages and free-ranging. It was a perfect day - only 24 degrees with a nice breeze. We still needed to sleep in, so didn't get there until after noon... just in time to catch the end of the show on Funnel Web spiders. Now at least we know what we're supposed to be looking [View Full Entry]

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Where better to celebrate Australia Day than in Sydney, so we jumped on the train and spent two days in the capital of New South Wales. We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and tracked down our hotel close to Central Station (thank you Expedia.ca). We then headed out on foot and straight down George Street. Our wanderings eventually took us toward Darling Harbour and the Sydney Aquarium. The aquarium was incredible! A menagerie of animals including seals, Fairy Penguins (very small) stingrays and sharks (Too bad that Sarah won't get to experience any of these while scuba diving!). After severa [View Full Entry]

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We've only been settled a few days, but we've had a few adventures already! We went for a bushwalk (hike) in Bouddi National Park (about a 15 minute drive from home). It was a very good workout - some very steep descents (and therefore, ascents) through rock and bushland with the reward of some tremendous look-outs along the way. We reached the end of the Mt. Bouddi trail and decided to continue down to a very secluded beach - Maitland Bay. The decline got extremely steep with stairs cut into the side of a cliff to get you down to the [View Full Entry]

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Day 1 Our Fiji trip began with a friend picking us up and dropping us off at Gosford train station. In just under an hour-and-a-half, we were at the international departures terminal at Sydney airport. After a four-hour flight and a one-hour time change, we arrived in Nadi on the main island of Viti Levu just in time to be transported to our overnight hotel - the Tanoa International - a beautiful hotel with very hungry mosquitoes that dined well on Sarah’s legs! Day 2 Up early to be transported to the marina for our ferry to Malolo Island. When we [View Full Entry]

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