today i'm writing from colorado, where i'm staying with tracey and her family just outside denver. it's pretty warm here comparatively, yesterday when we arrived it was 50 degrees farenheit, which was nearly t-shirt weather compared to all the temperatures i've been in recently! (though today it's back down to freezing!) in ann arbor it was the worst, days were between -15 and -25 celcius, so basically it was too cold to do anything. one day when school was cancelled cos of the cold, we took my cousin's kids to a play cafe, and while walking from the car to [View Full Entry]

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greetings from a very snowy michigan! since i arrived in chicago a week ago, it has barely stopped snowing, which makes for beautiful scenery, dangerous roads and wet socks. it's been really freezing, today is a chilly -12 degrees. i was under the impression that if it was below zero it was too cold to snow, but that theory has definitely been proven wrong! as i sit here, i can see a squirrel (oh, nope, apparently it's a chipmunk!) jumping around in the snowy branches of a tree outside. very cute! since the last time i wrote, lynne and i did [View Full Entry]

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well it's been a jam-packed week since i last wrote! last weekend we were still in vancouver, and went to visit the capliano suspension bridge, which is, as the name suggests, a huge suspension bridge over a river. it was really beautiful, with snow on the ground, fog in the mountains and huge fir trees everywhere - it was the type of scenery you see in the travel brochures for canada. tuesday we had a 3.30am start to catch a 4am taxi to the airport for our flight to los angeles! we cleared american customs in vancouver, which was weird [View Full Entry]

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yesterday i experienced my first white christmas and it was fantastic!! we woke up and opened the presents in our stockings (we had a secret santa then had to get everyone else $5 stocking fillers). my most memorable was an open bag of skittles from greg, from which he had removed all the red ones - red is my favourite flavour, thanks greg!! haha. then croft cooked us pancakes with real canadian maple syrup for breakfast which was yummy! unfortunately lauren and croft´s church didn´t have a christmas morning service and the sister church was too hard to get to [View Full Entry]

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today is the coldest day we´ve had in vancouver so far, with a high of -6 and a low of -16! i had to invest in some thermal socks cos my toes have been going numb when we go outside. it hasn´t snowed since wednesday but there is still snow on the ground because it´s been too cold to melt. the other night we went to the shops to try to find makeshift toboggans - we bought a christmas tray and a windscreen reflector, then walked to the park where we found a hill to slide down. unfortunately the tray [View Full Entry]

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hello from snowy vancouver! we woke up this morning to snow falling outside our window, which was pretty exciting! the ground is half green, half white now, so hopefully it´ll fall long enough that we can go outside to make snowmen! i´ve been here since sunday - i arrived in vancouver 10 minutes after i left adelaide, (though it was the longest 10 minutes of my life) so i got to live sunday twice. lauren came to meet me at the airport and then i went back to their place in new westminster. it´s a really nice apartment, right close to [View Full Entry]

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hello all! after writing a big long blog last night, i hit publish and the computer crashed and my blog was lost...so here goes again, and hopefully this one will work...we've had a busy couple of weeks since i last wrote. we spent 10 days on the south island, visiting some great places. first up was christchurch, which reminded me a bit of england. it was pretty but not spectacular like i had been expecting. we didn't have much time there, so just walked around the city a bit and got a feel for the place. from there we drove up [View Full Entry]

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hello! today i'm writing from our hostel on the seaside at plimmerton which is just out of wellington on the north island of new zealand. ellen, bron and i are a week into our month-long tour of the country and are having a lovely time so far! (note the new paragraph, that's for you lynno!) we started out in auckland, where it was rainy but not cold. our flights were both delayed so only ended up getting to our hostel at 4.30am, needless to say most of our day in auckland was spent asleep! we've hired a car so saw a [View Full Entry]

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Hello! Have had a really busy but hugely fun week! Can’t remember when I last checked in with you, but will try to update you on what we’ve been up to recently…on Sunday we attended KPC East church, one of the 5 they have around kampala. Kpc east is held at the Mandela international stadium, which is a huge stadium for track and field stuff. Before the service some of the team decided to have a race around the track and unfortunately dave cut his toe really deeply and nearly fainted in the service. I turned around and saw he was [View Full Entry]

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Hello! Just another quick update from kampala…we’ve had a very busy and tiring rest of the week. Each day we were up at 6 to get to the site on time, and much to our excitement and satisfaction ended up finishing our house at 4.30pm yesterday! Well, not quite, but as much as they get the teams to do. In the next few weeks the builders will finish the roof and other bits n pieces that need to be done. It was so great to work with the African team of builders, they were all just so nice. We would start [View Full Entry]

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