Pretty Perth

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Hi All,

We are enjoying Perth a lot. It is very warm and not as humid as Sydney was. It is 32 degrees right now about 4:45pm on Good Friday. I notice it is 12:45am Good Friday. We are a day ahead of you.

We have done lots of exploring. Even though we have a car, we have trained to Perth most days. Just walk 5 minutes down hill from our house, catch the train and arrive right down town Perth within about 20 minutes. It is a 10 minutes up hill walk on the way home but we manage to drag ourselves up the hill each night. We did the hop on, hop off bus again. It is a good way to see the city and then decide what sites we want to go back to. Perth is in the South West corner of Australia, the most remote city in Australia. A 5 hour flight from Sydney. It is full of sky scrapers etc but far removed from any other large city.

Yesterday, we took the train at 7am and then the ferry to Rottsnet Island for the day. It was about a 90 minutes cruise to the island. The island was spectacular. They too, had a hop on, hop off bus called the Bayseeker. It basically travelled the island stopping at about 12 gorgeous beaches. White sand a little like flour and beautiful clear water. Once we got wet, it was warm and very salty. We hit a couple of bay for swimming and sitting before we caught the ferry back to Perth. Got home about 7:45pm so we were bagged.

On Wednesday, we met up with a few ladies at a restaurant. These ladies are part of a larger group that is going through the process of setting up Microboards for their young people very similiar to what Evan has and works so well. Talking to them though, really made me realize what a wonderful life Evan has. It certainly did not get handed to us but Evan is financially well taken care of by our government and his personal network surrounding him is strong and stable. Mark, Carli, Clayton, Evan and Hiroko get together every Sunday for dinner. This started out being for the benefit of Evan. They all realized that if they didn't make a habit of getting together none of them would see Evan. He looks forward to it as much if not more as the others. Easter dinner is at our house this year. I can just hear Clayton, "Sure fine, but you better clean up and don't leave it for me". There will be a ton of them because it will be Jeremy and Jodi with the 3 kids, Sandy and Christine with the 2 girls, Mark and Carli with Isabelle and Brayden and then Hiroko, Tori, Evan and Clayton. It is wonderful that they want to spend time together. We will try and connect with them. It is the twins second birthday on or around that day so lots of fun.

We are cleaning and shopping for groceries to start our next week. We leave our Home exchange tomorrow morning, pick up our rental vehicle and head down south to see the Southern most part of Australia. Spend next week exploring around, especially the wineries in the Margaret River area and then we drive a little north and spend the night with the sister and brother in law of these home exchange people. I guess the sister and brother in law are coming to our place with these guys, Kevin and Glenys in 2009 and asked us to spend a night with them. So, why not. Never met, never communicated but it is an adventure.

We have had some funny things happen here. We chatted on the train one morning with a young man from North Vancouver. He was saying how he would like to move full time to Perth, the older guy sitting beside me said that he too, would like to visit a friend in Edmonton but Canada would not let him in because when he was a young lad he had gotten stuffed up when he was younger. I said, well maybe you could have your record exsponged after a certain length of time. His next comment was "It had only been a month since his last DUI" and then his robbery conviction wasn't that old either. He said he only got caught for the robbery because he robbed his friends store and the friend said "That you Adam" He said he denied it but then whipped off his pillow case from his head and confessed. I started to say to him something about "oh maybe I saw you on TV, you know that show. . . " then thought better of it but he added "oh, you mean World's supidest robbers" !!

And then, another day, Ross was sitting with our backpacks while Bonnie, Larry and I ran across the street to buy a few groceries. A older woman sat down beside him, (thank god he had his camera case beside him for a little space) She reached into her pocket and brought out a digital camera and began to show him very explicit movies of herself and then asked for $3.40 for the train. Ross paide her $3.40 for the train. We all teased that he could have been picked up and booked for buying leuwd material. He did pay her!!

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