All in an Aussi Winter

---

Well winter seems to have come and gone. If you blinked you would have missed it. A few weeks ago we had the coldest day in 21 years, it was 4 degrees. The week after it was right back up to the low 20s! Last week was real nice as well.

It has been a fun, but real busy few weeks. Dan left us three weeks ago now. If you haven't seen him yet, make sure you say hi before he heads off to Bible school. He called us the other night (friday night) and he was very lonely and wishing he was still here. We all miss him around, there definitally isn't as much joking around. We had a bit of a party for his going away, we rented 13 movies ($1 each at our local store) and watched them all in about 2 days. On the last night we had a bunch of guys over and ordered 8 pizzas and just hung out....and watched more movies! Then at about 1 am we went out to the beach and had a game of full tackle football! The beach was deserted, it was perfect. Finished off with a midnight dip...and then went back to our movie marathon! We stayed up the whole night, and then went to catch the sunrise for the first time since being here! We should have been doing it more often because its amazing. We have this spot that we've found on a rooftop facing the ocean, its the perfect spot just to sit and watch, at one point we actually had couches up there and everything...priceless. We said our goodbyes to Dan later that morning...it was awkward being at the international airport again...time has gone by way to fast, today we've been here exactly 7 months. Wont see Dan again untill Christmas time.

The weekend before that we went to the Blue Mountains. We wanted to do something nice...but cheap before Dan was to leave. Now they call them mountains here...but there really nothing compared to anything we have in Canada...but I guess its just one of those things that you've gotta see and do before leaving. It was about a 2 hour train ride out there, and then we rented mountain bikes and rode around...covered the whole thing in about an hour! It was nice, we took some cool pictures and then left. Thats our kinda travelling...cheap, and we keep things moving. The famous part of the Blue mountains is 'the three sisters' its like the lions back home in Vancouver except three of them...and not even close to the same size.

After Dan left, I started work for the same company as Tom. Its a decent job...actually its pretty good. Its probably the best job any traveller our age could get...they pay really well, have overtime avaliable, and its pretty slack. What we do is maintain parks around the city. We aren't city workers but were on contract with the city. Tom and I are on different routs during the day. My rout has one of the bigger parks in the downtown core and then some smaller ones around that. I am with a crew of 3, but the middle guy just quit..so thats good for me...I get to drive the company truck now every day! Its nice to get some driving in. Mainly we just make sure that the parks are clean, we do some weed spraying, pruning, gardening, and spreading bark mulch...we probably put in a half hour of real hard work a day, the rest of the time we are just 'maintaining'. Tom and I can sign up together to work on weekends as well to get some extra cash. For a while I kept my job at the cafe as well...so it was 7 days a week, but that was to much so I had to let it go. Neil is still at Rebel Sport...loving the sales. And Luis is still at university. Luis gets real lonley now because Dan was the one who always stayed up at night hanging out with him. Tom and I have to get up at 5 for our work...so we hit the sack pretty early.

The new place is working out really well. Definitally glad we moved.

Were starting to make some plans for the rest of our stay. We bought tickets to Thailand for November 11...we won't come back to Australia after that. We hope to spend at least a month there and maybe Vietnam and Cambodia. We'll come home sometime mid December. So we are all trying to save up for this trip. We probably won't do anything else...there is a slight chance we might still be able to drive up the gold coast...but its not looking to likely. It has really been harder than we thought to do as much traveling as we wanted to, but this trip has been so awesome...and would be even if we didn't do any travelling...so its like a bonus being able to do some travelling.

It was Tom's 20th birthday a few weeks ago as well. A bunch of us all went out for ribs. Now these are the biggest rib racks I've ever seen in my life. We've been there twice now...and the racks are probably about 18" long and 8" wide....massive, Tom had 2 of them in one night! Then on his actual birthday we got a 6 foot long sub instead of a birthday cake! That was massive as well! Good times.

Yesterday was a great day...it was the first day off for me in a while. We went down to the beach for some football, and then climbed these massive rocks along the shoreline to the next beach...it was pretty cool.

Thats all for now!

I tried to put some photos on...but for some reason its not working...maybe will try again later.

TYLER

---