Stupid Parrots

Got home from trampolining last night and was so tired it was all I could do to lay on the couch and moan (oh, and eat a mango). Mark worked us hard again, but at least this time he was merciful enough not to use the spray bottle! Jen conquered her backover and can now successfully land on her feet. Of course, now Mark wants her to do two backovers in a row... yikes! I am getting closer to conquering the cradle and the full airplane, but it's slow painful work. Which, according to Mark, is fine - or as he likes to put it, "pain is a good teacher". I think his belief is, if I crash-land enough times, I'll get tired of the pain and do the trick right. Groan... Believe it or not though, I am making progress!

I have finally, FINALLY finished photo-shopping all the pics for the summer camp slide shows. Note to self - next summer, no more names written in giant letters on hats. I can't BELIEVE how long it took me to edit all that out. It's a good thing I'm not working while I'm here. :-) So now I'm on to the next stage of the game and actually creating the slide shows. I really want to have at least a couple done by Christmas time, so that they can be played at the staff Christmas party. Which I'm going to miss for the first time ever. Wah! (Feeling a little homesick this week, I think.)

It is becoming increasingly evident that the seasons really ARE changing here, and that we're on our way to full summer. For one thing, it's starting to get light as early as 5am, and it's not getting dark until almost 9pm. I love being able to sit out so late and have it still be light! I love the fact that I haven't worn socks at all these last two weeks, except for when I was camping and of course at trampolining. I do NOT love the way the birds make such a ruckus so early in the morning. The whole "dawn chorus" thing takes on a whole new meaning down here. I'm pretty sure that the two largest trees in our backyard are fig trees; whatever they are, they have all these fun fruits on them right now. Which means that every morning, as soon as the sun comes up (and often significantly before), we get about 80,000 lorikeets (small parrots) and other birds in our backyard. Making enough noise to wake the dead. It makes no difference if the windows are open or closed; the noise is incredible. So for all of you who may be thinking that I'm spending a lot of time sleeping in on this trip, think again. What I'm really doing is spending a lot of time laying in bed, silently cursing the birds.

Oh! Another item of note. Jen and I have changed our travel plans for Christmas a little bit. Ruth and Carroll invited us up to Sydney for Christmas. I'm sure I've said this before too, but it is SO NICE to have an adoptive family in the same country as us! It was going to be a pretty quiet little Christmas down here in Melbourne; most of our house mates are either moving out or going away for the holidays, so it would've been me, Jen, and three others (all of whom had other plans for Christmas) left in the house. So it's nice to know we'll now be surrounded by friends! We're gonna take Jen's computer with us, because it has a webcam, so we can arrange times to do a video chat with our families back home. And the other bonus? The beaches in Sydney are MUCH nicer (and hopefully warmer) than the beaches in Melbourne! This is very important. We ARE going to spend time on the beach at Christmas!

So now we'll be flying up to Sydney at something ridiculous like 7:15am Christmas Eve day (we have to be up at 4am to catch this flight, but on the other hand it only cost us $69!). We'll stay with Ruth and Carroll until the 27th, and then catch a train to Canberra to start that part of our adventure. The rest of our trip itinerary is the same. We went and picked up our OZ Tracks passes at the train station yesterday... I am so excited about getting to cross the desert!