Hello beautiful people! I was away from the blogosphere for a few weeks as most of you know and probably even saw me over these last few weeks because I went home during the school break to be in Gina's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding, with the most beautiful summer weather and it all took place on a picturesque island near Camden, Maine.
Here's some little photo snippets. Feel free to oooh and awww, the photographers did a fantastic job! The theme was nautical, navy and yellow were the colors, and of course, we had steak and lobster dinner after the wedding.
I thought Gina made the most stunning bride, with the perfect hair and gorgeous dress, she looked like she walked off the pages of a bridal magazine.
I left the 'burg just days before my 10 year high school class reunion *sigh*. But Gina's Warrensburg wedding reception was last weekend and that sounded more like the place to reunite with some old faces... but I missed that one as well.
With mom and dad along for the big plane ride back to Australia, we arrived in Melbourne on 17 July. The jet lag didn't seem too bad. We slept most of it off with a few hours of sleep when we got to Melbourne. The first day we took two bus tours - a city sites morning tour and an afternoon tour to Phillip Island to see the "Penguin Parade". Every evening around dusk off the coast of Phillip Island come the penguins waddling out of the Southern Ocean in packs of eight or more. It was quite a site to see the penguins waddling their way up the beach to their nests. Sometimes it takes them three or four hours to find their nests in the dark and when they do what a ruckus they make! They get all excited and start squawking like crazy. The penguins were probably the highlight of the Melbourne trip for me.
The next day we took a bus tour of the Great Ocean Road to the Twelve Apostles, but our bus broke down when we stopped for lunch at Apollo Bay, about a third of the way through the tour. About three hours later we were picked up by another tour bus and taken the rest of the way to the Twelve Apostles, which we could barely see because the sun had already mostly gone down by then. We saw lots of koalas in the wild on this tour and stopped along the way to snap shots of their sleeping gray blobs of fur in the high branches of the eucalyptus trees. Three bus tours in two days was exhausting and an extra day was needed to enjoy the city sites, museums and shopping... but that was an extra day we didn't have.
Onto Perth we went where I showed my parents the local sites. We visited the Perth Mint, art museum, the Old Goal, and King's Park. They met SM and his mom - she made a lovely dinner for us at her home in The Hills one night. I drove them down the ocean road to see all the gorgeous beaches, to Guildford and the Margaret River Chocolate Factory and one particularly wet and rainy afternoon we visited the Aquarium of Western Australia at Hilary's Boat Harbour. Later we enjoyed a hot lunch at Dome cafe where they met my friend Gail, who is also from the States, and we did a little souvenir shopping.
After a few days in Perth - because that's all you really need to see it all - we drove down to Margaret River to see a different part of WA. We stopped along the way. In Pinjarra we had coffee at the biggest bakery in the west, then at the Harvey Dam we stopped to have a picnic lunch, but it had started raining so we ate at a cafe in the town of Harvey instead. At Busselton we stopped to see the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere and also got a taste of the sun setting over the Indian Ocean.
We stayed two nights at a cozy guest house in Marg. River and spent most of our time driving around the Western Australian countryside exploring the shops, wineries, and galleries, and we had a traditional Aussie "barbie" for lunch in a park just before the rain started again. On the second day we headed back to Perth via Mandurah where we stopped for lunch and Fremantle where we stopped to do some site-seeing of the Freo Prison, Maritime Museum, markets and to have a dinner of fish 'n chips. Man, were those fish 'n chips good! The next day mom and dad flew to Sydney to continue their Aussie travels and I started back to uni and was in desperate need of a week of sleep! All is well now though, I'm rested up and feeling good again.
I'm nearing the end of week two of my final semester at ECU. My class load is light, as in, I only go to class every other week and I have started back to work with the catering company. My days usually consist of me getting up and helping myself to two cups of instant coffee and brekkie while checking and responding to emails then reading my favorite blogs before I go for some excercise (a walk to and around the park). When I get back from my walk, I officially start my academic day, which lasts for about two to four hours of online research and/ or textbook reading. Sound fun? Not really. Tonight I'm starting swimming with Aussi Masters swim club - a suggestion by a girl I met in a swim class last semester.
I have already started contemplating my next steps for when I finish uni. For instance, more travel is on the menu, but where and when and how will I afford it are questions that come to mind. Hopefully, I will have those answers in the next week or so when I get my Aussie tax refund and student loan check... a lot depends on the money. Then I can start making plans. Next up after travelling is getting back to reality. Getting a job! Getting a car (probably my moms) and to start saving for my first house - eek!
