Martha and Susan’s Excellent Adventures

I need to compete with Sue’s crazy Whistler stories, and all the crazy snow back home, so here goes.

This past weekend I joined the UNSW Underwater Club for a dive weekend up at Palm Beach, the extreme northern point of Sydney’s northern beaches. We went up Friday night, came back Sunday afternoon, and only managed to get in 2 dives on Saturday, but the first one made it all worth while. I only have my Open Water certification, which means that really I’m only supposed to dive down to 18m max, but the first dive was a wreck dive at 27m down, and they were fine with taking me down, so I went.

Photos can be found here. See if you can find me! And that big fish inside the wreck is a Woebegone (shark!).

The wreck dive was great. No troubles going down or coming up. It was very little mermaid-like: sunken ship, lots of fishy friends, and a big shark (that we didn’t get chased by, but I have no complaints about that). I lucked out being partnered up with the photography guru, so I got a bunch of pictures of me underwater now.

At lunch that day we went to Palm Beach and ate sandwiches while our tanks were getting filled back up. We went for a walk down Palm Beach then, site of Home and Away. The Surf Life Saving Club actual said “Summer Bay SLSC” on it, which is the name of the beach on “Home and Away”, and you can get Summer Bay SLSC lifeguard shirts, and Summer Bay bags, which was funny.
The second dive was so crap they didn’t even charge us for it. My buddy and I planned to dive straight down to the anchor and head out from there, but after we were down a meter we couldn’t see the anchor line any more. After swimming around for about 15 mintues underwater seeing nothing but sand, and constantly getting turned in the wrong direction by the current we gave up and came out. I still counted it as a dive though - still an experience.

Sunday was eat-all-the-left-over-food day. It was great! It also rained, and we pretty much just relaxed, ate, and headed back to Sydney. Back at Laura’s the girls had had a big weekend too, so we were all in bed by 8:30pm.

Add to the resume I am a lumberjack now. Brock and I went out the other night after I got off a day of teaching 4 three year olds…. thus I was pretty tired. But I still went out into the bush to cut down our Christmas tree. We even did this legally, got a permit to go on crown land or any land under the power lines to cut down a tree for Christmas. I knew some of the back area from walking Charlie so we decided to go get a tree from under the power lines. We have quite a bit of snow and there was about a foot and half with a nice icy layer on top so every time you try to walk you fall through.

Brock was on a mission to get this tree in the daylight (good idea) I got off work at 4 and it starts to get dark around 4:30ish , so we decided to split up and go tree hunting. I found a couple trees and Brock decided to cut the larger of the two down (Christmas Vacation) but we did cut it down a couple times so that it would fit into the apartment.

We just finished decorating the tree and it looks beautiful

Ski School update….

I have two main groups of kids during the week and will have the rest of the season. My first group right now has just two kids both little red heads and are awesome!

My second group is 4 three year old boys and they have never skied so they are a handful. So far I have to clean up one kids that pooped his pants and another kid that stood at the door and made a nice little puddle of pee. One child told me that I should go for a coffee break haha.

Overall I am really enjoying teaching it is very challenging but very rewarding Oh and this morning I found a lost dog but he had tags and I called the owners and they came and got him. I am getting closer to having my own dog

Okay, so the photo below isn’t working and I don’t know why. Here’s a link instead: Sydney rain forcast for December.

So this is the weather forcast for Sydney over the next few weeks:

Pretty poor. Sue gave Laura Beingessner and I tickets to this outdoor Nutcracker thing at the Opera House. It’s happening tomorrow. Let’s hope the forcast is incorrect.

Other poor things: Ziv and I are fighting, rather badly, so I’ve moved in with Laura Beingessner for the time being. I’m moving over to Shahla’s just before Christmas, and she’ll be in Iran for 7 weeks. After that, we’ll see if Ziv and I are okay enough for me to move back to Maroubra.

Some good things: Last Saturday Ziv and I went to see a John Williams concert at the Opera House. It was truly awesome! We had great seats, just behind the percussion section and only 1 row back, so we could see everything going on in the orchestra. The Star Wars music was the best for me, but I also really liked the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, even though I’ve never seen the movie. The starting sounds are just sounds that you don’t expect an orchestra would be able to make. And the Harry Potter encore was great too. I wish I could quote Phil’s Sarah’s younger brother on John Williams properly. Something like: “Not only is John Williams one of the most influential composers of the 20th Century, he’s also the best”. I loved that speech! Not much is happening this weekend, but the following weekend I’m going on a dive trip, and the one after that I’m going to Uluru with Oleg. So despite the less than desirable living situation at the moment, and wanting to come home for Christmas, and jealousy of all your snow this year, and the terrible weather in Sydney, life here still has its bright spots.

Okay, must run back to the lab. Cheers guys!