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July 18, 2006
Coming home...wherever that is...
After 11 months, 8 countries (9 if you count Western Canada), and about a half dozen bouts of "curry-in-a-hurry" we're coming back to Canada tomorrow. We fly out of Sydney at 7:30am and arrive in Vancouver at 1:45 pm. Not bad...only 6 hours...except you have to add in the 17 hours time difference - which will make for nearly 23 hours in the air and a loooooong day.
It seems surreal - I can't really grasp the fact that it's all ending now...and so we leave Sydney with mixed feelings. While on the one hand we are excited to see our family and friends once again, we also know that much has changed over the last year and wonder how and where we'll fit in, what we'll do, how we'll make a living, etc. sigh - that's a battle for another day though.
In the meantime (it's my birthday today by the way) we wanted to thank you for journeying with us by following along with our blog. We plan to continue writing and posting photos as we spend time on a houseboat with Maureen's family (with temperatures forecast for 40C) and visiting my family as well, so keep your eye on our page - and we'll keep going with the blog this fall as well.
Anyway, WE'VE POSTED OVER 80 NEW PICTURES IN THE PHOTO GALLERY SO CHECK IT OUT!!
(that's how excited we are to have new pics...and no, I'm not going bald)
When Maureen last wrote a journal entry, we'd just finished our time on our Whitsunday Island snorkeling trip...
...after that we headed off to Fraser Island (the world's largest sand island...has even more sand than the Sahara desert) for a 3 day/2 night camping trip with another 7 people from our hostel....click on the link to keep reading
...we were both pretty uptight about the whole thing as we knew that the 7 people we'd be put with would have a huge part in determining how the trip would go. However, we were extremely thankful to have an awesome group of 2 Mexicans, 3 Brits and 2 Norwegians with which to share our time. While the weather wasn't too great, we were still able to enjoy swimming in some brilliant fresh lakes and streams, got to gape at humpback whales playing just off the island, cruised along the 75 mile beach "highway",
ate some great camp food, and shared in the misery of sleeping on uneven sand with inadequate sleeping gear provided by the hostel. We even got a bit of excitement with a 6-8 foot snake, a late night sprint home in the jeep along the beach as the tide crept higher, and a huge spider on a poor girl's leg....which led to some hysterics, plenty of tears, and comments such as "F&%k this nature s#%t...I want to go home!!!!!" (we love you Elkie...not to name names or anything :-) Good times.
From Fraser Island we spent a day getting beat up in the waves again while trying to surf at Noosa before spending our last day chilling out and spending the last of our money on the beach in Surfer's Paradise. Today was a bit of a zoo...but now it's 11:39pm and our shuttle to the airport is leaving in...oh bugger...5hours and 20 minutes. I think I'm going to cry. Love you all and see you soon.
Posted by David at July 18, 2006 10:14 PM