Week 9: Fireworks!

So the begining of this week has taken the course of many of the rest with movie night (how amazing is iron man 3!!!!!!!!) and a decent amount of study and early nights. Wednesday as part of my water management module we headed down to Wollongong Sewage Treatment Plant for a field trip... I know right, classy! It was pretty interesting actually to see how the water system runs in a town situation. It wasnt too smelly, it was mostly wastewater and recycling rather than raw sewage. The ritual wednesday at glassy went down.

Thursday afternoon I headed down to the beach with my board through his car sun roof, we debated whether it looked more like a unicorn or rhino and chose rhino to be manly! I am still learning to stand up on my board but I am determined and practice makes perfect. Friday afternoon was fitness again, last week I was hurting halfway through the week and although this week wasnt quite as bad I can feel it now on sunday night. Friday night we watched the Wallace and Gromit movie, so much funnier than I remember, perhaps it the friends I was with... Ooo and during the film we had our first rain in 30 days! :O I looked it up on the Aussi Met Office as I couldnt remember the last time it had rained. Unfortunately it has been an overcast weekend with temps only in the high teens, hard life right!

Saturday morning was spent catching up on sleep, attempting to do some work and playing pool. We participated in a bake off in the afternoon and our rag tag team of a pommy (me), aussi and an american quite successfully make a victoria sandwich cake with jam and then raspberry cream on the top. It went pretty well for how quickly we had to make it, we resorted to using a blender!

After rushing to finish the cake we then shoved an overnight bag of stuff together and headed off in two cars. Our destination was Gunning, where they host the second largest fireworks in Australia (only NY Sydney beats them). After a fun and relaxing journey with various stops here and there we made it, albeit slightly late. Nonetheless we saw some epic fireworks.

We then stayed around our make-shift fire (an old keg with a washing machine drum on top, how cool!) and had some chicken rolls with stuffing, coleslaw, marshmallow and a bevvy. Just another quick note on the weather, it was a cold night so prob about 10-15 degrees brrrr, how am I going to survive going back to England?! Once the fire died down we headed part way back and crashed an our friends near Moss Vale. This house was epic! On par with the Sydney house from a few weeks back. After a few mishaps with the other car we finally all arrived gone midnight and set up an epic array of mattresses for all 8 of us. We watched some movies and chatted and got a few hours sleep I think. We awoke in the morning to a massive bbq breakfast of eggs, bacon and rolls! NOM NOM NOM!!! I think its up there as one of the best brekkies so far. So a massive massive thank you to our hosts! Before heading back to the gong we wents for a little trip into Morton National Park, such a beautiful place with great views. Here are a selection of photos :). 

Makeshift fire cauldron!

How did I nearly forget!!!! I saw my first wild kangaroo. Whilst we were having brekkie we spotted this kangaroo chilling under a tree about 20m from the house.

Road trip music! :) 

Oh we also came back in a 7 seater monster of a car! There will be more photos to follow shortly :). 

On another note I now have a flickr account, so if you wanna check out more photos my name on there is chriz.rhodes :). 

And add me on skype chriz.rhodes ! 

So I have been here now 9 weeks, wow. It is quite unremarkable how the smallest events in the first few days and weeks have spiralled into something so great. For example it was only coincidence that in my first week I was helping someone with their internet down by the office and some aussi's rocked up and invited me to their house warming party that evening. It turns out that I have made great mates with them all. I am at the point where I have been here long enough that I am looking back at how amazing these weeks have been and my goal is to keep it going. Although I am really struggling to make a decision for mid session break... so my choices are head to NZ for as long as I can swing and hire a car over there, hire a car/van in the NSW area and find some places I want to visit, spend some time chilling at Wollongong and do some day trips or perhaps the most likely is a weekend or two away and a bit of chill time in the middle. If anybody out there has any suggestion please let me know, im so indecisive.

The week ahead looks like its going to be spent doing CW until tuesday when my two assignments are due and then take it a bit easier after that. I think the weather is going to break by tuesday or wednesday which will be awesome :) and we will see what next weekend holds there is currently a potential plan and hopefully it goes ahead. 

For now this is me...  tonight I will be eating our Victoria sponge cake and getting an early night :)