Heading out to the Outback was about an 8-hour trip into the middle of Australia. We left at 6:30 in the morning so it was mostly filled with sleep and movies. We watched “The Dish”, which was an Australian movie about the first landing on the moon, and then we watched “Finding Nemo.” Which happens to be funnier after you have lived in Australia for tow months and have heard them say all of the sayings that they use in the movie. There are so many little things that you miss until you’ve lived here. Finally 8 hours later when we arrived it was about 5 o’clock. We headed straight out into the field to see our first Australian Outback Sunset. It was gorgeous. The first night was the best, it was so gorgeous, and all of the colors were so vivid. That night we had some free time before dinner and then had Burgers. They were really good, we had one of the host families who are chefs cooking for us the whole weekend. After this we had some time around the bonfire where we shared our life stories. It was a great time to get to know each other. Then we went to bed because everyone was so tired from the trip and everything else.
On Saturday we woke up and had breakfast. I was asked after breakfast to help with the worship service for the next day. It was nice to get back into doing that I had forgotten how much I love it. I think I’m going to get back into doing that when I get back to school. We saw a sheep being sheared and I got a video of it. It was really interesting to watch and see how much wool they get off of the sheep. Then Max and Gloria came with their foster child Dylan to sell us boomerangs and didgeridoos. They helped us paint and burn into the wood on our own. They were amazing to talk to about everything. The flies were crazy while we were out there though, especially while we were painting. It took us a long while to all get our painting done so we had a bunch of free time after. I played a lot of Dutch Blitz. I love that game; I definitely want to buy it when I get home. I love when we all go on these trips because it’s like were dorming together and I really miss that while I’m here because we can’t really go to each others houses at night because the buses stop running and we would have no way to get home. That is the only thing that I don’t really like about this program. I love my host family but sometimes I wish I could live with all of the other students because we lose that time of bonding together. That night we had dinner, which was lamb stew and Johnnycakes. Johnnycakes are circles of dough that cook on the campfire and cook up kind of like pita bread. It was really good; I really liked making part of my dinner on the campfire. That night we went “Kangaroo Spotting,” It was so much fun! We ended up seeing 11 Kangaroos that night! And looking at the stars, it was unbelievable how many stars you could see out there. There were no obstacles in the way, you could see the stars/sky from horizon to horizon. We shared more life stories after everyone got to go kangaroo spotting and then we went to bed.
On Sunday morning I had Breakfast Duty…We made “One Eyed Jacks”, or “Toads in a Hole”, or “Eggs in a Basket” whichever name you want to choose. It was so much fun to help the cook make breakfast. It was really good too! It really reminded me of my brother though, I missed him a lot when I was helping cook. Then we had a time of worship and then we went to go explore the farm! It was so much fun. We all piled into Ute’s and Land Explorers and drove around the farm stopping every once in a while. He showed us how he plows the 35,000 acres that he has worth of farmland. He says that it takes him about 3 months to just get the certain paddock ready to be used for crops. Then we saw a Gecko, which was super cute. I wanted to take him home with me! We climbed one of the huge hills that was on their property and sat up there for a while just looking out and thinking about the land and the Outback. We saw a Kangaroo on the way back so our driver drove off chasing him and it turns out that he had a Joey in his pouch it was so cool to see the Kangaroo in the daylight. They are such amazing creatures! When we got back we had lunch and some of the students went to go chase a pig and a baby Emu. They caught both and people have pictures with them. Apparently after lunch they butchered a sheep and one of the students in our group passed out. I am so glad that I missed that; I probably would have passed out as well. We had a bunch of free time and went to see the final sunset in the Outback and I can’t tell you how GORGEOUS IT WAS! I still can’t get over that fact.
Check out the pictures on my Photo Website because they can explain it more than I can…
http://web.mac.com/k.lay/iWeb/asheilanamedkrystin/KLays%20Photo%20Albums.html
xoxo
Krystin
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