i thought as i sit here in the lax international guest lounge, i would quickly catch you up with what has happened so far this trip. but first for those that aren’t my mum and don’t know what this “holiday” i speak of is… i went back to america, not to work at summer camp but to a) go to a wedding (paul and alana’s); and b) general holiday/catch up with american friends.
i am only here for 2 weeks so don’t freak out and think that because you didn’t get to say goodbye, that our relationship has suddenly ended. that is false.
i flew out of adelaide on the sunday the 3rd of may at 6:45am. i decided to stay up again the night before so i would be tired enough to sleep on the way over, and consequently adele “stayed up” with me as well (good consequently). i literally packed my bag the 30 minutes before dad picked me up to take me to the airport. this was mostly due to my washing still being wet.
i flew to melbourne and realised that my flight to los angeles had been diverted to auckland, new zealand before going to lax. this confused me substantially and i just played along hoping everything would work out. so i left melbourne at about 11am and after a 3 hour flight, arrived in auckland at about 4:30pm.
i didn’t get to go outside at all but from what i saw, nz is very “green” and i couldn’t really work out where i was in relativeness to the rest of the country. in all honesty, it wasn’t very exciting…
we boarded at 5:30 or 6 or something and headed out for the states. i was hoping to crash (asleep) and wake up when we landed, but my body didn’t feel like doing that. i was dead tired in the head, but my body was too uncomfortable to sleep. so i watched movies and listened to music and managed to get about 3 hours of shut eye in total.
i got into lax at 11am to a very beautiful california day, but before i could fully experience it, i had to go through customs. i waited in line for about an hour and finally got through, and i came up on the system as “blocked”. so they took me into a small room and questioned me about my stay last year and why i stayed for another month after my visa expired. i pleaded guitly due to innocence and the nice man seemed happy to wave me through. consequently i was the last person to get out of customs… gah!
after a bit more stuffing around to check-in for my next flight, i made my way to the international lounge to grab some fat (more commonly known as mcdonalds) and catch some web time.
i will board my plane in about an hour which will take me to des moines, iowa via denver, colorado where the olsens will be picking me up! yay!
couple other things:
- i have internation roaming on my phone, so you should be able to sms me and contact me if you need too
- i hate american money
- i’m not sure if i’ll have permanent internet when i’m in iowa
- my parents both now have twitter, so proud
hey guys,
i am going to start blogging regularly again, there is a certain sense of joy reading back over blogs and seeing where i was and where i am now.
so i thought i would share about my latest purchase, a new car.
i’ll take you back to last december when my colt (bless her) finally gave in, and to cut a long story short, it was going to cost more than it was worth to get it back on the road again. this was slightly hard for me, because it was my first car, and as crap as it was she was still my baby.
anyways, i have been burning around in my parents heap, the mighty tarago that refuses to give up. i have been using it as a temporary car to get round in, but looking for a new car in the meantime. it has been a tough process, only because i have been incredibly picky. these were my requirements:
- holden vx s commodore
- manual
- can’t be white, silver or tungsten
- under 150,000km’s
that doesn’t sound overly picky, but the manual part is basically impossible because holden never brought out a manual unless requested. so they are around, just very hard to come across. so i have been looking since december, and last week i finally gave in and decided to go with one that met all my requirements except the manual part, and it was in tanunda. i took it for a test drive and it was great, a nice red beast.
the car was at a local dealer, and after asking around a bit, it seemed they don’t have an incredible reputation. so i put the car on the backburners for a while and tried to fall out of love.
this wasn’t hard because on monday i found the car. it met all of my requirements and seemed like the perfect buy.
i found it on carsales.com.au and made an enquiry straight away. i was able to obtain some pictures and pretty much fell in love all over again.
after a few emails with the dealer, i learned it was at holden dealer in adelaide (near glenelg) and arranged to come check it out on thursday night. but there was another guy who also was very interested as well. so it was a sort of first in, best dressed kind of game. luckily for me the other guy kept postponing his appointment, and i was able to see the car before him.
i went and looked at it on thursday night with dad and sussed it all out. it is in amazing condition aside from a giant scratch from somebodies keys down one side of the car. the dealer had already arranged to have the effected panels repainted to remove it. dad and i took it for a drive around adelaide and it purred along nicely.
we sat down with the salesman and made a deposit on it. then spent several tedious hours working out all my financing options and what is involved.
my loan was approved on friday and i told them to go ahead with it all. (after getting quotes from other banks and insurance brokers.)
so basically i have a car. i hopefully will be getting it either this friday or the following monday.
i’m fair excited.
Howdy there.
I just realized it has been over 2 months since my blog. So I thought I would keep you up to date with the happenings at schoolies.
Last night Adele and I travelled down to victor but ended up being stupidly late. We were meant to be at a meeting at 7:30 but got here just after 10. Oh well, wasn’t super important.
So we arrived at port elliot where our accommodation is and met up with the rest of our team. This is when the excitement for schoolies really started building up. We got our tee’s and hoodies and had a short meeting.
I am fortunate enough to be sleeping between the kitchen and lounge, so my sleep depends on everyone elses schedule. So I got an awesome 6 hours sleep.
This morning we had a short OH&S meeting and then headed to the victor harbor caravan park to sus out the area. Basically we have the “recovery tent”, which is a tent with couches, xbox, music, food and drink that the schoolies can just hang out at and “recover”.
We had another short meeting and then went out and helped arriving schoolies with their tents. I also found out that I was the leader of my small group. That puts a bit more responsibility on me, but I thrive on responsibility!
My team was up for the first shift which involved tent setups and cooking pancakes for hungry chillens. It was pretty uneventful until it started raining. Kinda puts us out of action, so we just chilled in the tent.
We had a guy come in drunk at 2pm and started throwing up… doesn’t take long.
My team finished up at 4 and headed back to our respective places of residence for the weekend.
We went and grabbed some tea a few hours ago and have just been bumming around at home playing games and watching tv.
My next shift is at 12am until 4am. Fun fun!
[updated with photos and new videos from la here and here]
hi fellow blog readers,
well last you heard from me, i met jose and susan at the san diego airport. and that is not where i am now, but i am in san diego.
quick history lesson, i have a mother, my mother has a brother, her brother has a wife, his wife has a brother, her brother has a wife, their names are jose and susan. so they are my aunties brother and sister in law. so they are related, just not by blood.
anyways, the night i got in, they took me a mexican restaurant called ‘tacos el gordo’ and got these amazing fries with awesome on top for my first san diego dinner. we headed back to their place (which is very nice) and watched ‘the flight of the conchords‘ (which i am now addicted to) while we consumed our meal.
the next day jose had the day off work, so we organised to go to la jolla (a nice beach community) and go snorkeling! i have been snorkeling once before about a year ago and loved it. but have not had the opportunity since. so it was awesome to be able to asplore the sea of west america. we went with adrian (jose’s cousin) and he was a great amount of fun! it was quite a nice area, but very busy. so to get a decent snorkeling spot, we had to trespass a bit… (shhhh!) and that night we had dinner at a ‘wings n things’. spicy!
wednesday was a pretty uneventful day, for me anyway. jose and susan had an a appointment to find out what sex their baby is! yay! they were so excited, and even more excited to find out it was a girl! congratulations guys i took the opportunity to do some shopping but spent most of my time trying to find a toilet and looking at the new ipods at the apple store. they picked me up and we cruised to the airport to pick hayley up. it was great to meet up with hayley again and you could tell she was tired after flying across the country. but none the less, we needed to celebrate the finding out of jose and susan’s babies sex (scuse grammar).
thursday, susan took hayley and i to the famous san diego zoo. there isn’t too much to imagine, it is pretty much like any other zoo, except massive and it has pandas! they were definitely cute! i think the most awesome thing i saw at the zoo was a 2 headed snake! it has some genetic disorder that happens every now and again. kinda cool! they had a sky lift that we could take and we got a birds eye view of most of the zoo. the thrills! that night, we were taken out to dinner by the miguel & josefina corrales (jose’s parents).
friday was shopping day for hayley and myself. there is this unwritten law that states: “you must use up any extra money and space with gifts for people when you travel”. i like this rule when other people are travelling, but i don’t like it when i’m travelling. the reason i don’t like it is because i have to actually think of what people would like and wouldn’t like. also because it requires time, and when you don’t have regular transport, its hard to find time. but we managed to complete our shopping lists. and i will apologise in advance to everyone i didn’t get gifts for. it wasn’t because i didn’t want to, just the factors of money and space came into the situation. so hopefully you will find room to forgive me.
that night we spent many hours consuming nibbles, drinking wine and beer and playing dominoes at miguel and josefina’s. really good night!
saturday, we wanted to snorkeling again. and we also decided kayaking was also a good recreation that goes with snorkeling. so after sniffing out several beaches, we found one that allowed both activities. adrian came with us again, as well as cynthia (susan’s sister, she also lives with jose and susan). skipping lots of minor details, we kayaked to an area where there were leopard sharks. this was amazing asplorin them! we could dive down and swim with them, plus all the little fishies and stingrays. (r.i.p steve.) we then decided to trek out to where we were on tuesday, except it was like kilometre there and back. and we only had 3 spots on the kayaks and 6 people. so we attempted to tow the snorkelers the whole way. we made it, but we were so stuffed.
that night we had a poker night with a bunch of the corrales cousins. good times. i came forth, which i was happy with.
sunday was the big game! chargers vs broncos. so again a bunch of the corrales cousins met at a burger place to watch the game. it was fun and people get so excited when their team gets a touchdown. everyone was up high fiving each other and cheering. it made me laugh. later that afternoon susan took hayley and i to christian city church san diego. i really wanted to go here, a) to go to church and b) because it is jurgen matthesius’s church.
jurgen is a pastor from australia, but has spoken at events all around the world and planted a church in san diego 3 years ago. i have seen him speak several times at planetshakers and youth alive and it was awesome to attend his church. it was in a school gym, but set up nicely and hayley and i were there early and got to chat with jurgen for a while. he’s a top guy and so much fun to be around. the service was great and we both felt very welcomed there and refreshed and rejuvenated. i’m so glad we went.
monday was hayley’s last day in america. and nothing was really planned until the night before. susan suggested that we take hayley to the los angeles airport rather then her catching the train there. but not just taking hayley to the airport and leaving, but actually spending the day in la. this sounded great! so we drove off to los angeles that morning. it took about 1:20 hours to get to the outskirts where orange county is. we pretty much drove through to the other side and i began freaking out with excitement. you may think to yourself, why would you freak out murty, its only los angeles. well i caught a glimpse of the hollywood sign. but that was it, until we went up to an observatory and there it was! in all its splendor, the famous hollywood sign. it’s kind of one of those things that’s like a ‘wow!’ and than that’s it. but it was still exciting! there was a magnificent view over most of los angeles and i thrashed my camera until the battery went flat.
for lunch we jose took us to ‘pinks‘. this apparently is a world famous hot dog stand. there was a rather large line up outside, and we had to wait around 15 minutes, but in the end i didn’t think it was anything that great. it could just be my habit of devouring anything within 10 seconds, but i wouldn’t write home about it. (hence i have a blog.)
we then cruised to hollywood boulevard. again the build up was amazing, but once we were there, it was just lots of buildings and people and stars (as in the object) on the sidewalks. got some photos etc, but didn’t really get out and look around a whole lot.
we headed through beverley hills (which wasn’t hilly at all), and it was obvious you had to earn over a billion dollars a second to live there. so many rich people and rich cars and rich shops and rich dog poo. but we made our way through there to santa monica.
i don’t know a whole lot about santa monica, but i guess its somewhat famous. we walked down third street promenade and looked at lots of shops and stuff. there were buskers as well, and they were actually decent. but american’s are too snobby to actually give them anything for their efforts.
we then decided we needed ice-cream, so we were on a mission to find a place that sold ice-cream. it was not easy! there was gelati and frozen yoghurt but no ice-cream. so we headed to the pier and i came across ‘bubba gump shrimp co‘. for those of you who don’t know, ‘bubba gump shrimp co’ was the company that forest gump and lieutenant dan started up in the movie ‘forest gump‘. and i found out that the pier that we were on was the one that forest gump ran to when he ran across america. the sun was setting and i got some great pictures of palm trees and the sunset, and now i am uber at sunset photos. we found a place right down the end of the pier that sold deep fried ice-cream, so we had to settle with that. but it was so good! it was a great end to a great day, and with that we took hayley to the airport. it was a pretty easy process and i’m glad i went along, because i now know how it all works now. we ate some food and saw hayley off. then drove uneventfully back to san diego.
i have spent today sleeping and finalising some things like bank stuff and photos and videos and blogs etc. i had to pack as well, and fortunately i can take more with me when i fly international, so weight is not a problem.
well i really gotta head off now, i am catching the train from san diego to los angeles, then catching a shuttle bus to the airport. my flight leaves at 4:10pm south australian time. i get into adelaide at 11:00am tomorrow if everything goes to plan.
well that’s it from me.
looking forward to seeing everyone again when i get home.
god bless you all
it indeed is murty again, and i am still in fact travelling around the us of a.
this last week i spent some time with my good friend shannon in huntsville, alabama. shannon came over to australia with annika last year and was apart of the young adults ministry that was developed. unfortunately she had to leave early and get married to mike. so it was great to see her again a year later.
shannon is a busy girl and had to work all week, but this enabled me to relax a bit more and do things as i pleased. she had a spare car that i was able to use and part of my alabamian experience was being able to drive around an american city. it was a very nerve racking experience actually driving by myself in another country, in a city, illegally. the reason i say illegally, is because you are required to have an international drivers license. (which i absent mindedly forgot to get before i came over.) but everything turned out fine in the end. i think because i have been here for this period of time now, i have adjusted pretty well to the road rules and driving conditions. i had a good chance to drive and it was good to have some freedom once again.
the first night that i arrived, shannon took me to a burger place that sells 1 pound burgers, so naturally i had to eat it. i polished it off like it was a crumb and the staff were quite impressed and asked to take my photo. i signed it with “take that america! love murty”. dang i’m funny!
the following day, i decided i needed a haircut and went to the local barber! this was my first experience at a barber, and it was … different. i am very much used to hairdressers, where you need to make an appointment prior to getting a haircut. this “technique” doesn’t work with barbers. you essentially walk in and and if there is an open seat, you sit down and tell the barber what you want done. this confused me, and i tried to make an appointment with them. but after trying to work out what the deal was, i went and sat down in a seat. i had a hispanic guy and it was hard to understand him, so i didn’t argue with him when he didn’t cut my hair properly. but he did a fairly good job anyway, and it was cheap.
wednesday, i decided to check out the us rocket and space center. and as it turns out, the rockets that went to space were actually built in huntsville, alabama. so that was cool. i spend a good couple hours there checking out all the interesting stuff there and learnt loadfuls! they had several replicas of the ’saturn 5′ rocket that is the most powerful rocket ever built, but i don’t think it ever got launched. i headed over to the museum and checked it out, and there were free tours. i got the impression people were more keen to walk around themselves and try to work it all out. not me! i got my own personal tour from ‘kevin‘. it was really good, because i learnt about stuff from right back when the first guy started even thinking about rocket science. there was a heap of stuff there that had actually gone to the moon and stuff that the astronauts used to practice with etc. anyways, it was a really interesting afternoon and i learnt lots
at some stage that week i had a run-in with a homeless guy. i was walking out of the “gas” station with my wallet and chewy in my hand, heading back to the car. a pretty daggy looking guy was walking past and was like “sweet mo-hawk man”. so i thanked him politely for his compliment and encouraged him to get a similar hair style. in return he stated that he was homeless and hungry and had a stomach tumour. this was fine, except he then decided to show me his deformity. and i won’t go into too much more detail other than i gave him a dollar because i had no other excuse (i was holding my wallet in my hand). then i hopped back into the car and thought about what had just happened and gladly removed the memory of his tumour from my mind.
i won’t go into too much detail of what else i did that week, but i went out to eat several times and checked out more of the city. we also saw ‘traitor‘ in a very schmancy cinema complex. i would recommend that movie! that weekend we drove the 6 hours down to niceville, florida.
“what were you doing in niceville, florida” i hear you all ask. well that is a mighty fine question!
shannon’s husband, mike, is stationed at an air force base down there. he is studying some course on how to blow stuff up and defuse things that blow stuff up. this sounds fun to any man, but i found out he has to wake up at 4am every morning and do like 2 hours of physical training. stuff that!
shannon and mike purchased a small hotel room for me (for $37 a night!) which was awesome of them and extremely comfortable. we didn’t do a whole lot, but we did go to the beach on saturday, which was definitely my highlight.
the beach was all fine white sand and the water was about 25 degrees! so nice! we went paddling for a while and then lay on the beach for a while. if i get married one day, i would really like to go back to that spot for my honeymoon. just a fantastic part of the world, nice people and happy feelings everywhere!
i also had ribs for the first time over here, which i can safely say, are amazing!
my downer for the week was i didn’t get to go to a black southern baptist church as i was planning. we looked for baptist churches down around niceville, but there were none with a black preacher man on the website. so it was a no go. we went to mike’s church anyway, which was good.
shannon and i then drove back to huntsville and i spent that night packing and getting ready for my trip over to san diego.
shannon then took me to the airport on monday morning and it was a straight forward process to catch the plane to charlotte, north carolina. i had a 3 hour layover, which is fine when you have a laptop and free wireless internet connection. it was like a 50 minute flight and pretty sure was the definition of uneventful. however, my flight from charlotte to san diego on the other hand was not.
i sat on the very back seat with a chinese man. he didn’t talk, which suited me fine. so i was going to be content with listening to music the whole trip and hopefully getting some shut-eye. then just before the plane left, a loud, obnoxious lady came down the isle having a massive sook that she had no where to put her extra luggage. there wasn’t anything i could do, so i dubbed it not my problem… until she came and sat in the seat next to me…
i would consider myself a pretty decent listener i would say and pretty good at holding up my end of a conversation. hmm, not so much in this situation. she talked non-stop the whole trip and did not let me get a word in. a few times i said “i’m going to listen to music now”. within 2 minutes she would tap me on the shoulder and off she would go again. but then she decided she liked me and forced me to eat half of her dinner. then she decided she could trust me and told me all about how she had aids. wow, is pretty much all i have to say.
i was glad to get off that plane and meet up with the smiling jose and susan at san diego.
so that is my trip in alabama and florida, hopefully enjoyed by all.
it is now less than a week until i get home! wow! this trip has gone so fast, yet it seems like it has been ages since i was home. i’m really excited to get home! yay!
i am about to leave for the airport in hunstvilla, alabama. just thought i would let you know details of when i get into san diego.
my flight goes from huntsville, alabama and zooms over to charlotte, north carolina. i sit around there for 3 hours before zooming off once again to san diego. i arrive there at 8:12pm, which is 10:42am south australian time.
i am all packed and roaring to go, one of my bags is a nice 23kg exactly, and that is the limit… hopefully will be fine.
hayley has had some troubles, and unfortunately can’t make her flight today. but she is catching one tomorrow and we will go an pick her up sometime tomorrow.
travelling is fun and you get to zoom around on planes! yay!
alabama/florida has been fun and i have really enjoyed it. i will endeavour to make a new blog about my time over here when i get to san diego. i have some great photos and videos for you all.
if you are interested i have uploaded a couple of panoramic images i took while on my trip up to lake superior. [click the images to see them in full view]
well hi there australia,
it’s me, your travelling, friendly, mo-hawked, man that you better all love dearly!
actually, you don’t have to love me, but it can be an option if you would like
enough of that riff raff, tasteless blogging murty, tasteless! c’mon!
well last time we met, i was at annika’s spending a saturday bumming around online as i so often love to do! well much has happened since then, so i will take this opportunity to share!
that morning, hayley headed off to stay with a family from camp. that night, i took annika out to dinner at some fancy restaurant in the mall of america that we had to wait for! but it was worth the wait. i once again visited the apple store and oogled over all the shiny things there until they closed and asked me to leave. we then headed to the cinema’s and saw death race. (by my request. i am the guest after all!) it was a really good movie, in a gross morbid way. but none the less, i will recommend it.
sunday we headed to hosanna church (a massive church), and it was amazing! it was cool walking in and straight away meeting up with my host dad, from when i worked at hosanna for day camp. (he is one of the pastors at hosanna.) but the service was great, and in my opinion, is how sunday worship should be! it was simple, not traditional, refreshing, god glorifying, renewing, and service focused. i really went away feeling sent, which is what we as christian’s should be feeling! anyways, i managed to catch up with some people i’d met through-out the summer and chat. that afternoon, annika and i headed to the minnesota state fair. it is quite an occasion apparently for minnesota, because “the state comes together”. it’s basically like the adelaide show on steroids, with 100 – 200 thousand attending each day over a period of 12 days. we spent most of it wondering around, and checking out the stuff there. i ate a turkey leg, it was fairly massive! we watched some lame as clown stuff around. they really need to work out how to be funny. no one was laughing… psch, stupid clowns!
the highlight of the afternoon was the bus trip down to the fair, because the bus we were on hit a car! it squashed a car against the barrier because the bus was going to fast around a corner. we had to pull over (eventually), fill out incident forms and pile onto another bus on the side of the interstate! it was fun!
monday morning annika thought it would be funny to fill all my luggage with rice, just before i had to leave, so that was frustrating! but i caught the bus at burnsville, minnesota down to ames, iowa. it was a 4 hour bus ride and extremely uneventful. oh well, can’t expect too much i suppose.
paul picked me up in ames with his friend josh. we had lunch at some american restaurant, then headed to josh’s place and place xbox for 9 hours. fairly unproductive.
the following day we went and played golf. this is the first time i’ve actually gone and properly played golf, so we made sure we did it properly with golf buggies! it was an 18 hole course with a par of 70. i got 146! i really didn’t mind too much, i knew i was going to be terrible, but i made sure i had fun. the funniest thing was at the first hole, paul and i both teed off and it was a great shot. then josh teed off and the ball went about 10 metres. i was laughing my face off while josh was ranting and smashing the ground with his club. oh good times.
paul’s parents found out i’m a keen 500 player, so we played 500 for a few hours one night and i was able to get to know paul’s parent well. they are great people, and i am glad i met them. it was truly a blessing to be able to stay with them for that week.
one of the last major things i did with paul, was volunteer at a concession stand for college football. it was awesome! i got to know a whole new bunch of people and have fun with them, while selling walking tacos. we had too many people in working in the stall, so they let me go and watch the last quarter of the game. it was very entertaining. americans like to have a lot of extra stuff going on while the game is going. (example: cheerleaders and a massive band.) i was standing up next to all the college students, and they were going mental! it was fun watching all the craziness. unfortunately i didn’t have my camera with me so i didn’t get any photos. oh well, its just like what’s in the movies anyway.
friday, paul took me to jared’s apartment, and i said my final farewells to paul (i will miss him).
jared lived at camp while i was there, because he was doing an internship at a company nearby and needed somewhere cheap to stay in the meantime. anyway, he attends iowa state university and lives in an apartment nearby. and he gladly let hayley and myself stay with him for a few days. it was a pretty typical looking apartment, and with 2 guys living there, it was quite dumpy. oh well, it sufficed.
we pretty much hung around all weekend. saturday night jared took us to a baseball game in des moines (40 minutes south). it was the ‘iowa cubs’ vs ‘omaha royals’. this wasn’t the top league, but its sort of like sanfl, so you do get pros playing at times. it was quite cool to watch an actual game, and again americans love making sports entertaining. so they had carts driving round launching out hotdogs and t-shirts into the crowds and music playing and commentators etc. it was ridiculous how much effort they put in to make it entertaining. the cool thing about it was that we got free tickets from some guy handing them out at the gate, was a treat. all in all im glad i went to experience it. (by the way the iowa cubs won 10 – 4)
sunday, jared gave us a tour of the isu campus. it was quite interesting and large! so many buildings spread out all over the place. apparently there are nearly 30,000 students! so i sort of felt i got a small insight on what its like for american college life. we also found a small marijuana plant in the park area! we also went to the legend state park, which was out of town a little ways. it was nice down there and we checked out the carnage caused by the flooding at the beginning of the summer.
that night i boarded the bus and headed to alabama!
the bus trip was… long… would be the best way to describe it. i had to catch 4 different buses in total to journey down to huntsville, alabama. so i started at ames, iowa at 7pm, sunday; then changed buses at 11pm in kansas city, missouri, the next stop was at st louis, missouri, i think we got in at about 7am. this was cool, because there wasn’t going on except for like the early morning drivers and steam coming out the drains! we then shipped off (well we bussed off actually) a few hours later and i arrived in nashville, tennessee at about 2pm. hung around there for a few hours then caught the final bus to huntsville, alabama. there i met mrs shannon boden, formerly shannon vitarius.
and that is where i will leave you for now…
thanks once again for reading, and you can keep up to date with what i’m doing by checking out my twitter. (which is conveniently place to the right of this.)
the car was at a local dealer, and after asking around a bit, it seemed they don’t have an incredible reputation. so i put the car on the backburners for a while and tried to fall out of love.
model: holden vx s commodore
well last you heard from me, i met 
thursday, susan took hayley and i to the famous 
monday was hayley’s last day in america. and nothing was really planned until the night before. susan suggested that we take hayley to the los angeles airport rather then her catching the train there. but not just taking hayley to the airport and leaving, but actually spending the 
the sun was setting and i got some great pictures of palm trees and the sunset, and now i am uber at sunset photos. we found a place right down the end of the pier that sold deep fried ice-cream, so we had to settle with that. but it was so good! it was a great end to a great day, and with that we took hayley to the airport. it was a pretty easy process and i’m glad i went along, because i now know how it all works now. we ate some food and saw hayley off. then drove uneventfully back to san diego.
shannon is a busy girl and had to work all week, but this enabled me to relax a bit more and do things as i pleased. she had a 
wednesday, i decided to check out the us rocket and space center. and as it turns out, the rockets that went to space were actually built in huntsville, alabama. so that was cool. i spend a good couple hours there checking out all the interesting stuff there and learnt loadfuls! they had several replicas of the ’saturn 5′ rocket that is the most powerful rocket ever built, but i don’t think it ever got launched. i headed over to the museum and checked it out, and there were free tours. i got the impression people were more keen to walk around themselves and try to work it all out. not me! i got my own personal tour from ‘
that weekend we drove the 6 hours down to 
that afternoon, annika and i headed to the 
i really didn’t mind too much, i knew i was going to be terrible, but i made sure i had fun. the funniest thing was at the first hole, paul and i both teed off and it was a great shot. then josh teed off and the ball went about 10 metres. i was laughing my face off while josh was ranting and smashing the ground with his club. oh good times.
friday, paul took me to jared’s apartment, and i said my final farewells to paul (i will miss him).
we also went to the 
