6 days, and a whole world

I got my first letter from my sponsor child yesterday. She is a 4 year old girl. She loves to play dancing and will try to be a good girl. I wonder what her life will be like in future years. Will she reach her goal of becoming a doctor when she grows up? How does she know at 4 that she wants to be a doctor? She lives in Burma (Myanmar), 700 kilometres from the capital city. Is the violence in her country affecting her now?

Last night I babysat my little sister. Sorry, childsat. She isn't a baby anymore. She is 6 days younger than my sponsor child. She loves to play dancing too. Last night she insisted on wearing her Little Mermaid dancing costume to bed.

I look at the contrast between these 2 girls, and I am thankful for my life. My sister does not need to rely on people from another country to help her with her education. We take clean water for granted. We don't need to go to the well for drinking water and we live in a house with more than one room.

We wrote a letter to my sponsor child last night, and my sister drew a picture for her. Apparently we can send flat gifts with the letter. One of the suggestions is stickers. We are going to choose some. My sister loves stickers so she is looking forward to helping me choose.

Back to reality

I'm back home again. After 12 nights, and 10 days away I'm back home. At the risk of sounding like a real princess, it is heavenly to be back with DSL and not using dial up anymore. I'm also freezing back in Melbourne - who would have thought that Tasmania was warmer. Another myth exploded.

Big things first - my brothers wedding was lovely. My new sister in law looked absolutely beautiful, and the ceremony was very simple. Most of the extended family were very entertained by the 6 or so rabbits hopping around - lots of suggestions of fertility were made. Everytime that we have a big family get together I'm stunned by the resemblance of our family. Looking back at the photo's now, I see groups of people who can't be anything other than related to each other.

The boy and I had a lovely 10 days together. I suspect it can be a test for a relationship to spend that amount of time driving around a strange place, where so many of the roads are what I described as squiggly bits. So many of them had recommended speeds of 15 or 25 kilometres an hour. I've learnt this trip that I really don't like windy, bendy roads, even if travelled slowly. This is a new thing for me - I always loved driving through the Adelaide Hills before they put the straight road in there. Yet I will happily sit on the back of a boat (holding on) when it is on the open sea ploughing through 2 metre waves. The boy gave up trying to understand it.

For the first time ever, we went away without all of our accomodation being prebooked. This is a massive step, especially for the boy, who lives by his schedule. We were lucky though. We managed to get 4 star accomodation in Launceston for 2 nights at a reduced rate in a magnificient historic building, and a 3 bedroom beachfront house on the Freycinet Penisula. Our main accomodation in Hobart sucked big time though. Not sure how you can forget to mention to bookings that you are undergoing major renovations. Won't ever be returning there. Cradle Mountain was magical though. After driving 5 hours with lots of squiggly bits on the roads, and the last 2 hours in the dark with no mobile reception, it was heavenly to arrive somewhere with the open fire ready laid for us, a queen size bed with a great mattress and electric blanket, and an electric heater to take the chill off until the fire kicked in. It was quite funny when we were unloading the car though - we had a possum keep trying to get in the door.

Next morning we had this visitor. He visited us regularly.











Home now, and the last photo that I took was this. Sunrise on the Spirit of Tasmania.

Since I've been gone ...

I haven't forgotten the blog, I've been writing stuff, I just haven't posted it yet. Today is the first time in 5 days that I've had internet access and it is dial up. Oh, the pain! A very brief pictorial history of my last few days ...


Making me smile


I love the feel of dried salt spray on me


Family gathering?!?


Swim platypus swim


Words fail me


The view from our deck


Sea caves


Dinner!


This view, champagne, freshly shucked oysters, biscuits and cheese



Dolphins!!

I need some suggestions

As some of you may know, my brother is getting married in less than one month. As a favour to him, I've been putting the music for dinner and dancing at the reception together. We've got the dinner music sorted, but I'm looking for suggestions.

What songs make you get up and dance at parties and at weddings? We've got a very mixed age group, so any suggestions will be gratefully received.

I promise I'll post the final list of songs used for all parts of the night - either before or afterwards.

I couldn't resist ...

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

The Sesame Street Personality Quiz

I'm not sure about some of it, but it was fun. Except the evil. I'll admit to that at times.