I got to spend the day yesterday with Dr. Kreykes and am so very glad. Didn't realize just how homesick I am. To everyone back home, I miss you and wish I could be with you all. But I am also very excited about being "down under." This has been such a cool experience so far and I'm excited to see what God has in store for me during this chapter of my life.

Sorry for being so AWOL as of late. Here's a quick update of what I've been doing!

I'm all finished up at Moxey's now. Not sure how I feel about it, I really enjoyed my job working with the calves but I'm quite excited to see more of Australia as well. This week I've been trekking all over New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, and even got down to the Victorian border.

I spent two days at Kosciusko National Park, also known as the Snowy Mountains. As far as I know, this is the one place in Australia that gets enough snow for skiing etc and there were lots of people doing just that! I skipped out; as some of you may already know, I have impeccable skiing skills and didn't feel a great need to carve up the slopes this time around. Mt Kosciusko is also the highest point in Australia.

 This is my "hotel" Barina

 Lots of pretty streams and bridges, there's platypus (or platypi??) in these waters though they were being shy when I was there

 In the morning, all the valleys between the mountains we're full of clouds, it was really cool!

 Wild emus!!

 And plenty of kangaroos too

 There's a picturesque little cattle station snuggled into the mountain range as well

After that I went to Canberra, the capital of Australia. Toured the Australian War Memorial which was very very cool though I didn't get any pictures as my phone was dead. And visited the Australian National Museum. Also quite interesting though not many pictures, most of the museum was on Aboriginal history and they don't allow pictures of those exhibits.

 Can see the old and new parliament houses here, old is on the left, new is on the right

 Slightly better shot of the new parliament house

 It's a platypus!

 And the world record for wooliest sheep, haha

Quick story... Australians are not very entrepreneurial... At all! There was an exhibit in the museum of the Australian car, the Holden. You see, Australians came to realize that it would be a good idea to have a car suitable for the Australian climate rather than always importing from Europe, America, and Japan. So what do they do? They go to General Motors in Michigan and have the GM guys design one and start building them. Once the Americans made a suitable vehicle, they moved the assembly of the vehicles to Australia, but who will build them? Well, they hired workers from all over the world to come and work in their factory, over 50% of their workforce was foreign and it was still under GM management. The whole venture must not have gone very well though because there are no Australian made vehicles anymore. I have a Holden but it is made in Germany.
Canberra is also Australia's "designed city" but it was designed by or inspired by (I forget) an America city planner. Haha, the Aussies are great but that is one of the big cultural differences I have noticed; they are not in the least bit entrepreneurial. Even at Moxey's, they are partially owned by the Chinese and have Americans help plan much of their operations.

Ok, so that short story went a little long, sorry! Let's continue... I went back to the Blue Mountians! I spent an afternoon here when I first arrived and still think it is a beautiful part of the country.

 Quite a few pretty waterfalls, though there's still a drought here so they weren't very full. These two ducks were just casually walking along the top of this waterfall

 A lot of the land below the cliffs is actually classified as rainforest

And for some reason my phone doesn't want to load any of the pictures I took today sorry! I spent the day seeing the touristy things of Sydney. Went to Bondi Beach and saw the Harbor Bridge and Opera House. It was very hot, still is too even though it's dark now, lower 90s pretty much all day and not a cloud in the sky! Very different from the snowy mountains. Needless to say, I also got a little sunburned haha.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to do more like a weekly post while I'm travelling. Adios!