Ormond Visitors

This last week we hosted our friend at Ormond for a barbie, some backyard cricket, and tennis. Ormond is really quiet right now before the students return, so we have the place mostly to ourselves! Having a barbie truly is an Australian tradition, they literaly have public barbies everywhere!

Our friends at the Ormond barbie

Brian showing off his backyard cricket skills

This is what happens to my racket when I lose in tennis

Matt and Kersti

Enjoying the roses at Ormond

Summer in Melbourne

Some pictures of us hanging out in Melbourne. We are trying to make the most of our last couple months here, and are seeing our friends as much as possible.

Byron and I in Melbourne Central en route to a moview

Kersti by the Telstra Dome

The tower in Melbourne Central used to make round shot

Trams in Melbourne

I'm confused....

The State Library of Victoria (which houses Ned Kelley's Armour!)

A baby possum at Ormond

Our Second Anniversary

Kersti and I recently celebrated our second anniversary (14 January). We went out for some lovely dinner and drinks at one of our favourite restaurants, the Long Room. It has been an awesome year together, and the next one promises to be just as wonderful and exciting! I love you Kersti!

My beautiful wife at our Anniversary Dinner!

Emjoying the feast! Calamari, sushi, yum!

We also did enjoy the cocktails, of course.

Yamba and New Years!

For New Years, our good friend Byron graciously invited us to spend the week at his beach house in Yamba and on his farm in nearby Grafton. We had a big group of us, and really enjoyed hanging out on the beach, tubing on the river near his farm, and playing some beach cricket. His family was so nice, and they have a beautiful farm house with sugar cane and horses. It is looking likely that Byron will be spending a year or two in California starting this June, so it will be good to hang out with him in the United States upon our return as well. It was a great way to ring in 2009!

The gang on New Years!

Our Gracious Hosts, Byron's mom and pop

Matt and I about to do some Tubing!

Kersti and I before take off...

Sporting our impressive life jackets

Kersti pull starting the motor?

Kersti showing her lawn bowling form!

The group at dinner

Enjoying Yamba, with some dinner at the Bowls Club :) How Aussie. But can you beat the $2 wine?

Playing catch with a sand ball

Some beach cricket!

Enjoying the fireworks on the beach

Happy New Year!

Our host Byron, plus Tyler and Andrea

Our amazing meals!

Hanging out at the beach house

Australian Open

'The tennis', as it is called, started last week and we have been watching as much as possible. We think of ourselves as quite lucky to live in a town which hosts a grand slam. It's so EASY to head over and watch the matches... and if you're not at the courts, the matches are on every television around the city. So while picking up an afternoon coffee at the cafe downstairs in my office building, I can catch bits of the current matches.
We have made several trips down to watch the matches live, and we have caught some exciting, close matches. It is especially exciting when Aussies are involved, the Jelena Dokic match was a great one.
We have been extremely fortunate that a friend of ours was kind enough to invite us to watch the matches from the Corporate SuperBoxes two different nights. We have been able to sit with a big group of our friends in comfort. While it has been some late nights staying up for the matches, it has been well worth it!

The view from our comfortable Superbox

Kersti pointing out where she would have hit it

Briand and Peter, are generous hook-ups!

Deeply intent on the game

All smiles in the comfortable air con

Kersti on the way to the SuperBox

Out on the smaller courts, Marty Fish in action.

The man-giant Isner as part of the American doubles team, man is he intimidating on the court!

Beating the heat with a little wine and beer!

David Starting Med School in Newcastle

So Dave moved to Newcastle, England a couple weeks ago, and is already well under way starting Medical School. I know I would struggle with the Newcastle Winter, but I think he will really enjoy some snow after Florida. He says he is enjoying Newcastle, and is full on taking biochem, histo, physio, and the always exciting anatomy.
Good luck David!

Newcastle in the Winter

Shots & Planning

Bill has been working every day on our trip plans for Asia... we've received all the vaccines we're going to get (less the malaria pills we'll pick up before we leave). The typhoid made our arms quite sore, and Bill has had a mild reaction (flu like symptoms), but the doctor says, 'that means it's working!'. Bill got his shot one week before me, so this week I hopefully will have side effects to look forward to :)

The planning is really quite tough. We're constantly grappling with the trade-off between seeing more places or taking it slow. And other problems pop-up like, we thought we had our general travel route all mapped out, but then we decided to tweak it around so we could take fewer malaria pills! Things we hadn't even thought of.

And thank you to Christopher and Megan (and my dad) for sending me all your travel tips. It has been REALLY useful. And it also enables us to confidently skip the areas you didn't like. Once we have it pretty much sorted, we'll post the itinerary on the blog.

We hope everyone is sticking to their New Years Resolutions and enjoying 2009!

Byron Bay and New Years!

After meeting up at the Los Angeles airport, Kersti and I took the long flight back to Australia. We stopped in Melbourne for only five hours, just long enough to go home and repack for our trip north to Byron Bay!

We flew to the Gold Coast, then drove south to stay at our beautiful and remote resort in the Byron Hinterlands as an early celebration of our second anniversary. We were caught in a huge thunderstorm during the night drive to the resort, but Kersti did a great job in getting us there safely despite our obvious tiredness. The resort was set in the rainforest of Northern New South Wales, and the weather was fantastic. The next day, we made the short drive into Byron Bay. While crowded, we had a lovely time hiking up to the lighthouse and enjoyed lying out on the beach.

The next day we drove down to Yamba, where our gracious host Byron had generously opened his beach house to our friend for New Years. Yamba is a quiet beach town, in a gorgeous setting. There, we met our friends Tyler, Andrea, Sophie, Lisanne, and Matt, as well as Byron and his family (it was a touch crowded). We had a fantastic New Years, hanging out on the beach and watching fireworks. While I was up my usual antics, fortunately Kersti survived unscathed. We spent the next couple days hanging out on the beach, body surfing, diving off of the rocks, and taking a tinny up the river to see dolphins and kingfishers. We then sent to Byron’s family farm in nearby Grafton. Their house was a beautifully renovated farmhouse, and we spent the day on the river tubing and trying out wakeboarding.

Byron’s family was so welcoming, and we had a fabulous time. Byron will be heading to the States in June on a Fulbright, so hopefully we will get the chance to repay the favor and host him in the States at some point!

Byron Bay, not bad for a hippie hangout

Enjoying the sunshine in Byron Bay

The beach of Byron Bay, with the lighthouse in the distance.

Hiking up the lighthouse

The view from the hike.

A goanna

The trees overhead

It was an easy, if hot hike

We made it!

The storms rolled in very fast..

Hanging out by the pool at our resort

Kersti showing off her new swimsuit.

Kersti showing off her cut knee, a result of my throwing her in the pool...