Pre-Travel Festivities -Dec 27th-Jan 1st

Schools out for the summer and farming chores have come to an end..well, this celebration of holidays began over a week ago so let me catch you up on what we have been up to since we now have all this (wonderful) free time on our hands!

We started our Aussie adventure mainly because I wanted to gain full hands on experience as a teacher...and even better a fully qualified, paid, fully responsible, lesson plan all night long teacher. As the job hunt for teachers is significantly low in Ontario I felt coming here would be an amazing oppourtunity to jump start my career. And what a boost it gave me! As I have mentioned several times I worked very hard over the past few months and feel very comfortable on who I am as a teacher. I plan to come home and show this confidence in job hunting (keeping fingers crossed here!) Mark was very supportive in this decision to come here and it also benefited himself as he learned more about farm managment, breeding, and different ways of doing things. But we also thought this would be an amazing oppourtunity to travel, try new foods, see new things, and enjoy this time together as we both know we will never have the oppourtunty to do this again.

So with all the hard work done were off to complete the second part of our mission- travel!  In our last post you saw us celebrating Christmas, Aussie style with shrimp-on-the- barbie and all! Our trip to New Zealand was to begin on January second so in the meantime, a day after Christmas we left for Lakes Entrance- a beach town along the coast- it reminds Mark and I of Grand Bend only just a bit bigger.

• On Dec  27th we arrived in Lakes Entrance with our campervan that Mark and I purchased(complete with bed and kitchen) and set up for the night. We arrived late so we had gone to bed. 
• Wed Dec 28th- We met with Dave and his family at Lakes Entrance. Have a mentioned Dave yet? I dont believe we have mentioned him unfortunatly. Dave is the brother to Steve (who is Mark's boss) Dave and Mark became really good mates while we have lived in Aussie and we often hung out with him and his family. His partner's name is Donna and she has two daughters, Kaitlyn(15) and Eryn (12). It has been really great getting to know them since we have been here! 
• Thurs Dec 29th- Mini golfing, ice-cream, and beach time in Lakes with Dave, Kait, and Eryn. 
• Fri Dec 30th- Camping on the beach at Lake Bunga (right outside Lakes) 
• Sat Dec 31st- Drive to New South Wales to camp at Eden- a wonderful spot along the coast. 
• New Years Night- Lakes Entrance with Amanda!
• Jan 1st- Goodbye (for now) Barbeque at Dave and Donna's house, then off to Melbourne 

It was quite interesting living out of a small campervan for a few days..We have now been forced to travel with a limited supply of clothing, wash up in cold water, do laundry at little old laundromats when passing through a town, continuously have bug spray on, and of course resorting to the good ol' nature pee.