New Year

I haven't written in a while because life has actually been fairly normal for me. During the week between Christmas and New Year, Brian worked days and I just cruised around the countryside. He was given a reprieve from the fire towers so was working more normal hours, but is back on the towers this week for a couple of days. I have been running a bit which feels really good but has underlined how sedintary I have become since leaving Bhutan. I'm hoping to get a bit more regular exercise in over the next few weeks.

I managed to hit some post-Christmas sales and am getting pretty comfortable with driving on the wrong side of the road. I have also pretty much mastered the round-about so can get from point A to point B without too many people honking at me.

Brian has been an awesome host and is spending all his spare time touring me around. He works for the parks so is a virtual fountain of knowledge regarding the local flora and fauna. I'm seeing all kinds of interesting animals and plants that we don't have at home - the parks are absolutely beautiful and quite people-free. Yesterday we went to the Melbourne water catchment which is closed to the public and we drove around all day without seeing a soul. I got to see a platypus in its natural environment, which was very cool. I also saw the biggest tree in Australia which totally excites Brian every time he sees it. Men and their size issues again :-).

We had a busy weekend with the kids and managed to get in a visit to a wildlife sanctuary on Sunday. They house lots of native animals and do a really interesting birds of prey demonstration. We had a great day, but the kids really wore us both out this weekend (Brian more than me) so we ended up falling asleep in front of the TV that evening. We woke up just in time to count down the new year and have a toast at midnight. God, we sound like an old married couple, don't we? Brian reckons that my blog has become extremely boring since I arrived here, but the reality is that it's really nice to just be living a somewhat normal existance for a couple of weeks. Doing dishes and picking up groceries are novelty for me now and it's an absolute dream to be able to shuffle to the fridge in my jammies for a glass of juice in the morning.

Tomorrow I'm heading into Melbourne to meet up with a friend of mine from Ottawa who is also traveling in Australia. His name is also Brian (the third in my collection) and is not be confused with either the British soldier or the Australian fire-fighter. I met Brian from Ottawa when we worked together at AT&T. He's been diving up north on the Great Barrier Reef for the last few weeks. We'll spend a couple of days in the city and then drive out along the Great Ocean Road. I'll post again as we go.