Whoa, PHOTOS! :) This is just a tidbit of what I've been up to lately. Top pictures are from an AMAZING trip to Phillip Island to see the beach and the Little Penguins. There's a video, which might work, of my feet in the ocean. Totally nerdy, but I loved it.

Next are some Mom-requested pictures of the house and my room, which I had to clean up for about 20 minutes before I could take pictures. My bedroom walls are blue, and the rest of the house is paneled in lovely soft woods from Tasmania. It's beautiful. The outdoor picture is of our deck, and the table where we eat dinner or "tea" together every night. It's lovely to be out in the sunshine and the breeze, and have parrots in the trees just beyond.
The next pictures are from Loch Sport, where I went this past weekend to try sailing. It was super windy, and the kangaroos were even hiding! If you click the green picture, you'll see 2 roos in the distance facing off to defend their mob from me.

This Weekend Rocks!

Okay. I'm having major issues with this software, and the fact that it won't let me post pictures and put captions near them! Ahh! They're tiny on this page, but if you want to see them at 100%, click on them and they'll open up big.
Sorry it's been a while since I've updated, but I'll make up for it with a massive long update now, covering last weekend first.

Saturday:
Rock Concert! Care Factor Zero is a band made up of staff from here at Monty, including our principal (lead guitar and backup vocals), science department head (bagpipes and percussion), 7th grade coordinator (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), science and music teacher (lead female vocals, flute, saxophone, other random instruments as needed) and my "Australia Dad", Ian, the media teacher (keyboard and backup vocals). It was a great time, and everyone in the place was dancing and clapping and having a ball. I even got up and danced! It was awesome. In addition to being the journalist/photographer for the band, I also got to help with the complicated setup and tear-down process, so I felt like quite a groupie by the end. :)

Pictures:
1- The band's name/logo on the bass drum
2- A great old man that was jigging, swing dancing, and generally rockin' out hard core.
3- Ian on the keyboard
4- Cam on the bagpipes and Mel during a brief singing rest

Sunday:
Hanging Rock!!! This was probably the coolest geology I've ever seen up close and personal. Hanging Rock was a very slow-erupting volcano long ago. So slow, in fact, that the topmost lava cooled before it could flow over, creating a "plug", and stopping the volcanic flow. The giant bubble had a few different types of magma, mostly silica. It cooled and became rock, and some of the softer forms of rock were slowly eroded away, leaving giant pillars, caves, cracks, and towers still standing of the stronger rocks. These are perched resting against other rocks, which is where the name "Hanging Rock" came from.

Pictures-
1) This is a plant called "Lamb's Ear," and the leaves are honestly softer than any fabric that I've ever touched. It's amazing. It feels as soft as... well... a lamb's ear. Or the fur on a rabbit. They grow everywhere, and we picked a few leaves to dry our hands on after washing them.
2) One of the wild geckos that roam about in the rocky areas of AU. This one was "just a bub" as they say here, meaning that it was rather young, and really tiny. He was terrified, and we put him back in the grass right after this photo.
3) Here's one of many awesome trees we saw growing miraculously out of the rock. Wherever dust can catch in a crack, these trees take root and grow to beautiful heights.
4) I thought this looked like two cupped hands, and the formation you see in the background, straight through the gap, is called "Camel's Back", and is a well-known landmark.
5) More of the amazing towers and cliffs. Between the place I stood and the rocks beyond, there was about a 30 foot gap and a 50 foot drop. Spooky!
6) A very artsy picture of one of the bleached trees coming up from the rocks.
7) Another tree, coming through the rock. This one is actually breaking the rock apart as it grows. All throughout Hanging Rock, I was seeing tunnels about the diameter of my arm, and holes that perforated the rocks where no water or wind could have eroded them. I finally figured out that it was the trees that were "chewing" through the rocks like this.
8) The family, looking through an amazing gap at the beautiful farm country beyond
9) Annette, looking at one of the "hanging rocks" that give the place it's name.
10) I was about to sneeze, but here's a picture of us on top of the very summit.
11) Here's us in a really cool cavern that would've fit about 10 people.
12) Brandon and Ashley in a really cool rock. It was shaped like an upside-down bowl, resting lopsided on another rock. We were able to crawl under the bowl, and inside, and poke our heads out of the hole.
13) The boys in another cool little cavern.
14) All of us in a cave. It was hard to get to, but probably the coolest hideout I've ever been in. It made me want to unpack my bookshelf and move their for a vacation home!
15) Ashley's favorite spot in the entire park
16)Annette, coming through a crack in the rock about 100 yards high, as we came back down.
There was another picture of me, looking dreadful, sleeping after a day of being a mountain goat, but since it's my blog, I can choose to save myself that embarrassment. :)

Things are going great, but it's still too hot here!

Here at school

G'day everyone - just a quick update from here at school.
It's been "cold" here this week - in the low 20's (Celsius) which is between 60-70*F. It's funny to watch people bundle up and put on their coats and sweaters, when all of you back home would probably love to have a 45* day!
School's going great. I'm involved with two Year 10 classes now, a Biology/Psychology course in which one of the classes is starting with Psychology, and the other is starting with Evolutionary Biology. It should be a great experience. I've never been too great at Psychology, so thank goodness I have Brandon, the brilliant Psych major, at home!
My other classes are a Year 11 Biology course, a Year 12 Biology course, and a Year 9 Physical Science course. I love all the students here - they've got SO much energy! It's great!
My fellow teachers have all been wonderful to me, too. I'm going to put up just a few pictures of the staff here in the science office so you can see their happy faces. :) OH! We've also got two side-necked turtles here in the office, and I took a quick picture of them, too.

More Pictures

Blue-tongued skink!
Lazy roo...

It's a Dingo!


And a kangaroo!


Here are some more pictures from our zoo trip, just thought you'd like to see them!

The Loooong Update

Oh my! It's been a long time since I've had a chance to update, so here comes a similarly long entry on all the fun things that've been happening to me.

School started this week, and was awesome. I'll be teaching 7th grade, 10th grade Evolution, and 11th grade Ecology this term. It's going to be great! All the teachers I'm working with are wonderful, and they all have a great sense of humor and love their jobs. It's so amazing.

This week at school was just orientation, which they call their "Alpha Program." It's a time where kids are introduced to their schedules, set goals for the year, get all their paperwork and such done, and get used to being back in school. For me, it was a great chance to meet the other teachers, find my way around, and sort out all my requirements.

This weekend, though, was SO great. Friday after school, I went on a shopping trip downtown and found all the stuff to hook up internet for my computer downstairs. I wandered through all kinds of cool shops, where little Japanese ladies were selling silk scarves, and big old Aussie guys were selling fresh fruit and vegetables. It was awesome. It was also quite hot. SO, I bought a box of ice cream treats to take home, and headed for the train station. :) hehehe.... I forgot to check the train times, and just barely missed the train back home. The next one came about a half hour later, but I sat, with a rapidly-going-soggy box of ice cream treats, late for dinner... and I just had to eat 'em before they went gooey. So.. I had a few. Just a few! The rest are pretty much just refrozen blobs wrapped in paper with a popsicle stick somewhere in the middle now.

Saturday, I went to Ashley's first basketball game of the season. Those kids sure run their hearts out! It was great to be in the stands again - I haven't been to a basketball game since my little giant of a brother played in high school. After that, it was steamy-hot, and Ash was beat, so we headed for the nearest ice cream parlor. I had a humongous cone, the smallest on the menu, that had about half a tub of ice cream on it.

Then, we went to pick up Laurel in Bayswater, and headed for the beach! It was a beautiful day to go for a swim, and we arrived just as some of the crowds were dispersing. The waves were over a meter tall, and so much fun to crash through and be tossed by. It's a rather famous beach, called Brighton Beach, because of some adorable little bathhouses where rich people change into their swimsuits (which are called toggs here). We tried to body-surf in the huge waves, and splashed until we were nearly sick with salt water, and then combed the beach for shells and such. Afterward, we went to check out the famous bathhouses, and saw THREE different weddings taking place within about 100 meters of each other. :)

Okay.. so swimming, and then more ice cream, and then home, and dinner, and Laurel and I talking and laughing like only old roommates can do until late in the night....

Today! We went to the zoo!

Well, not really - it's Healesville Sanctuary, an open, natural-type preserve for native Australian animals. I finally got to see all the iconic Aussie critters up close! I was inches from a platypus! A platypus!!! It was way too hard to get good pictures from the water, but I took a picture of a brass statue of him, anyway.

I also saw WALLABIES!!! Lots and lots of wallabies. They were cute, they were cuddly, they were sleeping in the shade. Much like their older cousins, the kangaroos. I also saw KOALAS! And echidnas, the egg-laying mammals that resemble our porcupines. Anyway... it was an awesome day. Laurel and I had a blast with the family, and though it was hot and long, it was big pack of memories I'll never forget.

So, here are a stack of pictures, a poor representation of all the wonderful I got to see. More on Monday! -- Tracy

Australia Day Weekend

Hello everyone! Saturday was Australia Day here, and it's a celebration similar to our 4th of July back home. I had a lot of "firsts" this weekend, and it was a really great time.

Friday night, I arrived on the farm up past Shepparton, in Mid-Northern Victoria. It's quite a place! It's a dairy farm, but their farms are very different from those back home. First of all, the pastures (paddocks) are all lazer-leveled to be perfectly flat. Water is so scarce up there that they need the fields level so they can be periodically flooded through an irrigation system. It was an absolutely lovely drive up there. The gum trees form a sort of archway over the roads, and the Great Dividing Range separates Victoria into two major regions. The hills were high and lovely, and it was great to see the wide open country again.

(Above are pictures taken on the farm)

Saturday afternoon was SO hot, we had to go dunk in the Murray River to cool off. I didn't take a lot of pictures, though it was absolutely beautiful there, because I was too busy swimming and squirting water guns with the kids. Saturday evening, I got to help with the milking on the farm! It's so funny - I've lived in dairy farm country my whole life, and I had to come all the way out to Australia to do the milking. My family will be proud that I didn't get kicked once, wasn't squeamish, and milked about 50 cows myself. However, I was a little slow and clumsy at it. Thank goodness those cows were forgiving! After the milking, I attended my first Australian "barby" - barbeque. We had lamb and sausages and all sorts of yummy food, and I listened as they sang silly Australian songs about "Chasing Sheilas" and "My Boomerang Won't Come Back". It was a great time.

Sunday I got to go fishing! Members of the extended family took me all the way up to New South Wales, up in "the bush", or rougher country of Australia. I was constantly staring around, in absolute awe of that country. However, it was hotter than I think I've ever experienced. It was in the upper 30's, which is nearing 100* F. We found a nice shady spot on the river, but I still felt like at any moment I could just melt into a puddle of sunblock-coated goo. :P

The fish weren't biting too much, but one of my fishing buddies caught a tiny little cod, and a bit later, a tortoise!

We had a picnic lunch on the beach, and since the fish kept stealing my bait, I decided to put a bit of chicken from my sandwich onto the hook. Not five minutes later, I got a huge bite, and pulled in this beauty:

It's a Murray Cod, which can grow to 100 kg. Mine, at 53 cm long, wasn't even big enough to keep! It fought well, and it was a fun fish to catch, but we threw him back. Later, one of my 'fishing guides' caught a nice Golden Perch, which we did keep.

On the way home, exhausted and happily eating an ice cream treat, I saw my first Kangaroos! A small "mob" of them, about 7-8, were just feeding alongside the road, and we stopped to watch them hop away. They are really quite graceful animals, which I wasn't expecting, and they're rather small and timid. A bit further on, we saw 3 wild emu's as well! OH! And I forgot another first: as we were fishing, a fly flew up my nose and got stuck there. That was a first, and a very powerful sneeze!! :)

Back at the house, I watched a bit of a cricket match, and some Australian-Rules Football, which is called "Footy". Though I still don't understand either sport fully, they both look intense, and rather fun. I caught a beautiful sunset that night, though the picture doesn't do it justice.

It was a wonderful weekend. Absolutely great. The country is actually way more fun than the city. :) I got to meet a real Australian stock horse, I got to see my first kangaroos, catch an enormous fish, get just a little tiny bit sunburned (don't worry Mom!), and most importantly, I met some really great people.

More later- for now I have some unpacking and laundry to take care of. Miss you all!