As most of you probably know by now, I've been away for the last few weeks. If you want me to go into more detail about it, with the course I'm doing we need to have some sort of experience with people of another culture. So for 2 weeks we went to an aboriginal community in the Queensland Outback and really helped out where ever was needed. We did teacher-aide work, ran an after-school program, cleaned up the school, and built relationships with the community. If you don't want to know more about it, then unread the last couple of sentences.
The trip was a whole lot of fun. Not only was it great gaining experience working with Aboriginal children, it was a good time to get to know lots of really awesome people from my course. To the right is a photo of the entire Dajarra Primary School and our group. The fact that I'm already incredibly white because I never get out combined with all the dark people in the photo makes me look like a ghost. I love especially Shontelle, the girl in the front hugging Brendon, and Sharndon, the first grader in the front with the awesome hair.While I was in Dajarra, it was my 19th birthday. It was one of my best birthdays to date. Without me even knowing, all the others guys in my group managed to bake me a birthday cake and we had a mini-party. Also, the kids found out it was my birthday so they spent the day singing (yelling?) happy birthday to me whenever they saw me. It was really nice having other people getting excited about my birthday instead of me trying to get everyone else excited about it.
When I got back from my trip, my mum gave me a gift which you can see the to the left. It's a photo of my baptism in a nice photo frame which says "Confirmed in Christ". I was baptised on Easter Sunday of this year, for your information.This is the loveliest gift I've ever recieved. My family are all not religious, so it means a lot to me that they'd recognise such an important step in my faith and frame it for me. It still makes me smile every time I look at it as much as I did when they gave it to me.
Anyway, I have to do an assignment on the cross-cultural trip and it's due on Friday. But I leave for Melbourne on Thursday, so I have to get it done by Wednesday, which is tomorrow. Suddenly you see why I'm here. That's right, procrastination strikes again.
True, I need to submit it online and therefore could do it while down in Melbourne. But honestly, who wants to be cooped up writing an assignment when they could be hanging out with internet-famous celebrities? Me, obviously.
Seeing as I've just mentioned it, I may as well dive into it. This weekend in Melbourne there's a Nerdfighter gathering and a Meet & Greet John Green/Reading of Paper Towns. If you can make it, come along! It's going to be a fun time full of camera-rocking nerd jokes and awesome.
Unfortunately for me, I won't be able to attend the Nerdfighter gathering on Saturday even though I'll be in the state. The original reason I was going down to Melbourne was because my church wanted me to go to this conference thing, which is on the Friday/Saturday. It's just convenient that John Green is in town that weekend. But I'll definitely be there on the Sunday and I'm sticking around until Tuesday. Let me know somehow if you want to catch up.
In unrelated news, the other night I bought the Midnight Juggernaut's album Dystopia from iTunes. I downloaded it based off two songs I had heard which I liked, a friend telling me it was 'good', and a little incling that told me it'd be worth the risk. I was a little nervous because the last album I bought of iTunes for the same reasons (Plans, by Death Cab for Cutie) was quite average and I didn't want to waste my money. (luckily, I bought Plans off a voucher I was given so technically didn't waste any money. It's an alright album, don't get me wrong, but I think it relies to heavily on I Will Follow You Into the Dark to make it a good album.)Dystopia completely blew me away from the very first listen. It's totally amazing and worth buying. It's their only album to date, but when they release another I will be getting it, no doubt. Highly reccomended. Really digging Shadows, Twenty Thousand Leagues and the two songs I had heard previous to buying it, Road to Recovery and Into the Galaxy.
That's all from me, I'll get back to doing my assignment. Ugh. :)
