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July 04, 2004
Australia-bound!
Well, this is my very last post that I will make from the United States of America in 2004! My bags are packed, and I'm ready to head to the airport in the morning! Here's a brief summary of what I've been up to during my last few days here in Wisconsin.
Wednesday was pretty much spent sorting through all the stuff I'd moved home from college, and putting into boxes down in the basement what I knew for sure that I wasn't gonna try to take with me to Australia. Thursday I actually started the packing process a little bit. Thursday night my parents friends Bruce and Joan and their daughter and son-in-law Alison and James stayed overnight at our house. Bruce & Joan have been pastoring a small church in western Minnesota for four years, but will be returning to their home a couple hours east of Melbourne in August. James is a youth pastor, and he and Alison live in a suburb of Melbourne, just a half hour from Monash University! So I'll be seeing quite a bit of them while I'm down there, going to church with them and the like. It'll be so nice having someone down there that I'll know, and that is willing to show me around down there, and perhaps even willing to take me to a few Aussie rules football matches!
Friday the 2nd I was busily preparing for several of my friends that were coming over. Mike came at around 2pm, and we bummed around a bit before people got here; I even taught him how to drive a stick finally! On our way back through Cumberland from his house, we happened to see Dave, Megan and their friend Dan walking down Main Street, so we pulled over and surprised them a bit. :-) Then we all walked down to the grocery store to get some stuff, and on the way back we saw Brendan & John stopped at the four corners. What luck! So we all got to my house around 5:30 or 6, and Jolene showed up by 6:30 I think. We wanted to go swimming, but the swimming raft needed some pretty major repairs before we could put it out on the lake, oh well. At least we got it out there by 8 so that some of us could go for a swim. Meanwhile Dan caught a very nice 26.5" northern, and I think they caught another northern a bit closer to dark (they grilled the fish for supper, Dave wasn't gonna eat anything if they didn't catch anything, hehe). Andrew and Amanda showed up too, right before our late supper of grilled brats from Louie's. Mmmmmm...
Dave, Megan, Dan, Patrick and Lew all left a bit after supper for Dave and Megan's cabin up by Siren, and Andrew and Amanda left a bit later. That left Mike, John, Jolene, Brendan and myself to go down, make a fire, tell stories and just hang out for quite awhile. It was a blast. Mike and my GAC physics friends seemed to get along really well, which made me glad. He and Jolene seemed to get along especially well too. ;-) Brendan went to bed around 3, and Kevin finally showed up around 3:30. He could only stay for 15-20 minutes though. :-( Mike and I were wishing he would've been here for most of the night, but at least he showed up, I guess that's what counts. But the remaining four of us were up till after 4:30, hehe. Definitely a night well spent. :-) We all rolled out of bed around 10 this morning for a late breakfast/brunch, and then everyone left between 1 and 2. That's when it really started setting in that I was about to leave for six months, when people started leaving, starting with Mike... I'm gonna miss everyone so much, but I know I'll be able to see everyone again before I know it.
After everyone left I ran over to the bank in Rice Lake to get some traveler's checks, and then it was time to resume packing (sigh). That's basically what I was doing most of the afternoon and evening, apart from an hour tonight when Kevin actually stopped by! He gave me one of his senior pictures, and I burned him a couple CD's. We played a few games of pool while we were waiting for the CD's; he won the first two, but then I won the last two! Kevin's extremely competitive, so losing to me even once was a bit hard for him to take, hehe. But I finally beat Kevin in pool! Woohoo!
At some point I'll get around to posting some photos from this weekend's activities, but I don't have time to do so before I leave. My flight leaves Minneapolis at 11:22am, so we have to be driving out of here by 7, in order to get to the airport by 9. I won't get a chance to post to my blog again until I'm in Australia, most likely not until after we're done with our week of IFSA orientation and finally arrive at Monash for another week of orientation there on July 11. I'll try to email everyone once I get internet access again with my address, dorm phone number and cell phone number. If you'd like to be included on my emails from Australia list, just drop me a line to my GAC email account, I'll check that one frequently the entire time I'm in Australia. Well I better get some sleep now. I hope I didn't forget anything in my bags. I'm gonna miss you all! See you in 2005!
Posted by Jared at July 4, 2004 12:53 AM