Sunday, 26 July, 2015

Another week of much the same as last week.

Dad's course continued to go well and he continued to ace the course exams.  He has one more week of theory before he begins the practical component of the course.  We are enjoying our two housemates here with us - they are both instructors with QAC - Niles is teaching this course and Garth is taking the course like Dad is.

Garth, Dad and Niles

I continued on with learning Auslan (Australian sign language), learning piano (played 'Oh When The Saints Go Marching In' this week), knitting (working on a doll's sweater), reading (another whodunit) and scripture reading (Sunday school lesson and Book of Mormon study).

Yesterday, Dad and I decided to spend the afternoon doing some geocaching.  We were able to find half of the ones we tried.  We are newbies in this adventure and that's likely why we had some trouble finding some of the caches.  There is usually a hint given if you can't find a cache, but sometimes the hints are obscure and really aren't helpful.

 house beside the path we walked along to get to our first geocache

 cricket game being played in the field beside the path we walked along to get to the geocache

 geocache find under the bridge

 view from the top of the hill where we found the geocache

 Dad holding the gps searching for our next geocache

 Me standing behind a wooden sculpture in the park near a geocache

 galahs on the field near a geocache

Geocache we found - it was 'in the open, but camouflaged' - someone had taken a piece of a small log and screwed the top of a container to the underside of the log and then dug a hole for the container to hide under the log - thus, out in the open as it looked like a piece of a tree, but camouflaged as it really wasn't part of the 'real' environment - an amazing creative idea

This morning, Dad dropped me off at the train station and I took the train to Wagga.  It took four hours and was really relaxing.  The seats were comfortable and there was a buffet car where I was able to buy lunch.  When I got to Wagga, I decided to walk to Auntie Norma and Uncle Les' house since I had been sitting for four hours.  The weather was cool in Wagga and the walk took just over an hour, but it was a good walk.  It was nice to see Auntie Norma and Uncle Les again.  Auntie Norma is 84 and Uncle Les is 88 and their age is starting to show.  They are still in their own home, though, and still doing their own cooking and cleaning.  My cousin, Rosie, came in from Sydney today and came over this afternoon for a catch-up before heading to her hotel.  We are both excited about doing some family history this week and I am looking forward to learning more about Auntie Norma's life growing up in Wagga which will help me when I start writing Poppy's life story.