Australia Trip: Update (continued)

...

In the last couple of months of 2009; whenever I wasn’t in the office at Surfing Australia, I was getting up to a heap of other fun stuff. I went camping to places like Lake Moogerah, Noosa North Shore, Byron Bay, The Great Ocean Road, and Austinville. I went surfing to countless surf spots on the east coast from Noosa to Cronulla and scored awesome waves! I went to a cricket match in Brissy, to a footy match in Canberra and to see the V8 supercars in Ipswich (all awesome events). Moreover, I was invited to heaps of Aussie Barbies by friends and other kinds of gatherings!

I was also invited to schools and churches to speak about my life in Mision Mexico in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney. I went to weddings and birthday parties. I went to Christian Surfers comps, to those I actually went in as a competitor and quite funnily and predictable didn’t make it past the first round in any of them. I went to Maryborough and Gympie, Geelong, Melbourne and Torquay where I visited friends and extended family! I can safely say that I know my way around the Gold Coast now, and yes I did get lost a ridiculous number of times but that’s just showed me that all roads lead home or at least most of them do. It was quite challenging getting used to driving on the other side of the road, but it is something I am proud to say that with time and patience I have been able to master!

During this trip there has been a first time for a lot of things in my life, things I never thought I would ever be able to see or to do! One of those things was my trip to the snow back in the first week of September 09. It was one of my many unique experiences during this trip; I had never seen before in my short living, and it was surely nothing like I expected even though honestly I didn’t know what to expect! It was Dad, Rohan (my brother from another mother ....and father.) and Debs, we also had Uncle Mark come over for a day (mum’s brother), I seriously couldn’t think of a better bunch to have there with me! The main goal was to snowboard as much as we possibly could each day, which meant, getting to the lifts at 9 am on the dot and heading home around 4 pm (in snowboarding time that is a long day).

Dad and Rohan had obviously done this before, and Debs and I, well, I had my surfing skills and Debs had her hopes. The place displayed one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen, it was the sort of thing I had only seen in movies and always thought of as surreal, so for a while I just stood there in awe, just appreciating the beautiful landscapes by which I was surrounded.

Once the whole pretty scene thing sank in, I knew I had yet another challenge in front of me: snowboarding! All geared up, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task, and therefore it was great having Rohan and Dad there with me; they told me how it all worked and were extremely patient with me. I don’t think it took long for it to click so before I knew it I was on my way down the slopes on my own with a lot of speed, speed that I didn’t know what to do with. Dad and Rohan were stylishly gliding down the slopes using their speed to steer their boards, and just flying down the line. I was going nowhere as fast as they were but surely loved it as much as they did. I had a few accidents, one of which I nearly ended in tears (yup it hurts when you land on your bum on dry ice) but at the end of the day it was all fun! Those were five days of snowboarding every single day, improving little by little, with each day just finishing really tired and wondering whether I would have the strength to do it all over again the next day. And each new day I'd get up realising that that was all I wanted to do ....I was hooked!

On the last day we had snowfall and I must admit it was the most magical thing I’ve ever witnessed. I remember sitting on the lift and being fully covered by snow as we were on our way up. It was so beautiful! All I could think was how great God is and how He created all these things perfect and how He has given us the opportunity to somehow enjoy and appreciate them. It was definitely a great experience and one that I have surely ticked off my bucket list, and that I would happily do again!

...