I am sure at this point you are thinking this must have been an uneventful week, but it was actually a pretty busy week! I'm now behind in some of my favourite TV shows because there is no time to watch them!
It all started pretty usual with a Young Men and Young Women combined mutual activity. We played loads of different games from hitting balls with fur tails, popping balloons tied to our ankles, and trying to tag people with clips. Although we had only one young men and three young women, it was a blast! Unfortunately, the videos are too big too load.
An extra bonus at mutual was that a young woman, Samantha, who hasn't been in church for a while showed up. It was the first time I had seen her at an activity and we were glad to have her there. I found out she really liked Wii games and invited her over to play the next day.
The next morning I had to get up at 5 am so I could get ready and leave to Taronga Zoo to set up our audio and video recording equipment. I met Tim there and all went well although the tigers still hissed at Tim.
On the way back he needed to stop at his flying fox camp and I got to see thousands of flying foxes hanging from the trees! So cool!
That evening Samantha came over and we played Just Dance and watched Girls Just Want to Have Fun. She is allergic to cats so for the beginning I just kept Shade locked in a room, but I let him out halfway through the movie because he was whining. I then learned that Samantha isn't just allergic, but actually deathly afraid of cats. Her anxiety level increased just when Shade would look at her, come near, or sniff her stuff. Although I tried to tell her just to calm down and Shade would settle down, it was just too much for her and I ended up walking her to the bus stop. Samantha struggled to understand why I couldn't just lock Shade up the whole time. I'm hoping that we will still be able to spend time together in the future, but perhaps not often at home since there is a vicious beast around :).
The following day we had dinner with the sister missionaries and I made a meal that wiped out my calories for the day. We had caramelised salmon (recipe from my mom) with rice and veggies and cookies and cream ice cream for dessert. It was tasty and even Matt didn't mind the salmon! I don't think it will be a regular meal though as salmon is so expensive and the sugar puts me way over my calories.
Shortly after that I had to meet with the Young Women presidency - Cate and Racheal so we could talk about our girls and our plans for an upcoming camp. Our original plan of going to the beach tanked, and we decided on a fun slumber party with service and activities the following day. I'm excited and we are only a few weeks away!
Friday I had another all-day workshop on graphing and plotting in the R statistical program. The most interesting thing though was I got an e-mail from Mogo Zoo down South that they are wanting to participate in the study! They also specifically asked to have a staff be a co-author in the paper which I found very odd since only those that have provided significant input to the study are authors and I struggle to see what any zoo staff member could provide at this stage. We'll see - maybe they want to write my thesis for me?
When I got home that day the elders were there and Matt was cooking dinner. Although we hadn't planned anything with the elders beforehand I was glad we always have hamburgers or something to share!
All of the really eventful stuff happened on Saturday. I missed my morning run with Cate as Matt and I had slept through my alarm, the texts from Cate, and a couple other notifications on my phone. We must have really needed the sleep. So to get my workout I jogged to the church for the soccer game with Matt and some of the other members. Being the only girl and the 11th player I decided to do some workouts outside instead. The boys had a blast though and I at least got to play a little at the end when others left.
After that Matt and I went to Taronga zoo so I could pick up the SD cards from my equipment. Naturally, we decided to stay and look around. We've already seen pretty much everything so we wandered and saw some adorable seals and penguins. The New Zealand penguin shown below is actually the only one of it's kind in captivity.
The last thing we did was visit the new Lemur walk where you walk through the lemur habitat! They are so cute and it is awesome to see them just walk right in front of you without a care in the world. It also provides awesome photo opportunities.
After the zoo and a mini-nap in the car, we headed off to Gordon, NSW where Tim had told me about a bat event going on. We got to see how incredibly cute grey headed flying foxes are up close. Unfortunately only those vaccinated for a specific disease carried by some bats can hold them, but I got plenty of pics with Tim and his babies. After some presentations we headed to the bridge where 20,000 flying foxes nearby fly over to get food. It only takes about 20 minutes for all of them to have left the nearby camp and it was such an amazing sight! It was dark so my pictures don't do it justice.
After our eventful weekend we got to relax the next morning and enjoy church meetings. Since I also conduct the choir right after church I have started getting up early on Sunday to cook a special treat for choir. I've started listening to October's General Conference while I cook and it has really helped me to enjoy my Sunday mornings! I'm hoping to listen to all of the last conference before the next one which we will watch April 12-13 here in Australia.
So its back to regular life starting with FHE with Brock & Kaytlin last night. This week I need to go through all the audio and video files from Taronga Zoo to see what I have and hopefully I got something of the big tiger fight that happened last Friday. I have great news from Matt who after posting an add on gumtree (Australia's craigslist) got called last night for a painting job! He just texted me this morning saying it might take a few days to so all is well for a little while!
I hope all have a great week and for those in the US that you enjoy conference this weekend!
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