March 10th

Work is fantastic! We are currently in the wonderful town of Echuca, Victoria
setting up for another horse race. Being sent up here means that we get a "Living Away Allowance" and we've been put up in a motel by the company!!! So not only do we make more per a day but we live for free in a really nice motel.

It's been really really hard.

Funny story, although it didn't start out that way. You know our "super angry-all-the-time" boss? Well, we were sent up with him. Just Jordan, myself and ol' rock ashborn. And in order to get up here I had to drive a 3-ton truck loaded with chairs, standard (manual) and on the wrong side of the road through melbourne, a large city of 4.4 million people. Up to this point I had let Jordan drive the whole time we've been here........ So that was really fun and nerve wracking!!! Jordan was navigating and decided to take a "shortcut" which saved us a whole lot of being an hour late. So the boss wasn't happy about it. (really? yeah.) And then he was mad all day, and mentioned how we were staying with him because the boss wanted to save some money on not having to put us up in a hotel because Rock has a Caravan here. When I found out I was upset for his sake and not really too enthused about the prospect of staying with him for 6 days. So I called our boss and said that Rock wasn't happy about it and we didn't want to put him out. so they set us up in a motel. Sweet.
The funny thing is as soon as rock called it quits for the day, he was all friendly to us and we had a good chat for 20 mins or so.
The next morning at Smoko he was fired over the phone and that was the last we've seen of him. I think we are local heroes back at the company..........
So anyway, they sent up another guy to be our supervisor, his name is Travis and he's one cool dude!! Used to be a rock star here in victoria, has a couple of albums recorded and a music video! It's been cool hanging out with him!

We’re here to till tuesday and then we go back to Melbourne for a bit and we’ll catch up with our German friends and the Mexican!!

Peace and Blessings friends!!

March 2-8th

So working in the factory isn't as much fun at setting up but it is still sweet to be working!! The best part so far is that at our campsite we met some more Backpackers:
Sabastian from Mexico City
Bejamine from central Germany
Janne from Northern Germany
Judith from Southern Germany and
Kris and her daughter Ida fro somewhere in Germany

so needless to say I am learning some German. All of us have camped out on one site to make it super cheap so stay and it's been a blast!!! We play Yatzee everynight. I even won once!!

On sunday we went to the Melbourne Worship Centre and took Sabatian with us, and it was great. The service was pretty charismatic (Assembly of God) and the Worship (musically) was probably the best I've heard. I think there was a lot of relavent stuff in the sermon for Sabatian to hear and we've had some good convosations with our new friends, so pray for them and us as we try to live the word of Christ and speak it into their lives.

When we come back from Tasmania we are going to pick Sabatian up and he will travel with us for awhile, so we are looking forward to that! It just so happens that he used to be a surf instructor in California for 4 years......... interesting.....

well we get sent off to echuca this week, we'll let you know what goes down next......

Peace and blessings!!!

Feb 26th (posted a little late, I know)

So we have worked, and BOY have we worked HARD!! Our first day on the job involved heat of 37 in the shade and close to 50 in the sun, too hot for sissy Canadians like ourselves. at least everyone else was struggling with the heat so we knocked off early.

So the 411 on the job. we are now working for a company called “No Fuss Events” as casual laborers. We were told to show up at the Yea racetrack. (yes the town is called Yea, it’s in victoria.... odd) so we did and were put to work right away. Our boss is a guy that goes by the name of Rock Ashborn and is the most angry person I have ever met. I think oxygen makes him angry. He didn’t even talk to us until our first coffee break (which is called smoko probably because everyone but ourselves and one younger fella smokes about 5 cigs in the 20 minute break). We found out today after working with this crew that half of them are ex-criminals. A couple of them have the hardcore prison tattoos and are the roughest bunch of guys I have ever known. They’re all pretty cool except for the boss-guy who I guess used to rob banks and other drug dealers..... and most likely killed a few in the process.......

So the job is setting up Marquis (or tents) for big events. The work is hard but good. We’re outdoors for the most part, getting exercise and paid (which is fantastic. We get 17.80/hour so that is nice) The best of the job so far was after working for these guys for two days we were told to be on standby at the actual event so we could help in anyway that was needed. So we showed up and helped the local Catholic church with the big meal which got us free food, drinks and coffee and dessert.....Lovely. So we directed parking and scrubbed dishes. Also saturday night before the boss guy left he told us that if we needed the forklift we could use it (neither of us has driven one before) so from inside his car he gave us the 30 second lesson on how to drive and told us to practice a bit before trying to do anything. So, did I play on it you ask? Heck Yeah!! At 5:30 on sunday boss guy showed up and then we worked another 3.5 hours on top of the 9.5 that we had already done, so it was a long day but a lot of fun and sweat and hard work. Just what the doctor ordered.

Now we are currently on the road heading to an area of Melbourne to go to the factory of No Fuss and do cleaning and stuff. No idea really but I guess we’ll find out when we get there.
Oh yeah, if any of you are every in the town of Yea and looking for a place to stay we highly recommend the Yea Family Caravan Park because it has the best prices and good facilities and friendly staff. YAH Yea Family Caravan Park!!

I also finally caught a fish that is worth mentioning. It was a 4 pound carp. Funny story... well maybe not too funny for you, but I think it is worth a chuckle or two. So I got back from work and Jordan went off to do something or ruther and so I decided to do some fishing off the bank of our campsite. So I tossed in a hand-line with some white bread as bait and waited maybe 20 minutes or so before leaving. Now i normally have the patience to fish for hours, especially flyfishing, but this water looked like one of the puddles in a farmers field, so I thought it was unlikely to get much action. As soon as I left my line I hear a SPLOOSH and look to see my line swimming up the “current” very quickly so I run to grab the line and find that it’s been snagged on one of the many trees in this swamp of a river. great. I see a decent size fish surface trying to roll of the hook so i figure that I need to act quick. So I crossed the rive via some dead fall so i could tug on the line from the other side, really I was just putting off the inevitable. So after futile tugging I did what I had to do. I got in the water. It’s all on video too.... I was a bit of a sissy. I couldn’t see my hand under 2 inches of the “soup” so after inching my way out to my line I untangle it to find that the fish broke my line. Of course. 20 pound Monofilament breaks easy right? So now I know there’s fish in there and that they do eat white bread so I grabbed another hand-line and tossed it in. Within 30 seconds BAM I get a hit and once again my line goes ripping upstream towards the nearest tree, but this time I stopped it and dragged it in. I was surprised and impressed with the fight that a carp can give.

And I was also very happy to have caught something bigger than my bait.