Some Holiday Amidst the Working

The past few weeks have been busy and stressful at work. The school where I am teaching is now seeing record numbers of students coming in. I guess it's good for job security, but having my all classes filled beyond the maximum amount has been interesting. Despite all of this, I try to find time to do some fun things on the weekends and holidays. Some friends invited me to see some of the amusement parks down on the Gold Coast and we had a lot of fun at Dreamworld.

I realized I was getting older, though, when I got motion sick on some of the rides. I guess it is bound to happen someday . . . .

For Easter weekend I wanted to go down the coast to Byron Bay but there was a music festival and everywhere had been sold out for months. So I booked a tour out to Moreton Island, one of the islands closer to Brisbane. There was a bad oil spill here a few weeks ago, but we went to the clean side and I got to snorkel around some ship wrecks.

It was eerie being around large sunken ships and the guide kept warning us about rust, barnacles, poisonous fish, and more poisonous fish. Nobody said anything about sharks, but there were rumors that there had been some shark problems a few weeks earlier. After we got our fill of swimming we took some 4wheel drive vehicles to the interior of the island where there were large sand dunes. I got to try my hand at some sandboarding. It was great fun except when I hit a bump and got a mouthful of sand. Sand doesn't melt in your mouth the way snow does. After a few more weeks of work another holiday came along. ANZAC Day commemorates the battle of Gallipoli on the 25th of April 1915 and honors all who are part of the Australia New Zealand Army Corps. My roommates and I woke up early for the dawn service in the city at ANZAC Square.

Afterwards we had a big YSA breakfast and then walked through the botanical gardens.
Some of the trees in the gardens were really beautiful in the morning sun.

And so life goes on and I continue to wonder how long I'll be here before I decide to move on to the next place. Until then here's a little picture of the Brisbane Temple, just next to the building where the YSA ward meets.