Oz Again

So Saturday was another amazing day to continue one of the best weekends of my life. I went down to Paddy’s market which is essentially a large swap meet with cheap stuff and lots of produce. I got a sweet touristy beach towel and some comfy sweat pants. In the afternoon I took a train down to Sutherland with Josh and Jimmy to meet our friend Eywen. We want on this thirty minute bush, nature walk down this trail that I wouldn’t have noticed from the road. About fifteen to twenty minutes in, the path opened up onto the Woronora River, which was absolutely amazing. After another fifteen minutes of walking, we came up to his house.

We hung out there for a little while and then got ready to head out on the river. His backyard literally is on the river. Like if I kept walking through his backyard I would have fallen onto the water. So we took out some kayaks on river and began to paddle. We stopped several times along the river to relax and have some fun. At one of the places, we want rock climbing up to this ledge to look out on the river. I only feared for my life a couple of times, climbing up the face in just some board shorts. Unfortunately no one had a water proof camera because the view was picturesque. Later down the river, we put are kayaks on the shore and swam over to some rope swings. After some group and personal difficulties we had some good jumps.
The group headed back to the house for some playoff footy (rugby). We headed up to get some Indian food before hopping on the train and back to the dorms. We all realized how difficult it is to stay awake after kayaking for four hours because we all passed out back at the dorms within an hour.

The next day we woke up to find the rain pouring down. After beautiful clear skies and sunshine from Monday through Saturday, Sunday was a different story. This day, I headed over to Macquarie University for the New South Wales mixed regionals club tournament. Yeah that was a long name, but we did well. We were ranked seventh going into the tournament, and ended up getting fourth. The top three teams had their own tournament due to the time constraints and field space. So the team I played for (RuBi) went undefeated, winning five games in the day and getting the best place we could. I was stoked on the day because it was extremely windy and rainy all day, and to play as well as we did for never practicing together as a team, was quite encouraging. So this means that I will be traveling to Brisbane for the Australia mixed club nationals tournament in the middle of October. RuBi is going in ranked sixth in the nation, which is awesome to be able to say.

Monday was not as fun as a day because I had two essays due. One was 1,500 words and the other was 2,500 words. So it pretty much took all of my mental capacity to push out those two papers over the last week. I did complete them and turned them in on time, and I felt pretty solid about them. However it caused me to just lay around and be lazy all day yesterday which felt amazing.

That’s all for now. I am having the best time here in Australia. I do miss everyone back home and couldn’t be more grateful to my parents, hi mum and dad, for this opportunity. I hope all my friends traveling around the world are safe and hopefully give me an update soon. I’ll be back soon, but not too soon!

Cheers, Richard