Last production in the land down under

You probably remember from a blog post way back in August that I've been part of a musical called "Honk!" Ze story of le ugly duckling. Je played mother duck. Well after a month and a half of intense rehearsals we put on the production last weekend. It went marvellously. From the hundreds of photos everyone took (no joke), I narrowed it down to five that I wanted to post up here. Mainly because each post only allows five photos to be put up.

This first one is from rehearsals. It's near the end of the play where I've been searching for my son, referred to as just "Ugly", for almost a year. We all get caught in a blizzard. At the end of which I find Ugly burried underneath a pile of snow, frozen to death. Or at least I THINK he's frozen to death. Sorry for ruining the story for those of you who didn't know it. I'm was trying to cry here. Is it convincing? I thought I did a damn good job. My flatmate Tomo came to watch my performance. I made him cry! Boo. Yaa.

After the show. The actors are rushing back to the dressing room to get changed so that they can run into the lobby and bask in their glory while everyone tells them how good they were in the show.

Our director and musical director giving us notes (what we did well and what could be improved upon) after the first performance on Friday night.

I was trying to get a photo of me and my husband (Drake the papa duck). But my son decided to jump into the photo. Kinda looks like they're fighting over me. They probably weren't...I'm just full of it.

Me and my baby, Ugly.

It's getting hot in herre

It is only spring and the weather forecast website says that the "fire danger" in the greater Sydney region is "high." Today the temperature outside is 38 and inside my room I just watched it go from 29 to 31.5 degrees. I whipped out my super duper fan and tucked away my mini heater. My feet are sweating. How I'm going to travel up north next month, I do not know.


Courtesy of Aussie cartoonist John Ditchburn.

Vet students sure know how to live it up

This weekend I went camping with around 300 students from the veterinary science program at my uni. Nadia's in the vet program so she invited me along to their annual camping trip. Getting there was an adventure all on its own. We had to drive form Sydney to Camden while completing a photo scavenger hunt. We pulled up to the uni that morning at 9, dressed up in a common theme as well has having our car and truck decked out. You see, each group was also competing for the "best dressed" prize. Our theme was "cows." We painted our two cars black and white, and strapped a paper maché horn, utter, and tail onto one of the cars.

As you can probably guess, we got a few stares from padestrians while driving around town completing the scanvenger hunt. We wore matching white tank tops. On the back of the tops we spray painted (in black) the words "team moo" and in the front we got individual names. Nadia and I got "moo eh" since we were the token Canadians on the team. By the time we got to Camden it was midday and boiling hot. Here we are, half the team trying to put the tents up while the other half scrubbing the black paint off the vehicles.


The games they had prepared for us...man. Here's are two teams playing egg netball. Netball is an aussie sport. It is basically basketball without the dribbling and without the backboard. Here we are playing not with basketballs, but eggs. A few cracked.

There is no proper name for this. Two people on a log trying to knock each other out with those long foamy thingies. That's as good as my explanation is going to get. The theme of the weekend, picked by the graduating fourth year students, was "lube." So they incorporated lube into everything. This log here has been slathered with lube. There was also lube wrestling earlier in the afternoon. Vet students are on crack.

A game of volleyball in a pool of mud.

Vet students are so odd! But I love them anyway. This is a guy with a drench gun. A drench gun is what vets use to vaccinate large animals because using syringes just isn't effective. So vets use this squirt gun attached to a bag filled with the vaccination. They just squirt the vaccination into cows' and horses' mouths. Except during this weekend the drench gun was used to squirt alcoholic beverages into students' mouths. Stop stressing guys. I only took two shots. I had planned to actually enjoy my weekend and remember things.

Oh spring break, you left us too soon

Tomorrow is the last day of spring break. No more breaks until...well until this semester is over. Eeek! But it's been a blast. Last weekend I hopped on a greyhound and went to Canberra (the capital of Australia) and spent the weekend with my friend Kimberley. I met Kimberley in Vancouver three summers ago when she flew over to volunteer as an intern at one of the Urban Promise summer day camps. On Saturday night we went out for dinner to celebrate Kim's birthday. She turned 22. During dinner Kim and I realized that I had spent her birthday with her three years ago. If you had told me then that I'd be spending her birthday with her again in three years in Australia, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

Sunday she took me to this flower festival. It has huge. People from all over Australia were there just for this event. It was pretty cool. They (the festival organizers?) looked into various flower festivals that take place around the world. Then they brought those flowers to Canberra and represented all the countries in this enormous national park. You'd take a map from the guides and walk around different sections of the park, each of which represented a country, and ooo and ahhh over the flowers. It was beautiful. There were also little markets, street performers, and art exhibitions. I had an amazing time, though the weather sucked a bit. I, being the forgetful person I am, left my camera in Sydney. So I had to buy a 10 shots disposable camera for 12 bucks. Yes, can you say rip off? I haven't developed those photos yet. When I develop them, find a scanner and scan them, they will be up here. Don't hold your breath. But I found Canada among the countries at the festival! There was a sea of red Canadian tulips there. Apparently every spring they appear everywhere in Ottawa.

After I came back from Canberra I basically partied with Nadia. Every night this past week. Except Tuesday night. That'd be five nights. A self-centered week indeeed. Oh but I did volunteer as an usher last weekend at the National Youth Shakespeare Company's production of Titus Andronicus. But other than that it was all partying. So I definitely need to take a break from that scene and concentrate on uni for this last month. If you catch me partying please drag me back home.

So I'm sorry for the lack of photos. I went out this past week with a bunch of German and American backpackers. And being the tourists they are, they snapped away all night. I need to get those photos off of them as well. So until then, this photo will have to suffice. It really says nothing about my spring break. I just want a photo up here with this post. I was yapping away on the phone and checking my email the other day when my friend found my camera and decided to waste two minutes of his life.

Look closely at my phone. Is that a...yes it is. Yes I did put a "Canada Kicks Ass" sticker on the back of my mobile. The sticker > courtesy of Nadia Vanderkuip's going away care package.


Canada kicks so much ass.