Saturday, April 24, 2010

Finally updating in my return trip to Perth

Alright, so it's been a while since I've updated this blog-thing or whatever, being a mixture of laziness, computer problems, and what not....but mostly being lazy and not getting around to it. With that said, I apologize (mainly to my mother who asks me every time I speak with her when I am going to start updating the blog) and am ready to start up again. So, here we go.

I've been in Perth a lil more than three months now and everything has been great. So much has happened since I've been back. It would take me ages to describe all the amazing and fun things that have been going on so I'll just give a couple highlights and then maybe touch on other things from time to time. First, it has been really good to catch up and see all the friends and people that I met last year. Leaving last August, I had made some really good friends and met some very amazing people, but with Australia being on the other side of the world, I didn't know if that would be the last time I saw them or not. To return and see everybody again has been the best experience (as well as meet many new ones).

I've also gotten to visit and experience some different areas around Perth that I didn't get to see last year. It helps to have a second chance to try and get to some places that I missed out on last season. Most notably, Ben, Al, and I made the short boat (ferry) ride over to Rottnest Island a couple months ago....ok I'll stop there for a second. Ben is the other American import from Iowa, a 6'6" post player who is a very good player and even better guy. Even being basically the same age I am, he is someone who I look up to tremendously and has a huge heart for the Lord, a great friend and one that I will keep after I leave. He's been the other half of the piece in pretty much all my excursions to the beach or wherever since I've been here.....Al is the like little brother, the 17 year old son of the family I am staying with (who have been awesome by the way, talk more on that later). Much fun to be around him....alright, so this fairly small island is about 20 km off the coast, so obviously the only way to it is by boat, and people are not allowed to have cars on the island. We went over with this plan to explore the island and do as many things as possible in the day that we were there. Well, that plan was scrapped as soon as we started snorkeling (well we still saw the island, but just snorkeled at different places). It was ridiculous, so much fun. There are lots of coral reefs surrounding the island thus lots of fish and everything.....DID NOT see any sharks tho, very thankful for that, and I was looking.....The water was also clear blue, not kidding. Definitely like something off the Travel Channel. It was all we wanted to do. A shame we never made it back as we got pretty busy and now its too cold to do that, but something I will never forget and just an amazing experience. Hopefully, I can get a couple pictures up here soon.

There has been a lot of stuff going on since I've been here and many other interesting and beautiful sites, but the thing that brought me here, basketball, has also been going on for about 2 months. It's going great. Thinking about it, its amazing to still be playing at a high level and that I'm playing in Australia, so very thankful for that. To top it off, it has once again been a great experience. The team is doing well as am I. We aren't even half way through the season yet, but I'm excited to see where and how far we can go. We got a lot of work to do to win the title again but am confident that we can. For specifics, we are sitting in third place with an 8-3 record, but are tied in the loss column. In reality, the games we lost are ones we shouldn't have but that happens and we just have to learn from them. We have 2 games this weekend that will challenge us once again.

That's all for now. There is a lot to write about and don't think I could do it all. Miss you all. Take care