TGIF!

I couldn’t let the week end without a dinner party for our new Australian friends.  This week has been crazy busy.  Starting with last Saturday, we went to a BBQ with the former exchange teachers in the Bendigo area.  Great bunch!!  We made some new friends and made some plans.  Gerard (pronounced Jerrod here) invited us to join him for the Port Fairy music festival in 2 weekends.  We bought ourselves tickets and will join him at his campsite for a 3 day festival of music at a beautiful seaside town.  More on that later…

Our school had the swimming sports festival this week.  All the students attend this huge spirit assembly held at the local aquatic center.  There are all kinds of swimming events, a fashion show and prizes.  The school is divided into Houses.  Each house wears a different colour.  Mine is McKillop, green.  It was fun to see the creative costumes the kids came up with.  They showed a lot of spirit.  Of course, I wore my green t-shirt, the mandatory hat (against the sun) and lots of sunscreen.

I was in Shepparton on Wed and Thu for a leadership conference with the Diocese.  Great food, great conversation and great educational ideas came out of that one.  I’ll be going to 3 more such conferences this year.

Last night, we had invited Ros and John, Donna’s good friends, for a nice dinner.  Gerard turned up unexpectedly to discuss the music festival and we asked him to stay as well.  He returned from feeding his cat with a lovely bottle of his own house wine.  His wife (who is in Dubai working on a school there) and he used to have a vineyard in Heathcote, so he brought a bottle of his 8 yr old Shiraz for us to share.  Yum!

I made beer butt chicken, corn, potatoes, green beans and an apple crisp for dessert.  Along with some nice Sauvignon Blanc from Bowler’s Run ($2.99 a bottle!!!), we were set for a lovely outdoor dinner.  The kind of thing we would do in Canada in late August, complete with mosquitoes, mind you.  Darn things, will they ever go away?  The conversation was great and continued into the night as we came indoors to escape the bugs.  All in all, a terrific time!