Goals for 2010

I want to keep doing tennis lessons and play Social Tennis. I’ve started gym classes at UWA and love combat. I want to go every Tuesday. I want to keep doing Aqua on Weds. I want to ride my bike. I want to stay healthy and fit & stay on the Healthy Eating CSIRO diet.

I want to be more crafty this year. I want to scrap book my 2008 trip photos & 2009 South African/ Mauritius trip. I want to start a visual journal from 2007. I want to create a visual journal, 5 – 10 lines of each journal of my life starting when I was 15 until now. I want to keep up with my Blog.

I want to travel. We plan to travel to the USA and UK this year to see friends & family. I can’t wait to see Vanessa/Dan in Houston and take Rod to the US for his 1st time. I want to see friends over East. I want to go camping more in WA. I want to experience new things in my home city.

I want to learn something new in my job at UWA. I want to put my heart and soul into organsing the 2011 LT conference to be held in Perth. I want to get colleagues at UWA Library to join in and encourage them to submit a paper/talk.

Of course I have lots more I want to do this year but these are the main goals. I want to keep in touch with family and friends in Perth too.

SA and Mauritius photos – finally

South Africa – As you can imagine it has taken me a very long time to upload these photos to my Flickr site. So there are no photo titles or tags yet. Hope you like them. I have lots more…..

It’s taken me a couple of months but I now have Mauritius photos. Not as many as South Africa.

Enjoy

More things

This week is You Tube (thing 19)… I’m going to wait and try and upload a video I took from my holidays, seems more relevant to me.

Swazi Candles - I was so enthralled by this guy making these candles, it was so fun to watch. I came home with an exact replica of this elephant he made. I certainly won’t be burning it. Bought a giraffe too. Here is my video of him doing it. Not sure how to make it vertical, so you’ll have to act like a giraffe to view it - 

Still need to do the podcasting (thing 17) session and now to look at slidecasting (thing 20). I know, posting my “things” completed are not in a nice order how I normally like things, but I will get there in the end, that’s the main thing. I’m too involved with my trip and photos still Mind is not yet focused on work yet!!!!

Podcasting – Thing 17.
OK I’m listening to a pod cast now, a group of 30 people from the poorest part of Cape Town, singing about the only day they got off New Year’s Day  – Cape Town Minstrels – from ”Hear in this Place” – a podcast that gives you glimpses of what it is like to live in other parts of the world – very intresting.  Podcasts – not really my thing – prefer RSS feeds via Google Reader, prefer to read than listen – no time for listening, but I’ve tried. Through Itunes there is a lot of interesting topics you can subscribe too.

SA update

Hey Everyone,
Haven’t had access to internet for a while, so there’s been no blogging. I’ll give you a summary of what we’ve done and seen and of course some photos. We are now in East London, the only river port in SA. So nice to see the beach and coastline again. On arrival we saw some whales. We’re here only for 1 night stopover, had a massive bus ride today, bout 8 hours, with a few comfort stops and also had time to check out a museum dedicated to Nelson Mandela.

Yesterday was just awesome. We stayed at a resort for 2 days in Drakensberg Mtns and it was devine, called Drakensberg Gardens. We took a 4WD tour up Sani Pass and into Lesotho (another country). It was an amazing experience. 2.5 hrs up and down through mountains and clouds, rainy as we went up and then we drove through some clouds into blue sky and sunshine to the highest pub in SA. Just stunning.

A few days ago we stayed in St Lucia, also on the beach. We visited the World Heritage site on a ferry and saw so many hippos, it was awesome. We also went on a 2nd safari, to Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park and finally saw a rhino, still no lion, so we only saw 4 out of the Big 5, but still amazing. This game park was so different to Kruger, rolling hills, lovely landscape to view game in the distance. Saw girafee, rhino, elephants, wild beasts and lots of birds.

Also had a day and a night stopover in Swaziland, absolutely beautiful country side… May have blogged about this already, but so nice.

SA Surprise Tour Begins

Mon 12/10/09
Started early lots of driving today to start the tour. Got stuck in peak hr traffic before heading out of Pretoria and into the beautiful countryside. Went via Panorama Route up to the Blyde River Canyon, spectacular scenery. Stopped at some fantastic viewing spots: 3 Rondavels, God’s Window and Bourke’s Luck Potholes. Stunning scenery, took some photos but with a point and shoot digital can’t do justice, but so awesome! Stayed at Hippo Hollow - 3 star, but to Rod and I felt like 5 stars, absolutely beautiful place!  There are real hippos in this place. They come out at night up onto the river bank. We had guards to keep us safe as they can kill us! So amazing, we saw a few but very difficult to take a photo. Tonight we had a special dinner – we were welcomed with banging drums, the Chief and singing and dancing. We had a typical SA BBQ for dinner – the food was glorious! So yummy. Awesome first day and night on tour!

Tuesday 13/10/09
Today was Kruger National Park today – up very early! 5 am start, but well worth it. We travelled to KNP by coach and the swapped over to a jeep with 9 people in it. Open windows on the sides with a roof. Absolutely amazing day. Overcast and stormy to start off with but got to about 36 by 12 noon. We just drove around for 8.5 hours with our ranger, trying to find animals. We didn’t see the big 5 but we did see a leopard up close and personal and there aren’t many of those left in the park even the ranger was imppressed! We saw zebras, giraffes, elephants, deer, water buffalo all quite close, got some ammazing photos. We also saw crocs and hippos in the water, plus lots of bird life. Both Rod and I were in heaven. It was such an awesome day! Safari rocks! In the arvo arrived back at Hippo Hollow, swam, relaxed, drank mojitos on the deck watching the hippos- what a life hey! Had dinner in the restaraunt, it was superb, felt like 5 star dining to me! Added bonus to mkae it even more mysterious the power went out and then the back up generator failed too, but no one cared. Was an awesome day and a fantastic evening. This tour is soooooooo good!

Wed 14/10/09
Today up again early, left HH at 8am. Buffet breakfasts all included everyday, so yummy, trying not to eat too much as we don’t have much of a chance to walk around. Drove south east towards Swaziland. We have comfort stops along the way. We stopped in No Man’s Land and had a guided tour thru a traditional village, more singing and dancing and then another spectacular buffet lunch with a croc in the pond. We drove into Swaziland, beautiful country, has the BEST scenery in the world. So relaxing driving on the bus and watching the world go by. Everyone everywhere is so friendly. I feel very safe here and in South Africa! Visited a glass blowing factory where they make things out of recycled glass. Finally bought something for ouselves. Then onto our hotel, Luggogo Sun - I’d say 10 star man! 3 hotels on one site and you have access to all 3!!! Not hot enough for swimming, but we walked up to the top hotel, superb views yet again. Rod did some bird watching while I came back to the room and updated my blog.

We are having the BEST time! I hope that you can see my photos when I get the Flickr account sorted……

South Africa – Pretoria

Hi All – My trip photos - plan to host via Flickr and not upload them all onto the blog – so for those not familiar, click on the link below under photos and hopefully they will appear as a slide show. Enjoy!.

Day 1
The plane ride to SA was fine, a long 11 hours, but we watched some great movies and tried to sleep. The food was so yummy, best I’ve had ever on a plane I reckon. It was about 6pm SA time when arrived at our hotel, in Pretoria, about 50 kn north-west of Jo-burg (I think), a lovely hotel overlooking a nice lake – lots of new birds for Rod to see. We ate dinner in the hotel and managed to stay awake til 10pm before going to bed. Was a very long day, but so exciting to be in South Africa finally!

Day 2
We didn’t sleep that well, but enough sleep to get us through the day. Today we checked out the shops near us, massive shopping centre, shopping heaven – we didn’t buy anything though. But I could have since my pack only weighed 9.6kg But don’t really wanna be carrying it around, being only 2nd day of our trip. In the arvo took a 4 hour tour down to Pretoria with a tour company. Pretoria is the capital city of SA. We saw the Voortrekker monument, Kruger’s House, Union Buildings and some beautiful gardens!! The jacarrandas are beautiful in this city! It was a great afternoon. Tonight we have our tour meet and greet, hope to have an early night. Having a ball so far and the weather is superb! Nice and warm Tomorrow the tour officially beings – bring it on!

Photos
Here are some photos from the first 2 days. I love the cheetah lamps in our room, great detail there.