She says: After almost three weeks aboard the nursing home at sea, it's been nice to see some familiar (and non-octogenarian) faces.
We had a great couple of days with Gus and Karla, who got engaged since we saw them last. They are an incredible couple who could not be more in love and we know that we will have many more adventures with them in the future. We are bummed to be missing their wedding, as the timing doesn't work out for us. We did get to see their church and eat brunch at their venue, and I think we convinced them to videotape it, so at least we'll get to watch it someday. It's not often that you find another person that you travel well with, let alone a group of four that can travel together. Our little team just works. Hopefully with the addition of small humans someday our Team Awesome will continue to grow and have around the world adventures. We were even considering crashing their Carnaval honeymoon in Rio, but it falls in my teaching time.
We feel so lucky to know so many great people, as Gus and Karla dropped us off nearby at a Red Pine friend's place. Stu Robinson has moved to Melbourne to be with his girlfriend, Jodi. The two of them had lived in Ottawa but life always got busy and we didn't hang out in Canada. They welcomed us into their beautiful home and we heard about Stu's new job,are fun of Aussie sayings and had a lot of laughs over wind and Tim Tams. I noticed that Jodi was sporting a sparkler, and having been away from regular Internet access had to interrupt and exclaim, "Are you ENGAGED?!". They excitedly told the story (complete with photos) of Stuart's recent Bachelor-esque proposal (think tea lights, roses, suit and tie, champagne, the works$. They're both really excited and we were thrilled to take them to dinner to celebrate. We had another great night filled with lots of catching up and I think all of us wished we had more time together. Or at least I did and everyone else humoured me.
Our hosts had to head off to work early the next day, but we slept in and then lost and found our way into town where we met up with a Kiwi friend from Mt A days, Rhonda Steel (she should be a soy with a name like that, but she's got an almost as cool job - marine archaeologist, or underwater treasure hunter!). The nearly ten years since we'd seen Rhonda melted away as we caught up with her adventures and she, the self proclaimed "worst tour guide ever" showed us around downtown Melbs. As it has been with all these too brief visits, she had to take off too soon and we parted with promises not to stay apart so long. She's also getting married soon. We were in engagement land with our friends in Melbourne! I only wish we could have introduced them all, because I think they'd all be a nice little crew of Friends-like friends, except all already engaged.
We explored the famous graffiti alleys of Melbourne (the first place we've visited that is PROUD of its graffiti), and the adorable pedestrian only streets of Cafes and shops. We stumbled on a nail spa just in time for me to get a quick mani-pedi before catching our bus to the airport. Matt picked my nail colour.