On Saturday, I slept in a little bit and decided on an English muffin with margarine and vegemite for brekky. After lounging around for a bit, Domenic and I headed into town to get a few things at the supermarket and to have a walk around.
After picking up some bread for lunch and the papers at Woolworths, we headed across the street to check out the new store called BCF (Boating Camping and Fishing). Sounds like my kind of store, huh? It wasn’t as big as Bass Pro and certainly didn’t have the broad selection of gear, but it sure was nice! I found a fishing shirt that I really liked that had a few logos on it that would remind me of Australia when I go fishing at home.
After walking around for a bit more, we crossed the street once again to check out the ceiling of St. Mary’s, the Catholic Church in town. The steeple of St. Mary’s can be seen kilometers from town and seems to be one of the few local landmarks in town. We walked inside and were greeted by Jesus, who was kind enough to provide us with a few brochures about the church and their distribution of largesse to the people of Bairnsdale and the surrounding community. We walked deeper into the church to find the ceilings completely painted with vivid Christian themes, and all of the windows covered with stained glass. It was pretty and I’m glad I went!
After eating lunch at home, Domenic and I headed back out to watch the East Gippsland United Football Club under-16s play a match against Warragul. The young gentleman and lady defeated the team from the east 21-1 in a blowout. The game reminded me of my time playing soccer a few years back! I’ll never forget traveling to various international schools in Europe, including Budapest and Warsaw.
We then came home to catch the last half of a few footy matches. Luckily, there were a few more on later in the day! After a bike ride along the Mitchell, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing, watching the footy matches on TV.
Today, I also slept in a bit to catch up on some sleep, and again had some vegemite on toast for breakfast; I can’t get enough of this stuff! We were invited to go to Linda and Ernie’s place for lunch at noon and we were to bring the dessert. Last night, Sheryl and I had started making a Pavlova, and this morning, she had finished it up to bring with us.
I am always jealous when I go to Linda and Ernie’s home because it is so beautiful and they have some of the best views in all of town. They purchased their home a few years ago and since then had worked on building up the area around the home. I’ve seen photos of when they bought it, and it is so hard to believe that the two of them only took 4 years to surround their home with lush gardens of tens of different kinds of trees and various vegetables and herbs. They also built a pizza “shack” in their back yard where they have a pizza oven, and a view over the paddocks to the south and the bay in the distance; truly amazing!
Today, we were having pizza for lunch at their home. When we arrived, we were instructed to make our own pizzas from a variety of fresh ingredients. We each started with some tomato sauce on hand made dough followed by a combination of ingredients including: various kinds of cheeses, meats, and herbs, anchovies, salmon, tomatoes, olives, chilies, capsicums, capers, pesto, and probably a ton of other stuff that I forgot, or just couldn’t see among the piles of fresh toppings. Once our pizzas were constructed in the kitchen, we took them down to Ernie, who had the oven ready to start.
The pizzas were amazing and the beers were cold! It was another great ending to another great weekend in Oz! I could have easily spent the whole day eating pizza overlooking the beautiful views from Windy Waters (Linda and Ernie’s house’s name).
Since I’ve been home from lunch, I finished up my laundry and started this post. I’m excited to start my final week student teaching at BSC and plan to get to bed early tonight!