THE GREAT ESCAPE!!

Its been a long time between drinks and I am sorry. The last week has been quite crazy. I have been writing an essay on witchcraft in the 16th Century which has taken up a lot of time plus been particularly depressing. But by God's grace I managed to hand it in on Monday (precisely at the due time) and now I don't have to think about it.YAY!!!

But let's go back to the Easter long weekend...

Here starts a most excellent adventure. Friday morning I went to church for Good Friday and that was tops. Not long after church had finished though I escaped to a world that existed at Newington Armory (Sydney Olympic Park) for three days. This was The Great Escape music festival. Tim (my brother) played with his band on Friday about lunch time. He was AWESOME!! What an exciting event in his growing music career to be put on a bill for such an awesome festival. This started a great weekend of phenomenal music. I would love to recount each moment for you but that would take forever and I am not sure I could do it justice. It was so good. I have entered a new world of amazing musicians and I am loving it. The festival had people like Sigur Ros, Donavon Frankenreiter, Roderigo y Gabriela, Eskimo Joe, The Black Keys, Silverchair, The Beautiful Girls, Something for Kate, Xavier Rudd, Bernard Fanning, Clare Bowditch, Martha Wainwright, and so much more. My favourites (apart from Tim) were Donavon, Sigur Ros and Roderigo y Gabriela. But everyone was great. In a little effort to do these great musicians some credit I will send you to the Great Escape website for you to look some of them up and see and hear for yourselves how great they are (www.thegreatescape.net.au). Also have a look at Tim's website it rocks too (www.timireland.com.au). I can't really express the amazing time I had listen to the music.

One thing I can express is my feelings about camping.... YUK!!! Freezing, dirty, smelly and gross. I hate camping!! But I survived it for the joy of the music. I camped with Jono (my bro), Bri (Jono & Tim's housemate), Amanda (Bri's sister) & Nick (one of Bri's friends) and that was great. It was great to hang out with them. I was so stoked that Amanda came along coz that meant that I got to know her but also that we didn't have to hang around the boys all the time. But it was just such a great weekend. Plenty of bonding (particularly the boys bonding), food and great music. I just loved it. It was my first experience of a music festival and it has certainly given me a massive taste for it.

On Sunday I had to leave about 3.30pm to go back to church. I had a shower for about half an hour to scrub the dirt off, clean my hair and generally just feel clean again!! Church was great that night. Dave preached an awesome sermon on Finding Life and clearly explained the gospel. Then after church I went back to the festival (really clean!!) to listen to Donavon and bring the tribe home. All in all one of the best weekends of my life so far!!!

The dream kinda continued somewhat into the next week (although it was essay week - going out to music became my lifeline in a depressing swamp of witchcraft reading). Tim played a gig at the Metro on the Wed with The Audreys (another band that played at the festival) and that was great (I didn't get home til after 2.30am that morning). Then Thurs night we got tickets to see Roderigo y Gabriel at the Newtown RSL and this was almost the best gig I have ever been to. These 2 are the most talented guitarists I have ever laid my eyes on. You have to see it to believe just how amazing they are. Gabriela would play her guitar while beating out the rhythm at the same time (all on her guitar) - AMAZING!!! Then Fri night Tim played again at the Excelsior in Glebe for a cozy and relaxed gig. This was a great end to an amazing week in the world of music.

I am still living in this new world of music and I am really loving it. I have wanted for ages to be exposed to new and quality music and now I feel like I am in a whole new world and it is a world that I love and feel very at home in.

Well life goes on...and it did. Back to church on the weekend and it was great again. I really love St George North. It is such an awesome church. Well I finished my essay on Mon then headed down to Wollongong to do some hard core holiday catch ups. I spent some time with my fam and lots of really loved friends. So that was excellent. I have my friend Sue coming down from Lismore tomorrow because she has a wedding in Sydney so I will get to spend lots of time with her which will be just fabulous!!! And also on Sat I have my long time friend Angie's wedding so that will also make for an excellent weekend.

All in all life on the outside has been great. However, life on the inside has been very turmultous. I think there is lots of stuff in my life that is quite tough to deal with so it makes living inside of me confusing and sad. Prayerfully, with God's help and others I will be able to work through this stuff ready to face the next trauma that comes along (and they roll around oh too regularly for my liking). But life does go on... so I keep plodding and try to work out in each trial what God is teaching me and trust that he is shaping me into the person he wants me to be.



Oh yeah... and boys are still stupid!!!! But I like them so much!

That is all for now I think...

Random...

I know that it has been a while. But life is crazy and such has been my life lately. I am endeavoring to be a nerd this year so am trying really hard to do a decent amount of study. So some standard but excellent things that have happened during the week are squash, dancing and church. I love all of these things a lot!! Also last week Lisa came up from Orange (where she is doing an 8 week rural placement for Uni) and so we all hung out, spent a lot of time laughing and catching up. This was really great.

I started singing lessons again tonight!! My new singing teacher is a friend of my brothers'. I am looking forward to spending some time improving my voice. This will be good.

I feel that although I have been crazy busy life has not been particularly interesting in terms of reporting online. Boys continue to confuse me (although probably for different reasons now). They take up too much time and effort but for some reason I cannot just forget about them. We are getting geared up and organised for mission at the moment. This is a big job for the women becuase there is generally lots of women's' events but only a handful of women to spread around (this is not to mention all the other things that we are involved in too). But all-in-all I am really excited about mission. It will be a really good week I think!

Anyways, I am extremely tired and this entry is not particularly interesting so I think I will stop and save you all the time, effort and boredom and take myself to bed!

Tonight was lots of fun... Tan and I bought a cheap bottle of wine an hung out on a nearby oval. A friend Dani came and joined us a little while later. It was fun. We talked mainly about boys (something new) and laughed a lot together. It was great.

Today was also good. Tan and I went to a Street Jazz class at Sydney Dance Company and that was good fun. It was hard work but great. I am also trying to catch up on my Summer Calvin reading and so did that this morning.

Last night I had dinner with a friend and talked some more about boys. But it was quite a lovely night that we will being doing again in the not too distant future.

Thursday night I won my squash match. That was very satisfying. I won 15-13 in the 5th (for those of you who at all understand anything about squash) which just means that it was a long and hard match. But very enjoyable and the fitness work I have been doing has seemed to pay off somewhat. So that was encouragement to keep training.

Anyway, I am going to take advantage of the extra hour sleep tonight so I am going to go to sleep. I hope you all sleep well too.