Captive in Australia

Hey everyone, sorry we’ve not written in a while. The past week or so has been pretty non-stop. So here’s a wee update on what we got up to our last week in Sydney and our ATTEMPTS to leave Australia.

Monday – we helped out at the Shine course for women again at Hillsong. This week they were discussing our uniqueness and how we need to embrace this. Was another really nice night, and to top it off we got a wee sachet of hand cream free when leaving which is great for us smelly travellers!

Tuesday – we spent most of the day Tuesday hiding from the heat in Tanya’s flat sorting soultouch emails and boring things like this before attending the first “Sisterhood United” of 2010 at Hillsong. Sisterhood United is a huge group of the women from the church who meet once a month or so for “Be the change” mornings, where they go into the community with several different outreach programmes. This also enables friendships and fellowship to develop within the women, which is especially cool for the stay at home mummies.

Wednesday – this was our final free day in Sydney, so after a huge hunt for the cheapest tourist thing to do we boarded a super cool double decker train to go a visit Ferndale Wildlife Park. It was a really fun day where we even got to cuddle up to a real koala bear and kangaroos!! We also saw a Tasmanian Devil which we never even knew existed for certain a few weeks before!

Thursday – an extremely early start on Thursday took us to setting up and helping with a “mum and bubs” group at the Be the Change morning at Hillsong. This was a group running for new mums where they had scones and coffees as a speaker gave different parenting tips, really focussing on how women can try to keep calm and enjoy their babies and toddlers despite tantrums etc, when spending all day with them, often alone. This was a fun time for Laura and I to play with the wee cute babies and drool with them over the yummy looking scones! After cleaning up from the session we headed into meet Micah at Paddy’s market in town and to visit Chinatown for a yummy Chinese snack. Night time brought our final time going out to visit our homeless friends with the street beat team. About 5 minutes after arriving Laura turned round to find me highland dancing in the middle of the street after I foolishly agreed to swapping culture with a group of aussies who just told me rubbish Australian jokes that I didn’t even understand, and since I’m terrible at remembering any jokes, let alone any Scottish ones, there I was dancing away! Was a really brilliant final night with the team as we met some incredible people, and I basically had to be dragged away from a amazing conversation with a guy Lance who had visited 57 countries in his life, going to live with the people in the slums as this is where he thought the real life was! I left so inspired and amazed!

Friday - this was possibly one of our best days in Australia. We went with the Shine team to visit a salvation army women’s refuge centre for single women who were also participating in the Shine programme each week as they ate their breakfast on a Friday morning. There was a small group of women ranging from around 20 – 55 years all with very different and interesting backgrounds, although most with very little right now either materially, emotionally or both. But what spirits they had! As we discussed the importance of respecting our bodies enough to keep them physically fit and healthy, stories were revealed of always putting themselves last and children, husbands, family and friends first, which although shows total kindness, has also resulted in a reduced feeling of self-worth. It was just an incredible experience to see the penny drop in some of these women, that not only do they have a lot to offer others, but that they have a lot to offer themselves and that they were purposefully created for much more than they had ever imagined. To some the morning was a nice chat with friends, sprinkled with some interesting anatomy facts, but for others it was much more. I felt as though I could literally see their faces and hearts soften as they began to shine in themselves.

We left the refuge buzzing to spend the rest of the afternoon catching up with those we had been working the closest with to say proper goodbyes and thanks to. At night time we went with Tanya, Micha and Manuel to a famous aussie pie stand for a taste experience and a giggle at the water edge.

Saturday – more prepared than I think I’ve ever been, we had packed our bags the night before so we could get up and go out for our last street teams experience. Was a nice morning with loads of encouragement from people, the usual scrubbing of bathrooms and kitchen floors whilst meeting many new people, and we said our goodbyes allowing more than enough time to get to the airport and check in for our flight to Bangkok.

Sad to leave friends but excited for a new place and new experiences Laura and I bubbled up to the check in desk giggling as we got the check in guy to get his photo taken with Leroy. Our giggles were brought to a temporary stop whoever as we were informed that our tickets had been cancelled for some reason and were now void! After speaking to STA (the travel company we booked them with) in Sydney we were told we would have to wait for 9 hours until the Edinburgh office was open as it was them who had made the booking so them that had to fix it. Our flight of course was in 3 hours. So, with nothing more we could do we set ourselves up comfortably and settled in for a long day laughing at the situation, Laura taught me to play chess (although I need a LOT more practice!) But not to worry, after what felt like a million phone calls between STA, us and the flights company we were booked onto the next flight to Bangkok. The only thing was, it was just about to leave! So running and laughing we headed for the departure gate as quickly as possible whilst also trying to explain the situation to our eagerly waiting hosts at the other end, all whom had broken English and understandably struggled with my accent.

However, against all odds we landed in Bangkok around 13 hours later, sleepy and ready for a shower and bed asap, but still smiling. All we had to do now was get our bags...2 hours or so later and we found ourselves laughing (now hysterically) in the lost luggage office reporting my bag as missing!

What a journey! Everything worked out great in the end though. My bag was delivered to me a few days later (which really just gave me an excuse to wear some of laura’s clothes) and our host family couldn’t be any nicer or more welcoming! Was actually a really good time, as although things weren’t exactly smooth, we never stopped laughing and trusting it would work out and it did exactly that with no problems! Anyway, everyone loves and excuse to borrow their friends clothes every now and again!

Thinking of you all! Sending our love and promises to try to keep this blog updated more regularly!

Jenn xx