Shane in Australia

This coming Saturday I will be heading back to Pennsylvania and my family... I am eager to be on my way there; it has been a long separation and I have missed them terribly these last several weeks. We have used Skype to communicate, usually twice a day. If you aren't aware of Skype, I highly recommend you check it out (http://www.skype.com/intl/en/welcomeback/). It is a free communication tool that works through the Internet and allows free computer to computer video conferencing and real cheap phone calls to anywhere in the world ($0.02/min). It is not perfect, there are times that the clarity is not so good, but it does allow me to see my kids and wife and chat with them. Anyway, Skype only goes so far, it is time to get home! 5 days left and then I'm on my way.

This week I didn't do too much: most of the week I worked on my last post when I wasn't working on work. However, Friday night I had poker night at my house. Three coworkers came over, and played until 1:00 a.m., pretty fun. Today I went for a hike with Teresa and Marg, the women I met hiking and a few of their coworkers. We met at Belair Nation Park, yet another Mt. Lofty Range park overlooking Adelaide. It was very pretty and there were plenty of koalas as we hiked. There are also emus in the park, the evidence was fairly common (seed filled patties the size of a small cows...) but I didn't see any actual emus. At home there were rainbow lorikeets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lories_and_lorikeets) hanging around the house, so I got a few pictures of them as well. There was a pretty good sunset and sunrise on Saturday, so those are below as well... This is likely the last post for a while (I ostensibly return in May). I might put together a summary post while I'm at home, but then again, I'll likely spend a lot of time with the kids and Pat, so I might not get to it... Well, thanks for keeping up with my weekly diatribes, they are useful for me to capture this experience and to communicate to you all. TTFN

Shane

Rainbow Lorikeets

Saturday

Hiking Sunday

Last week my parents arrived in Adelaide. They toured around while I worked until Friday. Friday morning we drove to Cape Jervis and boarded a ferry for Kangaroo Island. I had booked the Borda Light lodge for my parents and me for three nights. The Borda Lighthouse is on the most western point of Kangaroo Island. Going west from there the first landfall is Argentina! We spent the weekend going to different locations on the island (it is about the same size as Long Island). There were many animals and birds and a wide range of landscapes. I took over 800 pictures, so here are a few. The pictures above sum it up though - lighthouse, parents, kangaroos and landscapes. I may hit this subject again, there is a lot of material here. I would recommend KI to any potential visitor...