Hello world!

Originally posted on 23 April 2012 by Sophie

Yes, I’m still alive. I know this site has been neglected for over a year, but honestly, all I have been doing is saving money for my Oz adventure.

So, in short, there are a few changes in my plans. For starters, I won’t be going this year, because I first want to finish school (which will probably be in January 2013). Secondly, I guess I will be going alone in stead of together with Mo. She hasn’t been able to save enough yet to accompany me. She might tag along later on hopefully. Last but not least, I revamped this page. I felt like it was time for something new. I changed some information and I will be adding stuff over the coming months. I’ll try to keep you up-to-date. ^^

Merry Christmas

Originally posted on 22 December 2010 by Sophie

When I was browsing my web domain earlier today, I was shocked to see I hadn’t updated this site in over 7 months. Therefore I decided to write a blog right away. December always intrigues me. Especially when you start thinking about the differences in celebrating Christmas all over the world.

For example, it’s winter over here. The normal green landscape is hidden under a blanket of snow; a lot of snow to be honest. I haven’t seen this much snow in the Netherlands for years. However, if you compare the minus 5 to 10 °C to the sunny weather and high temperatures in Australia right now, you can imagine what impact another season can have on a simple celebration as Christmas. Everywhere, in almost every American and West-European movie, Christmas has a connotation of winter, snow, and cold weather. Even the Christmas songs are snow-minded.

To celebrate Christmas in an Australian summer is one fascination aspects of my year Down Under. I want to experience life to its fullest and broaden my horizons in a way that can’t be done by staying home. So by actually screwing up my biological clock to go from Spring-Summer to another Spring-Summer followed by a year of Autumn-Winter-Autumn-Winter I will be able to see what’s like to lay on the beach in a red bikini while singing Jingle Bells and missing my family. As much as I like snow and winter, I won’t be missing it, not that year.

Another quite extraordinary fact I learned during Empire class (Empire deals with the history of four former colonies of the British Empire; South Africa, India, Australia, and Canada) about the Australian history is that there was only on rebellious uprising in its entire known history (post-1700). The Eureka rising led to the right to vote for all men in 1850. That’s something that wouldn’t be achieved in Europe or the USA for another fifty years.

Nevertheless, I hope I’ll be able to update this site a bit sooner next time. I want to wish you all a merry Christmas and all the best for 2011.

A year has passed

Originally posted on 20 April 2010 by Sophie

Time flies! It’s almost a year ago when we started saving money for our trip. This also means that we’ve completed one third of our saving/waiting time before we’ll be going to Oz! *celebrates*

We both know we haven’t been updating the site lately, but there isn’t much to say at the moment. We just hope there won’t be any volcano erupting when we’ll be flying Down Under. But that’s just for selfish reasons.

We know this post isn’t long and we can’t really think of something to make it longer either, so bye bye for now. We just wanted to let you know we’re still alive and still saving for our dream!