Exams are finished! Winter break begins....

Well, it's winter break for me at least...unfortunately Jon is still working. I wrote my last exam on Monday and thankfully left on a high note (can't say the same for all the exams I wrote!). I'm officially on winter break for 6 weeks. Being the nerd that I am though, I have volunteered for two weeks of extra placements to gain a few more practical hours and clinical experience, but they won't start for a a week and a half, so it's sleep in and relaxation until then. Jon even brought me breakfast in bed this morning...and for no reason at all. I feel spoiled.

We have managed to do some exploring over the past few months and have seen some beautiful beaches - there are really so many to see! The beach in the top pictures is Dee Why beach which was blocks away from my last placement. I luckily managed to land 3 placements that were all blocks from the beach! The second picture is Palm Beach and it's spectacular even on the drizzly day that we went to see it. An Australian TV show called "Home and Away" is filmed here. On this day, this super cute entirely blonde family of three girls aged probably 10, 7 and 5 all jumped out of their land rover with their parents and surf boards and headed fearlessly into the surf. Very different from what we know!

The third picture is a picture of the "Three Sisters" in the Blue Mountains. We tried to see this 12 years ago when we visited Australia on a backpacking trip, but it rained heavily every day and we weren't able to even catch a glimpse.
Finally, on second attempt, the day was beautiful!!





We've also booked a much needed week-end away to wine country to explore some of the Australian wines that we are not familiar with. We found this fantastic German family that will be taking Kona into their home while we go away and they seem very keen to have her which puts our minds at ease.

Hope all is well with everyone back home. So glad summer has finally arrived for you after a wet spring. The weather is cooler here but really nothing to complain about considering it's winter with highs of about 18 and lows overnight of about 10C.

Miss all of you!
Lori, Jon & Kona