Mood:
happy-And so ends the Critical Thinking and Communications unit, along with another week.
First, last weekend. We went to a few events last weekend. Friday night, Rob Sanders, my Syndicate Buddy, invoted Kimberly, Jacoby, and I over to his house for pizza and information sharing about Australia. I think I wrote about this last week, so I'll move on. Sunday morning, we drove out Hall to partake in their market experience. It was neat! It's easily the largest flea market we have seen so far, and we were told it was small in comparison to it's usual size. We walked the whole thing, plyed with the animals for sale, bought some woodwork and such. It was a really nice market and we will be back!
Sunday night we went to the Irish Club, had dinner, and listened to a small band playing Irish/celtic folk music from 5p-8p. We stayed for the whole thing. They were fantastic! The club does this every Sunday night, with different groups performing different types of music, so we will enjoy varying degrees of entertainment from week to week, but last week was perfect. The band was great, the food was good (and cheap!), and the people went out of there way to wander over to our table and introduce themselves and make us feel welcome. I can see us spending several Sundays evenings there.
This week was all about learning some of the many different tools for identifying/defining the problem or issue, assemilating large quantities of data, breaking large problems into smaller details, evaluating decision criteria, developing countermeasures for threats and weaknesses, etc, etc.
This week's sport, which happens every Wednesday afternoon, I went with the running club on a short run. I am not actually a member of the running club, simply because I wanted to try something different. I joined the Adventure Racing Club, which is sort of like Eco-Challenge. As such, thre are several disciplines including running, mountain biking, kayaking, canoeing, even rock climbing and rapelling. They always throw in something out of left field like roller blading or scooters, as we were told by the team last year. Anyway, our first race is coming up in two weeks. Last week we trained with the runners. Next week will be with the mountain bikers.
Jacoby started Hogwar-, now wait, Canbera Grammar school this week! To be honest, it was a rough first day. His Housemaster assigned him a "buddy" to show him to his classes and make sure he had someone to talk to, to ask questions, and such. Turns out the kid assigned wasn't at all interested in helpng Jacoby, so he was left to fend for himself. He did fine, and got where he needed to get, but attitudes flaired a bit when he got home, presumably out of frustration. Wednesday was a much better day. Thursday was fine. Friday was another rough day, for reasons I don't fully understand. Apparently he burned himself in Science (on the bunsen burner, then got splashed with water by another student playing in the sink, then he got moved to a different math class to ease overcrowding in the first...He swears this math class is harder, to which I say, "Good!" All in all, his attitude got the better of him and it stayed with him throughout the evening. It wasn't until we got to the festival last night that it sort of abated a bit.
And that brings us to the Fringe Festival. Last night started the Canberra Multicurtural Festival, which will go for eleven days. Last night was a kick-off music and dance show with several artists/groups/troops introducing their acts and saying where they will be throughout the show. It was fantastic. They had a drum group called Circle of Rhythm that was probably some of the best drum work from three people that I've ever heard. We saw the Chooky Dancers perform three songs worth, live. (You can see them on youtube, if you are interested). -And there were others.
We will be going back today for music, dancing, and food throughout the day, tomorrow, and next weekend.
We also have an American gathering on Sunday. The Coales (LTC Joe Coale and his wife Melissa) are students in CDSS (sort of like our War College, but on the same campus as us) have invited all of the Americans (all 4 of us) to their house for a BBQ.
So, busy weekends ahead!
- Ryan
