The Magic, The Memories and 2012!

You can spend a lifetime studying but never learning... I wanted to stop being that person. So I took a year out and learned how to live and live well.
Here is some of the fun I had along the way!

On the first day of 2012, I woke up in LA!

I moved into a small apartment in Orlando and made incredible friends with my housemates, neighbours and co-workers. We hung out all the time at get-togethers in our homes, star-gazing and housing parties on our lawn and day trips to Disney World.

We...

worked together

shopped together

cooked together

ate together

did our laundry together 

and hit the gym together.

They made even the most mundane things feel like the best times of my life.
Life is better together!

I spent almost every day of five months in Disney World.
It is my favourite place in the world.

I worked full-time posing for pictures, giving hugs and autographs.

I loved my job.

On the weekends, I visited Disney World as a guest and made some
magical moments of my own. 

And even more magical times when friends from home came to visit!

I explored another magical world... of castles and WIZARDS!

I cruised to the beautiful Bahamas with a bunch of Aussies/Kiwis where we enjoyed sunshine, swimming, fine dining and buffets every day. On the last night, I ate so much food that I literally threw up.

I will always remember the birthday that I celebrated with great friends and Disney Princesses at the Royal Akershus Banquet Hall at Disney World!

...it also may have involved Donald Duck plush toys, Buzz Lightyear alarm clock presents and children's costumes. Growing up is going well.

We graduated our College Program the Disney way with Mickey and Minnie.

Then it was time to say goodbye to the Happiest Place on Earth. I was so sad to be leaving but I pulled myself together and embarked on an exciting journey across the United States sharing my adventures with different loved ones along the way.

I got a pleasant surprise when a friend from Disney rode the bus from Orlando to New York to meet up with me to give me a proper goodbye!

It was so cold when I got home to Australia and I suffered from severe bouts of Post-Disney Depression.

Symptoms included epic Tim Tam binges

So I focused my attention to gaining work experience... interning at a law firm; and shadowing criminal barrister.

...and making a fresh start. My parents sold my Echo when I was overseas so when I came home, I bought a new car. It feels great to drive again!

I tried to make life more exciting by saying yes to more things

...but that often just meant saying yes to lots of ice cream :/

I travelled...

on a missions trip to India that taught me things about God and faith that have become the foundation of my life.

on a family holiday to Malaysia where I uncovered my heritage, where I come from and where I fit in

and to Queensland just to say hi to a friend who makes my life better.

I had a sweet job at a radio station and eventually made my on-air debut! If Disney World was the best job in the world, this is the second-best.

I dyed my my hair a little bit purple!

I miss my Disney friends but I try to skype and write emails and letters when I can.
Getting mail is my favourite thing.

I loved 2012 and I wish I could do it all over again!

Rest is good, God commands rest. It reminds me that I am not a machine. Rather, that in a world that assigns value to people according to what they do, I am valuable simply because I am human. (Genesis 1:27, Genesis 2:7). Shalom is the biblical principle of peace. Peace with ourselves, with our health and our wealth can all help us to find fulfilment and satisfaction. But shalom also means wholeness. 2012 was my space to find shalom and wholeness through connecting with God, enjoying the world and finding Him in it.

Goodbye to the best year I've had so far. Thank you to everyone who made it special.

I will always remember this!

Heaven and Nature Sing

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone following my ramblings! 

My Christmas looked like this:

Every year, we visit Santa

We sing Christmas carols at church and the best Christmas carol is "O Holy Night" sung by my friend Sam :)

I had dinner at home with my family on Christmas Eve. 

As per tradition, I prepared the ham

...and my sister made a cake that put me in a food coma

Last year, someone won tweezers from a bon-bon and I decided it was the best prize ever. 

I still stand by that statement because this year, the best thing we won from a bon-bon was a pair of freaky plastic lips. 

Boxing Day

We leave home at 5 am the day after Christmas for the Boxing Day sales. This is the busiest shopping day of the year because stores have sales to get rid of their Christmas stock at the end of the year. I could sleep in on Boxing Day and go shopping at a decent hour... but I would be waiting at least an hour for a car park for sure. Plus I would have to fight peak-hour crowds to browse through crummy leftovers from the keen-as-a-bean morning shoppers.  So 5am it is!

I hit zombie mode at about 10am. This is when I start walking into people and dropping things. After six hours of making my way through crowds and waiting in line to enter shops/try on clothes/buy clothes (we are waiting in line to pay money, this is insanity!), I was keen to spend a few hours in silence and at least five metres away from the nearest person. 

I woke up with cramps in my calves the next morning and struggled to get out of bed. 

Maybe I should stretch before I go shopping? Serious pain.

I'm happy with these pretty purchases though. 

A few things for grown up lawyer life at discount prices :)

(Wallet was a Christmas present from the cake-making sister)

Butter, Sugar and Time. Mix Well

I realised this week that time is life's most precious resource and I'm wasting it on Facebook. Collectively, Americans spend more than 100,000 years on Facebook each month (Venture Beat). Remember Myspace? I (don't) remember how many hours I dedicated cultivating my online persona, to have it all amount to nothing now that Myspace is officially dead.

So in an attempt utilise my time better and avoid the temptation to waste hours on Facebook and other social networks, I have been forcing myself to get out and do things... ANYTHING, because almost everything else would actually be more worthwhile than refreshing my newsfeed and readjusting my profile picture.

I truly believe one of the best ways to invest your time is in your relationships because they are the only thing you are bringing with you into Heaven. I crashed my friend's Tuesday afternoon and I loved baking shortbread with her. We used cookie cutters in the shape of moustaches, Christmas trees and our Disney friends Chip'n'Dale to make trays of pretty Christmas short bread with this simple recipe!

I was inspired by this article: 5 Things We Will Wish We Had Done Differently (Relevant Magazine)

Hopped off the plane at LAX... and BOLTED!

I once stayed in the red-light districts of Paris on my own. They were crowded, scummy and scary even during the day with shady-looking strangers offering to trade you cigarettes and packets of tissues for some change. At that particular time, riots of a nationalistic flavour were flaring up over the FIFA World Cup. I remember stepping out of the worst hotel I have ever stayed in and immediately being flattened against a brick wall as a stampede of people scrambled through the streets with panicked shouting, followed by a battalion of policemen armed with shields and batons marching slowly and carefully on after them.

I was scared then but Los Angeles was scarier. Like most major cities, there are good and bad areas. Call me strange but I have grown to prefer seedy areas over tourist areas. I call it "Real America." My friends and I had just come from a sun set bike ride along the board walk at Santa Monica Beach. It had gotten dark and cold quite quickly, and in a complete YOLO moment, we decided to hop off the bus early in West Hollywood so that one of the girls could fulfil her dream of getting a tattoo at Kat Von D's High Voltage Tattoo (from LA Ink). Just the night before, my parents had found out that I had been straying from the group and exploring LA on my own and had sent a long text about "sticking with the group for my own safety." So, I followed them off the bus to the tattoo parlour where one of the girls got her dream tattoo.

There was no bathroom in the tattoo parlour so at 10pm, one of the boys and I hit North La Brea Avenue aiming for the closest McDonalds 263 metres away. As soon as we stepped out the door, we could tell we were in a seedy area. Roaming the streets were men with a crazed look in their eye and there were echoes of clinking of bottles and mad cackling laughter ringing in the air. Stupidly, I suggested we run... for two reasons: 1) We'd get to our McDonalds safehaven faster; and 2) It might warm us up because while those Winter days in California were hot and sunny, the nights were too chilly for our shorts and t-shirts.

So we picked up the pace and started jogging in our thongs (flip-flops/jandels etc) which I admit, must have looked and sounded very suspicious. Two people running in thongs down a seedy street late at night. We had gotten maybe 50 metres down the road when I swore that I could hear a third pair of footsteps running behind me. I could tell Luke could hear them too and we looked at each other nervously. I was sure I was about to get attacked and mugged and I remembered that I had only $2 on me and felt a little relieved.

Together we looked around and sure enough, we saw a tall man in the shadows carrying a backpack chasing us down. It all happened so quickly, I don't remember what I was thinking or feeling, if I was thinking or feeling anything at all. Instead of tackling us though, he slowed down to halt when we locked eyes and started to talk manically to us. "Why did you guys stop running? I was just trying to run wit y'all." Stunned, we just stared at him stupidly - probably like this:

"Well Happy New Year!" he yelled cheerily slash manically, before he let us walk off. We hurried across the street into McDonalds where he followed us in and took a seat at the entrance. We snuck out through the back exit. We still don't really know if that guy was intending to mug us. We didn't ask. Maybe we should have.

Better Homes and Bathrooms

My friend James has taught me at least two things that have improved the quality of my life, and now I pass them on to you!

Firstly, brushing your teeth in the shower. It sounds weird but it makes a lot of sense once you actually try it. It's easier to clean up and saves time.

Now for the snickers sandwich. Crunchy peanut butter on top of a thick layer of Nutella on bread. Easy-peasy! I prefer a single slice of toasted bread (crunchy and warm; a pleasant bread:nutella:pb ratio) but the original Snickers sandwich is obviously an actual sandwich: two slices of soft bread with the spreads jammed in the middle. Each to his own!

GC Shore

The hot, picturesque beaches on the Gold Coast are good. But spending time with a close friend is far better.

I visited my friend Sharleen at her home in Queensland this week. We became good friends while working together at Disney World but hadn't seen each other since I left the States in June.

We spent most of the week on the Gold Coast by the beach, under the harsh sun and in the unforgiving surf. Queensland is tropical and the weather is always hot - I guess it is the "Florida" of Australia (even complete with theme parks). We accidentally fell asleep on the sand and got so sunburnt that I could hear Sharleen yelping in pain in the shower for the rest of the week (falling asleep in the sun never ends well). We went for walks along the beach at twilight, ate chocolate and hot chips for every meal and watched hilarious YouTube videos before bed. Sometimes a friend is someone you can do nothing with and love every minute of it.

No matter what we were doing, I felt really blessed to just have time with my friend. To chat over a meal, to see the same sunset and to create a new memory together... in real time. How precious that becomes when you find yourselves living worlds away and unable to share such simple things.

Joggers Paradise

This evening's running track is inspiring

Embarrassing Photo Prints

When you get your digital photos printed at the photo centre, the person at the photo centre will usually check the photos with you to make sure you are collecting the right batch. I cannot think of a worse photo in my batch to be on top of the pile, but sure enough, when the photo centre lady took the photos out of their packaging for everyone to see, there I was in a child's Ariel dress staring back at all of us. Nope, definitely NOT mine...... :$

It's 95 degrees in the shade

I am grateful to live in a place where I can drive 25 minutes and get to this...

Especially since it is 38C degrees today!

Give Me A Home Among the Gum Trees

The trick to these is to put your hair through the head hole! 

These are legit photo points at Healesville Sanctuary, a zoo for native Australian wildlife. K.

I saw koalas, dingoes, kangaroos, wombats, platypus, snakes and the like... and I patted a wallaby! My favourite thing is listening to the zookeepers talk about the animals. It always makes me wish I was in primary school again learning random facts about the world and the creatures in it. (Possum Magic, Edwina the Emu, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Belinda The Cow anyone?) I feel like I would be a much better person if I could recall all of those things.

I usually hate birds but I thought this emu was really cute! Probably because it doesn't fly.