Up, Up and Away: New Experiences

Hey hey

So Friday involved another trip to a lake, however this time we went to one with a beach.

Although rather weirded out by the whole concept of swimming in a lake and lazing on its beach (thanks to the wonderfully untrustworthy lakes at home) I did end up wading and really enjoyed the afternoon. We had lunch including a very simple hot dog and a BLT.

On Friday evening we went out to see Naomi's horse, Ranger, and I watched her riding lesson. In this past week I've really loved getting to see the different aspects of life here and I'm so, so happy that I've been able to come and visit.

Saturday ended up being a very long day, we made it to an event at the Germanic American institute, another grad party and then to part of the all-night arts festival Northern Spark.

The event at the GAI was interesting, it mainly involved people sitting around drinking and eating as they listened to a band play German music. A comment as we left may have been something like "It would probably be more interesting if we could drink the beer."

The neighbourhood that the GAI is in though is ridiculously wealthy. The houses are more like small mansions and they all have impeccable front lawns. Partly made me realise just how young things in Canberra are, and that's even without seeing the thousands upon thousands of year old buildings mum and dad have seen in Europe.

The concept of graduation parties initially seemed a little foreign to me. Finishing high school (year 12) in the USA is such a major event as its often when kids then move out of home an very often interstate. So as I've managed to accompany Naomi to a small handful of grad parties I've found them with such a positive vibe that it's just been so lovely to meet some new people and slowly realise what a big step college/university is. Plus we got corn on the cob. It had cheese on it.

We headed out for Northern Spark a bit after 8, before the sun set. The festival was taking place all over Minneapolis, so there was a lot of walking (especially when we kept walking too far and having to double back). The event was a really interesting experience, I got to do a fair bit of sight seeing as most main landmarks had some sort of event happening. We called it a night around 1:30am as I was just too exhausted to keep walking through the night, but what we managed to see was really awesome.

Just a couple of photos including listening to multiple different musicians, sitting inside effectively a large balloon and icing styrofoam cakes.