Hi there, long time no story!
…that is first of all due to the lots of assignment we had to hand in over the last couple of months, but since the final research project has been handed in last week, everything is gettin better now!I guess I have a lot of catching up to do… I just start and tell you what happened to us over the last weeks:

We went whalewatching the other day, I think it was a sunny, sometimes rainy day in August. Mark knows some guy with a boat who does those trips commercially, so everybody paid 50 bucks and off we went.

It is basically a little tip on the pacific, trying to see some big fish, hehe. This description does not really sound as amazing as it actually was in the end, but I added some pictures and this litte video to convey some of the excitement we experienced out there.

I think, just being on the pacific with a little boat is cool enough, but seeing whales is just something „from another world“…. totally amazing. But: check out the pics in the galleries to see for yourself.
The little baby whale on the video is only about 2 weeks old (according to Lee, the captain), but I found it scary enough to have that „monster“ diving under our boat, seeing the size (and probable strength) of that little boy. Overall, it was a great day out and everybody enjoyed it big time.

Kai arrived in Sydney!
To meet him after more than a year and to say good bye to that great city, we decided to take advantage of the sweet offers Virgin Blue have on their website, and to fly down instead of sitting in the bus for over 12 hours again…. Sydney is still great, and meeting Kai was really sweet as well. We behaved like proper tourists:

Kai brought my new digi handycam to Australia and we walked around the city for days, filming and photographing everything. We went to the fishmarkets, paddy’s, to the Oxford street for the last time, went out for dinner and met up with all the friends we made. Was nice, until we left. Leaving Sydney felt strange, not having sydney „around the corner“ (as 800 kilometres in down under are „around the corner“) even more. I added some pictures of that trip to the galleries as well.

Another exciting adventure I presented myself with was a nice little adrenalin kick:
I jumped out of a smoothly running plane at 14.000 feet.

Falling down is much faster than waiting to get up to that height, we (the tandem „instructor“ and me) needed 70 seconds for 10.000 feet. The rest, as it appeared to me, was slooooow. Funny, because my skydive partner told me we were still descending at 2 meters per second…. I thought we were just sitting in the air, not moving much. However, jumping out scared the shit out of me (One could tell by looking in my face just before jumping), and actually, I thought I would be dying (die-ing?) of an heart attack jumping out there.
I needed some seconds to realize what’s happening to me in that moment, but after that, it is just a hell of a rush, and I am not able to describe it really. Everybody should do it, and I bet I will do it again some time. Check out some pictures in the galleries or the video to the right (you need quicktime).

However, we are going back to Germany soon.

Probably leaving on the 24th, we are trying to enjoy the last weeks as much as possible, especially as it is getting hotter and hotter everyday (the summer comes back!).

I am certainly looking forward to going back and seeing you all, but it will most definetly be quite difficult to adopt to the crap german weather and the cold environment again, after more almost 1.5 years of beautiful beaches, beautiful nature and an amamzing sun 7 days a week….

See you soon, anyway!

Hugs,
Lasse