Olli

Ciao! Se hai volglia di scrivere un email questo e la mia indirizzo: jahart@liberty.edu or hecubus185@gmail.com ho anche laciato un messagio nell stesso posto dove tu hai laciato il tuo.

Ok, for the non Italian speaking readers of my blog, that first line is an attempt to tell Italains how to email me. Turns out that somehow my best friend, Olli, from when I lived in Italy found my blog and left a comment on the post called "Ross Tucker" that I wrote on May 23rd. I haven't heard from him in forever and I couldn't have been happier to hear from him. I hope he logs back on and gets my message.

Anyway, I wanted to quickly come on a write a few things since I will be gone for the entire weekend. This week was the Melbourne Cup. It's the big annual horse race...kind of like the Kentucky derby in the US, except way more popular. Like waaaay more popular. The entire state of Victoria, where Melbourne is, gets off of school and work as a public holiday for the big race. Although we didn't get off of work up here in New South Wales, our office did close at 2:30pm so that we could all go watch it. Our office reserved a few tables at a pub so we had great seats. There are 20,000,000 people in Australia and there was $150,000,000 bet on this race alone. For those of you that are mathematically impaired, thats $7.50 for every single person in the entire country.

Since the office wasn't opening back up for the rest of the day, most people stuck around until about 4:30. I hadn't eaten lunch, so when they brought out the finger food I went to town on it. They had seasoned fries, chicken wraps, cheese bruschetta...and some kind of terrible fish/seafood patties. So at this point I'm having a great time. That was about to end. At 5:30 I went to the bus stop to catch the bus home. My stomach was starting to turn. Before I knew it I was running into the building across the street looking for a bathroom. I don't know if I got food poisoning or if I was allergic to something I ate, but I've been bed ridden for the past 48 hours because of it. I literally wanted to kill myself during the first 24 hours. I obviously called off of work both yesterday and today, but I was so sick that I couldn't even use my computer or watch tv. I'm definitely feeling better now and I plan on going to work tomorrow, but it was horrible.

Anyway, I go to another surf camp tomorrow, it should be pretty sweet...assuming I keep on feeling better. It will be good to get out of the house and to get a workout. Also, I booked a trip to Tasmania for next weekend and it looks like my friend Benedikt is going to come along. I write more about those things later. I hope you are all well. Ciao.