Gap Life?

#7

Hi future me and probably future Brim...

The last month has been pretty hectic, when I left you last I was looking forward to Corps Day. That went alright, after having a rough time of putting a BH team together it was just a matter of surviving the ride there and the freezingness of Warradale Army Barracks. I got the task of being the assessor/marker person for the camouflage and concealment station/activity thing. I hid stuff in trees and bushes and cadets had to find the 25 items without crossing a certain boundary... those rules altered a tad when it became dark. Even though I was doing exactly the same thing from 0700 till 2345 with only meal breaks I managed to keep myself entertained for most of it. Talking to the different units was good, even though they were very hesitant in giving me any info on where they were from... Apparently this was an order given to them because the assessors are bias butt holes who will give teams from amazing units like Broken Hill's 1000 more points... Yep that's definitely the reason why. I got to know another CUO that I haven't met in my previous 6 years of cadets, even though we've probably been on many of the same bivs. We slept on stretchers inside, and a lot of the male officer's were complaining about some of the more experienced officers snoring. It was all a big joke until the Saturday night when the CUO and I came back from counting scores at around 0200 and realised that one of our own teenage cadet girls was possibly possessed by some kind of wolf demon dog- there is no other explanation for the snoring sounds that young girl was producing. But the highlight of the whole weekend was seeing Brims slightly still recovering face come through the mess door just to visit me! After a massive night of free wine and prom heels she found it in herself to get up before morally necessary and walk all the way down the the barracks just to be reunited with her bestie. AHmazing. Isn't that just beautiful, cannot think of many other people who would do that. Pretty sure a tad of AAC nostalgia encouraged the adventure, but I had fun for that hour or so!

Cadets is a tad different these days (starting from last Tuesday) as we're kinda getting all pumped up for AFX (annual camp). I've made a new training program for preparing the cadets, and making sure they know stuff for the camp. The new thing is that the instructors pretty much just include me and my captain. Awesome.

After that I had Sarah and Dario's engagement party. I was really looking forward to it, it was going to be massive, with heaps of family and 200+ balloons -(literally). I helped them set up on the day and that was fun- mucking around with the balloons and being harassed by Unlce Nino because the music didn't meet his taste standards. Catching up with some family and friends that came to BH for it was really good too. For their prezzie I chose a photo from our trip to China and we got it enlarged and framed, it looked really good in the end, perfect for their future new house. I went with Adam, pretty sure he enjoyed being talked at by my family and told drunkenly that we are perfect together, oh, and that he's got groovy moves on the dance floor... Yep, definitely.

So I did get accepted onto Lifeline's board, and I've been to a few meetings. It's very different to what I naively thought it would be, a lot of financial and business type of talk. But I'm finding that I'm learning a few bits here and there that will probably be helpful later on in life. It feels good to be involved in something so big, so I'm looking forward to relaying different opinions from the youth council when a topic that's relevant comes up.

Had a few school friends visit so there was a bit of a reunion of our year on a Saturday night, which was quite fun. The following Tuesday I went to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Road Show with Adam, fricken hilarious, I must say. They had Cal Wilson and Randy, that funny purple puppet... Haaa. (As well as 3 other comedians).

THEN THERE WAS HANNAH AND TERRI! We went camping :]

Hehe, we got a group of friends together and went down near the main weir and camped over night. This mostly included eating and playing with fire... which was very enjoyable. Camping food is the best... marshmallows, spuds will bolognese sauce, bacon, and heeeeeaps of junk food. Most of us slept in swags, which I love. In conclusion, it was fun.

Having friends in town again was extremely nice. Quite beautiful even. We got the whole crew together for a lovely dinner at the mulga, and got a tad weirded out at how everyone had and hadn't changed and talked about what we were doing with our lives now. Then we did the normal things like maccas, movies, games, going out and I went to see Brave with Terri. Very good, but a tad fricken scary for a kids movie...

Last weekend I went to Adelaide with Adam and he took me to see my first ever footy game. It was Essendon and Port playing, so we were pretty much outnumbered by the Adelaide crew... but that seemed to change after the Bombers had won by 50 points, interestingly enough. It was a great game (and that coming from me is huge), very close until the last quarter. Just so glad it didn't rain, it was already so COLD. We went bowling and shopping too. Mama Carmela's, Hogs Breath and the Watermark were all on the menu, so that was extremely yummy. We stayed at the Stanford Grand which was very fancy hahaha. I got to catch up with the cousins as well, Hugo, Rosa and Ioana, which is always fun! Can't wait to see them again later on in the year.

Mum has just planned an incredible family holiday for us to Thailand. So I'm just always secretly excited for life these days. Its straight after AFX with cadets so its gonna be a nice transition haha. It's gonna be in October, which was around when I would have liked to go to Europe, particularly Malta. So I've been thinking and talking and kinda of half-deciding that I might book that for May next year and have a little more than a gap year hehe. Why not I guess, I've got a full time job and I'm still not sure what I would like to do with life (other than have a gap year+ and travel :P) even though I've definitely narrowed it down... well maybe not- I've actually thought of some other ideas that might be smarter to start with. Anyyyywaaaay, THAILAND!

Well that was a biggen... serves me right for not writing one sooner I guess... Now onto Brim.

Loven life ladies and gents...

-Licul