Ringing in the New Year

It’s been over a month and a half since December’s eventful post. 7 weeks. Every single time I sit down to write a blogpost, I can’t believe how fast time has flown by. Admittedly, I put off writing up posts because it’s a rare feeling of sudden spontaneity and inspiration that I don’t often get ( that, or I feel as if I haven’t done anything substantial worth posting about haha). Anywho, I hope January was a good leap into the new year for you. I’ve finally reached the stage of of writing ’16’ instead of ’15’.

I also spent some time revamping my blogs (as you may have already noticed). It took me aaages to figure out how to do basic layout formatting in the html and getting the theme loaded up *sigh* All gee, I’m happy with it.

On New Year’s Day, my sister and I took an early flight to Tasmania for our first mission school with the Sisters of the Immaculata for ten days to deepen our Catholic faith and meet youth across Australia.

Made a short stopover at Melbourne before Hobart.

The gorgeous little marquee which was especially beautiful when we lit candles inside for Adoration.

I don’t have many photos from the camp because I didn’t use my phone for ten days. We did have a camera but didn’t use it often… At first, it was kinda like ‘nuuuuuuuuuh!!!’ but it was seriously the best way to start my new year- with a digital detox. That allowed me to really concentrate on the present. ‘To connect with God, we disconnect from the world’ and I realised the truth in that at the end of the camp.

Our typical day would consist of early mornings, prayer, praise and worship, mass, talks, sharegroup activities, helping out in the kitchen, playing games and Adoration. It was all very jam-packed so we always had something to do.

Archery! Brought out my inner Katniss Everdeen . yeah!

Went out and about to town for Evangelising~

Enjoying the silence during Golden Hour

I love how the sun sets at 10pm (daylight savings)

Overall, it was an incredible experience for me- emotionally and spiritually. I also had tonnes of fun with the people who were so welcoming and friendly, I really missed them when I left. I am extremely grateful for the Knights of the Southern Cross who made this all possible for us.

Big shoutout to Dragan for taking us around on our last day before flying back. We drove up Mount Wellington to witness a beautiful view of Hobart transitioning from a cloudy afternoon to its twinkling night lights. Went around the harbour, beaches and jammed to epic Croation music.

‘We must take a touristy photo of our shoes!’

Absolutely adore these photos- two lovebirds at sunset.

And with that, a wonderful end to the trip and beautiful beginning to a new year!

Captured the contrast between the city buildings and Albert St Uniting Church.

Renae’s awesome idea to take the chicas out to Bounce. Super fun exercise- I was too scared to try any tricks so I just jumped a lot haha. Needed the breaks D; it’s exhausting!

My first Maccas toy in years~ Absolutely adore how the Snoopy spins around.

Making le veggie dumplingss

Catch up and dumpling chow with Michael 🙂

(above and below) are my sister’s awesome breakfast meals she made for me as I was rushing out of the house <3

Celebrated first date of the year with Alex at Sono. I hadn’t seen him for almost a month so we had a special dinner 🙂 Really calm atmosphere and the fuuuuuuud ermagerd. Need to go to Japan. Also tried fresh oysters for the first time! They had a super fishy aftertaste but yeah, strangely satisfying! I really wasn’t sure if I’d like it …

Did a big scrapbooking project for Mum’s special day. It’s such a long process x_x but result was totally worth.

Inserted pages of dishes that she’s made haha 😀

Birthday Noodles whoop whoop! My sister is totally cuti-fying everything. Look at that egg.

Decided to try out Nitrogenie at Southbank on a hot and humid stormy night. The sky was alright where we were but there were these strange clouds in the distance with constant lightning flashes! Awesome yet slightly terrifying to watch. I wanted to run for it and go home but the clouds weren’t moving so meh. Anyway, we chose condensed milk and milo- large to share. Yes, it was nice and yes it was very smooth ice cream …….but almost too smooth. It was melting insanely fast (the heat outside made it a lot worse) so we couldn’t really enjoy it properly ;( It’s fun to watch and the place itself is uber cute but I probably wouldn’t have it again.

Nandos Paella

New Shanghai, downing those dumplings….. (been eating a lot of these….)

Found the most adorable wooden music boxes at Pigeonhole.

We go to Australian Geographic on dates to make forts with Kinetic Sand . yup.

Lil bit of shopping….

Best and worst yolo meals I’ve had in a while. San Churros Choc Banana Sundae with Renae.

Went to a local event for Lunar New Year and watched a bunch of awesome performances, a lot of which were from Sunnybank! (A long way away, for those who know where I live).

I’d watch these beautiful women in awe and hope to be that fabulous when I’m older :’D Such passion, such spirit.

My favourite would have had to be ‘Toko Tan’- A rhythmic, organic, fluid & energetic Japanese art form of ‘Wadaiko’ (Japanese drumming). They memorised half an hour worth of pieces, performed in perfect sync with such enthusiasm and not a single mistake. I was so entranced!

Uni commitments are starting to roll in and my super duper long holidays are finally drawing to a close. I’ll see how blogging goes, take care!