up, up and away!

hello all! i know it's been a long long while since i've written. i seriously haven't been doing anything except working. my tan is fading, i haven't dipped a toe in the ocean in probably about two weeks, and i'm living off rice crackers. but, all for good reason because we are going on HOLIDAYYYY!!!!! bry and i are heading to indonesia for three weeks on sunday. our friend emma is meeting us there and bry's friend from germany is coming as well. it's going to be an amazing time, we will be chilling in bali, komodo national park (aka i'm going to see real life komodo dragons!) and lombok for some epic surf. i couldn't be more excited! it's been quite the process getting ready to leave, and with working so much and everything, i managed to give myself a stress rash, went to the doctors twice in two weeks, was put on antibiotics etc etc but i'm all good now! i sold my car (steve foreverrrrrrr <3), am sending a massive box of stuff home today, and we are having a garage sale at our cabin, affectionately known as our "porch sale" since we don't actually have a garage hahaha. we are both wrapping up all of our loose ends here in margs, which is both an exciting prospect and a sad one. i've been here for about 6 months and have really grown to adore this beautiful place. i've made some awesome friends and seen many amazing things, but i feel ready to move on and see more of australia. after indo, we are headed to darwin where bryanna already has her job lined up, and i will be looking for a new job! NT is going to be such a different setting than western australia, so i'm seriously stoked to see that part!

last weekend, bry, myself and our friend hanna were invited up to narrogin to go gliding with a member of the district club where the girls work, humphrey. he is a really cool guy who has been flying and teaching people how to fly gliders for about 15 years now. a glider is essentially a plane without an engine, which uses thermal columns of hot air rising from the ground to fly on. i went first and honestly i was pretty scared! you get towed up on a string behind a power plane and once you are high enough the rope lets go and you are on your own! the plane drops you in a thermal, and then the pilot uses the rising hot air to go higher and higher! humphrey is such an amazing pilot, and as we were going he pointed things out to me and told me how everything worked. we got up to 5,300 feet and it was such a beautiful experience! the girls enjoyed their time in the sky as well, and after we took humphrey out for dinner and a few beers and then hung out at the gliding club, and stayed the night in one of the caravans they have set up there. we had so so much fun and you could tell that humphrey is so passionate about flying and loves to share his knowledge and experience with others. it was AMAZING! now, we are all hooked on flying and want to become pilots :) here are a few photos:

all in all it was actually the best couple of days ever! we all had so much fun and we are so lucky that humphrey shared his passion of flying with us!

anyways i am at the library now and my internet is about to run out, but just wanted to let everyone know i'm still alive and kickin'! i've just posted some new photos on facebook, and hopefully in indo we will have good wifi so i can keep everyone updated on the adventure!

loving and missing you all very much! hope spring has sprung... and a shoutout to my mom on her 50th birthday! love you lots momma xoxoxo <3

soph