Big Weekend

This past week, Ryan and Kristin Kirk (an adorable married couple from Canada who are our school directors), led lectures on relationships.  I loved their approach to the topic because it was not your typical Christian talk on boy-girl relationships.  They talked on our relationship with God, our relationships with others, and our relationships with the opposite sex.  Throughout the week, I really realized how stoked God is on relationships.  First off, Jesus is all about relationship and about us having the ability to be in relationship with God, which is amazing and so unique to Christianity.  We also learned about the different "levels" of relationships with others.  Relationships begin with acknowledgement and then are followed by social interaction, friendship, companionship, commitment, intimacy and lastly, marriage.  Ryan and Kristin stressed that at any point in relationships, both people need to be at the same place or the relationship is destined to be very difficult or destined to fail.  I learned a lot of really cool, practical things about relationships. 

This weekend, we were given three days to relax, travel or do whatever we wanted. It all started on Thursday night when the staff treated us to a lovely home-cooked meal.  We all got dressed up and arrived at our church where the staff had set up fancy tables and had cooked a delicious meal for us.  We ended that night with an all-out dance party (mostly techno music) which was sooooo fun!  Lauren, Lyndzie and I had big plans to travel up to Frasier Island for the weekend (the biggest sand island in the world) but with the buses on strike and the outrageous cost of renting a 4wd SUV, we ditched that plan and decided to stay here on the Sunshine Coast.  

Sheer Rock!

We were a little worried that we would not find much to do...but boy were we surprised.  Friday night we had a barbeque at the beach where we grilled kebabs with some other YWAMers.  Then on Saturday we went to Glasshouse Mountain.  We had heard that this was not your average hike, but I never expected it to be so intense.  As you can see from the pictures, we basically scaled solid rock cliffs.  It was super fun (and somewhat scary at times).  The view from the top was absolutely breathtaking.  

Me, Andrew, Lyndzie, Mandy and Isaac at the top!

That night Mandy, Lauren, Lyndzie and I went out to dinner and this cute, rink-a-dink Thai place called Island Breeze and then took a cab over to a funky music lounge called Solbar.  The opening band was a great Reggae group, but the main band, called the Beards, was not our favorite.  All of their songs were about beards and so, as you can imagine, we got over it pretty quick.

On Sunday, we woke up early to head over to Cottontree with the girls.  We walked around the local craft market and grabbed tea at the most amazing tea place I have ever been to in my life (not exaggerating).  It was called Silva Spoon.  They had tons of loose leaf tea and I was totally in my element.  It was so special and such a blessing to have some legit, quality tea.

Best Tea Ever

  You all know how obsessed I am with tea, so this was a real treat.  Then we had lunch at a place called Raw Energy which reminded me so much of Santa Cruz.  It had all kinds of vegan and vegetarian foods with a super funky, hippy vibe.  

Raw Energy

All in all, this weekend was so relaxing and a great time to rejuvenate.  It came at the perfect time to just get refreshed and filled up by the Lord.  Next week, we are having lectures for the whole week down in Byron Bay, which is six hours south of here.  I can't wait to spend the entire week in a new place.  I hear that it is pretty hippy-dippy..so of course...I am stoked.

Aussie phrase of the week: "Good on you" = Good job!

Aussie word of the week: "hey?" = what?