It's kind of nice when not too much happens all in the same day. The last few days have been so packed with things to see and do that we feel exhausted. Today we just went to the meeting and to a family barbie in the park. The Wodonga West congregation is really nice, and their Kingdom Hall is beautiful, with a drive through window for pickups and dropoffs, overlooking the green and blue hills north of Melbourne. The friends here are great, but here is one half of every conversation I've had so far: "So where are you from? Oh wow, the big city eh? A bit different from here, isn't it? So you were there on September 11th - what was that like? No? Long Island, eh? We've got one of those... How long is it? How long will you be visiting? Only a month? That's not long enough, is it? What parts of Australia did you see? Oh yeah, the coast is beautiful - never been there myself though. So what do you do back in the states? Huh.. that's not very interesting..." So my answers have all become a routine. I shpeal out, almost in perfect sequence, interesting tidbits and smile my best. I'm not a very good people person, but it's harder when everyone asks the exact same questions.

So I was pretty happy today to meet Peter's and Sharon's pregnant daughter and son-in-law, Matt. He's into snowboarding and engineering and gets along well with Peter, who has a computer controlled engraving machine in his garage. He took me for a tour of his sign engraving shop in his garage, and of course, I'm into all that mechanical stuff, so it was pretty cool to me.

Wodonga Kingdom Hall	View From Their Car Park	Reunion	Ant Traffic
Taking a Nap

Most of the Gosden relatives in the Wodonga area are from Rose's brother Hartman. So, all the cousins they never get to see were in the park for a barbie and a game of footie. The ball kept bouncing off the power lines, so it was difficult to have a real game. I met all of their cousins and nieces and unkles. See above for a transcript.

Barbequeing is so popular here in Australia, that they actually have public barbies free to use. We saw them at every town we stopped in. You just push a button, and this stainless steel surface starts getting hot! They do have grills on their barbies, but they always have a flat pan-shaped area for cooking on too. Uncle Harman made sure it was nice and clean before we cooked on it... heh.

Duck	More Ducks	Unkle Hartman	Footie Over the Power Lines
Cousin Eric	Cleaning the Barbie	Sunset over Duck Pond	Ripples