I love working with people who can find things to have a laugh about when things feel like they might be getting too intense.

It is so weird being back in Melbourne after spending time in Alice Springs. Mum and I had a lovely vegetarian lunch on my last day. I had a warm tofu salad and it was the yummiest tofu I have ever eaten. Tiger airways is so budget it is funny. Passengers are dropped away from the normal airport and collect their luggage in an outdoor luggage terminal and then walk for like 4mins to get to where the shuttle buses and everything leave from. This is normally a 30secs walk from where you collect your luggage. The first thing you notice when being back in the city is the traffic and the noise. I came home to an empty house which was initially disappointing but then I ended up really enjoying the time out from people. Isn’t that an unusual thing for an extrovert to say?

So I went to bed only to be woken up at 4:00 in the morning with someone banging very loudly on the garage door down stairs in the laneway. I think they were trying to wake me up. Chris and I went down to see what the issue was and I won’t go into details about all that happened because it feels a bit insensitve to discuss it on the net but it sure was intense. Welcome back to Urban Seed gemma!!! 

 

Alice Springs is a very cool town, I like it a lot. Last night we went and had beers (we being Jem, Tom, Tracy, Danial, Ryan and Andrew and me)  at this bar in the mall. We sat outside and there was this big sign in front of me that said “Proud to be Aboriginal, Proud to be Australian.” I thought, I hope that is how people feel. Anyway there is heaps of Aboriginal stuff up here which is great. I went out the night before to a jam session with a friend I met in Melbourne about a month before she moved to Alice and this guy there played the didgeridoo so well. I was excited. It was beautiful to be there, didgeridoo palying, looking up at the sky, dancing. I could definitly move here. We are going out to a remote community type place today. It is only an hour out of Alice and it has a coffee shop and a gallery there so it is not classic remote community but it still is classed as one. Mum does work out there. I am going to try and have a look at the school to get a feel for what teaching up here would be like. Not that you could really know just by looking at something but I still want to check it out if it is not too awkward. I was hoping to get there for lunchtime but people are now running very late home from somewhere so it might not be possible.   

For anyone interested in the road trip we are currently in Geelong  in an internet cafe. Boring. The problem is we need to work out money stuff and Ryan needs a spreadsheet to do it. I must say he is very clever with spreadsheets. Anyhow it has been going good. A lovely night in a character filled hotel in Culcairn and showing Jane and co. my house last night in Melbourne was great too. Jane said she loved Credo Cafe and I think she meant it. I must say I am a bit impatient to get to the parts of Australia I haven’t seen but I can’t complain because the company is good and the vehicles we are in are fantastic.  We have named them Priscilla and Mayhem. There names like totally suit there personality and style.

I have had such a busy week. We had mission exposure again and we had 6 people staying with us for a week. It was really great but exhausting. We run sessions for people and they come and hang out at Credo Cafe with us. Four of the people were actually from Hope Street in your local Sydney town. When we were doing our faith mapping journeys one of the women shared about her past very serious addiction to speed and her journey out of it and where God was in all of that. I did not share my experiences with the whole group but I talked with her about it all later. It was really helpful for me to connect with that part of my journey again with someone who reminded me so much of myself in a lot of ways, besides the fact she was about 10years older. When I shared with her about my past addictions and stuff she said “Wow I wouldn’t have picked that.” I guess that is a good thing. The other amazing thing about the week was I cooked twice for people and they said my cooking was really good.