2016
was a good year for me. One of the many highlights for me this year was
Geocaching. Geocaching is an international sport which consists mainly
of finding hidden boxes in the woods with a GPS(Co-ordinates are posted
online). I found out about the game in April this year, and since then I
have found 51 geocaches with my phone. I got to most of them on my bike
and some of them on family trips and vacations, including trips to the
Netherlands and Singapore.
Sailing
season is around Summer(October-March in Australia), so this year had
parts of two sailing seasons. The first, when I went to the Royal
Queensland Yacht Squadron in Manly, QLD, started in late 2015. During
that term I completed the Tackers course, which teaches basic knowledge
of sailing for children. I needed the certificate from Tackers to get
into Green Fleet(higher level teaching, including the rules of racing). I
sailed in Green fleet through the beginning of 2016 and up until March.
By then, the sailing season had ended, and I finished Green Fleet and
was allowed to sail in a higher level group, Intermediate Fleet(also
called Blue Squadron) during the next season. Unfortunately, sailing in
Intermediate Fleet required owning a Laser at the sailing club, which
are very expensive. Because of this, I had to start sailing at another
club the next season.
Starting
at October, I sailed at the Humpybong sailing club at Redcliffe. Since I
had completed Tackers, I was able to get straight into Green Fleet.
Because there are no higher-level courses at Humpybong, the next step
was to become a Tackers assistant instructor. I enrolled in a two-day
course back at Manly and got an AI certificate. The course I will be
helping with will be in early January.
Meanwhile,
I had been reading many books with Steve every evening. This year we
finished The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, we read Much Ado About
Nothing by Shakespeare, which we watched with my grandmother, and we
read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
I
have also been practicing clarinet regularly and have passed the grade 3
music examination for clarinet. I am now working on some pieces of
music for two auditions which are both scheduled mid-January.
One
of the biggest highlights for the year was the trip to the Netherlands.
As it started, eight time zones of air travel made August literally the
longest month of my life(and September the shortest). We switched to a
connecting flight in Dubai on the way and saw some of the airport. A few
days after we got to Leeuwarden, capital of Friesland, we took a ferry
to Terschelling, our favourite island. It is a small island, only 30km
long, and I had a lot of fun biking around the island and seeing the
nature, the towns, the farmland, and the ruins of German WWII bunkers.
After staying there for 3 weeks, we went south to the city of Nijmegen,
stayed there for a few days and went around to an amusement park and the
German border. Then we went back to Schiphol and flew to Singapore. We
stayed there for 3 days and then returned to Australia. It was the best
trip I had in 4 years.
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