Aussie Expats Update – Hiking, Buffalo, Wings and Sonic

Ladies and gentlemen!
Well, here we are again for the weekly Friday ‘It’s Your American Life!’ update. I know… The title needs some more work still (it’s on my list of things to do), but I’m not on top of my game today. We were up until 3 am last night (babysitting, not even partying!) and I am consequently worn out and late in getting this post up. I also haven’t done any uni at all today. Oops. But anyway, have a pinch and a punch for the first of the month! It seems crazy to think that it’s already July, especially when we realised that Monday, 4th of July, marks our one month anniversary for moving to Oklahoma. A whole month already! It makes me realise that the next 2.5 years are probably going to fly by, which means we have to do as many things as we can before we go.

Luckily, we’ve really been getting out and about recently. Last weekend we helped our local gym, Black Dog Crossfit, paint the walls. Sounds like a quick and easy job, but it is a big space. All of the painted walls were bare concrete before a group of us got stuck into them after training on Saturday and it was a hot, sweaty, shoulder busting process. It’s ended up looking pretty fantastic though and we’re glad that we went along to help out.

We made a quick trip to Dick’s afterwards for our hiking jaunt planned for Sunday and then we drove down to Wichita Falls that afternoon for the Wichita Art and Soul Festival. It was hot. Really hot! But we had a lot of fun anyway. We ate some great tacos and garlic parmesan fries from a food truck, I patted a really cute and very excitable puppy (which really made the whole trip worthwhile for me) and we got some shaved ice in colour changing cups. James decided to put pretty much every available flavour in his, so it was pretty gross: we couldn’t decide whether to blame the ‘Wedding Cake’ or the ‘Tiger’s Blood’ flavour for the overall ick taste, but he really committed to eating most of it. I was simultaneously impressed and a bit grossed out, but if nothing else, his determination to the cause deserves some merit… as does his candle-picking taste. We got some beautiful scents from a candle stall called Penelope & Lou Candles. If you’re in OK and want some great soy candles, check them out. They’re absolutely lovely!

We met up with some friends there a bit later on. James and I had earlier gone into an antiques store, only to discover they had free cookies and brownies, which I promptly availed myself of and so of course we decided to revisit it once the girls arrived. Once inside, we spent some time looking through some weird antiques and finally purchasing some Disney movies on VHS… I will happily admit that was my fault because I remember reading an article a while ago about how these VHS films were being sold for a lot of money; the internet subsequently revealed that I may have been fooled about that, but since they were a dollar each, I don’t feel too bad about it.

Sunday saw us have our friend, Kim, visit for breakfast (pancakes and bacon with maple syrup and ice-cream!) before she drove us all out to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Randy the Ranger was so excited to meet us (and that we knew that we call it a ‘bubbler’ back home) that he invited us to join the hiking group on Facebook and come out again in future for some trails. It was hot work, but it was incredibly quiet and the scenery was stunning.

We took a bit of a stroll – by which I mean a very careful, pick-where-your-foot-goes journey – across this pool of water to the other side. I was the only one to emerge triumphant after both James and Kim fell during the crossing: ergo, I’m the best! We had a really great time, even though my back was pretty sore from all the walking afterwards, and are looking forward to heading back out again soon.

This week has really been about me settling into uni and getting stuck into the books: my psychology subject looks like it’ll be a lot of work! We went out a bought some matting for our garage today to turn it into a gym and are heading into Wichita Falls again tomorrow for a massage each before seeing Tarzan. Hurray!

To sign off on this post and wish you all a great long weekend, have this photo of a buffalo. They’re so big and shaggy!

— Ana.