At the end of March, Zack and I, along with several friends, are doing a ridiculous race called the Tough Mudder. It's a course designed by British Special Forces and involves running basically a half marathon with obstacles along the way. They range from jumping off a plank into ice cold water, running through mud-filled tires, crawling through skinny tubes and under wire, climbing over walls, jumping over fire, carrying a log up a hill, racing through electrified wires (ack!), etc. Peer pressure is the only reason I signed up for it. Anyway, we had a little team get-together this weekend with a BBQ at Adam and Emily's place followed by a game of lawn bowling at a local club. It was an extremely hot day!
This "sport" is pretty popular among the elderly here in Australia. You stand on a mat and then roll this black ball, which is kind of like a smushed sphere and weighted on one side (so you have to account for the curve that happens), toward a white "jack" (small ball) at the other end of the green. The closest ball to the jack wins. For the first few rounds, the girls split from the boys. This picture is of the guys during one of their games.
Zack ended up being pretty good at lawn bowling. The pictures above show his ball right on the pin; he definitely won that round! Note his extremely Aussie outfit...muscle tee (called a singlet here) and colored shorts. With our Havaiana flip-flops (thongs), we are starting to fit in in this country!
After bowling, we went back to the Lowells for some more food and dessert. Here is the cake I made in honor of the occasion. We are Team AUSsome because most of us are expats or people from other countries. You can see several of the obstacles we'll have to face featured on this cake. More to come about how/if we survive at the end of the month!
