It's been a hectic few weeks, the experience of which could prolly best be summed up by last night - the annual GASS trivia night.

We'd (Mailie and I) spent 6 weeks sort-of organising it, followed by 2 weeks frantically organising prizes, questions, people, food, games and the like. And, much to our relief, it all came together brilliantly, as we managed to prise more than $2000 out of 122 fellow young people in exchange for a great night of entertainment and the warm fuzzy feeling of helping others.

Which, for us, is great, as it means that with 2 months to spare, we've reached our annual fundraising target of $4000, such that GASS can fund a reciprocal scholarship. Yay.

And a big thanks to Scott for coming along, even if I did only get to talk to him for 30 seconds!

Cheers
Mossy

quite an eventful 48 hours.

Not only did I spend two days up at the annual GASS (german australian students' society) Winter Camp, held on Lake Hume near Albury, I read all of the 5th Harry Potter book.

Both were fantastic. GASS camp may have been tarred by the 4 hour long national committee meeting, but the balance was restored by the annual GASS footy match, where, running around in bear feet (forgot shoes, thongs are no good), I scored the winning goal and marked on the line with a minute to go to the the dark team victory! And there were a few solid hits, a couple of the girls ripped into the guys; all up an exciting game.

Incidentally, the photo is of trav, one of the GASSies, running after the car, as we drive off. He'd just been to the bus to say byes to a few people, and check that the person we'd just ferried to the bus (going a little faster than we should have, with chase music courtesy of Run Lola Run booming) was ok. We couldn't be bothered waiting, so drove off. Got a good laugh.

And Harry Potter. I may not have able to convince everyone it's an allegory of mythic Greek and Roman standards, but it was certainly a good read. If only I can now find someone who thinks it was bad, that'd be a be great conversation. Any takers?

Mossy

Hehe.

GASS had it's annual Melbourne Day yesterday, as we introduced this year's batch of German exchange students and Australian hosts to Melbourne ... after having made the pilgrimage out to the airport for 5:45am on Monday morning to meet them, with our spunky new banner.

Altough the day was poorly attended by older GASSies (I blame Mailie, the other Social Coordinator, as it obviously couldn't have been my fault :D), it was a hoot as we sent the hosts and Stipis around Melbourne's CBD taking photos and doing crazy things. Some of the highlights included:
- being given a real signed statutory declaration informing me that the police approved our scav hunters to "look out for crooks"
- getting the above people thrown out of Coles for balancing pizzas on their heads (they were supposedly a security threat).
- meeting "Todd," a random stranger that one group brought to meet me to get extra points
- having people shave their arms for Tim Tams
- Getting photos of groups protesting for Kangaroo rights on the steps of Parliament
- Being given a job offer as a Mannequin by a clothing store.

And then of course, the footy was great - the Hawks thumped the Western Bulldogs by 71 points, the Germans' looked confused while watching their first game of AFL live, and the crowd dushed up the usual array of "white maggot" related comments (about the umpiring).

Quite a fun day, all in all. Just a pity I can't join them all in Albury this week for the annual Winter Camp, instead i'll be busily working on getting the VCEnet site up and ready for the launch in the next few weeks.

Peace, Mossy