FreeRice

Want to improve your vocabulary and do something to alleviate world hunger? Then check out FreeRice - a website that donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Prgram each time you give a correct answer to a vocabulary question. The words get harder each time you get the word right, so it can become quite challenging.

You can read more about the UN World Food Program by clicking this link. I know 20 grains of rice doesn't sound like a lot, but it certainly adds up: to date, over 21,000,000,000 grains of rice have been donated through this site. The cost of the rice is carried by site sponsors, so it doesn't cost you a cent to participate!

In the last hour, the four of us have donated several thousand grains of rice between us. Catherine's best vocab level is 11, and I peaked at level 48. As Catherine says, there are three good things about this program:

1. you help people who don't have enough food to eat
2. you improve your knowledge of words
3. it's fun

Let me know if you try it by leaving a comment - we'd love to hear how many people join us!

Railway Rumours

Rumours about the new railway are rife.

It's really starting to look as though the new railway will be either:

1. passing right through our house, or
2. running just below the edge of our block

This is bad and it is sad. None of us wishes to move - but we are also prevented from doing modifications (for Christopher) and from getting even more attached to this beautiful place, until we know whether we'll be able to stay.

We are considering the following options:

1. asking Australia Zoo to loan us some koalas for our gum trees, so we can claim we are a wildlife sanctuary;
2. asking Peter Jackson to film "The Hobbit" here, so we will be a tourist attraction; or
3. burying some dinosaur bones so we can claim to have a vital archeological site on our block.

Any further ideas will be gratefully accepted.