I'm happy to sit here and say that, despite a dull ache in my leg, some restricted nerve sensation, and a huge bruise on my foot that prevents me from wearing sneakers (and it's cold up here!), I'm doing fantastically. I can walk around, bearing weight fully, and in my physical therapist now has me on the eliptical and on the bikes. We're continuing to work on my range of motion, breaking the scar tissue by bending it as far as possible. That's certainly painful, but I'm making progress. They took my stitches out last Thursday and Doc Diduch said I was doing great! He did recommend, however, that I stick around for another 2 weeks in June, so I'm leaving on June 20th to head down to the Southern Hemisphere.

Speaking of which, I've recently been completely immersed in Australia websites, books, pamphlets, news excerpts, and conversation. What an overwhelming country! Bill Bryson has been my latest humorous (though often annoyingly so) travel guide and friend in my lonliness. I just finished his book, In a Sunburned Country, and I would recommend it with almost flying colours. His writing style is often pathetically pessimistic and cynical, but for the most part, he provides a fantastic wealth of facts that fill in the gaps of his solitary excursions in the vast, underpopulated land.

Now that I've finalized my plane reservations and am now into the insanely difficult (but exhilerating) task of actually planning my own adventures, I'm extremely happy to be finished with the book. I need to indulge in another world than the one in which I am or will be living. I believe now I'll move onto The Fountainhead, or perhaps escape even more fully into Middle Earth by reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Fiction is meant as a diversion, no? And with this huge logistical task at hand, Lord knows I need a bit of a diversion!