I HATE DIAL-UP!!! Funny, I seem to remember saying that quite frequently before I left home...
However bad the computer situation can be sometimes at school, at least once you do get on, you know you will be online for as long as you want. You don't have to worry about loosing the letter you've been writing for the past hour because the connection suddenly went sour. Ugh...

Now that that's out and off my chest I can move on to what I've been wanting to write since I got back from Sydney. Its not much, but I liked it, and I can still see the subject when I read it. So with no further ado:

(excerpt from letter written 2 Aug 2004)

"The sun is setting out at the horizon. Its out on the right and just ahead, which makes sense considering we're flying toward the southwest. It's slowly sinking, leaving the horizon a rainbow which runs parallel with it. The sky above is so very clear, the ocean below is hazy grey with white cloudy fuzz, stretching away to meet the red of the sunset. The sun's gone now and the colours are almost imperceptibly fading. You've heard of the green flash? It's said you can sometimes see it at the exact moment the sun slips below the horizon. Well up here there is a faint green band in the sky. I wish I could draw or paint, or that I were better with words, then I'd be able to show you what I am seeing. It's such a pity, most of the people around me still have their window shades down. They don't know what they are missing.
I am waiting for the first star. I'll make a wish - and being the practical and pragmatic person I am, I'll forget what it was I wished for in less than an hour. But the star won't forget, it will remember and hold my wish for me until I need it back... And there it is, just where the sky begins to darken to a proper night-time shade.
"Star light, star bright..." You know how the rest of it goes.
The horizon is still changing colours. You know, I think they actually became more brilliant. It's now an almost tawny orange yellow, nearly the colour of a small hot fire. It is so beautifully gorgeous. I'll have to take you on a trip somewhere, someday, just so you can watch the sunset from up here.
Another star has joined the first, about four fingers down and to the left. The southern night sky will be so very different from our own. The blue is deepening and seems to be pressing the horizon for the last bit of colour. The clouds are now glowing with the same shade of red/orange that I've seen cooling lava take and still it changes. Don't presses squeeze the strongest and most potent juice when it is tightest? The sunset is no different.
The red became a rosy warm coral and now is slowly dying. Each time I look, there is a bit less fire, and the band is a bit thinner. The Night sky, with her two stars, has deepened to a soft velvet black, speckled with pinpricks of light, which I can only see by pressing my forehead again the window. There is hardly any colour left now, the rainbow is beset by Lady Night. She is closing in on three sides, unwilling to share her realm with any who properly belong to the Day. A few more minutes and she will have prevailed. But I will have watched it go, slowly and gracefully, knowing it will return with the morrow."