Matt

This afternoon I was excited to catch up with my cousin, Matt. 17 years ago Matt and I both went over to the USA around the same time. We both ended up going to Ricks College together in Idaho. It was nice having him there with me as he was my link to home and it was really good to have another Aussie there. We actually lived really close to each other which was great as I could often pop over and see him on the way to or from campus. The last time that Matt came 'home' to visit was about 10 years ago, so it has been a busy week for him meeting all of his siblings partners and their kids.

It was so good to see him - despite his VERY American accent ;) Matt believes he still has a lot of his Aussie accent, and says that everyone there says he sounds Australian, but to us he sounds very American. I can't talk as I know how easy it is to pick up the accent, as I was only there for 13 months and came home sounding quite American as well.

I loved looking at all of his photos from home of the kids and Janell. I feel lucky to have met Janell when we were at Ricks together, especially as a lot of his family still hasn't met her or the kids. He told me he doesn't really want another baby, but I think he was almost tempted to take Kobe home with him ;)
It was so nice to see him and to reminisce about the good old days at Ricks and to talk about how much life has changed for both of us since then. Hopefully it won't be another 10 years before we see him again.