Finding Nemo Trip

After an early flight, we had to leave our house’s in Auckland by 4:10 AM, we stepped onto Australia grounds after a 3 ½ hour flight.  With all of our luggage in hand we headed off to try and figure out the public transportation to get us to the home we were going to stay at.  To paint a little picture, I’ve named my suitcase Hippo.  It is the greatest luggage ever, big and spacious perfect for fitting in clothes to last me for the past three months of my journey.  I get to thank Mama and Papa for this wonderful suitcase I was given for a graduation gift.  But it is a very large suitcase, and when it’s fully packed it is heavy.  I also was carrying my smaller rolling suitcase, a stuffed backpack, and a black duffle bag.  I get to thank my Grandma Patti for the smart idea of bringing an extra duffle just in case I needed more room to bring things home.   As we made our way down the airport and stopped to ask for directions I got teased a little bit about how much stuff I had with me.  After talking to some very helpful people we figured out a transportation pass that we could buy that would cover all the transportation costs.  So we headed out on our public transportation adventure.  Now that you know how many things I was carrying imagine Anna and Heidi, both with similar amounts of luggage.  We are all together walking through the airport, on the two trains, and a bus that we needed to take home.  We were quite the sight, three girls trying to get their luggage on and off the public transportation.  And I must admit, it was difficult trying to make our way but eventually we made it.

 That afternoon we decided we needed a very Australian activity so we headed to Featherdale.   This is an Australian animal park.  It was so awesome because the kangoos and emus are just wandering around the park.  You can pet them and be right up with them.  We also got to pet a koala bear and a wombat.  During feeding time we got to learn about and watch the dingoes and flying foxes eat and interact with the people who worked there.  It was such a blast!  It was the perfect way to kick off our week in Australia.

The kangaroos were just hopping freely all over the entire park!  They were very friendly, letting me pet them!

The koala bear was one of the softest animals I have ever felt!  He was just like an adorable stuffed animal!  I didn't get to actually hold him because he has very sharp claws that might hurt.  So instead I got to pet him and take pictures with the little fluffy guy.

There were also giant Emu's running around the park as well.  I was a little bit scared of them.

The picture above was probably the most traumatizing part of the Feather dale experience.   I had no clue about what a kangaroo's pouch looked like.  I was picturing a cute little pocket that the baby sits in with it's head popping out, like the stuffed animals.  But no, the pouch was very different than I had expected.  Yuck ha.

They had the funniest, fluffiest looking chickens that I have ever seen in my life.  I laugh every time I look at them.

The flying foxes were a very fun thing to watch.  They are these giant furry bats that eat fruit but are very venomous if they were to bite you.

The other animal that I ended up loving during my visit was this chubby little wombat guy!  He just trudged around his area and greeted us nonchalantly.  He reminded me of an Yeyore kind of character.

There were also tons of different kinds of birds!

That evening we had the opportunity to visit the Sydney Temple!  We joined a youth group and participated in  baptisms.  The temple we beautiful and the workers were as sweet as ever helping us through.

Saturday we woke up early and went to a big flower market with Tamara, the girl our age that we are staying with.  It was fun because we got to see all different beautiful types of flowers and some that are specifically native to Australia.  The market is great because people can come here and buy them for way cheaper than at a normal store.

Next we headed off into town.    Downtown Sydney was wonderful.  We walked through the china town and down to Darling Harbor.  While we were leaning over looking into the water we saw a group of at least 50 jelly fish right up near the surface.

Next we grabbed lunch and rode the ferry twice, getting a great view of Sydney Opera House!! 

This is definitely an exciting landmark that we got to see!  I kept thinking (this is super lame) but of the movie Finding Nemo when they swim through the jelly fish and then come up and see the opera house!  Except seeing everything live was much better than the cartoon movie.  The ferry was really relaxing though and it was a great way to see more of Sydney!  At the beginning of the our trip we bought a pass that lets us ride all buses, trains, and ferries for 60 bucks so we are trying to make the most of our passes J

After the first ferry ride we decided to take another one to show us another part of the city.  As we started heading towards the other warf we, unexpectedly, ran into some of our girls from New Zealand.  There were five other girls that came to Sydney as well as us, but they booked a hotel closer in to the city central.  Without cell phones and limited internet access we weren’t planning on trying to get in contact with each other because we felt it would be too difficult.  But by some random chance we were walking right in path to see them in this random part of the city.  We stopped and talked and decided to meet up for dinner later that evening!

After our next ferry ride we had a little bit more time before dinner.  We decided to explore parts of the botanical gardens.  They were beautiful greenery and winding paths that we followed.  There were parts that had colorful flowers and other parts with old, large trees towering over us.  There was only one negative aspect of this garden, the creepy spiders we saw everywhere.  There were at least ten of these large guys on their massive webs all around us on the walk. 

After we finally accepted the fact that we needed to keep an eye out for the webs so that we didn’t walk right into one and get up nice and close with the intimidating insect.  Along the walk there were also lots of noise flying foxes a certain type of bat.  We had seen these bats at feeding time at feather dale and now we got to observe them in the wild.   There were at least a hundred in the different trees with in the gardens. 

For dinner we went to a place called Pancakes on the rocks with Hannah, Nancy, and Neely.  This place is known for their fabulous crapes and pancakes!  Nancy and I split a Mexican crape for our salty part of dinner and hot’n troppo pancakes for dessert.  Let me describe this heavenly dessert that we devoured.  It was two pancakes topped with one scoop of vanilla and one scoop of chocolate ice cream.  Then it had walnuts, bananas, and hot fudge topping this master piece.  It was a tiny piece of heaven on earth.  It was a good choice to split this dessert because the amount of sugar that was in taken would have been overwhelming to take on alone.

After dinner we decided to stay together and take an evening walked along the Harbor Bridge, looking out into the city lights.  It was spectacular. 

This city is wonderful.  The bridge was a lot longer than expected to walk across.  It probably took us a half hour to make it across and back.  It was so fun to spend time with the girls, take pictures, and talk about memories and upcoming events.  We were also luck enough to randomly run into Emily and Nicole!   We were finally, all eight of us, together in Sydney, Australia.  We have to keep reminding our selves where we are, and each time we say it I still can’t quite believe it.  It started to get a bit late so we didn’t get to spend too much time with everyone all together but it was so fun to run into people that we knew in this large foreign city!

Heidi’s roommate from Provo, Mckenna lived in Sydney for three years.  She set us up with some of her friends to stay with.  I wasn’t sure if we were going to be around the family much and just head off to do our own thing, but they have all made us feel so welcome. 

Brother and sister Campbell have been so sweet to provide us with food, a room to stay, rides to places we need, and always talking to us.  Lachlan, the 14 year old brother, was very generous to share his cell phone with us a few times when we went out a couple days.  It is never easy to give us your cell phone for amounts of time to make sure we didn't get stranded anywhere while we were in the city, he was so gracious about it.   He was also so sweet to play games with us on Sunday afternoon.  Laura is so cute!  She is very easy to talk to and has blessed us with the wonderful opportunity to use a nice blow dryer and straightener, which we have not had for the past three months.  Tamera has been so wonderful to really help us make sure that we are getting to do and see some of the best things about Sydney!  We have really been able to feel like family, so welcome and accepted here.  I couldn’t have asked for a better experience of people to stay with.

We came home by bus, getting to our home by 9:30 to a birthday party for one of the girls that we are staying with.   There were at least thirty people there to celebrate Laura’s 18^th birthday.  Cheryl, Laura’s mom, went all out with a fabulous spread of desserts.  It was quite the presentation of treats for the guests.  We met some of the people there and surprisingly one of the boys has a cousin at BYU that is and Elementary Education major and was in my drama class winter semester of 2010.  It is such a small world.

On Sunday we got to watch general conference with the family we are staying with.  The made a big pancake breakfast and are taking care of us so well.  We really are lucky to have this opportunity to stay with such great people!

Monday we woke up early and headed to one of Tamara’s favorite places for breakfast called, Café 5.  It is this cute, little place along one of the beaches.   They had some amazing scrambled eggs with different breads, vegetables, meats, and other toppings.  It has been fun to get to know the Cambell family better and spend time talking with them.  It is never perfectly easy to come to someone’s home that you have never met before and totally feel comfortable.  In fact I was really nervous the first day or two.  But the more time I have spent with them the more grateful I feel to have been hooked up with this wonderful family. 

We also got the chance to do a little bit of hiking.  We went on the Manly beach hike along the coast and in the bush.  We saw lizards, spiders, and beautiful views of Australia!  It took us a few hours to make it from Spit Bridge (which we did spit off of because of its name) to the main part of the beach area.

That night the girls that we were staying with did something very nice for us.  They let us use their blow dryer straightener.  We also busted out my hair spray that I have treasured on this trip so valuably, only wanting to use it for special occasions, when in reality I never ended up using it at all because I was so afraid of running out.  With the triple combination of blow dyer, straightener, and hair spray the three of us got the chance to get ready in a way that we have not been able to do for over three  months now.  It was a glorious feeling!

Monday night we went to a famous chocolate restaurant called, Max Brenner.  It was to die for.  They have tons of different chocolate choices from hot chocolate, chocolate pastries, waffles covered in chocolate, and chocolate licks.  Anna, Heidi, and I got a chocolate soufflé , hot chocolate, and a chocolate lick (which is a small shot cup full of pure melted chocolate).  It was AMAZING!!!  It was the best chocolate I have ever tasted in my life!

Our last day we decided to spend a lot of time at the beach!  We went to a famous beach called Bondi! 

Another reason why this day was one of the best ever, Ben and Jerry's was giving out free ice cream to everyone!  Of couse we got in line to partake of such great news!

 The last evening in Australia we decided to get hot chocolate and take the ferry in the evening time with all the lights out.  The city was magical all lit up.  The weather is starting to set into fall with cool breezes but we still sat outside on the front of  the boat!

Australia has been such a fun holiday.  All my bags are packed now to start the 30 hour journey back home.  We calculated the travel time with lay overs and have a long trip back.  But it will be worth it to see my family again :)  I will never forget the once in a life time experiences of these past three months but it sure feels good to be heading home to my favorite people in the whole world!