Dingo time.

So this should be interesting... I have not tried posting a movie clip yet. So bear with me people.

I tried to film the dingoes howling, because it was so neat to witness, you could hear all of the dingoes around the park howling... however, I was talking a bit. I was really excited so I said "shut up"... Like insinuating... is this really happening... then Mary looked at me as to say "why do you want them to shut up?" So then I stated that I meant it in the best way possible, if there is a good way to put it... which there is not. I will no longer say shut up when I am excited. It just does not make any sense.

I hope you are able to play the clip and hear the howling over my annoying talking :)

Silly me.

Mr. Kangaroo.

Soooooo.... I totally got to feed a Kangaroo. Yep, jealousy is a natural feeling that all of you should be experiencing right now :) I'm talking out of my palm people...

It was so exciting. So we walked into this big area where all of the Kangaroos were just lying around, Lazy little animals actually. There were two different kinds.... the red Kangaroos, which are not as shy and they are a bit smaller, and there were the grey Kangaroos as well. The red kangaroo was the one that I got to feed.

Did you know that Kangaroos use their tail to walk? I didn't... and it was the neatest thing to see. They prop their entire bodies up with the tail in between each step... They seriously are really neat animals.

Healsville Sanctuary.

Healsville Sanctuary is one of the three zoo's in the Melbourne area. This specific zoo is home to native Australian animals. Mary took Kate and I, along with her son Jameson and Her husband Andrew to the Zoo on Saturday. We all had such a great time. It was a bit of a drive... maybe and hour out past the Yarra wine valley that I had visited previously. Beautiful scenery.

There were so many great things at the zoo. We were able to see more Koala's, a Tasmanian Devil, Dingo's (which I could have never imagined to be so cute...Casey, I am bringing one home to be Ole's new sibling) a platypus and some awful reptiles....

But the highlight of the trip was the Kangaroos!!!

Here are a few great pictures to take a gander at. Hope you enjoy.

Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre is my current read (mom...I know you are very excited about this). I bought it the other day at a book store for the purposes of being a reliable friend on my often, long bus rides into the city. I am not far into it yet, maybe 75 pages. However, I have loved every word thus far. There was one phrase that I really loved today as I was reading on my ride home. I thought I would share it with you.

A little backround....

I have been very distracted recently and the first few weeks here were extremely hard at work. For no reason other than a wandering mind and pre-occupied thoughts. Funny thing is, I wasn't sure what was occupying my mind. I have concluded that my mind and body were on extreme emergency mode. I had been going-going-going for months and my mind had started only responding to panic. I had finals, graduation, packing, parties, moving, Visa's etc.... stress...stress..stress..

I am feeling much better now. Almost back to normal... If ever there was a normal :)

Anyways- back to Jane Eyre... as I was reading tonight I thought the following phrase really summed me up lately-

"I seldom put, and never keep, things in order; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method: and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements."

Totally random but it made me think of my recent struggles. I love this book so far.

Port Melbourne.

The last few days have been very very long. I am so surprised by how much energy it takes to go out after a full day of work. Like I said, growing up is hard to do:)

I was able to go to Parliament twice this week and I really enjoyed it. After work on Thursday Kate and I went to dinner with Tom. He took us down to a really beautiful part of town called Port Melbourne. We ate at a restaurant that was right on the Ocean. It was so beautiful. It was inconvenient because it was dark so I was not able to many great pictures so I took a few of our dinner.

First, I don't think I realized that quail... the fancy food that you would order at a nice restaurant... is eating those adorable little birds that run along our yard at home... the ones with all of the really cute little babies that follow...sad. I never connected the dots there. Kate ordered quail and I felt bad about it all night. I however ordered a delicious vegetarian dish which was Moroccan flavored Okra with sweet potato and giant couscous...It was yummy.

Sorry about all of the food posts, that's just pretty much the exciting part of my days lately. I am headed to an animal sanctuary/zoo tomorrow and I will take lots of fun pictures. Love you all!

Lygon street and yummy italian food.

I served an Australian man while I was working at Mazza maybe one month before I came out to Melbourne. I detected that he had a slight accent so I decided to be brave and I asked him where he was from... "Sir, may I ask you where your accent is from...?" I said bravely, I was wanting to try and pick up the difference of a English accent and an Australian accent..."The back of my throat, I am sick.." The man grunted.... His teenage son was sitting across from him and he started to laugh... "forgive my dad," the kid said..."he is from Australia".

I proceeded to tell him that the reason I was asking was because I was moving to Australia soon and was trying to get familiar. The man soon warmed up and it turned out that he was from Melbourne. I completely neglected my other tables as I sat and listened to stories of places that he was urging me to visit. By the time that he left I was even more excited to come here. Before he finished his dinner he wrote a few things down on a piece of paper for me.

I have carried this little piece of paper with me all through my journeys so far, and it has proved to be 100% correct. I have appeared to be so with it and I have even impressed locals with my knowledge of the fun, cool areas I know all about. I wish I could find that man and tell him thank you. If you look at the top of the note (which is front and back) you will see that it says Italian food-Lygon street. That is where we had dinner tonight.

We arrived at about 8pm and set out to find a place to eat. The weird, and not so appealing part of Lygon street, is the store owners that stand in front of the restaurants urging you to come eat at their restaurant. They beg you to look at the menu and immediately try to pull you in. It was very overwhelming. They even offer you free things. Kate and I got whisked away to some restaurant and the woman offered us free wine and appetizers. Weird. (BTW- the wine was Nobilo, my very favorite wine from Mazza...it is from New Zealand and I have been looking for it all over).

We had a great dinner... I had gnocchi with a red sauce and Kate had Alfredo. Mmmmm. We then went and had Gelato down the road. Little Italian restaurants and gelato stores littered this area. It was a great way to spend the evening.

Fitzroy area.

Well I had a rather unexciting weekend. On Saturday Kate and I accompanied Mary to a women's liberal conference. It was very interesting. However, doing work things on one of the two days off a week (even though I had a great time, and I suggested that I should go) really puts a damper on the weekend. Before you know it, Sunday is over and the new week begins. Man, its hard to grow up. This responsibility thing is for the birds :)

Anyways, Kate and I grabbed dinner after the conference and then came back to my place to relax (my roommates were in Sydney so I had the place to myself, always a plus).

You want to know one really REALLY dumb thing about Australia.... All of the shops close at 5pm every single day... I guess they are not really worried about that profit margin. This is especially hard when you work a 9-5 job. I feel like I cant get around to accomplishing anything I need to because the stupid shops are always closed.... So irritating!

We decided to go explore around an area called the Fitzroy district. The main street is Brunswick and that is where we spent most of our time today. This area is right next to The University of Melbourne so its kind of like the hip, college part of town. I really liked it. I want to go back and just look through all the shops all day long, there was so much to see.

I am not sure what this week holds for me. Parliament is sitting this week so I anticipate that I will go down town, or to the city area at least once. Other than that, its looking pretty mellow. No big plans for this coming weekend, but we have tickets to an Australian Football League game next week, so that should be fun.

I have been a bit homesick these last couple days.... I suspect that it is because I have been mostly working and not exploring. I reckon that's the point of the internship though. This coming Wednesday will be 5 weeks that I have been here. That feels so weird. I miss Ole a whole lot and you all know that I miss Casey and everyone else. I guess you never quite know what you have until you are away from it for a while. I am thankful for every single person in my life. If you are reading this, that means you.

Australia v. Japan.

Kate and I got tickets to this soccer game and we had the greatest time. It was held at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds that holds 100,000 people! It was such a magical stadium... it oozed the sports spirit that Melbourne has. We were so impressed that we are going to go again! Next time we are going to go see the Bombers v. the Magpies (Australian Football League) with our friend Tom. We are super excited for that!

We were told that we needed to have a meat pie at the stadium sort of like having a hot dog or cracker jacks at a baseball game. We did. We wished we had not. Gross. :)

It was a great night and just one more wonderful thing we have experienced here in Australia.

Pictures: We got there pretty early, so there is one shot of the stadium looking very empty...70,000 people ended up attending! The fire looking thing is a flare torch of some sort, when Australia scored people would light them in the audience.

Mr. Wallaby.

At the Koala reserve we totally saw a Wallaby. We arrived to the reserve really early and we were the first ones there. As we started to walk around... I saw something hopping... I freaked out! It was a Wallaby. Wallabies are like smaller kangaroos.

It was incredible. I was so excited to see that and to see it out on the open/wild. I tried to take a few quick pictures. If you click on the pictures it should enlarge them for you.

I love and miss all of you. I don't have any super exciting plans for this weekend. I am headed to a political conference on Saturday and then Kate and I are going to maybe go see a movie and get dinner. Sunday I am headed to a really awesome part of town, the Fitzroy area. Its kind of grungy area with neat shops and lots of cafes. We are going to meet up with Tom for lunch and then shop our little hearts out. I am excited.

Koala time.

We went to the Koala reserve on Philip Island to check out these adorable little creatures. This reserve has boardwalks that are elevated off the ground so you are essentially walking more or less in the tree tops. The Koalas were all asleep except for one of them. They are so cute, they look like little balls of fur hidden in the trees. Here are a few pictures and one is from google. There was a momma that looked like this there, but she was sleeping...so pretend I took the picture :)

Penguins.

So like I have said before, the main attraction to Philip Island is the nightly invasion of the little penguins. Their technical name is the little penguin. Well, every single night these little guys swim onto the island and scurry away to their burrows. They live out to sea for apx 3-4 weeks. They are dark navy blue on their back sides and white on the belly's, this is to camouflage them from predatory birds from up top and sharks from below. Smart little creatures :)

We have heard so much fuss about these little penguins that we just had to go check it out. We got the plus seats which meant that we were able to stand about 5 feet away from the trail that the penguins took to get home on the hill side. We sat there for probably 30 minutes and we saw nothing. All the sudden you see this little pack of heads pop out of the water and apx 50 little penguins start wobbling across the beach. Really, it was on of the most amazing things I have ever seen. group after group came up out of the water. About 600 Penguins came out that night and in the hot summer season, sometimes there will be 2000! They said that all together the colony has about 6000 little penguins.

You are not allowed to take pictures of the penguins so I took pictures of pictures and also googled to find you a sight similar to what they were. They stood maybe 1 foot tall and weighed apx 2-3 pounds.

It was spectacular, and frightfully cold. :)

I miss him.

I Miss Casey every single day. Its really hard to be away from the person that you adore the most. I wish he was here experiencing all of this with me. I can not wait for him to come here, He is going to loose his marbles over this place and all of its splendor. I love you WCMS.

The Ocean.

I do not remember the last time I stood on a beach. It was so nice to see the ocean. The weather was a bit overcast which I thought made the experience even better. Here are a few pictures. Stay tuned.. I still have tons of pictures of the penguin experience, the koalas and the other fun things. I will have them all posted in the next couple of days.

Mmmmm...Fish and Chips.

I love me some fish and Chips. Especially when the fish is fresh right from the ocean you are looking at. We had a local stop and talk to us as we were walking around looking concerned about our choices. She suggested this certain shop and it must be good because there were a bunch of locals eating there. I always trust the locals. Anyways, I had a fisherman's basket that had a little bit of everything...some calamari strip, a potato cake...fish...chips... prawns... all the goodies. I thought I would share a bit of my cuisine adventures with you!