The last day in Sydney was a ZOO!

Jim and I spent our last day at the Taronga zoo. It was amazing. We had to take the ferry across the harbor to get there. Then we spent about 5 hours there and probably only saw about 1/2 of the animals. It was huge.

One of the things I really loved about it was that they were very succient with their animal descriptions. (Pelican example below.) It just told you what you needed to know without all the fluff.

These are all the Australian Animals

Koalas - Yay!

Kanagroos and Wallabies - they let us just wander in the enclosure with these guys, there are no fences separating us form them. We were just told to stay on the path and the animals knew how to just stay out of reach.

Platapus and some huge bird with a horn on its head.

Non-Australian Animals

Any resemblence?

Merekeets - there was like 30-50 of these in the enclosure. They were so cute all running around together, but don't stand still long enough for good photos.

Red Panda

Giraffes

Monkeys - Which Jim loves, go figure.

Reptiles

(Jim took this picture, isn't it great!)

Sea things.

Grizzly Bear

Jim rubbing noses with a pigmy grizzly bear. He is so brave!

This is us after a full day of animal viewing. Yay!

Bilberry Adventures

This is my friend Jason Bilberry. We went to Crater High School together. He lives in Australia. After my time in Sydney I was able to extend my trip to hang out with him and his family in Adelaide. It was fantastic to be with an old friend. This trip really showed me how old friends can be anchors in your life. They remind you where you have been which can show just how far you have come. Which in turn can give you the strength to get where you need to go. He has a wonderful wife Jane, and two amazing boys.  I won't lie, the boys have just as much energy as any little boys do, but for some reason you put an aussie accent on them and I could hang out with them forever - especially when they are calling me a cheeky monkey. So cute!

I was greeted at the airport by Jane and Ronan. It's been 7 years (we think) since we have seen each other, so they studied my picture on the blog to make sure they would recognize me. They got me on the second try after only one false greeting to some brown haired stranger.

The first full day we dropped the boys at school then the grown ups went off to wine country for a bit of wine and cheese tasting. Beautiful country and even better company. My favorite quote of the day is when Jane, who is a full time mom, said "I feel like an adult again." I loved it. So many people are hung up about being young and daring - I just loved that Jane was relishing the adult company - I was too.



Besides the wine country tour, Jane arranged all these great activities for us to do. One was a night walk in the bush at Warawong (don't know if I am even close to the spelling). We saw tons of Australian night animals that I can't even begin to recall the names of. But it was totally cool, cause we were just walking along on a path no fences or nothing and our guide would just shine a flashlight on them and show us the different animals. There were tons of possums, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures because of their sensitive eyes.
These last two animals were very wiley (Ronan and Jason), but I managed to suspend them with my flash. He he he.
Day 3 was started with swimming lessons for Ronan (who has no fear of the water), then a trip to the pier at the beach. Adelaide is on the southern coast of Australia.

The boys being cheeky monkeys.

A great deal of my time in Adelaide was spent talking about, practicing and watching "footie", or Australian rules football. I learned all about kicking the footie, marking the ball (catching a kicked footie with two hands), bumping other players, hand passing and goals. I can now say that I can hand pass and kick a footie quite well, but with little accuracy, which I think is probably the most important thing. I am also pretty sure I can now distinguish the difference between footie and rugby.