Wendy's Place

Featherdale Zoo

2008-09-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

I skipped everything from June 21 to July 12 (when we left to the Gold Coast), but i'm still going to post about the cool things that happened those few weeks.

On Saturday June 21 we woke up late, of course, and didn't make it to the blue mountains so we decided to go to the zoo. We chose to go to the little petting zoo instead of the big zoo (Toronga Zoo) with all the lions and tigers and stuff. We figured we can see all those animals in Utah! So it was about an hour train ride and then we were in the middle of no-where and had to walk and find our way there. Of course we ran right up to the train as it was pulling away. So we decided to camp out at the train station and play some cards for the next 30 minutes while we waited for the next one.

This is a wombat! I was so happy to see one. This picture is for Mindy who wanted me to find a wombat so bad!

These are wallabies, which are really similar to kangaroos. Look how cute the baby wallaby is just chillin insinde the pouch.

This pelican's beak was insanly long! I thought it was so cool.

This is a good story, so you should read it all. I know you're thinking "why did Wendy put this blurry picture on her blog?" Well, I'll tell you why. I had pushed the button on my camera to take a picture of this creepy emu and then it just started running at me like he was going to attack. So I screamed and ran and this picture still took. It's like an action shot! Seriously though, these things are creepy and they just walk around the zoo. I was terrified of them and we all know I'm terrified when things come running at me. So naturally I screamed, which caused Brighton and Jayne to scream as well. Let's just say we caused quite the scene at Featherdale Zoo that day and everyone was laughing at us and one guy was even videoing us. What made us feel even better about ourselves is right after, when we saw some 3 year olds going right up to the dang emu like it was no big deal. Seriously, I was scared for their lives, but appartently the mother or no one else cared! Those brave little souls :)

*Side note- When we eventually made it to the Blue Mountains, Jayne bought an emu sausage that we all ate. Take that emu!

After a lot of time, carefulness, and some more screaming, Jayne took a bold move and got this close to the emu to give it some food. It snatched the cone with food in it right out of her hand!

I liked to stick more to this sweet sleeping koala. It was so cute! They let us pet it and we could have held it if it wasn't sleeping.

Here's what everyone's been wanting to see. Kangaroo's! This zoo was so cool because the kanga's aren't in cages and they just hop around and chill with the people. They're so cute! We got to feed and pet them too.

Me feeding my little kangaroo buddy.

Here's the big croc. He was mean looking and kind of creepy when he moved around. They didn't let us pet and feed this one for some strange reason!

That was our adventure at the zoo and that's the only time we saw all these Australian animals. Sorry to destroy the thought of all of you who thought there were kangaroos and wombats just walking down our street!

2008-08-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

For all those who read this, just so you know, I'm not slacking on purpose right now with this blog thing. We ran out of internet (something I can't wait to not deal with when I'm back home!) therefore making it so we can't blog. I practically skipped blogging all of July too, but I am going to still blog about that when I get back home. So keep checking if you want to see more adventures that really happened a month ago! As for now, I can't wait to see you all soon!

New Zealand!

2008-08-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

So we had one day to catch up in Sydney, then we were back to the airport again the next morning on our way to New Zealand. Luckily we got to bring a suitcase for this one!
Our hour long bus ride to the airport at like 5 in the morning. Way too many of these early-morning-airport trips.

We flew into Christchurch in New Zealand. This is the famous church right in the center of the town.

We stayed at this same motel 3 different times while in New Zealand and we loved it. It's called 'Hotel SO' and I wish I could put more pictures of it and explain it more because it really was SO cool, and cheap! But that would just get boring so if you want to know more, just ask me.

That night we ate at a chinese restaurant and Jayne got all this sick seafood that she cooked right there herself. I'm sure all you seafood lovers would have thought it was the greatest thing in the world, but it looked nasty to me! Brighton and I stuck to our usual sweet and sour chicken dish.

The next morning we took a 5 hour shuttle ride to Picton (at the top of the south island) where we were supposed to catch a ferry up to Wellington (the north island). This is a pretty view of Picton.

Unfortunately the swells on the ocean were worse than they've been in 50 years so our ferry was cancelled. We had to run find a motel in Picton for that night and book the next ferry tickets available for the next day. This is Kristi from Canada who Brighton befriended after we found out our ferry was cancelled. She stayed with us that night and she's way great!

The next morning we ran around trying to figure out flights and other options to get to the north island because the ferry's were still being cancelled so if ours was again, we wouldn't have been able to get on one for a few days. And we only had a few days so that wouldn't work! Apparently the luck was with us this day because the ferry we were scheduled for was the first one that got to go out. This picture is of us happily waiting to get on the ferry.

The ship we were on was like a cruise ship so you could walk around and they had cafe's and movies playing and all that fun stuff. The swells were still incredibly bad so it was really funny to walk around because everyone really was falling over from how bad the ship was rocking! A ton of people were getting sea sick and they had people walking around with ice and stuff to help. It was crazy! We went outside at the top of the ship to see the adventure, of course. It was so windy, as you can tell from my hair. I really had to hang on to the railing to stay up. It was so fun (and freezing) to play up there. When we were completely frozen we went back in and sat down and the sea sickness hit our dear little Jayne. Her face went white and it was not good. Luckily she was able to fall asleep so nothing too drastic happened.

When we got to Wellington, we rented a car and drove 3 hours to Wanganui, where we stayed with a family that Jayne's family met last time they were in New Zealand. This is Brett and Di.

The next day Di took us all around Wanganui. We went to a market and then to the beach where we saw someone she new who was out riding horses. We all took a turn riding this big guy for a second.

Then we went on a bush walk where we learned all about the New Zealand Kiwi bird. These big green hills full of sheep is what it looks like in so much of New Zealand that we saw.

The next day, Brett took us to the Wanganui museum.

Practicing my teaching skills. Jayne makes a great student! That night we watched the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team play the Wallabies, which is Australia's rugby team, at their house. It was a big game. They explained all the rules to rugby to us that night and I instantly became a fan of the sport!

We had a lot of fun with the family that weekend and were so sad to leave. This picture is the last night we were there, after playing some serious games of mafia! These are the 4 kids, Lochie, Angus, Chloe, and Bridget. They are all seriously so amazing at sports and everything they do and we swear they're going to be famous some day!

We drove back to Wellington and walked around there before catching the ferry back to Picton.

King James in Wellington.

We took the 3 hour ferry ride (after driving 3 hours in our car) then got right on the shuttle for a 5 hour ride back to Christchurch. Let's just say we got to see a lot of New Zealand! We always ended up on the crappy little van shuttles so I tried to focus on the beauty of New Zealand instead of the ride. We stayed in Christchurch that night then got up the next morning and took an 8 hour shuttle ride down to Queenstown. This picture is on the road right by our motel in Queenstown.

Brighton and Jayne decided it would be cool to go jump 440 feet with only a bungy attached to their feet. Crazy, I know. Ask them to see the video and they'll be happy to show you! It's sweet.

On the gondola on the way up to see a pretty view of Queenstown.

Queenstown. That mountain range in the back is called the Remarkables. It's the only other mountain range, along with the Rocky Mountains, that runs north and south. Pretty cool!

On Thursday, we went on this tour bus to Milford Sound. Jayne's face makes me laugh so hard in this picture! And it shows how pretty we look when we're traveling. As you can tell, we were freezing. It took us about 5 hours to get there, but we stopped a lot to look at things and take pictures so it wasn't bad. Not to mention that Bret from Flight of the Conchords was our tour guide! Okay, so it was just a look-a-like and sound-a-like, but that would have been cool if it was really him since we're slightly obsessed.

One of our stops. So pretty!

Snow in July? I know you're all jealous.

Milford Sound!

We took the ferry out to see everything. We were on it for 2 hours and it was 2 hours of pure beauty! We saw a lot of seals, but no dolphins or penguins like the group before us saw.

We took that tour bus back to Queenstown and spent a couple more days there. The whole time we were there, everyone kept telling us we needed to eat at 'Fergburger'. They forgot to mention that we should only get one burger for the 3 of us to share! They were ridiculously huge!

We had another 8 hour long shuttle ride back to Christchurch for our last night in New Zealand. It's a good thing this was our last shuttle ride because it was definitely the worst! I don't know if you could have got us on another one after this. Unfortunately we didn't snap a picture. It was insane at how crammed in there everyone was though. This is a picture of our last meal together (we really felt how we look, they gave us so much food!) because Brighton and I were flying back to Sydney early the next morning and Jayne was going up to Auckland and then back home to Utah. Sad!

Melbourne

2008-08-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

Friday night (July 18th) we headed straight from the Gold Coast down to Melbourne. We didn't even fly in until after midnight so by the time we got to the hotel we were really tired. Laura flew in the next morning. She's a girl we met here in Sydney in our ward. She graduated from BYU and is here working for a year and really wanted to see Wicked so she came along with us.
The whole reason we went to Melbourne is to see the musical 'Wicked'. Jayne had just seen it in LA on her way out to Australia and Brighton and I have seen it in New York, but all 3 of us are slightly obsessed with it so of course we had to go! It's a new thing here in Australia, but I think it was just as good as the one I saw in New York. It was AMAZING!!

These smiles are fake in this picture because we were really all so depressed that it was over!

This is at a pancake restaurant that we ate at. We had way too much fun with the cool mirror on the way out. I think Laura was a little overwhelmed by us at this point? But who wouldn't be. We all knew it would happen despite our efforts.

Chillin in the hotel with our candy necklaces.

We walked around the Betanical Gardens, which was very beautiful of course.

If you know me, you know I sure do love spaghetti (as you can tell from me looking overly excited in this picture). It wasn't quite as good as my mom's, but still yummy.

Another picture of Jayne doing crazy random things. Brighton just loves when she does stuff like this to her. :) We were at the beach in this picture and it was freezing! Still really pretty though.

We love going to the top of the tallest buildings in every city. This is on top of the Eureka at night looking over Melbourne. We couldn't get a very good picture, but it's still so pretty.

The last day we were there we decided to go to a movie because it was too freezing to be outside. We paid the normal $13 that you have to pay to go to a movie anywhere in Australia. Such a rip off. We walked in and this is what it looked like. It was worse then the dollar theaters in Utah! We were so ticked! Luckily we had the whole theater to ourselves, which made it a little exciting. The chairs in my classrooms at school are more comfortable than these ones!

We flew back into Sydney early in the morning and this was the site from my window. It's such a pretty view of the Harbour Bridge and you can even see the Opera House right behind it.

We had that day (July 22) to do laundry and catch up on some sleep because we were leaving for New Zealand super early the next morning. That night our great friend Jess, who takes such good care of us, took us to Gavindas. It's a place in Sydney where you go eat a buffet with lots of yummy Indian food and then you go watch the movie that they have playing. This theater is a little different then the one we were at the night before in Melbourne. You actually have you own bed type thing to lie on while you watch the movie. I was really proud of myself for staying awake through the whole thing. I usually can't even stay awake standing through a movie! It was really fun and we just love hanging out with Jess!

The Gold Coast

2008-08-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive. For the past 3 weeks we've been traveling, therefore leaving us with no computers or time to blog. (I'll be honest, I already wasn't very good at this whole blogging-on-time thing and this just made it a lot worse) So now that I have some time, hopefully there will be A LOT of blogging being done the next week or two. Sorry for the length.

We started our trip by going up to the Gold Coast in Australia. It's about an hour south of Brisbane and is an hour and a half flight from Sydney. We of course were trying to do everything the cheapest way so we didn't pay the extra money to check in baggage. And we were flying straight from the Gold Coast down to Melbourne (again trying to save money), which is at the bottom of Australia. This meant 2 different climates because the Gold Coast is hot and Melbourne is freezing this time of year! The point of all this is to explain that we fit 10 days worth of clothes for 2 different climates all into our own little backpacks that we could use as our carry-on. So the picture is showing all that 3 girls had for this 10 day trip. Pretty impressive?

On the airplane with our books, ready to go. We're big nerds and always have our books. Okay, so Brighton always has hers, but has never read it since we've been here. She has something against reading right now since that's all Jayne and I do any time we're sitting.
Our first car experience on the wrong side of the road. Jayne drove everytime we had a rental car for the whole 3 weeks. We only almost crashed a few times! Just kidding, it really would be so hard and Jayne did an amazing job at it. She's a natural!
Jayne knows a family in the Gold Coast that we stayed with so we drove right to their house. They're the greatest family ever and have such a nice house. We stayed there for 6 days and loved every second of it. This is Pauline Scallan in the picture with us.
All the theme parks are in the Gold Coast so we decided to go to one on Monday. We went to Warner Brothers Movie World. Loved it! It closed at 5 though (just like everything else does in Australia) so we got there right when it opened and stayed right till it closed. This is Brighton and Jayne posing in front of the Superman ride, which was definitely my favorite.
Is that Batman Jayne's eating lunch with? I think so...
Scared for the Batman ride.
One great thing about the Scallan family is they are obsessed with sports. Their favorite's of course are soccer, cricket, and rugby though, definitely not my most knowledgeable sports. Jayne was sure happy about it when she found out the family plays on an indoor soccer league every Monday night. So of course she played even when we found out she was the only girl for both teams. She did amazing though and even scored! She's our little soccer player :)

This is looking off the patio at the Scallan's home. Yes, that is a river in their backyard. It was so beautiful I could sit there and stare at it all day.

We had planned to take the boat (in their backyard) out one night and it ended up raining just at that time so they put the cover on it and we still went. We stayed completely dry and had a fun ride looking at all the million dollar homes surrounding us while eating biscuits and wine (water for us 3 of course)!

We made dinner and dessert for them on Tuesday night since they were feeding us so much. Our broccoli, chicken dish with crepes for dessert were a hit, but after the 5 or 6 hours of cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, we were ready to never do it again. It was actully pretty humorous!

This is Jayne in our room at the Scallan home. She's falling through the cracks of life? I'm not sure what that means either so you'll have to ask her. Just thought I'd throw in a few random pictures.

Ssurfers Paradise. This is the beach by their house.

What the IGA? All of you who lived in Strawberry Loop 12 years ago should appreciate this!

Thursday we drove to Byron Bay. No words or picture's can even describe it. We happened to be up on this hill by the lighthouse right at sunset. So pretty.

Byron Bay. We were completely surrounded by water and even saw a few whales out there.

Byron Bay also has the greatest little shopping area where we ate lunch and walked around. This town is full of hippie's, in real life! Peace.

The new Batman movie came out the night before so of course we had to go see it once we got home from Byron Bay. It came out a couple days earlier in Australia so we felt pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.

Friday, the last day we were there, we spent the day at the beach again and also went to the top of the Q1 building. It's one of the tallest buildings in the world, or something like that. This picture kind of gives you an idea of what the Gold Coast is like. It's just never-ending beaches!

Random

2008-07-06T03:18:00.000-07:00

You're probably wondering what Jayne and Wendy do everyday while Brighton's at work. Here's some pictures to get an idea of an average day of no school slash no work in Sydney, Australia.

We love to go running, usually along our favorite path from Bronte Beach to Bondi Beach, which is one of the most popular beaches in Sydney. It's so amazing to look out at the beaches, ocean, and all the pretty rock along the whole path. In the picture we're holding the "floppy flyer" that we love to throw around at the park and beach too after a nice run!

We go meet Brighton for lunch a few times a week. (Yet again, we love pictures on benches). In this picture we're eating quiche from a little bakery by her work. We usually go pick something up then eat it at the park right by her work. We all love that park!

This is our new favorite place, Gloria Jeans Coffees. The internet in Australia is horrible so we don't have unlimited internet at our apartment. This means no Youtube or downloading anything. And if you really know us then you know why this is such a struggle. Because that's the only way we can watch So You Think You Can Dance! We suffered without it for the first couple of weeks until we found our greatest discovery of free Wi-fi at Gloria Jeans. Jayne and I go and load all the dances from Youtube, then just shut our computers and bring them home so we can watch them with Brighton. Our lives are complete now!

One of our favorite stops is the candy shop called "Sticky" at Bondi Junction. We watch them make the candy and it's so amazing! Jayne might be a little obsessed? I can't tell if it's with the candy or the guy that works there :) There will be more pictures to come of the candy store.

Right by the candy store and Gloria Jeans is the pet store. I love all the little puppies! I fell in love with this little puppy in the corner that looks just like Chester did when he was a puppy. I was so sad when we walked passed the other day and he was gone. I get attached so easily!

That's all for now on the adventures of mine and Jayne's day. This is a way random picture, but it made me happy. We went into our kitchen one night and Jorge had set up this recycling system. I love recycling!

One Tuesday afternoon Brighton was by herself at work so Jayne and I went and hung out in the office with her!

After that, we thought we'd go see a movie since it was Tuesday, (movies are only $9 on Tuesday instead of $13, ridiculous!) but we still decided it wasn't worth the money. We took this picture before we left because we feel a special connection with Kung Fu Panda or something since we saw Jack Black at the premiere! We decided to go to our favorite place instead, which is Coles, and buy stuff to make tinfoil dinners. Side note- Coles is easily our favorite place in Sydney. We always make sure to make it there at night with all the sweet deals on bread!

Enjoying our tinfoil dinners. It's one of our new favorite meals!

We ended that week with going to a concert of our fellow candy making friend Ben, (the one standing next to me) who Jayne may be strangly attracted too! He's really so cool and gives Jayne lot's of free candy! This is us hanging out with the band after their show.

Manly!

2008-07-02T05:49:00.000-07:00

On Saturday June 14th, we ventured over to the cutest little area called Manly. You have to take a 30 minute-ish ferry ride over to get there from the harbour. I seriously loved it. It was really windy and rainy that day, but we still had a lot of fun.

This is a cool surfboard bench. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to surfing so I thought I'd get a picture of it!

We ate this cool little restaurant across the street from the beach. The ocean was a really pretty sea green color and the waves were huge! It was so pretty.

Brighton hurried over to take these pictures of the beach with these pretty colors and the rainbow while Jayne and I stayed at the restaurant to pay.
This shows how cute of a town it is. I wouldn't mind living there! I really did love it.

When Brighton came back from taking the pictures, she had had a little accident. Or I guess the bird flying above her had the accident. Yes, she got pooped on by a bird. Luckily with some water, napkins, and a tide pen, we were able to clean her up.

I wish this showed how pretty it really was. Use your imagination!

No we did not plan on matching this day. But since we did, we thought we'd act like little girls and get a cute picture out of it! These were some way cool benches in the middle of a bunch of shops. We found ourselves hanging out and taking lot's of pictures in this area for quite some time. I think we have an obsession with benches.

It was Jayne's first time at circular quay so when we got off the ferry we stayed and walked around there for a bit. It was my first time there at night. Then we had to get home so Brighton and I could write our talks that we gave in church the next day!

2008-07-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Jayne and I spent the next few days at the beach. We met some nice old men to take this picture for us. They were high on something and just chatted away with us forever. Always a good time. It was such a nice day!

On our walk to and from Bronte Beach, we pass a little playground and this bad boy shown above. We like to call it the "Flying V" aka the "Velocitron" aka "The big green monster". You just sit on it and pedal away and it spins you in circles. It really is the coolest thing ever. West Jordan Park needs to invest in one of these too!

There are Adult Book stores everywhere here! Just to clear up any confusion for all those who have read Brighton or Jayne's blog, I DO NOT enjoy these kind of stores. I like bookstores for kids!

It's a good thing I'm not here during their summer because I think I would die with all the bugs. Luckily we haven't seen many since we moved in. However, just before we were about to leave one night, I innocently went into our kitchen and saw a huge cockroach in our sink. After screaming and quickly excusing myself from the situation, Jayne and Brighton took care of it. I don't know what they did, I just know there was a lot of screaming involved and the cockroach was no longer in the sink. What brave little souls.

Then we headed out for what we now know as one of our most adventurous nights. Unfortunately this is the only picture we captured that night. One of Jayne's friends from home has family out here so we went and met him (Sean) and his friends at Le Chifley. This is a really high-class bar with TONS of people in it...or the exact opposite of that. So after a very interesting taxi driver, we finally found this bar and stood there awkwardly for about 30 minutes while all these creepy old men kept talking to us. That was an adventure. Luckily Sean eventually found us and it ended up being a really fun night.

Jayne's here!

2008-06-28T03:41:00.000-07:00

(Yes, Jayne has really been here for 2 and a half weeks, but just pretend this is up to date.) So Jayne flew in on a Tuesday morning. Jorge and I rode the bus down to the airport to meet her. After getting to our flat and Jayne taking a little nap, we went to Brighton's work to meet her for lunch. What a reunion that was! This is us eating lunch at the cafe right across from Brighton's work. Brighton and I got the chicken and pumpkin wrap. They put pumpkin in everything here and I love it!

Jayne and I then went to Darling Harbour to wait for Brighton to get off work. We walked around and played on this amazing playground. I think we had a little too much fun and maybe got a few weird looks! PS- This was the coolest toy. West Jordan Park definitely needs to invest in one.

We think we're so cute because almost everynight we make a fun little dinner with our cheap foods. And for some reason we love to always take a picture of our 3 matching plates.

2008-06-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

On Monday June 9, it was a holiday here in Australia. It's when they celebrate the queen's birthday I guess. All we knew is that Brighton didn't have to go to work so we ventured around Sydney. This is Darling Harbour, which is in the city and has tons of shops, restaurants, parks, and everthing! It was raining, of course, but it was still really fun and pretty. They even had a bunch of jazz bands playing around the harbour because of the holiday.

Brighton was playing around with the settings on her camera and my yellow umbrella. But it shows how pretty it is there!

I was so happy to see this snowman! I know I'm weird.

Yes, this is Jack Black. That night, we went and walked and shopped a little around Martin Place. We were walking passed a theater and noticed that all the tv stations and a small crowd were starting to form around some red carpet. So of course we decided to wait around and see what was going on. We found out it was the premiere for the movie Kung Fu Panda and Jack Black was coming. When he got there, he came right over to all the fans and was just taking pictures and such. He was so close that we even touched him! He was way chill. I was expecting him to be in a suit or something, but nope, he was wearing sweats, a t-shirt with a panda on it, and this yellow jacket. Does that surprise you?

We got lot's of picture's and video's of him. That was a great ending to our day!

First couple weeks

2008-06-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

You're wondering why I would post a picture of this building? Oh, it's just our church. We have a little section on the 3rd level with a chapel and a few rooms. It's weird because it looks just like a church inside. It has the same carpet, couches, and everything. It feels like home! We were a little nervous about how we'd find it inside that first day, but saw 2 missionaries out on the street that helped us out.

This is outside the Commonwealth Bank after opening an account. Kind of cool that we have an account in Australia!

Our apartment is FREEZING!!! I think it's even warmer outside then it is inside. There's no heaters so this is how you'd find me on an average night. Brighton doesen't seem to think it's as cold, considering these pictures were taken right after each other and she doesn't even have socks or a jacket on. I even have multiple layers. I'm pretty sure she's the abnormal one, not me! Luckily Jayne came to the rescue and brought over a huge can of Stephens hot cocoa. What a lifesaver!

This is what it looks like on our walk over to the beach. It's amazing!

We hung out at the beach our 2nd Saturday here. The weather was perfect! This name-in-the-sand thing is a lot harder then it looks. Notice the lady in the background staring at us, probably trying not to laugh because we looked like such dorks trying to get a picture before the water came to destroy it.

Here's some views of Bronte Beach, about a 10 minute walk from where we live. I seriously can just sit there everyday and not get sick of it. (As long as it's not raining!) I even get to go jogging along the beach. I've always wanted to do that and I love it! Minus the part where I see lot's of overly-tan old men in speedo's.

This is our first night that we really went out on our own to do something fun. It was quite exciting! We made it to a pizza restaurant and found ourselves spending the rest of the night at our now favorite place, Coles. This may or may not just be the grocery store. Don't judge us. I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but of course we made it fun!

We have to remember that it is winter here. Even though it's still pretty warm, it rained all day every day for a over a week. It was the hardest rain and it seemed to never stop. You know those people you laugh at when it's really windy and their umbrella's flip the opposite way? Well, let's just say Brighton's umbrella struggles a little bit and we're those people that get laughed at. We always get a good laugh ourselves. One night we got home and we were both completely soaked through even though it's hard to see it in the picture. It still rains pretty much everyday so we spend a lot of time with these umbrella's! We're getting really attached so it's a good thing we won't have to part with them when we get home because we'll be just in time for another winter!

The first weekend in June we had a convention for all the young single adult stakes in the Sydney area. Friday night was a dance thing that was way fun and Saturday night everyone performed skits. Our stake just did a few funny dance numbers that we had been practicing for. It was actually really fun. This is Graeme in the picture with us. Don't worry, he's just one of the finalists for the Australian So You Think You Can Dance. We're slightly obsessed with that show. He's in our stake and was one of the judges for the skit night. After watching us practice, he told everyone to dance more like the "American girls" aka Brighton and Wendy. You can only imagine how happy that made us!

We're really here

2008-05-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

I know I'm a little behind, but last Saturday we stopped at the famous Sydney Opera House and the bridge. It made me realize that we're really in Australia. That's kind of weird. We were there at a perfect time of night and it was so pretty! It was perfect.

We also went and found the building where Brighton's doing her internship. 35 Buckingham street. She's all grown up and professional!

This is Bronte Road. It's the main street by where we live. This is the road we get to the bus and train stops, the grocery store, the mall, and probably anything else we need. And yes, they are driving on the wrong side of the road. I don't think I'll ever get used to it. Everything is opposite here! Literally everything. It's so weird.

Spiders

2008-05-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

So within the first hour of being in our apartment, Brighton and I found 3 spiders. We all know how I react to spiders. They're not small either! I don't go near those creepy things so luckily I have a good friend like Brighton. They were all in webs though so we searched for the vacuum and had to play like we were insect killers for a bit. (My job was to turn the vacuum on and off...Brighton took care of the rest) PS- Sorry Jill, I just had to share the misery I'm going through.

A few hours after this horrible discovery, our flat mate Jorge showed us where we walk to get to the bus and train everyday. A whole tree of these spiders and their webs are on the way. Lovely.

Luckily this is what else we see on our walk to our apartment. Yep, that's the ocean. So pretty!

We didn't think we'd have too much trouble with jet lag because we had such irregular sleeping schedules already, but it hit us. This is us chillin on our top bunk that first night trying with all our might to stay awake. It was the most miserable thing! We only made it till 9:00. That can go down in history as the earliest the 2 of us have ever gone to bed!

Off to Australia!

2008-05-24T05:05:00.000-07:00

Brighton's been waiting for me to realize that we were really going to the opposite side of the world for the next 3 months. Well, this face of mine isn't pretending. It finally hit when I said bye to my parents and we were waiting to get on the plane. We had a little anxiety, I'm not gonna lie! Once we were on the plane we seemed to be fine though.

Pretty sunset above the clouds before landing in L.A. (side note- L.A's not my favorite place to be during the final few minutes of a close Lakers playoff game. Brighton had to keep reminding me we might lose our lives if I kept expressing my hatred for them outloud. It was rough.)

Sorry, this is the only picture that can be exposed from the plane ride over. You can't imagine what 18 hours of traveling can do to the 2 of us! But this is what we looked at for way too much time. The ride actually wasn't too bad. We just did a lot of sleeping and eating. And some more sleeping and eating. They fed us so much!

Here's some pictures of where we live. The balcony is definitely my favorite part. We just need a porch swing to go on it and it'd be perfect!

When we got there, the guy we're renting from had the bed spreads on our beds and all. He even had 2 of his old cell phones sitting on our desk charging for us. He and the equadorian couple that lives with us are helping us so much, we'd be so stressed without them.