Australia

Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip to Australia, they are not in any kind of order. When we have more time, we will tell about the pictures.

Christina in the Hong Kong airport the second time around.

So, every time we got in the car to go somewhere, I thought we were going to die. They drive on the wrong side of the road! That also makes crossing the street very interesting. I was always confused about which way to look first. My solution was to look both ways 10 or 15 times before stepping off the sidewalk.

As we were leaving Mark's to go to the airport, I found this elephant beetle in the driveway. When I picked it up it kept hissing, hissing and hissing. I would have up-loaded a video, but it takes too long.

Mark's beautiful family: Veronica holding 'Rafa,' and Mark holding Helen.

We took Helen on a walk, in the park we found these flowers, I have no idea what they are called. We walked to the store to get some souvenirs and found much cheaper prices than what we got in the city. Helen got a bit impatient with Christina's slow shopping though and I had to chase after her a few times. She is a cutie though.

The first time I saw this sign, I asked Mark if the magpies were dangerous, he gave and emphatic 'Yes!' You can't tell by the picture how big this magpie is, but it is the size of an American crow, and as you can see the beak is much sharper. I guess they regularly attack people, though we didn't have any problems with them.

This is the best picture we got of Rafa.

We had a blast at the beach, it was a hot day, but overcast so we didn't get fried. The water was great, there were tons of waves. A couple of times we got caught off guard and were tumbled by a wave but that was the fum part.

This is a cake called 'pavlova' with mango and passion fruit on top. It is really popular in Australia; a member of Mark's ward made this one for us. It tasted like pure sugar to me, but Christina enjoyed it.

This mountain is part of the Great Dividing Range that runs along the eastern side of Australia.

That might look like a small kangaroo (that's what I thought it was) but it's a wallaby.

This is a wombat, a very interesting animal. They are burrowers and they had to cover the bottom of their enclosure with chain-link fence to keep the from burrowing out.

This is one of two joeys that we saw, Jay's daughter was fascinated by it, she kept trying to grab it and take it out of its mother's pouch.

These mother-baby pair was the main attraction at the koala enclosure. They were pretty cute.

This is a different species of kangaroo, he was much shier than the other ones so we didn't get to pet him.

A pair of Australian ducks.

Petting an echidna, Australia's version of the porcupine.

Most of the Kangaroos were too full to eat, every person that passed by was giving them food.

Kangaroos are sooo soft! Softer than any other animal I have petted, except maybe a chinchilla.

Most of the Koalas we saw were sleeping, I guess they sleep 20 hours a day.

This mother was so patient, but when Lily (Jay's two year old daughter) tried to take the joey out of the pouch, she hopped off.

These rhinoceros iguanas are native to Cuba. I bet the big one weighed over 25lbs.

The famous non-native Australian cane toad. Mark told us there was a bounty on them for a long time until the animal rights people made a big enough fuss to put an end to that.

Christina covertly organized a birthday party for me. Mark's twin brother Jay, a baker by trade, made me a blackberry pie, and a great cherry chocolate cake. The pie was not as good as my mom's, but his crust was amazing, the best I've ever had.

One highlight of the trip was Rafael's (Rafa) blessing, This is a picture of those in the circle.

Veronica's mom made these pants and the white shirt for the blessing.

A species of Australian dove?

Eucalyptus trees in Mark's yard. Australia was beautiful, so green, but they told us that it was unusually green.

The red berrys are called miracle fruit, they change your taste buds so that sour things taste sweet. After eating two of the berry, I ate a half of a lemon, and it was sweeter than an orange!

This is called a kebab, pronounced kee-baab.

This guy was astounding, he gave a great demonstration on the dijiridoo, but our camera battery died so we missed it.

We are posing with the lizard Jay caught, it bit him on the thumb, but it wasn't too bad.

We saw close to a hundred of these lizards, they called them bearded dragon.

This one is well over three feet long.

These cliffs were just behind the temple, it was a beautiful place and a bueatiful day.