A little footie, a lot of koalas

Well it's certainly been a fun few days... I'm still getting settled and trying to figure out the town. Turns out Brisbane is massive and there are lots of little neighborhoods. I'm in Kenmore with 6 other people, so we are officially the Kenmore Krew, which makes taking the bus everywhere a whole lot more fun. Also, we discovered that the Maccas down the street (Maccas is what they call McDonald's here) has soft serve ice cream for 30 cents, which is amazing, obviously. Everything here is crazy expensive so cheap ice cream has definitely been a highlight. Another thrilling find are Tim-Tams, which are essentially oreos dipped in chocolate and crack. And when you dip them in Milo (a hot malt beverage) they become liquid gold on your tongue, I will be bringing back cases of them, don't trip. Vegemite is not good. End of story. Even on Tim-Tams, vegemite could never be good. It's like a salty soy saucy dirt-flavored pungent spread that for some reason instills a lot of pride in Aussies. Sorry guys, we love your cookies (or biscuits, as they would say) and your accents, and I'm even getting used to the short shorts all the guys wear, but let's ditch the whole vegemite deal.

There are a lot of little phrases they have here that we don't have, as you may have noticed. A chicken is a chook. A BBQ is a barbie. And instead of YOLO they say STREYA, like Aus-Streya, because, let's be honest, this country rocks. There are certain things I'm not supposed to say around immature males, I've noticed. "I'm stuffed" and "doodle" have completely different meanings here, beware. But I'm getting used to it. I've even started looking right first and then left when I cross the road, which believe you me, is an incredibly hard habit to break. I haven't been run over yet, so the only things I have to worry about surviving now is the blue-ringed octopus which can paralyze you for 6 hours, deadly box jellies, and that crocodile that just ate someone. When we were in Girraween we found a snake skin of the 7th most venomous snake in the world, and it was 6 feet long. Australia will keep you on your toes, my friends, let me tell you!

A group of us spent a very relaxing day today at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary (pictures attatched) where we were able to hold, pet, and love on some adorable little koalas. They are cute in pictures, but they are even cuter live when they jump from branch to branch and chill back and enjoy the sunshine. They had over 130 koalas at the reserve, and even had them in separate pens based on age: kindergarten pen, retirement pen, cubby house... Unlike Girraween where we slowly meandered to get within 3 meters (oh yea, metric system baby) of the wild kangaroos, we could literally lay with the ones at the reserve. They were hilarious and let us do everything but ride them, not that I tried =] They are incredibly soft and well tempered and love to cuddle! We also saw wombats, platypus, dingos, crazy talking birds, crocodiles, pretty much everything you have to see when you go to Australia. It was delightful!

Sunday night we attended an Australian Rules Football game, basically rugby with different rules. We arrived early to get our face painted and play with baby goats in the petting zoo, so I was obviously very happy since my obsession with goats has skyrocketed within the last year. The Brisbane Lions played the Bulldogs and won! Yay! I've been rooting for them my whole life... kind of. Then, after the game, we went out to a bar to celebrate a friend's birthday. There was a live musician who basically played any song we requested- Brown Eyed Girl, Sweet Home Alabama, Allstar... it was so so so fun. He said we were the best crowd he's ever had. Um duh... we're from California, it's what we do. We danced our little patooties off and had a really wonderful time =]

Oh and I'm taking classes too...