Hi everyone,

It's (finally!) Amy here! I want to make sure you know I really am on this trip so I thought it was time for my version of events. :) I don't know what Simon has been telling you, as I haven't had time to read the blogs (I do LOOOVE reading the messages though, so keep them coming!), but I hear (from Tomo, Woody, and Yvette-hi guys!), that you like long blogs. If I get long-winded (as I am sure to), you can blame them. Ha!

Well, I am THRILLED to report that my latest Masters class is finished (and I got a 100%)!!! Sorry I didn't post an entry right away. I would have been quite happy to have never seen a computer again after I finished that last paper! I was also very sick of seeing a pencil and paper. Because we aren't traveling with a computer, I ended up hand-writing all my assignments and then just typing them from the papers once we got to a computer. What a hassle (and the cause of quite a few hand cramps)! As we were sitting on the flight from Bangkok to Japan, I looked down and saw my pencil. My immediate thought was, "Noooooooooooooo, I've had enough!" when I suddenly realized that I didn't have to curse my pencil anymore. Hooray! So now I have an 8 week reprieve before I have to get back to the papers. At least then, I will have a computer!

Anyway, before I get to all my feelings on the places we've been, I'd better update you on Australia (Part 1-we'll be back to OZ in a few days). We had about 10 hours in planes to get from Japan to Australia and happily slept pretty well (we were exhausted after the crummy overnight bus ride from Osaka to Tokyo). We arrived at the Brisbane airport and were met by Yvette, Ashleigh, and Sasha (Simon's sister and our nieces-hi guys!). Ashleigh is 10 and Sasha is nearly 6, so they kept us entertained on the hour long drive to their house. After a quick stop at home and change of clothes, we headed down to Surfer's Paradise. The Gold Coast was a total shock to me, but in a completely different way than anywhere else we'd been on this trip. It was like we were home! For the first time in 30 days, no one stared at me because my hair was blonde!! The weather was just like a winter's day in Sarasota and Surfer's Paradise looked like it could have been picked up from anywhere in Florida and dropped in Australia. Though I do still think the sand in Sarasota is nicer (Paul and Yvette-you'll just have to come and see for yourselves!). We had a nice afternoon walking around Surfer's and catching up. We got our first savory pies of the trip (Americans-they are somewhat similar to chicken pot pie except you get them from bakery-type shops)-beef and cheddar-yummy!!

That night we went back for a home-cooked dinner of lasagne-Yvette must have read my mind-I had been craving Italian for a couple of weeks! The next day Paul and Yvette had to work, so Yvette dropped Simon and I and the girls off at Dreamworld. It is a theme park right near their house. The themepark continued my feelings that we were in Florida, except that it was so much more laid-back than the parks we are used to. We bought tickets and just got a receipt-no actual ticket. No one checked our bags and there were very short areas for people to stand in line. We are used to waiting a minimum of half an hour for most rides back home, but at Dreamworld the lines were never more than 20 minutes. They didn't have any plans for child swap (Warren and Kathrine-I don't know what you'd do!), so whenever Sasha was too little we just all waited in line together and then she walked out to the other side of the ride and waited for us to ride. Lucky for us she was big enough to stand on her own!

At Dreamworld, we also enjoyed the animal area. There was a cute petting zoo area where kids could milk a cow and feed goats, alpacas (like llamas), pigs, and sheep. There was also an area to wander around with kangaroos. We got some funny photos of the kangaroos and also koalas, wombats, emus, crocodiles, and birds. In my language acquisition class, there is a unit on Australian animals, so I can't wait to share the pictures with my classes next year! We also stopped to see a farm animals show where I was selected to "bake" bread in front of the audience. The guy dumped flour, water, and one other ingredient (I can't remember-must've been stage fright-ha!) into a bowl and I was supposed to mix the ingredients with my hands while he went on with the show. I felt like a fool because the ingredients weren't measured very well-the dough was just a blob that was stuck to my hands-yuck!. Oh, and he asked my name when he chose me to come up, but apparently forgot it awfully quickly because during the entire rest of the show, he called me Linda! Amy...Linda...anyone see the connection? Not me-it sure sounded funny when he said it in his Aussie accent, though...Leeeenda! :-P Happily, they, of course, changed pots and gave us bread at the end of the show that came from a well-mixed dough, so my dirty hands didn't cause any damage! :)

That night we headed back to Paul and Yvette's and Paul made us a delicious dinner of cheesy spaghetti and sausages on toast. He really put his culinary skills to work to please us. :) Everyone thinks we are crazy when we are craving foods! The next day, after playing some board games with Ashleigh and Sasha, we caught a bus with the girls to the mall in the next town where Simon and I were promptly struck with sticker shock. I didn't realize how inexpensive the US was until I arrived in OZ. There were lots of sales going on, but we still had a hard time finding things. Luckily, Simon found a Payless-type store and got a cheapo pair of shoes so he can finally throw away the flip-flops that haven't left his feet in over a month! Ewww!!!

That night for dinner we had pizza and ice cream at home. Yvette and the girls went to Baskin-Robbins and got a giant bucket of ice cream while Simon and I were waiting for the pizza. They got five or six flavors all dumped into this one bucket so each scoop of ice cream we ate for dinner was a surprise-we never knew what we were going to get. It was like my ice cream dream come true-half a dozen flavors all together!!!! :)

The next day was our last in the Gold Coast/Brisbane so we dropped the girls off at their holiday care class and Yvette drove us up to Brisbane. We checked out downtown from the car and then headed to the airport. We were lucky to be early because it turned out our flight from Sydney to Wellington was cancelled. We spent a long time on the phone with Qantas and then at their ticketing desk and eventually got put on a flight leaving half an hour earlier from Brisbane to Sydney so we would be able to catch an Air New Zealand flight (not part of our flight alliance, so no frequent flier miles-what a bummer!) to Wellington. All seemed to be falling into place until ALL the flights from Brisbane to Sydney were delayed for a variety of reasons. The flight we were on ended up leaving an hour late (so half an hour later than we were originally supposed to be on) and we didn't think we'd make our connection in Sydney. Fortunately, the reason our flight was cancelled was because of a mechanical problem so Qantas would have to pay for our dinner, breakfast, and a hotel room. We were mentally gearing ourselves up to miss the connection, but when we arrived in Sydney and were running to the ticketing counter, we heard our names announced. It turned out Air New Zealand knew we were delayed and had kept their check-in counter open for us even though we only arrived five minutes before the flight to Wellington was supposed to depart! So we went running through the Sydney airport to catch the flight, but I got caught up in security-well done to the Australian bag scanner-he was the first in 14 flights to have noticed the scissors in my sewing kit (they are so small-he ended up giving them back)-they were just discovered at an inopportune time! Luckily, though, as I ran to the gate (15 minutes after the flight was supposed to depart), the last few people were still boarding. So no free hotel, but a lovely bed at Simon's parents house awaited us instead! :-) We were so happy to arrive here in Wellington and are very glad Simon's parents live so near the airport-three minutes tops!

Ok, I think that is all from Australia, but Simon is telling me to remind you to look at our photos. They are on photobucket.com under siamy2008. I think this is the link...http://s308.photobucket.com/albums/kk324/siamy2008/ From there you can look at the other photos. Too bad they didn't work on this website even after we asked for help, but oh well, you can check over on photobucket.

Better get some lunch. More later...

love, amy & simon :)