Why my mom was making a weird face

Ryan has a speech impediment. You can't really notice it unless you look at his mouth while he is talking. He forms many of the sounds incorrectly. In this video I was trying to show that he makes a "Sh" sound with his mouth open. Make the sound, I bet your teeth are together...not Ryan's...
So when I was with my family last week I was trying to show them how he makes the sounds, they made fun of me because I was making crazy faces!

The Blue Mountains

We took a train about two hours from Sydney to the Blue Mountains. It was a cold (about 4 degrees Celsius) and foggy day, but we were all still excited to go on a hike through the famous Blue Mountains!

This is where we stopped to eat our lunch halfway through our hike. We had lemon chicken wraps. I was the first one to bite into my wrap (anyone surprised?) and was shocked and dismayed to find some strange things in my wrap....
The first thing I tasted was a potato....oh, and not just a regular potato...but there was potato salad in our wraps!
there was some grilled chicken, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes...
It was weird, but edible!

Most of their trees in Australia don't leave their leaves, they loose their bark!

One of four water falls that we saw on our hike.

The second waterfall.

The third waterfall.

The initial view we got of the blue mountains.

Sydney

After a short, but miserable flight (has anyone ever had the joy of vomiting on an airplane?) we arrived in Sydney. It was very different, it was cold and rainy and not so tropical. We had to take a train and then a ferry to get to our lodging. Then we had to walk up about 100 steps and two huge hills all with our 50 pounds suitcases, in the rain. It was not a nice experience. When we got to our hotel we found that we had very small rooms with a double bed, plus a twin sized mattress on the floor. There were about 15 rooms per floor and a separate bathroom with four toilets and three showers...for the entire floor. It was lacking to say the least. After a lot of whining and complaining we all got over it and went out for a walk with our guide. We got to see the Sydney Harbor Bridge, and the Opera House which we were very close to. We got really good food and started the second part of our trip!

Palm Cove

Our last day in Cairns we had a free day. We decided to take a bus to a local beach.
It was so pretty!

This is me standing right in front of the chapel below. So this is the view looking out of the glass windows of the chapel. And the next two pictures below are taken from right in front of the chapel! Not the temple, but still pretty!!

This is a wedding chapel right on the beach!

The grocery store

I may be wrong, but do we have pictures of cows and chickens in our meat section?

Is that a different monkey on the coco pops?

Most of the people I went to Australia with could not use their cell phones while overseas. The travel company gave us phone cards we could use to talk on the phone or use in the internet. The easiest way to use these was to go to the local grocery store where they had six computers and two phones. Sometimes it took a while to get to use the phone and sometimes we ended up waiting while people were talking on the phone. These are just some of the fun things we saw that were different in the Australian grocery store!

Red Bull in a glass bottle? and that was $3.49 for one bottle!

Where is the red bag for the nacho cheese doritos?

RICE BUBBLES? Really?

Not sure how LCMs stands for Rice Krispie Treats?!?

Rain Forest

On our third day in Australia we went to the Kuranda rain forest.

We got to see some awesome animals!

Day 2-June 6, 2011 My 32nd Birthday

The second day of our trip was my birthday. We got up early and got on this catamaran and drove out to a good section of the Great Barrier Reef. We then snorkeled and ate and snorkeled again. The boat had this trampoline style netting that we laid over the water on, it was very comfortable and also fun. Every once in a while the water would splash up and cool us off.
The darker areas are the reef closer to the surface. I did not have an underwater camera, but the coral was GORGEOUS. Every color of the rainbow, vibrant blues, vivid greens and purples. And fish swimming all around the reef. Every time I saw a school of fish I screamed through my snorkel. The island you can kind of see in this picture is where we initially snorkeled. We took a little boat from our catamaran out to the island and then walked into the water and started exploring.
There were fish just swimming around the boat. These fish were the size of dinner plates. We fed them the left over prawns (shrimp) from our lunch.

This is the city of Cairns as we were driving back home.

I just loved seeing crocodile on the menu.

Since it was my birthday my friends took me to dinner. I had crocodile and chorizo ravioli. It was delicious! They would not let us take the left over food home. Apparently at nice restaurants there you do not do take out.

While we were coming home, I lost this hat over the side of the boat. The wind blew it right off my head!! Despite this, it was one of the best birthdays I have ever had. If my family had been there with me it would have been perfect!!

My hotel room in Cairns!

These pictures are all taken standing on the deck of our hotel. We were a block from the water in two different directions. It was a decent hotel with an all you can eat breakfast, one of my favorite parts! It was within walking distance of anywhere we could have wanted to go!

My Roommate Jenn, she has also been my seat mate and project partner for the last 2 years in school. After this class she is done and I will somehow have to survive without her!

This is the casino that was directly across the street from us!

The sun rise!