"What's your name, you hopeless no-hoper? I know karate!!"

Ahh well, Julie's last post will be a tough act to follw, but I'll give it a shot. Trevor, your comments made all three of us laugh out loud, obnoxiously loud, and made everyone in the internet cafe look our way.. Julie's grammar is all part of the charm, her stories just wouldn't be the same if they made sense ;o). Anyway keep 'em coming, we all love to hear from home!!

So first a quick update:

Sunday before the lovely picnic in the Royal Botanical Gardens that Julie mentioned, we went to the Sydney Acquaruim for the morning - it was THE VERY COOLEST place! Can't believe Julie forgot to write about that after how positively giddy she was to see sharks. You get to walk in underwater tunnels where the sharks and other assorted sae life swim arouns and above you. It's wierd to be 2 inches from those guys and they don't notice you at all. So we saw a ton of cool new creatures: sharks, jellyfish, stingrays, platypuses (my new fave they are too cute!), and some sea creature whose closest living realtive is an elephant!! Can't remember what it was called, but it was oddly hairy and round with a huge snout thingy. Pretty cool to watch though. And I saw a shark eat a fishy! Sad times for the fishy.

Other than that we have done a whole lot of lying on beaches, tossing around rugby balls, trying to explain our love of real coffee to people who only drink cappuccinos, and generally just loving life. We have met SO many great preople since moving to Bondi! (and no Aunt Liz, we don't sleep on the sand, though there is always a bit in your bed and pockets and ears and hair at any given time). We'll be sad to leave Bondi but super excited for the next step of adventure!

So in a couple hours when our cool new friend Jonathan gets off work we are heading to a surf camp at 7 mile beach, about 1.5 hours south of Sydney. We're staying there for 2 nights, so we'll be back in civilization thursday evening. The camp is in the middle of a national park which is apparently very beautiful. I'm hoping to see a couple Aussie creatures in the wild! We are all super excited for surfing, and for the chance to actually learn the techniques from pros - I'm pretty sure I'll need all the help I can get!! We'll tell you all about surf camp when we get back :o)

Very much love from tomorrow!
Shanna

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER in Australia in 5hrs and 22 minutes!!! (you better be reading)

P.P.S. If you are wondering about the title - there was a crazy Aussie guy outside the hostel entrance gate last night yelling what he thought were insults... apparently he's a bit of a softie when it comes to insulting people. I also hear he offered a couple modelling contracts, though that's just a rumor (don't worry Larry and Granny, the security here is super tight and he was removed right away, but it was still pretty funny to hear!).