Kia Ora

I have made it safely back to the wonderful land of America! After traveling for literally 2 days (left on a Thursday and came home on a Thursday), and getting told by the old man sitting next to me that if there was a gold medal for sleeping on an airplane I would be the one to win it—sleeping 9 hours of the 13 hour flight from NZ, I AM HOME!

It was so fun being welcomed back by all of my family waiting for me at the airport. Friday and Saturday back home was also a lot of fun spending time with family, eating YUMMY American food again (including Doritos and chips), and going to the doctor to figure out all of my stomach problems haha.

I loved my time in New Zealand. The experiences I had there were both humbling and exciting and I will NEVER forget everything I learned there. My week vacation in Australia was also a lot of fun. We had a bunch of CRAZY adventures, but we had a wonderful time and made it home safely :) :).

Here is my 6 days in Cairns and Sydney Australia. . . .

I hated saying goodbye to Phil and Nish, and of course the kids: Richi,
Siah, Dia, and baby Faith. :(

Hilarious flight intro video on Air New Zealand. We'd always die laughing
at this video!

Margo is OUT! (She kinda looks a little freaky like this!)

Changing from NZ currency to Australian currency!

Hello Cairns Australia!

Our rooms were pretty nice. We even had a little balcony.

Comfort Inn :)

We were even right across the street from what we thought was the ocean.
It was really just an esplanade that was full of mud :(.

So we laid out by the pool in the hot sun instead of going to the beach
our first day in Australia!

That night we walked to the city and went to a Night Market. I tried
this crocodile jerky. It was kind of gross...but hey I can say I've eaten
crocodile now right?! :)

Night Market shopping

Oh and of course some amazing ice cream for dinner.

Saturday morning we woke up early, and caught our bus ride for our
day cruise on the great barrier reef!

Here we go for a FUN DAY IN THE SUN! :)

Literally beauty all around us.

Green Island, where we spent the day snorkeling and relaxing in the sun.

Beautiful Great Barrier Reef.

The water was so so pretty!

Ah I want to go back now!

My two favorite colors :)

Let's go snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef!!

. . .dork. . .yes. . .lol

These blue starfishes were everywhere!

All of the fish were so beautiful! There was this huge fish that we saw
hiding under a reef. . .it was bright blue and looked like Dory from
Finding Nemo, and was about the size of my chin to my hips!

This fish was my favorite. He had a little circle mouth that he would
blow circle bubbles out of (like literally in the shape of cheerios.)

The fish were small, big, and tonz of BRIGHT colors. There were
blues, greens, yellows, oranges. . .just tonz of fun color fish.

We lucked out in finding a sea turtle to swim with. It was so much fun.
We would just pet his shell and then swim along side of him! SO COOL!

Swimming in the Great Barrier Reef, in Cairns Australia, with a sea turtle.
Insane :)!!

There's me with my buddy!

Me, Brooke, and Brooke!

Me, Margo, and Brooke...loving the snorkeling!

This was hilarious. These yellow fish must have liked my togs or something
because they would NOT leave me alone. They kept swimming around
my stomach, legs, and chest until I got out of the water!

Haha! I love my little yellow fish friends! :)

Us and the sea turtle!

These were cool. They would suck back inside if we got close to them!

After snorkeling, and shoveling down our lunches, we went on a
glass water boat tour!

It was a lot cooler actually snorkeling in the reef.

I'm pretty sure that's an eel on the left!

We saw HUGE fish like this when we were snorkeling. The Dory fish was
even BIGGER than this!

It was funny because by the end of the day the tide had gone down so
we couldn't really snorkel any more. Everyone was just walking
around because there was little water.

But you could see the reef a lot better for pictures!

Me and the Great Barrier Reef!

Beautiful!

What a fun day!!

On Easter Sunday we went to the Anglican church
down the road.

It was a different experience for me. . .

Margo surprised us all with Easter chocolates (she was
so sweet and bought me a non-chocolate candy :)).

Back to the airport, getting ready to head to Sydney Australia now!

When we got there we were in quite the shock from our change of
hotel and location. It was definitely a down grade and definitely a
sketchy area!!

We stuffed 4 girls into these little rooms.

And tried to shower in this tiny bathroom haha.

This was how our first night in Sydney was. It was really freaky to be in a
ghetto area, in the rain, in a thunder storm.

A lot of the buildings near our hotel looked like this.
There were homeless people finding shelter under
buildings and life was just a little bit scary for those
3 days in Sydney!

I'm just glad we didn't get anything stolen and that we had
a McDonald's right next to our hotel so that we could get
free wifi if we needed (for any type of emergency haha).

We bought these passes that allowed us to use any train, bus, or ferry for
the whole week. They sure came in handy as we were constantly on one
of these three types of transportation.

Good Ol' train system!

I'm glad I was able to figure out where we needed to go on the train maps.

I didn't realize that Sydney was going to be such a ghetto place when we
were outside of the city!

Featherdale Wildlife Park! So much fun!!!

We met up with a bunch of other girls from our program who had just gone
straight to Sydney from NZ (instead of going to Cairns first).

IN THE WILDLIFE PARK WE SAW:

. . .pretty birds

. . .heaps and heaps of kangaroos

. . .snakes

. . .cuddly Koalas

. . .baby kangaroos :)

. . .emus

. . .a crocodile

crikey!

. . .baby penguins

so stinkin cute

fair dingcome mate! :)

. . .lizards

. . .flying-foxes (bats)

. . .a dingo

. . .a big kangaroo

. . .storks

. . .Tasmanian devil

who wouldn't stop running around!!

Sydney City.....Sydney Harbor Bridge

Opera House. So beautiful!

Opera House Tour!

The city at night!!

I can't believe how BEAUTIFUL and BIG both the bridge and opera house
were in real life. Bigger than I had ever imagined they would be!

We were able to get last minute, cheap tickets, to the
Tony Bennett concert in the Opera House. It was
AMAZING!

The sound inside is unreal....and Tony Bennett can still sing WAY good
for how old he is!

The band, One Direction, was in Sydney and all
the girls were FREAKING out below their hotel.

Royal Botanical Gardens

Those are flying-foxes in the trees in the park....crazy!

Wishing tree! (I made a wish, don't worry :).)

Most famous spot for taking a picture!

Darling Harbour

After a crazy experience of trying to find the temple, we
finally got there and made it for our baptism session.
We rode on a billion different trains and at
one point, had like 6 people in the train cart helping us
on their cell phones figure out the best route to take
to get to our temple. Then we got off the train, ran up
a huge hill, and we're close to tears when we SAW the
angel Moroni shinning behind the trees.