It would have made it Lauren!

I have come to really come to look forward to and enjoy skyping with my family on Thursday mornings. It is nice to be able to hear about what is going on back home as well as catch them on my Australian stories so they don’t have to wait until I get home to hear them all. I knew that I had a Creative Arts project lingering over my head that I had successfully put off until the last few days before it was due but I was willing to put it off even longer to go out and visit the Sydney Wild Life attraction with Riley. We had about another two weeks before the tickets expired so we had to make sure to be able to use them before they went bad. We had always seen the koala bears on the stands outside the Wild Life centre every single time we walked by and today was like no other with the cutest koala just sleeping away!

We took the normal entry pictures that they try and sell you at the end of the trip and wandered our way inside and down all the railing mazes. I guess they have those out for crowded days but we luckily have never experienced that. Again, the pictures will do most of the talking. We started out in the butterfly room where butterflies were flying all around us. I had read that they were attracted to bright colors and I thanked myself for wearing a bright t-shirt. However, the butterflies seemed more into chasing each other around then landing on people. Riley was the first to become the butterfly whisperer when he nuzzled his finger up to a perched butterfly and he gracefully climbed unto his finger. These are seriously some of the cutest pictures!

Reunited and it feels so good!

I, of course, had to have my go with the butterflies but definitely didn’t have as good of luck. Whether I did have one close to getting on my finger I would have to yell for Riley to come over since he was off chasing more butterflies and take my picture, which by that point the butterfly had gotten scared and flown off. Finally, after many trials I finally got my own picture with a butterfly on my finger! 

If we had to leave then, I would have been satisfied! But we still had a lot more animals to see like jumping mice which were cute only because they were in an enclosed area, kangaroos, crocodile, a colorful emu, and wallabies. We attended as many talks as we could from the zookeepers as we have found those to be pretty personal and informative. The kangaroo exhibit is actually in an open area where the kangaroos get to freely roam around even though I know they’re smart to stay in their area far away from the humans. The feeding trough was close to the footpath which meant the kangaroos had to come up close to eat. We listened intently as the zookeeper told us all about the kangaroo life cycle and how the females can pause their pregnancy until they ‘get their life together.’ I found this to be very cool, although she said this is the reason why Australia is overrun with kangaroos since they can basically just have a baby whether they want. But because we were listening intently to her talk we were the first to be able to go out and pet a kangaroo while they were eating. Turns out as long as they have food they are content with being pet, unlike dogs. They really are very soft and not that scary up close, although they did have a statue of a grown 6 foot male kangaroo in the corner which would definitely make me shake in my boots if I saw him in the wild!

Riley acted like he was all big and bad next to him though.

We tried to catch the crocodile talk next but had no idea where to meet up since there was three viewing stations for the crocodile and decided to pass. We stuck around for the koala bear talk as well as watched other people pay $20-$35 dollars to have their picture taken next to a koala bear. We were definitely thankful we got to do is within the first weekend for a much better price. Did you know that the koala bears are also marsupial animals, meaning they have a pouch for their young? We had just found that out the other day, which is pretty cool! Other than that, koala bears really aren’t that interesting since they sleep for about 20 hours of the day and only eat certain leaves. Apparently their brains are so small that they don’t have the capacity to learn new habits and patterns. If the zookeepers were to pull the leaves off the branches and put them on a plate for the koala bears they wouldn’t know how to eat them. After the koala bear talk, we had seen just about everything and decided to head out before it got too late. We were also keen on going to the markets to possibly get some souvenir shopping done. Once we finally got back it was time for a quick dinner before we headed off to trivia at Kelly’s! It felt like we hadn’t been there in forever, but really it had been about two weeks. With four people there we had high hopes for the night but once again, things weren’t in our favor. It didn’t help that the crossword theme was famous fictional female characters. I’m not one for remembering names and obviously the guys don’t watch a lot of girly TV shows so we didn’t start off on a good note. But by the end of the night we had successfully filled in all but four blanks which was quite the accomplishment! We did alright on the questions but I’m still kicking myself over not remembering who sang my favorite song. I seriously had a mind freeze and couldn’t remember that Rick Springfield sang Jesse’s Girl, Riley’s mom will be shocked as well. I was able to make a come back and put down who sang my other favorite song called Maniac Monday though! This was my night for trivia I though! Then came the paper airplane contest…Riley has been talking and talking about this contest saying that one day he will get it out the door and I believe that he can. He folded, double folded and triple folded the airplane this time and just chucked it as hard as he could towards the door. When it was about to sail through the opening it hit the very tiptop corner of the door frame and jammed into the ground. This was quite the dash to Riley’s dream especially since we know it would have gone through had it not hit the corner. Neill had been talking about going for frozen yogurt afterwards since the first round so we decided to all take a trip down King Street to find a nice yogurt place. Apparently these shops are popping up all over Sydney just like back home in Goldsboro, where you can choose your yogurt, how much you want and then choose the toppings to put on there. They don’t have as many candy ingredients to choose from, but they do have miniature versions of everything else. It was nice to have casual conversations with the guys which quickly turned into travel stories once again. Neill’s friend, Terrid has recently been to Europe so I got into conversation with him about where to go. He keeps telling me that Prague is a must, so I’ll probably have to make that happen. He also shared stories about Octoberfest, which gets me curious how my experience there will be. Even though we didn’t win trivia, it was probably one of the best nights out with the guys! We unfortunately had to tell Neill that we have just five weeks left in Sydney and that put a damper on his night. We’re all confident that we’ll run into each other in the future again though!