This week was a fantastic week. Monday of course was Halloween and Becky went all out making mummy pizza's, monster toes, brain surgery salad, and a witches brew. We had some trick or treaters and I enjoyed sitting outside and seeing bats! The bats were far larger than I thought they would be. At first I thought the were large birds.
I got to go to a few music concerts this week. Ashlee and Ethan both had concerts. Ashlee had a solo as Tracy from Hairspray. She sang "Good Morning Baltimore" and did a great job. I could tell she really enjoyed being on stage for all of the numbers because she had a constant smile and was dancing the entire time:)
Ethan sings with the Birrilee Blokes. I was very impressed with there choral group. They had a very nice sound. Kyle said that he liked the song "Tool" the best, Ethan brought a blower on stage and the rest of the group had their own tools. It was a fun performance and it must be a Brouwer thing because I know Ethan loved being on stage as well.
On Wednesday Becky, Ethan, Aaron, Wyatt and I went to the Botanical Garden in Mt. Koot-tha. I have never seen anything like it! The Garden was massive and there were soooo many plant species there. I think they had just about every flower, bush, grass, and tree there. They even had a dome with a rain forest inside. I was in constantly in awe of how small I felt compared to some of the beautiful things I saw.
On Thursday I decided to spend the afternoon in the city. I took the city cat into South Bank and walked around for just a little bit before grabbing some lunch and finding a table in some shade near a little man made stream. There were a lot of people around, but I finished my book "The Robe," and what a great book! I really enjoyed it. One of my favorite books of all time.
Friday wasn't supposed to be too exciting, but around 2 I got a phone call from a Stephanie in my YSA ward. She asked if I would be able to fill in on a mystery date. I listened very carefully to all the details because I have a hard time understanding the Aussie accent sometimes:) The gist of the date was boys make a main dish and girls a dessert. All of the girls met up at a location and picked an envelope that gave directions to where your mystery date and meal would be. They did not tell you who your date was. The boys did the same for the dessert location. The first date was from 7 to 8:30 then you would end that date and at 9 meet up with your new date.
That all being said I should mention that I don't know Brisbane very well. I did not know any of the boys and it was dark. I was very nervous! My worst fear was getting lost and not being able to find my date. How embarrassing would that be...
I got my envelope and was excited to try a Kangaroo dish. The location was the Brisbane Botanical Garden... fortunately I knew there were two different gardens in Brisbane and figured my date meant the one in the city. I had to call Becky and spent a good while trying to locate it in the GPS. I finally did. Eventually I did find a "car park" (aka parking spot), and then headed into this park... in the dark... in a large and unknown city... it was a big park... oh and I did not know what my date looked like... did I mention I was a little nervous.
I could not find my date anywhere! There were random people walking through the park and I passed a couple mounted police officers. I searched for 20 to 30 minutes. Finally I sat down on a park bench and was so embarrassed and felt really bad that somewhere in this dark park some boy had a made a kangaroo dish and was sitting there by himself and I wasn't going to show up. I felt really bad... so I got up the nerve to text someone and try to find out who this boy was and what his number was. It was 7:45 when I called him and finally found him. Haha I felt really stupid. He was very nice and also very hungry and asked me to pray immediately so we could eat. The Kangaroo was good and I was happy that Adam and I had similar interests in the outdoors and he was outgoing and talkative. It was fun to talk to him and 8:30 came quickly so I had to rush home to beat my date.
I made cookies and ice cream for my dessert and Austin and I ate it out by the pool. Austin too was very outgoing and talkative. I was grateful not to have to lead the conversation. He knew a lot about animals and tried to give me some tips of cool places to see while I was in Australia. Overall it was a good date night and I was certainly relieved that it was over and that I hadn't gotten into a wreck, gotten really lost, or something else.
Yesterday was awesome! The whole family went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and it was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. I am still excited about it. I got to pet many kangaroos and I got to hold a Koala Bear! It was an amazing experience. I can't even express how it felt being there. Like being a part of a thing that I'd only experienced through movies and never thought I'd ever do. Everyone enjoyed being a part of it. I asked the Koala handler if she just loved her job and of course she smiled and said that she did.
We watched a couple of shows. We learned about snakes first and I did touch it. Then we learned about birds of pray and Ashlee actually got to put a big glove on and hold some rat guts to lure in one of the owls. It landed on her arm and she was all smiles as it devoured the food. She came back and whispered to me that that was so cool. The younger boys loved the guanas and chased them all over trying to pet them.
So many cool looking animals there. I also got to pet an emu which was really odd. They looked very weird and were not soft at all. It was a little scary because they look pretty prehistoric, but the were cool as well.
Anyway, I feel like I have written another novel here. I had a great week again and left out some other things I did this last week... yep they are coming to me now, but I'm out of words for the day.
G'day
Debbie
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