Australia Zoo & Broncos Rugby Game

We started off our Friday morning around 7 am because we needed to get ready for our adventure to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo and then later to the Brisbane Broncos Rugby League game!

Before we went into the actual zoo, we stopped by the animal hospital where we saw them working on an arachnid and then saw a couple of koalas getting help too. One koala even had an amputated leg! :( Poor little guy.. But he was so cute to watch walk around!

The Australia Zoo is on a HUGE piece of land. It is full of awesome animals and activities too! (Be sure to check out my pictures on Facebook if you haven’t already!) I got to feed an elephant, hold a baby crocodile, pet and feed kangaroos, pet koalas, and attend the Croc Show! We fed the elephants witch chunks of melon-type fruit about the size of my palm. It was the weirdest
thing EVER! Their trunks are like little vacuums! He just sucked the fruit up and tossed it back into his mouth! So crazy!

We did have one little incident when we were feeding the kangaroos. I wasn’t really thinking and I held my hand out too high for the kangaroo to reach easily. This kangaroo used its hands to grab mine. It kind of hurt because they have some kind of claw type fingers. Haha. Anyways, you aren’t supposed to pull the food away from the Kangaroos though, so I didn’t know what to do!
Eventually I just closed my palm over the food and walked away to feed another kangaroo. But then the same kangaroo came over by us when we were feeding a different kangaroo. Then the one we were feeding started growling while Nina was feeding it! Then mine was eating out of my hand again but when I tried towalk away it like hopped after me a little bit! I kind of freaked and just threw the food on the ground to get away from it! Haha. So embarrassing but no other kangaroos had acted like that. Needless to say Nina and I left those two alone after that. Haha.

We were lucky enough to go to the Zoo over the school holiday so Steve Irwin’s wife, Terri, and two kids, Bindi and Robert were there to perform the Croc Show! To get the show started the staff had us stand up and pay tribute to Steve by giving a big thumbs up and yelling, “Crikey!” I felt themost entertaining part was seeing them interact as a family, especially after
their devastating loss of Steve.

Terri said something about America while she was talking and of course all of us girls cheered pretty loudly. She looked up at us and asked us where we were from. We all yelled back that we were from Minnesota of course. Then she said, “That’s where the mall is right?!” And again, we all said yeah and cheered. It was so neat! I caught part of that interaction on video too.

A few times throughout the day the girls and I had discussions on how sometimes it was sad to be there because there are pictures of Steve everywhere. His quotes are posted throughout the zoo as well. Those are pretty inspiring. On the other side of the sadness is the fact that his family and the people at the Zoo are all working so hard to keep his dream alive. You can just feel the passion for the animals in the atmosphere while you are there.

We left the Zoo at 4 pm to catch the train to Brisbane for the Broncos Rugby League game! It took about an hour on the train to get to Brisbane. It was really neat because downtown it was just like being in the cities for Twins game. Everyone was wearing Broncos gear and the atmosphere wasreally neat. Unfortunately, it was raining on our walk there, which made it a bit chilly. We we re hoping the rain would clear though because it was an open air stadium.

When we got the stadium a few of us stopped to buy a shirt for ourselves. We grabbed food for supper and then headed to our seats. I had the most delicious chicken sandwich ever! (Here they call it a chicken burger). Nina was nice enough to share her fries with me. We couldn’t get over how perfectly salted the fries were. Haha. Stadium food always seems to hit the spot! I even
thoroughly enjoyed my Coke I had and I don’t even like Australia’s Coke! It tastes different than ours! We got to our seats that were in SECOND ROW. It was amazing! The players were like RIGHT THERE! Nina and I sat on the end of the group. We had a great time chatting between our spouts of trying to figure out how the heck Rugby worked! Of course we were comparing
it to our football the whole time. It was definitely an experience of Culture Shock being one of nine girls in the stadium of over 30,000 who had no idea what was going on and everyone else did!

Nina’s host family was able to go to the game so they lead us to the best train station to take so we could have seats on the train ride home. The ride home took forever for some reason. We were all dead tired once we got home from our long, exhausting, but totally awesome day!

I feel as though I need to tell you all something. Since you have been so kind to read my blog, I feel you deserve to know about a recent event in my life. Here it is: I have accepted a position as a first grade teacher in Huron, South Dakota for next year! I am very excited about this opportunity! I loved the principals and the superintendent after talking with them in my interview. (I did this interview over Skype at 4am the night we returned from Sydney!) So it seems that when I get back I have a bit more to celebrate over graduation weekend! :)

I got to use Facetime with Janaya and Keely tonight! It was SO fun! I LOVED talking with them! Except I can just tell we have SO much to catch up on! Haha. Reuniting with my roomies will be so great!

15 days until I’m home, friends! The next two weeks I will be back in the schools. I don’t know if my body is ready to get back to work after two weeks on Holiday, but I supposed it’s going to have to figure out a way to survive!

Love and hugs to everyone!
Xoxo