Animals Galore!

***Check out videos! Linked on the left***

Before I begin this post- a little shout out to my BENG (bioengineering) crew, who faithfully stick together to survive what is our college lives in impossible classes. I found our candy bar in an Indonesian restaurant. Looks good yes? But as Maggie so eloquently put it:

"I bet those beng-beng candy bars are promising on the outside but once you
start eating it, they're salty and painful to chew."

I couldn't agree with her more haha.

So the PIXAR exhibit turned ouot to be really fun! They had lots of drawings, sculptures, and clips showing the development of all the PIXAR films. My favorite, of course, being Toy Story. The first one. We want to go see Ratatouille because it looks really cute from what we saw at the exhibit, but it doesn't come out in Australia until August 30, which is too late because we leave for New Zealand on the 27th. Oh well.
Here's everyone with Sully and Mike!
If you saw Saleh with an Australian accent, it kinda sounds like Sully! Fitting, seeing as how I can't even tell these two apart, hahaha.
After the exhibit, we all went to get gelato to eat in the freezing cold weather. I was sooo cold afterwards!! But it was so worth it.
Just look at the joy on that face! I got a scoop of mango with a scoop of irish cream. Sounds weird, but it was reeally good.
After dessert, we decided maybe we should have dinner too. So we went over to Hungry Jacks, which is really just Burger King in disguise. I got a cheeseburger- yum. Hungry Jacks seems pretty popular around here.
They were a little hungry.
On Friday, we all went to the Sri Lankan place to eat and got Hoppers. Basically they give you a plate of veggies and meat (shown above) and we put it in an edible bowl with a white mush on the bottom (shown below) and ate it! It was very tasty, and a lot of food.
We finished a cryptic crossword over lunch, and made it back just in time to hear someone from Singapore give a seminar about his project that he had been working on the past few years. After that, I managed to fit in some more work before we had an office party! That was fun, and I was able to meet some more people who work in David's computer lab. After that, Slavisa and Wojtek invited us to play some table tennis with them. They both turned out to be really pro at it! They humored us though, and went easy on us. It was lots of fun!
Look at this pro shot! I hit it right off the corner of the table to score a point after this pic was taken.
Team Steph-Heather won! 3-2
I love this pic! Slavisa diving for the ball.
Beautiful action shot.
Do you see the determination on that face? Oh yeah.
My game face! I look kinda crazed in this picture, haha, but it's ok.
On Saturday, Thomas (who also is visiting Monash DSSE lab for research) joined us on our day tour to Phillip's Island. A bus came and picked us all up from our hotel at 11:15 in the morning.
Isn't this the cutest dog? He was tied to the pole outside a shop looking really sad so we went over to pet him.
The bus came and we all piled on!
This is Peter, our tour guide. He was awesome! I hope he is our tour guide next week as well when we go on the Great Ocean Road.
Wombat!! I'm not sure what Steph is doing here... lol.
Saleh how he has looked this whole trip- always behind the camera! He is determined to catch EVERYTHING on film.
Our free gift!! Penguins!! I was so excited.
The PRIMERS at our stop in Tooradin Village.
It was really nice to get out of the city for a day and see the countryside of Australia. There were lots of cows on the way. Phillip's Island was about an hour and a half away from Melbourne.
The beautiful view from a winery that we stopped at. At the bottom you can see the grape vines, although they have nothing on them since it is winter. In the distance is the ocean! We were blessed with a beautiful day on Saturday. The winery was called The Gurdies Winery, and they had some pretty tasty wine.
They lined up all the glasses for our group and poured in a little of one type of wine. Then we would taste that, and the lady would pour a little in of the next wine. We tried about 5 or 6 wines by the end. My favorite was a sweet white wine called Riesling.
Cheers!
Outside of the wine tasting building.

After the winery, we visited an animal sanctuary, which is also where we got lunch.
Here is a wombat- he was so fat and cute! This one was about 1 1/2 years old I believe.
Liz and me with the wombat!
They also had lots of koalas! Koalas are protected by the government in Victoria, so we were not allowed to touch the koalas, but they were cute to look at! They also have some sharp claws, which would make it slightly painful to hold.
Sleepy time!
These were wallabies. They look a lot like kangaroos, but they are smaller. They was so soft!! I loved petting and feeding them. They weren't overly friendly unless we had food in our hands, and then they had a change of heart =P
Liz making friends with the wallabies.
They also had a little pony, some scary emus, some sheep, goats, and a donkey- seen here. I think Michelle's face says it all haha.
The dingos were just like dogs! Granted these lived in a sanctuary, so real dingos are probably a little more wild, but these were very furry and friendly. Here's Thomas and the dingo they brought out of the enclosure.
A Tasmanian devil! They would bite your hand if you stuck if over the wall of the enclosure.
These birds were hilarious! They might have been some type of cockatoo, but they would talk! At first, they only said hello, but when I started laughing- the bird starting laughing too!! I was practically rolling on the ground cracking up- and he would shake his head side to side while he laughed too. I have never heard a bird laugh at me before!
My new best friend- Casey the Kangaroo.
The kangaroos were definitely my favorite. They are so soft! I want one.
I could have stayed there all day. I only wish there had been less other people around- it got a bit crowded at times.
Look! There is a joey in her pouch!
After the animal sanctuary, we drove to the beach! This picture is of "The Nobbies", which is what the rocks were called at this place. There were also lots of dens in the ground where wild penguins made their home. I had no idea that there were wild penguins in Australia!
The scenery here was really breath-taking.
But cold!
The sun almost went down while we were there, but we had to go so we would not miss the "penguin parade" when the wild penguins come in from the ocean and waddle to their nests at night, right after sundown. There were a lot of people there to see the penguins! Watching the penguins come in from the ocean was not that exciting, but afterwards when we were walking back up the path, we got too see some up close as they were waddling back through the brush. They were so small! And they sounded really cool too.
This koala was bigger than me! I don't have any pictures of the penguins because they wouldn't allow use to use cameras. They didn't want any flashes to scare the little guys.
After that, we drove to a pizza place and got dinner. Such a fun day! I can't wait until our day tour this Saturday.
On Sunday, we all went to Collins Street Baptist Church together, and even John and Andres (our Colombian friends) came with us. After that, we walked over to the Queen Victoria Market. All the girls bought a beanie with ear flaps!! Haha, a lot of people wear those here in Melbourne. I also bought some fruit at a pretty good price. Then we bought some hot doughnuts, because there was a big long line for them and we wanted to see what the fuss was all about. They were good- very doughy and filled with a sweet strawberry filling.
Yummmm...
Here is Stephanie trying to play the didjeridu, an aboriginal Australian instrument. I tried it too- and it's actually not that easy. You have to make the sound of a horse snorting to get it to work!

That night, David invited us over for dinner with his family. We had some really tasty food, and a good time. It was nice to be in a house with a home-cooked meal again!
David made us gnocchi, vegetarian lasagna, some curry stuff, rice, soup and salad. It was all so good! I was stuffed.
A very nice end to a great weekend. Tomorrow, we are going to see the new Harry Potter movie =D I'm excited. I've heard good things.

Cheers!