The moment you've all been waiting for.......

Australia!!

(I hope your expectations aren't too high after waiting so long. Enjoy!)

Chapter 1: The Great Ocean Road
My first night in Australia we stayed in Geelong and got a head start on driving The Great Ocean Road. Here we are, leaving Geelong and heading for the coast.




Ocean!!




Yay, I'm in Australia!!! Jens and I, our first stop to enjoy the view and take a quick pic.


The official start of the Great Ocean Road.


We stopped to walk along the beach.


Despite the warm weather the water was still COLD!!


On the road again.


Beautiful coastline. Reminds me a bit of the Big Island of Hawaii.




Literally looking in every tree along the road for Koalas.




Stopping again to enjoy the "beach" and document our travels.


KOALA!! I found him!


There he is! Just chillin' by the side of the road, eatin' some eucalyptus leaves. Koala fact: Koalas spend 75% of their day sleeping in the trees and are most active after sunset, so its pretty cool that we found one during the day.


Isn't Heuey cute? Yep, I named him.


He poses so nicely. And look at that little furry Koala bum!


It looks like Scotland! We had to stop and take this one because we both were reminded of dear old Scotland.


And, we're back in Australia.


The 12 Apostles. The ocean has eroded these individual rocks from the original coastline.





Proof that I was actually there :)


A hidden little beach we found.




This is not such a great picture I know (too bad the sun was shining too brightly :) ) but this was really cool. You can just barely make out a dark shape at the "top" of the pool of water and that is an underground channel going out to the ocean. When a big wave came through it made such a loud thundering!!


Its pretty cool what the ocean and the tides can do. I'm such a nerd.






The end of Chapter 1. :)

Karneval Pics

--Follow the links to enjoy some some of the German music we were dancing to .......if you dare ;) --


Our Karneval party, hosted by Stephan and Sabine and friends.

Esther and I, all dressed up and ready for the party!!
(Esther one of my German friends I met in Scotland last year)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur4-9WZGgOk




The party scene.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-_xXfjB3AM


My friend from class, Ana.


Esther, Me and Peng Huy (another friend from class).


Peng Huy and I.


Ana and her boyfriend Nadir, looking a bit funny.


Peace! Ana and Peng Huy.


Guadelupe (ANOTHER friend from class).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbCwVWB1KFg&feature=fvst


Stephan (a pirate), and a couple of friends from the 70's




A small Karneval parade.















These are witches, Hexen. This is a very traditional costume for Karneval. Sabine told me that different parts of Germany are having different colors. I don't know if you can see what they are carrying in their hands but they have these things, I don't know what they are called but you can spin then around and it makes A LOT of noise.





I didn't understand this one.


I liked their costumes!! Cute.














I think they are like the Karneval equivalent of our Drill teams. They are something special for Karneval and they dance or something. I'm not sure. We only saw them marching.


The older girls.




Maybe this works on your computers. When I tried it the quality was not very good but I cant tell if it is my computer or if it was my camera but I hope it works for you.





Bis Spaeter!!

xxx

Schnee, Karneval und so weiter....

You probably noticed that I stopped in the middle of telling you about Australia. I got bored. I figured if I was bored writing about it then you all were probably bored reading it too. I know what you really want are the photos but unfortunately they are still not ready. Soon I hope!!

Meanwhile, here in Stuttgart life has been crazy to say the least. My class is going well but it seems to be especially time consuming this time around. Last week I even had to prepare a short presentation about the USA. Now there are just a few more weeks before the course will finish so we wont be slowing down much anytime soon.

Life with my German family is still going well but also very, very busy. Sabine and I have lots of goals, projects and plans for Lara which is wonderful and exciting but requires extra preparation and planning on my part. Otherwise things are great. My relationship with both girls continues to get better. Lara still tries to be the boss with me but I'm not allowing that, which she is learning.

Last Monday was Lara's Birthday which made this a very interesting week. We had a party on Monday with a few of the boys from Lara's class and then another party Wednesday for all the family. It was a very busy week with preparations and people around and a very difficult time for Lara. Changes in her schedule and having so many people around who are not usually there is very challenging for her. It made for a challenging week for the rest of us as well.

This week is the start of Karneval here in Deutschland!! I haven't quite figured out the whole meaning of Karneval and it seems to vary depending on where you are in the country but basically I've established that Karneval means party, costumes, party, party, party and don't forget the costume!! I don't know what more to say except that Germans like to party. But the costume is definitely essential with this one. Very important.

In other news Stuttgart has been completely covered in snow since I've returned from Australia. I think we managed one week where the snow was melting and a few days without snow in sight. I think right now we probably have somewhere around 6 inches of snow in our garden. It doesn't look like the snow is coming down very heavily but I don't think it has really stopped falling in the last couple of days at least. Of course here life doesn't stop like it does at home. Buses and trains still run and don't think that you'll have a day off of school my friends. Life continues as usual around here.

These are some pictures I took last week. This actually looks much better that what is outside now. Here the street and the walkways are clear but that's not what it looks like now.

My house.





Our garden.


That's the cat, Giovanni, running to get inside before I close the door.


That's about all my news for now. I hope you are satisfied after such a long blogging hiatus on my part.

As usual, I miss you all!!

K.