11-24-11

One year ago...

We were in the Poconos

celebrating Thanksgiving

& we got engaged!   

[ Photo Credit : EJ, My talented Sister ]

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our family + friends back home in America! 

Yesterday we hosted a small thanksgiving celebration at our flat

[ Proof that I cooked :) ]

 [ Yummy Australian sweets from Tara ]

Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving!

We missed all of you!

xo

Sydney : Part 3

We woke up early Monday morning to take the ferry back into downtown Sydney. 

[ Taking the ferry is officially the best mode of public transportation ]

Unfortunately we only had a few hours to walk around before we had to head back to Canberra.

Sydney is one of the most Beautiful, cultured, clean and amazing cities I've ever been to. 

Here are a few pictures from our day

Beautiful purple trees all over Sydney

Fish & Chips on the water

Sydney : Part 2

After dinner we took the ferry into downtown Sydney with Daniel and a few of his friends to See a hip hop concert at the Sydney opera house! 

It was a very surreal moment taking the ferry into the city, at sunset to go to the famous Sydney opera house! While on the ferry We drove right past the Sydney opera house and the harbor bridge. 

It was absolutely breathtaking. 

It is hard to believe that people take this ferry into the city for work everyday!
After the concert we all went outside and had a drink at the opera house bar which is right on the water overlooking the harbor bridge

 It was an unreal view of the opera house/ water/ harbor bridge.

Sydney : Part 1

Jeremy had another off day on sunday so we decided to go to Sydney! 

We have very special friends who live in Sydney and we are so lucky that we were able to see them and spend the night at their house! The Finks met my parents when they moved to Philadelphia in in 1986. 

 As Tamar told the story: She and her husband had just moved to Philadelphia with their 3 year old son Daniel. They knew no one and enrolled Daniel in pre school at the JCC- where I also happened to be attending pre school. On the first day of school my mom came over and introduced herself and invited them over for the Jewish holidays when she found out they had no family in Philadelphia ( my mom is the sweetest person in the world)
Daniel and I became good friends went to school together until they moved back to Australia 3 years later.

As soon as we arrived in Sydney Tamar took us on a " Randee tour" of Bondi beach, which is the town they live in.  If you don't know my mom a " Randee tour" is when you see lots of sights in a city in a short amount of time and do lots... of ... walking!! 

LOTS!  

Yes, that is a swimming pool ON the ocean. Tamar took swimming lessons there as a child.

10/31

A  few years ago my sister EJ studied abroad in Spain for the summer. Before she left I bought her a bunch of different greeting cards, wrote inside each one, and then wrote a date on each envelope. I told her she couldn’t open up the card until the date written on the outside of the envelope. I spread out the dates so she would have a card to open once a week or every other week while she was away in case she ever got homesick or needed something to cheer her up! 

A few years after Spain EJ moved to Costa Rica for a year, so I sent her with another stack of cards with dates on the envelopes!

As Jeremy and I were leaving for the Airport to go to Australia my mom handed us a stack of cards for each of us with dates on the envelopes. We opened our first cards on the plane but had to wait to open the rest.  

We were all sitting around on October 31 discussing how strange it is that they don’t celebrate Halloween in Australia when I remembered we had cards we were allowed to open on 10/31!   

It definitely brightened my day to get to open a card from my mom! 

Looking forward to opening the rest over the next few months….

Thanks mama, I love you!

Kangaroos

 I have been saying for months that while I was in Australia 
I just wanted to see one kangaroo with a baby in her pouch! 

While we were at Pebbly beach I got to see so many babyroos in pouches
 and even pet the mamas. 

It was so exciting and fascinating  all at the same time! 

 Our camp site was covered with all of these Kangaroos all day/night.
 There were about 10 of them just hangin around. 
We got food and were able to feed them and pet them. 
The kangas would come up to our picnic table and just sit around with us.
 It was absolutely amazing. 
The kangaroos in Pebbly beach are very tame and used to humans.
 The roos that we see in Canberra are wild so we can’t get close to them or even attempt to pet them.

 

This is my new best friend. She kept coming back to me all day. I have named her Sally Jo.