Welcome Home

My friends threw a surprise welcome home party for me. I wasn't expecting it all all! Some people didn't think I'd ever come back...here I am!

Belated Birthday Celebrations

We normally celebrate my parents' birthdays together since they're just a day apart. This year the soirée took place at Morton's Steakhouse downtown. Presents consisted of many traditional Australian artifacts :)

The Long Voyage Home Sept 8–9

My trip home began around 4am on Sept. 8 (Happy Birthday Dad!) and didn't end until 11am or so on the 9th. As I mentioned earlier, James and I took a shuttle from Noosa to Brisbane, met his parents in Sydney and I continued on to Nadi, Fiji. It was so hot and humid in Fiji, it reminded me of being back in India or the Philippines. I slept most of the way arriving in LA the afternoon of the 8th and had a 9 HOUR layover at LAX. Luckily my friend and savior, Amy, picked me up from the airport and we cruised around different beaches around LA for the day. I can't even imagine what I'd do in the airport for 9 hours. I then flew past Ohio and landed in Philadelphia the next morning! I finally made it to Dayton where my dad was kind enough to pick me up and take me home. It was so nice to be able to go home, shower, and sleep in a fully reclined position in a soft comfy bed.

Sunday, September 7

Today marks the beginning of my LONG journey home. I was hoping to get home for my parents' birthdays, but I'll be a day late. James rode with me to the Brisbane airport. We got picked up at 4:30am to make it to our 8:45am flight. As we were riding the shuttle to Brisbane I got a call from Qantas saying our flight to Sydney was canceled. I started to freak out a little bit considering I had a connecting flight in Sydney that I had to make. Turns out we were able to get on the next available flight, which left earlier than our original, so I was in Sydney with plenty of time. James' mom and stepdad met us in Sydney to say goodbye and to take James home with them for a few weeks.

Saturday, September 6 Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my last full day in Noosa. James and I decided to take the boat out for our last fishing excursion. I caught my biggest fish today a baby Estuary Cod. It was such a warm and beautiful day. We walked around Gympie Terrace that night and got some italian food for dinner. It was a perfect day.

Friday, September 5

Another day of fishing. It wasn't very successful, but it was beautiful out.

Friday, September 5

There's a little shack of a place I'd always pass claiming to have the best Calamari in the world. I've always been curious, but a little scared at the same time. This afternoon James and I decided to get fish and chips from this place and eat along the Noosa River. The calamari was AMAZING and the fish and chips were quite good as well. Another place we just discovered a little to late. The 2nd photo is shows how Australia always charges A LOT for sauce. It's so annoying.

Wednesday, September 3 Fishing Day Cont...

Wednesday, September 3

Fishing Day! So I admit I'm not much of a fisher, nor have I really expressed an interest in pursuing it as a hobby, but for some reason I decided I wanted to try fishing today. The weather was a bit overcast and chilly, but since my days in Australia are numbered, we had to push forward. We bought some live (frozen) bait, which, thank you very much, I was able to put on the hook by myself (after James did it the first dozen times). I caught quite a few (teeny tiny) fish, which really scared me at first, but then it was kinda exciting. I could not bear to take the hook out of the fish so that became James' job. The fish in the first row on the right is called a Happy Moments fish. When Mari, Tyler, Snowball, James and I were at Fraser we saw a number of fliers warning about the dangers of the Happy Moments. You can see that it's a pretty ugly fish to begin with, but it has sharp spikes with poison in them and if it pierces your skin it's no good. It put up a pretty good fight when James was reeling it in. Overall: Fishing Day...SUCCESS!

Tuesday, September 2

Again, I don't have any photos from today, so I had to scrounge online for other people's or google map's photos :) I spent the day in Toowoomba which is about 3 hours from Noosa. When we got home James and I were in the mood for some fresh seafood. We had tried different seafood markets around the area in the past few months, but tonight we decided to try the Noosa Junction Seafood Market. It was awesome and we were both disappointed that we found it right before I was leaving. We bought fresh shrimp, oysters and fish. The oysters had not been shucked and James successfully opened them at home with a screwdriver....classy :) The meal was delicious!

Monday, September 1

James and I spent most the day recovering from the influx of guests. It felt really weird to be on our own again. We headed to the grocery store and found these awesome burger patties shaped like Australia. We obviously had to buy them. I can't find the photos we took of our burgers (they were actually pretty great). I just searched online and found these two. I have no idea what is on the grill in between the burgers in the bottom photo.

Sunday, August 31, Farewell

The crew left this morning. It was a sad drive all the way back to noosa. We got used to having the little crew around all the time. Mari had a camera that took time lapse photos and put together this amazing video of her trip to Australia. Check it out here: vimeo.com/1707053

Saturday, August 30, Brisbane

View at night from our room

Saturday, August 30, Brisbane

We decided to spend the day/night in brisbane. We rented a HUGE 2 bedroom suite with 3 balconies right in the middle of the city. Turns out it ended up being Riverfest, which means that there were fireworks and fighter jets doing tricks in the sky. There were so many people in town, we came at the perfect time!