Concerning savages, mysterious food, corpses, and old maid vagabonds

We took a walk in a rain forest the other day. And it was a real rain forest, because it was rainy! ha ha ha. (that was such a corny pun, in case you couldn't already tell) It was really neat though, with the almost jungle vegetation and fern trees, myrtle, and whatnot. It made me feel like a savage again. . . .

The other night it was also interesting because we ate out with a Vietnamese, an Indian, a Portugese, and a half Egyptian! All of whom have grown up in Australia. Quite the exposure to unusual people I'm getting, eh?

Yesterday we went out to eat for Yum Cha. That was rather unusual--you know when you're eating at a real Chinese restaurant when most of the people eating there are Chinese and you have to ask for a fork and spoon! Basically Chinese waiters would drift by you with a tray of food and then tell you in nearly unintelligible English what it was they were offering. Some of it was guessing, since we didn't know what a lot of it was, and Kendra and I just kept looking at Amanda to see if she would accept it or not. If she did, we would usually get a small plate with three of the mystery items of it and we would each take one (very often we were vaguely aware what was in it however). You know something is gormet when you don't know what it is!

Now the rest of our time in Australia is running short. We leave Tuesday morning! We have a fourteen hour flight to LA, fly four hours to Indy, then I fly to Detroit, then on to Manchester, and get back late Tuesday night, even though it will have been twenty four hours or so since we left! Pray we won't be corpses at the end of it!

Tomorrow should also be busy. We plan to ride the train into the city with Amanda on her way to work, then go to the State Library to copy the article on the Coronet, and if we have time and the weather is okay we hope to go to the Botanic Gardens and the zoo, which is said to be one of the oldest in the world or something. It will be scary with just Kenny and me on our own though, so hopefully we won't become lost, mere old maid vagabonds to wander the streets of Melbourne in desperate confusion for the rest of our lives until insanity relieves us of our misery.

Then comes the grand challenge of packing! heh, heh, heh. Somehow I have to fit everything I brought and everything I bought back into my back without crushing anything or being overweight. Luckily coming over I had about fifteen more pounds to spare before my suitcase reached the fifty pound weight limit. I'm not sure if Kendra will be so fortunate, but we shall see.

So maybe, just perhaps, this will be my last post in Australia! We'll just wait and see.

p.s. I'll bet my title tricked you into reading my post, eh? hehe I guess it worked!