Christmas Eve

We had some friends visiting for Christmas they were on a vacation to Sydney for a little bit and they decided to spend Christmas Eve with us. On the day of Christmas Eve we decided to go to a restaurant instead of cooking ourselves but we still had had to uphold our tradition of seven kinds of fish very year. When I walked into the apartment we were using I saw three white shopping bags with blue ribbons rapped around the handle of the bags. One said Cleo on it one said Stella and one said Jade.

We changed into our fancy dresses that had come in the bags. Mine was blue in it came down to my knees and matched perfectly with my painted toenails. Eva Forman one of our friends lent me a belt to put around my wast. She was fifteen years old her sisters were thirteen and  10 they were Lyla, Eva, and Sadie. After we were done making the the fish we sat down to eat I managed to not get a spot of food on my dress a miracle (it was a Christmas miracle.) After we were done with our fish we took a cab to a restaurant were we were doing to eat dinner. All the kids sat at one end of the table and the adults sat at the at the other end. 

Me and my friend Sadie shared an entrée of pasta it wasn't that good, but the point is the desert was excellent. I had a scoop of ice cream that was flavored mango sourbay with pieces of coconut sprinkled on top Stella had a piece of cheesecake with fruit and chocolate sauce and jade had a big blob of vanilla Ice cream swimming in a sea of chocolate sauce. It was sooooooo good. Our friends left the next morning I would've been sad that they left but I was to amazed by what I saw when I woke up. (Find out about what I saw in my next blog...)

Sydney

I had already been to Sydney before I arrived there permanently on the 22nd of December. I had flown down with my mom to check out schools and apartments before the schools closed for summer break. Sydney is already one of my favorite cities even though I have only been here for around a week or two. There is everything you need in the city center, the suburbs that surround it are beautiful and peaceful and the people are super accommodating and nice. 

We found an apartment located in a nice and convenient part of town, my sisters and I are all enrolled in our separate schools and we're all ready to move in on the 10th of January. After moving around constantly for the past two years, I'm kind of ready to settle into a house for a while. 

We just celebrated Christmas and after getting lots of new stuff I packed most of it away to open again when we reach the new house. It's hard to get organized when you're moving your stuff around all over the place and I've been losing and misplacing my stuff where ever I go, so I've decided to try to get by with as little things as possible.

Movie World

In the Gold Coast there are lots of amusement parks and water parks. We decided to visit all of them with our friends on a boat named Moana Roa. On that boat there is three kids two older boys and one younger girl. First we visited Sea World it was okay, but Movie World was the best. There is a huge  roller coaster right when you enter. It's called the Green Lantern. It was love at first sight for me and that roller coaster, anyways me and Stella had to go on it right away, but I had drag Remi to get in line. There was a platform with two rows and four seats in each row Stella Remi and I sat in the front seats, and Beau and Travis sat in the back.

After we were done with the roller coaster we moved on to the next roller coaster. This one was called Superman it was based on the movie Superman when a train station is blowing up and superman pushes a train full of people out of it.We did this one over and over again it became my favorite
one, because its slow in the beginning then it rockets forward. On our tenth time i managed to not scream as much as I did on my first on it. There are five cars attached to each other and four seats to a car. But the most fun part was having all my friends to scream with and laugh with so thank you
everyone for being there with me.  

Melbourne

On November 16th we flew from Brisbane to Melbourne for my moms birthday. It was a 3 hour plane ride to the Melbourne airport, and a couple minutes in a taxi from there to the hotel. Our room was nice and comfortable with two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a sitting room and even a kitchen. We unpacked our stuff and relaxed before exploring the neighborhood. My mom had picked a place in Chinatown because we were big fans of Asian food and the other interesting parts of the city were within walking distance. 

Melbourne was awesome! We took a walking tour one morning and my sisters and I spent a fun day with a friend when mom and dad were busy. We discovered hidden alley ways brimming with tasty surprises and neat little squares hidden behind towering monuments. We went to the zoo and saw platypuses and kangaroos and koalas where I was used to seeing snakes and tigers and bears. We quickly outfitted in hats and socks so we wouldn't completely freeze in the ice skating rink (it can be cold in Melbourne) and saw the whole city from above when we took a trip to the Melbourne Star, a giant ferris wheel like the London Eye. At the Imigration Museum we did a treasure hunt while learning about how Australia got such a diverse population and every night we eat noodle soups and dumpling from the many Asian restaurants in the neighborhood. 

I really want to go back. 

Working

My dad rented an office in Brisbane so he could work, but he decided to take us with him so we could also do our work there. The first day we packed up all our stuff and walked across the bridge to were our office is. The office is made up of little rooms with desks and chairs its pretty big it even has a kitchen were you can get really cold water or really hot water instintaniasly if you want.

 Our little room was at the back of the office. It had four desks and four chairs, but these weren't just any chairs these were WEELY chairs that we could push ourselves around in. but there were lots of other people in the office so we couldn't make a lot of noise and we had to focus on our school. 

The second day we went to the office I was the only kid to go. We ate lunch out and had Fo it was really good. the internet is really good at the office the only bad part is that we have to walk a long way to get from our boat to the office  but otherwiseit was perfect.

A New City

On our first day at the dock we decided to go to the mall and see what Brisbane was like. It wasn’t a very big mall just a little clothes store, grocery market, and toiletries store.

we walked around there for but didn’t buy anything. Then we walked over the big lake and on a bridge and saw a parade marching threw this part of town. We wanted to join but it was getting to late so we settle for ice cream and home.

The next day my dad and Jade went to the office to work and my mom and Stella went shopping  I stayed home. It was kind of boring just staying at home with no sisters to play with, but on the other hand there was no mom to push you to do school I had a relaxing day of school and play. But when my family got home there was lots of noise and everyone telling me that i should’v done the dishes when they were gone (exept I was educating myself instead.) But finally everyone settles down to read or sleep.

On thursday I met up with my friend Remi after school we decided we would go to the factory outlets which are a series of big shops that sell regular everyday things.

Remi and her mom took us in there car it was a fifteen minute drive. By the time we got there I was so hot and sweaty that it was a real shock to go into a building with AC. First we went to the food court to get some lunch.

 My sister bought a leather jacket  and some jeans in a store were i bought a sweat shirt and Remi bought jeans also. 

We didn’t find any shoes that were good for walking. mostly we just looked at all the expensive things that we couldn’t get. My mom gave me 200 dollars to spend on clothes. so far I  have 193 dollars left to spend, I’m doing pretty good. I really wanted to buy everything in site but i managed to control myself and only get the essentials. Australia is really expensive but i think we’ll manage.

Australia

It took almost 11 days to sail from Fiji to Brisbane. At first we had lots of wind and waves which battered us and made us feel seasick but then it settled down and the wind died away until we were left drifting in a millpond. We checked the weather forecast and found that there were major winds heading our way, we turned on our engines and rushed to safety into the river that winds it's way through Brisbane. Unfortunately we arrived after sunset and were unable to disembark and stretch our legs after 11 days of immobility.    

The next day we were welcomed to the marina by a family who lived on another boat there in the marina, they had been in the same marina and lived on the same boat for 4 years and had grow used to living in Brisbane city. They showed us around and we picked up some bread from the guy who lived on the house boat at the end dock. He owned 9 guinea pigs and he washed and exercised them everyday on the lawn in front of the docks. After we had explored our new environment (the marina), we got on the ferry and went to downtown Brisbane. 

The ferries were small and red and went up and down the river like a water bus for free. There was a dock at the marina and every half hour a ferry would show up there. It took us maybe 15 minutes to go from the marina to the center of the city on the ferry. The city looked like any other but it was surprisingly cleaner than most cities, there was not much litter on the sidewalks and every building gleamed in the sunlight. There were restaurants and shops everywhere and skyscrapers made from windows and office buildings with thousands of cubicles. We walked across the big bridge with lights running down the sides and stepped into awesome gardens with paths throughout the flower beds and fountains in the middle of pruned hedges and a public pool that looked like a natural pond and stretched the length of the park. Everywhere we looked we saw picnic tables on the lawns and children waiting in front of ice cream shops with their hair still wet from the pool. We walked under the enormous trellis with vines and flowers growing over it, we found a wooden boardwalk winding through a tiny forest and we saw birds floating on the stream that chuckled along next to us. 

I love Brisbane.