Holiday travels...

If you have followed us for the past few months, then you know that our life in Japan is just not quite exciting enough.

Pause. Yes, I am kidding.

And yet, this time of year, the boys' school has a three week (!) holiday break. Since we didn't think we wanted to stay in Japan the whole time, and since we're in the right hemisphere anyway, we thought we'd take a trip here for Christmas:

Isn't it beautiful? Can you guess where we are? Here's a hint. The wildlife can be dangerous:

And the natives eat this:

and they have these!

And also these!

And other cuties like these:

Not that the trip here was easy. We're in the same time zone (more or less) but it was an 8-hour red-eye that arrived at 5am. Nobody got much sleep, and by lunch time, we were all feeling it.

Even Darrin:

Oops. That's not him. That's an old, tired version of one of these cool birds that we saw at a rainforest-zoo today.

Are they owls? We thought so, too.

Anyway, we haven't had much time to blog, because we have been sitting on the beach and hanging out in the pool. Those activities can be very time-consuming.

Today when we visited the wildlife center, I fulfilled a life-long dream:

I have been in love with koalas most of my life. This one left some poop on my shirt (and on Max's shirt, too--he held the same one).

I think I will never wash my pink shirt again.

In fact, four out of five of us got pooped on today. Alek got nailed by some bird:

And so did Hugo. Only Darrin escaped!

We ate breakfast amongst the the birds at this zoo. (see, I'm already fluent in the language down here! I say "amongst" and "booking" and "bah-sil")

And then we went on a bird-feeding tour. This is one of the things the birds eat. Only, imagine them moving.

(Okay! No more gross pictures--I promise.)

This is a female version of some kind of parrot:

And here is the male version. See? Very Christmas-y.

And of course we fed these wallabies:

And saw fruit bats:

And owls (this one's for Papa):

And kangaroos too, of course.

Later, by our hotel pool, we even saw a baby koala and a platypus:

And in case you are wondering, we are feeling extremely lucky and a little spoiled, too, being on this trip.

Tropical Australia....wish you were here!