Friday report

Hi,

First of all, Erik is better. Yeah! His fever finally quit yesterday after 6 days. He's pretty wiped out, but keeping up with the kids and students pretty well. Also, Andrew decided not to stay the extra two weeks. He was bummed, but it would have cost an extra $1000 and that is a bit much. I know Kari's glad to have him with her on the 19+ hour flight to Chicago and on to KC. We will sure miss them here. It's really been such a chance of a lifetime for us to be here as a family. They are such great kids, we are so blessed. Tonight we went to a nice bistro so the kids could try some lamb shanks before they left. I got prawns which were yummy.

Yesterday afternoon we walked down to the Seafood Market, several miles away. It was quite impressive. Think of Pike's market and times it by 6! They had so many varieties of seafood. About 10 varieties of prawns and lots of lobster and the strangest huge giant crabs and blue crab and on and on. We saw a lobster whose body was 2 feet long. Maybe bigger. Erik was practically drooling, he loved it so much. We bought our supper-some rock lobster, banana prawns, and New Zealand green mussle, plus a gorgeous loaf of Damper bread. Erik and I brought the food home to the fridge and worked on paperwork while the kids took the ferry to Manly and played for several hours in the waves. We had a late yummy meal!

Today we left with the group this morning for the Australian Museum. A very interesting museum, I think you would love it if you have time when you're here, Pappa and Patricia. It was air conditioned and had lots of artifacts and samples of the interesting birds and animals in Australia. It also had a great Indigenous Australian exhibit.

This afternoon we spent at the Art Gallery of NSW. It was interesting too. We walked thru the Royal Botanic Gardens, they are gorgeous. We saw a Wollemi pine that was older than the one we saw at our lodge in the Blue Mts and lots of flying fox, huge bats. I mean huge! Their bodies are the size of squirrels.

We did some souvenir shopping and are back at "home" now. The kids are at the park playing cricket, rugby and frisbee. I'm doing laundry and such. Tommorow is their last day here and we plan to head to Coogee beach. It's supposed to be 95.

Hope all's well with you, send me an email and let me know if you're reading. nilsen6@comcast.net I am curious.

Carla