Leaving on a jet plane...

Hi everyone! Melissa here, Amy asked me to post on her blog because she didn't get time to. She is now flying to New Zealand after a few airport dramas (like having TOO MUCH STUFF!).

So I really don't know what I am meant to write...on Tuesday night we had a small going away party for Amy. (Should I meantion everyone who came.....I don't know! Blogging is hard. I'll just put some pictures)

Here are some people who were at the party. From the left: Peter, James, Matt, Melissa, Amy, Steph, Laura and Amelia. Chris was there too. We basically watched DVD's of Amy's photos all night. Haha, it was fun.

On Wednesday (A.K.A Amys last full day) Cheryl, Melissa and Amy went to St Kilda, walked along the pier and ate ice cream (for a change) But the monumental occassion of the day was that we got a civilised picture of Amy and Melissa!! Here it is!!

And there is a picture of Melissa, Cheryl and Amy.

To conclude, a giant, some what scary face...(its an amusement park, and its the picture below :P)
Bye bye, Amy. Miss you already. The house feels empty... :(

A Cow

Here's a cow! We saw it, and couldn't resist taking a photo. Hahaha.

There was a little girl who kept walking up and touching the cow, and Melissa kept mooing. The little girl, at one point in time, told her mom that "That cow over there is really scary!!" She then proceeded to come back over to the cow again. And Melissa mooed again. It was really funny :)

How many kids can you fit in a tree?

Clever title for the post, huh? Chris came up with it :)

We couldn't resist ourselves. Here we are, chilling out in the tree ;)


Heh. Here are Chris and I!


I like this picture, but it came out a little bit blurry. That's okay, though... it's still a good photo :)


Ah! The rosellas. Okay, so there were a bunch of birds flying around... and I saw some actually land on people's shoulders. A couple of kids were holding bird food in their hands, and the birds were eating out of their hands... so I was excited when a man offered me some bird food :) And then, the birds came. Very quickly, too!


They're pretty, aren't they? I was a little scratched up on my arms, because the rosellas had somewhat sharp claws, but I don't really care. I had fun holding them.

Return to Healesville

Today, Matt, Melissa, Cheryl and I met up with Lynne and the kids in Healesville, in a place called Badger Creek. We ate lunch there, then took a walk on the trails that went through the forest. It was a nice day :)


Here we all are, hanging out on a bridge. Woohoo!!!


I like this photo :) That's Laura with me, by the way. (We're still on the bridge.)


Watch out, Chris might punch you. I always knew he was a little crazy... (just kidding, Chris.) Apparently, the leeches liked Chris and Matt (and Melissa). They each found one on their legs. I was wearing pants and shoes, so I didn't need to really think about them. (Hooray!!) But we didn't worry about them very much (the leeches, I mean). They came off easily, and it really wasn't a big deal. Still, I'm glad that I wore pants and shoes :D


Let's have a collective "Awwwwwww....."

More faces... basically, just goofy pictures.

After I finished packing, Melissa and I just chilled out on the couch and goofed around a little bit. The following pictures are the results of our endeavors to be spontaneous. (Which means that we're just being silly ;P)


I think we both blinked during this photo. Haha.


Ahh, priceless. Heh.

The best chocolate shakes in the WORLD

Yesterday, Monday, we (meaning Matt, Melissa, Cheryl and I) went to Warrandyte to a place called "Thyme on the Terrace." It's this cute little restaurant, that just so happens to have awesome food... we've been there three times during my stay :) Foccacias rock.


Here is a picture of THE BEST CHOCOLATE SHAKE IN THE WORLD. (Mwahahaha.) They are soooooooooo good!!!! I wish I could take them home with me. Mmmmmmmmmmmm...............


And here I am, drinking the best chocolate shake IN THE WORLD. Again, hahaha. They are just soooo good!!!!!

After lunch, we came back home. I packed both of my suitcases :( They are both very, very overweight. (Oy...) I'm kind of worried about it, but... we'll see what happens.

More of church, and some faces as well.

Okay, so I took my camera with me again this past Sunday. Here is a good picture of my YSA class.

Here I am, with one of my sunday school teachers :) Attractive, no?


And here are her daughters. Hahaha. Elise and Rebeccah.

...And here is the ward choir. (Well, most of them, at least.)


I went to the Melbourne temple on Friday. It was definitely a beautiful, beautiful place :) I'm so grateful that I was able to go.

Saying good-bye was very, very tough. I'm going to miss all of these people so much!

Church Photos

So, it's about time that I started posting pictures of my sunday school class, isn't it?

Well, my class is made up of a bunch of YSA's. That was new to me, considering that we don't have a class like that in our ward back home--because there really aren't many YSA's. So, this has been a neat experience.

I can't name everyone in the picture ,_, There were a few visitors, and a couple of people are new to the class, so I don't really know their names. Sorry about that.


This is Elise, our sunday school teacher's daughter. She's very, very nice :)


And this is Erin. Melissa and I met her on my first sunday, and she's pretty much helped me with everything church-wise. I'm going to especially miss these two girls, Elise and Erin. They're great girls.


I'm not sure if I posted a picture of the temple yet, but here are two of them. I like the second one better, but that's just my preference :)


My sunday school teacher told me that he'd call the temple this week and set up an appointment for everyone to do baptisms and confirmations either Wednesday or Friday morning. I'm so excited!


It's so pretty!

Karaoke on a Saturday Night

Saturday night, we all (minus Scott) went to the Harris' for dinner. Chris and Laura have a game called "Sing Star" for the Playstation 2, and so we played that for a while. I just have a few shots of us all singing karaoke.


I think this song was "Murder on the Dance Floor," but I'm not completely sure.


This one was "Livin la Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin. Hahaha.


And here is Melissa's reaction to pretty much everything...


Haha. After dinner, Laura and I played around on her family's keyboard. Laura didn't know that a picture was being taken, I don't think :)

Rooftops and Williamstown

So when I was taking pictures from the observation deck of the Rialto, I saw tennis courts and didn't think much about it. Then I realized... they were on the roofs of buildings!


This looked more like a children's playground than anything else. I still think it's cool that it was on the top of a building, though.


Oh! Across this bay is Williamstown. Cool, huh?

The Rialto Tower

Saturday, Rob took Cheryl, Melissa, Matt and I to the Rialto in the city. It is the tallest office building in the southern hemisphere. At the Rialto, there's an observation deck--that's where we went! Melissa took a picture of me with the city in the background.


The observation deck was on the... 55th floor of the tower, 253 meters above the city. That's pretty high up! As a result, I was able to get some really nice pictures of Melbourne.


In the post titled "Williamstown," I talked about the Sandridge Bridge. Well, here is how that same bridge looks from the observation deck of the Rialto Tower.


If I were to keep going in this direction across the water, I'd eventually end up in Tasmania. Cool, no?

A Carriage Ride, Gold Panning, and Jumping

So it was a very hot day... and we took a ride in a carriage, like the ones in all of the cowboy movies. So fun!

Here are Melissa and Cheryl!


This is a picture of the carriage that we rode in. The ride was fairly short, but it was nice to see a lot of things without having to walk there :P Haha.


After the ride in the carriage, Melissa and I went panning for gold while Cheryl went into one of the shops to buy something for a friend. We had a fun time. I found a very small rock (more like a pebble) that looked like parts of it might have been painted gold, but that was pretty much it. Well, whatever the case was, Melissa and I were glad to just take off our shoes and go wading in the stream. That felt so good!
So here's Melissa, goofing off as usual :)


Here is Melissa, pretending that she found gold. Hahaha. You can see Cheryl, too :)


When we left Sovereign Hill, Melissa and I decided to go for a swim in the pool by our cottage. However, we found this jumping pillow along the way... ;)

We couldn't resist. It was a lot of fun :)

We went back to Sovereign Hill at around 9 that night, to go to a special program that they had. It was a lights and sounds show explaining the Eureka Rebellion, where a series of events led the gold miners to rise up against the British (sound familiar?). Eventually, the miners/diggers were massacred early in the morning by the British police force. It was a fantastic show, and I was very surprised to learn, after it was over, that it had lasted almost 2 hours. It was very, very nice, and I really enjoyed being at Sovereign Hill.

Ballarat and Sovereign Hill

Last Thursday morning, Melissa, Cheryl and I went on an overnight trip to the city of Ballarat, a place where there was a huge gold rush in the 1850s. It was an awesome place! Here is the cottage that we stayed at.


We went to Sovereign Hill, which is a cool place where the people that work there dress up in the gold rush period clothing, and the entire area was made to look as though it were a town built in the 1850's. It was really cool! Melissa and I actually had our picture taken here--we dressed up in period clothing as well. It was so fun!!


As I said before, the people that work at Sovereign Hill dress up and go about their lives as though they lived in the period. These men were singing and playing instruments, so I took a picture of them. Haha.


There were a lot of little shops at Sovereign Hill, each one different. Here's the inside of one of them.


I just thought this photo was funny because you have the people in period dress, and then Melissa. Haha.

Thursday at Ballarat was HOT. Someone said that it was 42 degrees, which translates to 107.6 degrees fahrenheit. Dude, that's hot!! We still had fun, though. It was just... really, really warm.