Still Friday 07 August

Today’s Pronunciation Tip #2: Quay = “key.”

Today I went to the zoo! Karolina and I hopped the ferry from Circular Quay to Taronga Wharf. We saw our very first koalas and kangaroos and my personal new favorite animal, the Echidna, which looks like a porcupine and waddles in the most endearing manner. The flying foxes were great, and so were the squirrel gliders in their little nocturnal habitat. We saw THE MOST POISONOUS SNAKE IN THE WORLD, called the “fierce” snake, which was kinda terrifying…I mean, it’s bad enough being THE MOST POISONOUS SNAKE IN THE WORLD, but you have to be FIERCE on top of it? Sadly there were no bearded dragons, but several other kinds of dragon were quite adorable. We saw dozens of parakeets and many kinds of pigeons (?) and a kookaburra, and were pleasantly surprised to see a free kookaburra sitting in a tree just around the next bend from his captive friend, commiserating, or maybe lording it over him.

A freak wind storm sprang up while we were walking around the Botanical Gardens (things were still blooming, but all the shrubbery was chopped back for the winter and even the eels were hibernating at the bottom of the pond) and within seconds, the city centre became a vast wind channel, sort of like Chicago. Large cold drops of water were falling, so Karolina and her boyfriend took off and I hurried home on the buses to take my (newly sopping) laundry down from the line. I was saved most of the labor, anyway, because most of the laundry had flown away and come to rest in piles of leaves against the walls of the courtyard.

Plan for tonight: cooking beef stroganoff. I’ve been putting it off because the act of slicing the bloody beef still freaks me out. Wish me luck!

p.s. Don’t bother seeing The Ugly Truth. The funny parts don’t outweigh the stupid and offensive.