April 10-13

Last Friday, around 10 AM, Meagan and I gave our last hugs to our close friends, Callie and Margaret, and waved them good-bye as they finished checking on their bags. I teared up a little (I normally am not the crying type...), but this good-bye was a lot easier than the one last July. At that time, we had a year before we knew we would see each other (we did not know at that moment that they would visit us in Australia), but now, we only have six and a half weeks! I can hardly believe we will be driving on the right side of the road, spending time with our friends, and shopping in American stores--all in only 6 1/2weeks! It seems like ages from this moment, but the time will probably fly by.

We had an absolutely fantastic time with Callie and Margaret! Some of my favorite times include days spent at Twin Waters, our day-trip to Dreamworld, and the few hours we had at O’Reilly’s. I have put links for those places so that you can read the posts on my family’s blog that talk about those occasions—I could begin explaining our time there, but I guess my dad and mom did a better job. Also, I have other later instances I need to talk about here….

On the last Tuesday Callie and Margaret spent with us, we walked down to Cecilia’s Nail & Hair Salon, a cute little place a few minutes' walk from our home, and each received a French manicure. We had only one professional French manicure before that day, and consider it a special treat, but our Grandma Kim, my dad’s step-mom, kindly helped us out financially (Thank you, Grandma Kim!!!). So, we all had lots of fun doing girly stuff. Here are some pictures of our time at Cecilia’s:

That night, Meagan and Margaret continued the pampering mood and decided to give each other facials (Callie and I diligently [yeah right!] worked on our U.S. History homework :-)). You should have seen the bathroom! They set up at least ten little tea lamps on the floor and prepared all of the home-made scrubs, masks, etc. before hand. At one point, they even set the fire alarm off! :-)

The next day, Callie, Margaret, and I called the Moores for our weekly US History class. I had a lot of fun sharing my experience on the phone with them.

After that, my mom drove us to Chermside, where we showed them one of our “shopping centres,” called “malls" in America. We spent our time leading them into various shops, and all came away with something, whether a shirt or lipgloss or a hat.

On Thursday, the last full day with the McKenzies, we took the CityCat to South Bank, the location of the 1988 Word Expo. We strolled through the pathways lined with tall, curvy arches ornamented with rosy blossoms, and took lots of pictures. Twice, we had a Chinese tourist film us while we were taking

pictures or even eating Tim-Tams! We all thought that was a little weird, but my mom told us later that she had experienced that before. She said that lots of Asians think that Americans are really cool, so that’s why they film us! Isn’t that strange?

That night, we moved the queen and two twin mattresses into the rumpus, or bonus, room, and positioned them so that all our heads would be together. But before we tumbled into bed, we soaked for more than an hour in the hottub, just chatting about our past memories in America, our more recent ones in Australia, and our plans for our future. After we rinsed off and finished preparing for bed, we crawled into bed and relished our last moments together by talking some more. Meagan soon dozed off, Margaret following about half an hour later, but Callie and I stayed up until almost 3 AM. We did not beat our previous record, which was staying up until 3:40 AM, but it was pretty late, especially since we woke up before 7 AM. We arrived at the airport around 9 AM, and after a long wait to check in their bags, waved good-bye to them. The rest of the day we spent tackling school, organizing some of our boxes, and talking about how much fun we had with Callie and Margaret.

I have to go now. Hope you enjoyed reading this!