Goodbye, Koalas.

Tomorrow we leave for New Zealand.
Although I'm very excited to go somewhere cool and crisp, I am going to seriously miss this place. I have a fondness for Straddie, for it's warm beaches, kind locals, and even the sticky heat. See, I even use the nickname tourists in love with the island who spend their summers in the houses they own here use.
Today we saw not only sea turtles, but what looked incredibly suspiciously like Manta rays. There were five of them, all together (peculiar, they're not social animals) just under the surface of the water in the gorge. After staring at the brown blobs we thought were more turtles for awhile, we became sure of their flat triangular shape and that they didn't ever come up for air. We also saw dozens of dolphins playing in the water, and at one point about 5 or 10 of them rode with giant waves, body surfing. They jumped through the side of the waves, and ended up very near a group of human surfers, who looked delighted to have dolphins riding the same waves they were. It was quite a sight.

We have to pack tonight, which I should be doing right now. I finished Jane Eyre a few days ago, so started reading Three Cups of Tea yesterday. I love it. The school books this year have been so much better than previous years-- I actually look forward to reading them. Last year we had two good books, Night by Ellie Weisel and the Samurai's Garden by I forget who, but this year almost every book I have thoroughly enjoyed. It helps the whole stress-case phenomenon when I actually enjoy doing the homework.

Love Actually finally was in the day after I posted the last post. It was pretty good, mostly just because it had the most amazing cast of all time who seemed like they were having an amazing time filming. We also saw a movie called Dear Frankie, which was sweet, and a movie called the World's Fastest Indian. Sounds like a strange, low-budget, old racist movie, yes? Well, wrong. It was very good. It belongs to W, who loves motorcycles, and who told us to watch it. The New Zealand movie was about an old Kiwi from Invercargil (we didn't drive through it in our camper, but were near it)who was a bike fanatic. The true story was wonderful, as it followed an incredibly sweet NZ man through his journey to the US and to Speed Week in the Utah Salt Flats, and the people he met along the way (everybody he met was charmed by him, including a LA drag queen, who the Kiwi had no reservations about). He was going to SPeed Week because he was sure he was going to break a world record for speed on his 40-year old bike made to go 55 mph that he had outfitted for 25 years, now capable of going well over 150 mph. Again, I'm not sure if you can get this in the US, but if you can it's a quite wonderful movie.
Oh, and you know that Australian movie we saw and loved, Hey, Hey, it's Esther Blueburger? Well, while we were starting it, I commented at how much one of the main characters looked like the girl from Whale Rider. Today, I was looking up the movie again, and saw that she actually was the main character in Whale Rider, which was her big debut. She was much older-looking in Hey, Hey, it's Esther Blueburger, which was weird because it came out only about four years after Whale Rider. She was quite good in both, if I do say so myself.

Well, I should get back to packing, or at least reading while my parents tolerantly walk around me doing most of the work. It's late. Well, not really, but we have to leave at 9:00 am tomorrow... Not so happy about that, but it's not that different from when we've been getting out of the house most mornings.

Good night, good bye, good.... hm. I can't think of another other than "riddance."