June 17

Thursday...

Today I got up and headed downtown to the Australian Museum in Sydney

http://australianmuseum.net.au/

Spent over 2 hours there wondering around. They had a large skeleton exhibit, a big mineral exhibit, saw some living fossils, lots of dinosaur stuff, butterflies, a special "footy" exhibit and another limited time "alive" exhibit.

Learned a lot of new facts and chatted with the employee who enlightened me on a lot. These shells in the picture are stinging shells. This octopus only lights up with blue circles when it feels its in danger.

They had some neat hands on activities: a touch table, a creat your creature with trash, and also a create your own dinosaur station.

Also fun stuff I read about:

**Sydney's very own "Spiderman"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/spiderman-unravelled-funnel-web-venom-20100510-uokt.html

**Toads the size of dogs found in Darwin, Australia

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/who-ya-gonna-call-toadbusters-20100606-xn8g.html

**The tiniest wallaby and a Pinocchio Frog found in Papua's Eden

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/tiniest-wallaby-pinocchio-frog-discovered-in-papuas-eden-20100518-vcb5.html

**Learned about the Gastric Brooding Frog, they can turn the acid in their stomach off and can carry their babies there

http://www.frogsaustralia.net.au/frogs/display.cfm?frog_id=84



In other news: I am also waiting for this "French Spiderman" to finally climb the Sydney Skyscraper....

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/spiderman-foiled-in-sydney-climb-attempt/story-fn3dxity-1225873939097

At night headed down with the peeps for the FIFA fest in Darling Harbour: huge ordeal from June 11th - July 12th (Sydney is 1 in 5 chosen to host it). Tonights game was at 930pm Argentina & South Korea..usually the games are at 430am or midnight.

http://www.sydneyfifafanfest.com.au/

Tried Baia Italian for dinner in Cockle Warf (Darling Harbour).

Went to HomeBar for some after game festivities.

http://www.homesydney.com/

I love the ice cream cone pictures we took: some guy tried to take our picture 10 times..each time it was either blurry, had one of us in it, had half a body, had only heads,...etc. and then after walking away one of our friends realized the ice cream cone wasnt just a station..but we had been taking pictures with a trash can. No wonder the strange looks. Love it.