University of Queensland St. Lucia Campus & Bron's house for sunset

We visited University of Queensland St. Lucia campus one afternoon. 

It is a beautiful campus with sand stone buildings and archways. We took the City Cat to get there and the kids brought their scooters to scoot around the campus. Matt met with a colleague. When Matt was done with the meeting with we stopped at the bookstore. 

I bought a UQ sweatshirt and Matt bought a UQ Keepcup.

 While Matt met with a colleague on campus we ate lunch in the quad and read the 39 Clues.

  

 On the way home we got off the City Cat in the West End and biked along the river to our apartment.

 Later that night we went to Bron and Tony's house for drinks, apps, and the sunset. They live a 5 min walk from our apartment along the river.

3 Museums...busy day

We made a video for our church from Brisbane promoting the upcoming retreat. 

We took this picture right after the video.

Rylie and I a package in the mail with got our necklaces from Jen Dunstan!!

 Our first visit to the Queensland Art Museum. There was a lot of art and historical 

information about the Aboriginal people.

 Real Aboriginal boomerangs

 This was a neat part of the museum to walk through.

 Outside of the museum by the cafe in the back the kids were chasing water dragons.

 Aboriginal art work

 Queensland State Library

There were these cool foam building blocks and whole area for kids to play

We ended up playing at the playground at South Bank and 

Derek found a great spot to read his book.

Matt met up with us after our busy day of visiting 3 museums, the library, and park. 

We went out to dinner at Grill'd and then walked home enjoying the lights of the 

city and the beautiful weather.

Matt's back in Australia!!

After being in China for 10 days Matt is home!! Well, back with us in Brisbane. We couldn't wait to meet him at the bus stop and walk/scoot home with him! He managed to fit a couple souvenirs in his suitcase for the kids - Rylie got a panda from the zoo and Derek got a Terracotta emperor. 

Both kids LOVED their souvenirs.

Matt had to fly through Sydney to get to Brisbane. Below is the Sydney Opera house and bridge. That's the closest we got to Sydney this trip. Next time we come to Australia we will visit Sydney.

Buddha Festival

We video chatted with Kyla as Mark and Matt were in China.

The kids loved using the FaceTime filters during their video chat! 

We picked up sushi lunch and then ice cream treat at the Queen St Mall.

We can't wait to have Matt back with us in Australia

After lunch we headed to the Buddha festival. We had no idea what to expect, but it was an amazing cultural experience. There were performances of jugglers and martial artists. It was so neat. Meanwhile, poor Matt was stuck at the Chinese airport waiting for his flight to leave to 

come back to Australia.

Derek and Rylie had an opportunity to practice Chinese calligraphy. They used a pen with a soft point (almost like a brush). They loved doing the calligraphy. It was very relaxing. To write the Chinese calligraphy the kids started at the right side of the page and go down each column.

After the calligraphy the kids were able to do some origami and coloring.

A drum performance.

Just as we were about to leave the festival we spotted a man doing Chinese calligraphy. We had him write Derek and Rylie's name along with our last name. Ironically, Matt was in China while we were at this festival and he wasn't able to find anyone to do calligraphy and we ended up finding someone in Brisbane. :)

Fireworks to end the festival. We could see them from the balcony!