Travelog for: Sportie

It's the last day of the year and it started with some bad news: Katrin got this broken envelope in a plastic bag. On the plastic bag it says that the German Post put the envelope into this bag because it was damaged. The really sad thing is, that in this envelope where some postcards and some brochures, but there should have been another TV, Leo Lion. He is now somewhere lost in the mail. 


Here it's dinner time and on "Silvester", that's how New Year's Eve is called in German, Katrin's family usually eats Raclette. Everybody gets a little pan and can choose from all this great food and heat it and     scalloped it with cheese. Yummi!


Later in the evening Katrin's boyfriend mixed some cocktails for us. We all ended up a little bit drunk because we wanted to try everything. Katrin stopped us and told her boyfriend to mix just some juices together. So he did, but I saw, that he always added a little bit of wodka...


After midnight we went outside to welcome the new year with some fireworks. Katrin had bought some rockets and a lot of beautiful fountains. We tried to take some photos, but it didn't really work...

Happy New Year!!!

Today it is time to say godbye to Luddie. She'll travel to Austria. I wished her a short and safe journey.

Today the parents of Katrin's boyfriend invited everybody for a trip to the Baltic Sea. We are here on a small island called Pöhl and this is the harbour of Timmendorf.


This is the view over the Baltic Sea and as you can see on the waves, it was very windy!


This is the view along the cliffs and the beach.


The wind was very strong and over the years it has made holes into the cliffs. Today some of them are homes for seagulls, but not this one.


The sea again


This funny waves in the ground are made by the tide. Katrin wanted to go a bit nearer to the water...


... and here we discovered tracks from birds in the sand.


And the cliffs again


Frozen water glittering the sun, very beautiful.


This is the landscape we discovered behind the cliffs: green fields are far as you can see.

Today Katrin took us for a quick walk around her hometown. It was very cold again and there was some snow left on the ground.
Here we are in front of the church. It was built during the 15th century with huge stones.


We went up the stairs and turned around: this is the townhall of Kellinghusen:


These stones are standing near the church. The letters build the word "Frieden". This is "peace" in English.

Katrin says I'm a lucky TV because I'm the last one sho can take to the museum where she is working. Her practical term ends this week, so we have to take some photos today.
This is Katrin's last little project: She's scanning photos from an old photo album. These photos are from the 1940's


This poster in the office is Katrin's favourite. Can you see why?


During the lunch breack we wanted to take some photos in the yard. We crossed this hall, look at the great play of shadow and light.


This is one of the famous "Tempo"-cars from the 1950's. In the museum there is a whole exhibition about them. They are special because you could dirve them without a driver's license and they have just three wheels.


This is TRUDE. It's a drill which was used to built a tunnel for cars under the river Elbe. It's very huge, specially when you are a little mouse like me.


This is the river behind the museum. It's nearly frozen!

Today is my last day in Kellinghusen because Katrin is leaving for her own journey soon. It's been a rather short stay, but Katrin showed me a lot. I hugged Lady Sirina goodbye who is going to go back home. Katrin hasn't heard anything from her owner and she couldn't keep her. I'm excited about my trip to Australia, because I'm coming from the cold German winter to the hot Australian summer!

Hey mom! I've just arrived in Australia! It wasn't too long of a trip thankfully but now that I got out of that stuffy package I realize that the package wasn't stuffy... everything is... it's SO hot... it's like 35'c today... yesterday was when they went to Sydney and it wasn't even 32'c and they were baking away - it's so shockingly hot! lol

I think I'm going to lay down and relax now... it's only me and Fllama. :-) Oh and Sara told me they're more than likely going back to Sydney for the same kind of trip this time next month! I wonder what I'll see... apparently it was very beautiful! :-)

Remember when I said it was really hot? Well a couple hours later Sara heard one boom of thunder and that was it... it was POURING down rain... I cannot believe how quickly the weather can change here...


It was actually flooding down the street because of how much rain and wind was happening. Sara forgot to close some of the windows in her house - particularly the kitchen window and the floor looked like it had a small pond in it. Pretty insane...

...but just as quickly as it ended it was done and there was a very bright rainbow greeting us... very pretty! I'm just glad it was able to cool down a little bit...


...sadly it didn't last and the next day was even hotter than the day before. Not good the drastic changes in the weather, I'm feeling a bit stuffy because of it... hopefully we don't get a cold from all that... that wouldn't be a good way to start my vacation would it?

Today we stayed up really really really late. It was around 530am before Sara went to bed and we went to bed around 430am thankfully we were all so very tired... but we stayed up because at 4am, Mr. Obama was turning into the first African American president. President Obama now... a pretty awesome thing actually. Three of the five tv stations were showing it live from Washington DC... a lot of it I found to be pretty boring but when it finally ticked over to 4am, it got a lot more interesting... :-)

Around 3 or 330am they had a whole bunch of people walk out and then they had president elect Obama walk out...


After a lot of talking and speeches, and singing they inaugurated vice president Biden...



...and then it was finally the time... even 5 minutes late... the inauguration of President Obama...



...after the inauguration we watched his speech. He's such a lovely speaker isn't he?


Well you might ask why Sara stayed up that late just to watch that... well, I didn't know this before but Sara was born and raised in America and is an American citizen... so she's very proud of her country for electing such a fine man and watching history itself... it's an amazing thing isn't it? :-) She's very proud to be American sometimes. :-) Well I'm off to bed it's been a long night... :-P

Sorry I've been away for a while... it's been VERY hot here in Australia. We've been hitting some record temperatures almost every day the last few weeks. Kind of crazy... it even got up to 47'C in some areas (around 114'F in South Australia) there have been lots of black outs and the air conditioners don't seem to make much difference. Were kind of hoping for some rain soon... but Sara got a notice that she's got a house inspection coming up... so she's been cleaning the house - one room each day for the last few days. She spent around 3 hours on the kitchen last night, and today she worked on her room... it was a bit crazy..

We all decided we could help a little bit... although not much because some of the chemicals are pretty nasty and she was up on a ladder much of the time... but once it was done we decided to help her put her room back together...

...that's just after the cleaning when she's ready to start putting everything back together. The only things in the room were the wardrobe and the bed frame. Everything else was scattered through the hall and living room. It looked pretty packed... haha

Now we've started to put it all back together... the picture above the bed, the bed and the slats under the bed are together now... sadly we couldn't help much more than being on the side lines. That stuff was pretty heavy actually...


...and now everything is complete... how does it look?


...I'll be updating much more soon, more so if it cools down where we can go outside without feeling like we are in an oven... but hopefully we'll see some sights soon. Maybe even a trip to Molong but there will be a Sydney trip coming up soon... maybe even two... :-) We'll see how that goes! :-) Write again soon!

Today we found out that we now have a resident spider visiting in Sara's house. Sara is a bit used to it - they're harmless I can assure you. They are good to have around because they kill all the nasty other bugs (like red backs and white tip spiders)... they usually keep to themselves. Sara is always very wary of where they are, as she doesn't really like spiders. But there is always one each Summer, sometimes more... well here I am with the spider... it's pretty big isn't it? It's a Huntsman Spider. ;-)

Welcome to Australia right? :-P

Here's a close up of him, its hard to tell by the pictures but he's bigger than me... :-)


I'm kind of glad he's keeping to himself... we also have a resident mouse in the house too since Sara's husband Daniel left the door open one day. He's found his way into the mouse mansion (where she has five mice in it)... so it's been interesting this Summer lol. Write again soon!

It was very very hot today. We found out that on Sunday it's supposed to get up to 47'c (116.6'f)... it's supposed to be the hottest place on Earth that day... beating out the African deserts and the Middle-East. So we're trying to prepare for the massive heat wave that's already brought us down to nothing since it's been so hot for a while... although, not that hot... we're not really looking forward to it... so today to get away from the heat, Sara took us up to Mount Canobolas which is actually an extinct volcano... here I am at the top of the summit, facing Orange below me...


...right in the center of the summit it's got this map...

...the map shows you what you can see and in which direction, so Orange is that way, Mudgee is that way, and so on and so forth. You can see quite far on a clear day... it's actually the highest point West of the Blue Mountains up until a mountain in South Australia - which is very very far away (think around half the distance of the United States)...

...and here I am at the other side of the summit facing the opposite direction from Orange... you can't see much, all you can see is it's very very brown because of the lack of rain...


...because of the massive heat that was today (35'c) and going up the big hill our car needed a bit of attention so while Sara was taking photos, Daniel her husband was cooling the car down a little bit so the car didn't overheat...

...at least it's down hill to our next destination... that should give the car a bit of time to cool down... we can hope anyways... write again soon! :-)

Next stop was only a short drive down a big long hill, through lots of bush land... we were now visiting the man made Lake Canobolas... it seemed to really heat up even coming a little bit down that mountain... we no longer had a small breeze that the summit allowed us... so it was very warm. So while we were here we stayed in the shade... here I am in the shade of a tree near the lake. :-) Doesn't it look just wonderful?


...there were lots of ducks while we were there - most of which were in the shade but there was this pair of Australian Wood Ducks which Sara always used to refer to them as the "fancy" ducks because of how pretty they were. Although they look a lot different to the wood ducks that Sara are used to, which are of course native to the United States. :-)

...they had three not so little ducklings following them in a row... it was pretty cute, they were swimming to some shade on the other side of the lake... what I would have given to be a duck today. The water looked so nice and cool... it's time to head home everyone is getting a bit of a headache, time to get lots of water into us... write again soon!

Well, also thought I'd update on the status of when we got home... when we got home it seemed to get hotter - at least by another 2'c which doesn't seem like much but when it's so hot already it kind of kicks you again when your down... :-/ We had fans on the birds, the dog and the mice... so we found one of Sara's mice actually laying in the breeze of the fan trying to cool down... poor little girl! Her and her sister and trying to keep cool by sleeping in one of the tubes even now at almost midnight...

...her and her sister almost look identical, so she's not sure which one it is (one has a small white spot on the backside) it's either Puff or Fluff... and Charlotte is in the wheel (the white blob)... she also has two others that aren't seen or mentioned - so 5 in total, the other two are Moo, and Choc Chip. :-) They're quite fun too watch, too bad it's been too hot to have them be as active as normal...

...and as the sun was going down Sara always says to herself... "Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning sailors warning." Since there was such a bright red sky at night... it means we are in for another scorching day tomorrow...

...I'm kind of hoping this heat wave will end soon, it's hard to sleep and hard to move much and actually do anything... so fingers crossed! Write again soon! Miss you mom! :-D