Jordi and Bella's American Adventure

First of all, GREETINGS FROM DOWN UNDER

We cannot believe it has been 9 months since we returned from our Epic Journey of the beautiful United States! It feels like only a week ago we were having fun with you on the other side of the world! But apparently time flies when you are having fun and although our life had changed a fraction, to include a bit of routine in our lives - like, you know…… school and work, we cannot complain that we haven’t been having fun. After all, it’s our mum’s job is to ensure that our life is a constant, never-ending adventure.

We thought we would give you a little update of what we have been up to since we returned, just in case you were wondering to yourself - "whatever happened to those travelling Aussies".

Well, here we go:

When we arrived back in Australia (15th of December 2012), we were met by our family at the airport. They were the largest, most excited crowd we had ever seen! They all chased each other to be the first ones to give us the most amazing hug. Oh, how nice it was to see our grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins!!!! We all squealed with joy!

(ok, so that's not our crowd but to us it looked just like that!)

If American border patrol had ever seen this 'welcome back' scene they would’ve understood and not constantly question us whether we had intention of returning to Australia. How could we have not????

It seemed not only family came to see us at the airport. One of our favorite animals must’ve heard we were coming as well. No idea how he made it to the airport but we heard later on the news that some nice policeman, after talking to the kangaroo for over 4 hours, persuaded him to take a nap and transported him back to the wild.

"Thanks for welcoming us back little roo! We missed you too, mate!"

It was great seeing our family - and really- the first few weeks were a bit of a blur with parties, picnics, get togethers and celebrations.

Now, some introductions:

This is our daddy's side of the family

And this is our mummy's side of the family

(two sets of grand-parents)

And these are a bunch of our friends who couldn't wait for us to get back

And of course, our cousins

I was thrilled to be reunited with my best friend, Pippa

Within hours of our arrival, we were out of our 'camping gear' and into our city-chick outfits. I think we scrubbed up alright!

We also caught up with our grandparents' lovely dogs, Elliot and Jasper

Little Elliot is a new addition to the family - he is just adorable! Within minutes we were best friends

He plays vets with me quite often. I've got my fantastic outfit (which I got as a gift from our Bumble Bee friends in Pennsylvania) and some practice I got from our Vet friends in West Virginia. Now I have myself a patient and I am set! - but don't worry, I wont be doing the operations I watched at the vet surgery!!!!!

We lived with our grandparents for a few months until our parents worked out whether we were going to return back to the country, where we lived for the last 4 years before our trip OR stay in the city, where our home was rented out. We didn't mind that it took our parents so long to work things out - we got a chance to get totally spoilt by the grandparents! And to top it all off - our grandma is a 'master chef' so we got to eat all sorts of delicious home-cooked meals.

We did occasionally help her with making of the dessert. Although often it got consumed BEFORE it got to the table.

Eventually, our parents decided that we would stay in the city, close to our family. We had to wait for three months for our tenants to move out and then perform some major clean up to get the house back to its original glory!

Meanwhile, we started our new school, which we just love! It's only 10 min on foot from our new home.

This is us in our lovely school uniforms

Our school is big on Chinese culture. We even have a sister school in Beijing. At school we learn Mandarin. I always thought it was a fruit not a language. One day I told mum I like Mandarin and she put it in my lunch box the next day - even she gets confused sometimes, LOL

In line with this education, we get to celebrate Chinese New Year - here we are, getting into the 'Chinese Spirit'

Ahhhh, H-a-ro from Da China Girls!!!

After school, we have all sorts of activities.

We started learning Aikido (Japanese Self Defence)

And also Capoeira (Brazilian Marshal Arts). This is sort of a dance, which looks like a fight. Very cool indeed.

This is Bella 'fighting' the trainer.

I am sure, soon we will be able to do this:

We also joined our State's Youth Theatre to polish our acting repertoires. We even got to perform in front of over 1000 people at a University! It was totally ace!

I also play this groovy instrument I saw in New Orleans. It took me a looooooong time to persuade mummy to pay for this little beauty! But don't I just look great with it?

After a long wait, we were finally able to move into our home and as much as we LOVED living at our grandparent's we were thrilled to be able to decorate our own separate bedrooms. 10 points to anyone who'll guess which room belongs to whom:

We even got our own playroom now (not that we didn't have one before but hey, after spending 18 months in a camper.....)

Incidentally, here are a few more shots, in case you were wondering what the rest of the house looks like:

Moving back to our home meant we could now run all sorts of parties, starting with simple sleepovers with cousins

To bigger parties, like my birthday!

Here we are preparing our Monsters cupcakes to take to school for my birthday. You like?

The kids at school LOVED them!

And then I got to spoil my friends at a local trampoline place, where we all jumped with joy!

Even though it took a lot of energy for us to move back to our city place, our parents made sure we weren't left out of some interesting adventures. Although we like living in the city, we are outback - kind-of girls so soon after arrival we went back into 'the bush' to catch up with some locals we missed dearly..

We also went on a camping trip with our friends in March to check out local (only 4 hrs away) Rodeo show. We never attended one in Australia before but seeing this show we've learned why Texan cowboys speak so highly of our Australian cowboys. Aussie boys are mad!

We must admit, we were thrilled to get out of our dresses for the weekend...

As soon as winter arrived, we geared up and went to the snow. Yes, yes, I know some of you still don't believe we have snow in Australia but I promise you - it was all natural! Only 5 hrs drive from Melbourne...

We finally learned how to ski. It only took us a couple of lessons to hit the green slopes. Even the trainer had trouble catching up! Bella even went as far as jumping off 6ft drops - giving mum a heart attack in the process, lol

It was a great getaway with some of our awesome Aussie friends

As we are not normally used to the cold, we ventured north from Melbourne a few weeks later to defrost. We flew up to Noosa, some 3000km from Melbourne (Florida to New York?).

Noosa is a funky little town where the rich and famous like to chill out or surfers like to gather. After all, all Australians and their dogs like to surf...

Well, maybe not all Australians. But we sure wanted to catch some waves...

But one of the main reasons we flew up to Noosa was because my parents surprised me for my birthday with an unusual gift. They organised for both Bella and I to become a zoo-keeper for a day at the famous Australia Zoo. Have you ever heard of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter? Well, that's his zoo and we were lucky enough to spend a whole day working behind the scenes with the zookeepers!

We got to look after a lot of animals, big and small. Kangaroos, Koalas, snakes, camels, elephants, lizards and more! It was a blast!

Check out this little beauty. Not sure if he falls into the small or very large category. He's a kind-of oversized tortoise...

We sure gave him a good scrub and fed him some yummy hay...

During the day we got to watch Bindi (Steve Irwin's daughter) perform on stage.

She ran a dancing competition.

Guess who won it??? Yep, I did!!! Bindi came down and gave me a prize in person. I was thrilled!

I am a big fan of Bindi's

We then watched a crocodile show performed by the Irwins. It was incredible! It is very unusual that the Irwins would do the show themselves, they normally have other people do it so we felt very privileged to see them live.

What a pity that their dad, Steve is no longer alive. He died in 2006 when he got stung by a stingray. The whole country mourned his death.....

He was my biggest hero!

Mind you, Terri is certainly doing a great job feeding those big crocks!

But after the show....as if all THAT wasn't enough, our parents surprised us with something even more incredible.....

We got to meet the Irwins in person!!!!! Woohoo!!!
Not only did we meet them - we actually spent couple of hours with them in their Echidna's enclosure!

I have no idea how my parent managed to pull that one off but to say I was over the moon, would be an absolute understatement!

Terri was extremely impressed by our American trip, especially when we told her we went to Eugene, Oregon, which is where she grew up.

We gave her some ideas of where she could take Bindi and Robert next time she travels to the USA.

Terri in exchange told us where we could travel in Africa as they spent some time filming there. Mummy added that destination to her 'bucket list'.

We had an absolute ball with the Irwins - not only did we get to feed these beautiful Echidnas, talk about Bindi's film career (have you seen Return to Nim's island?) but we also got to climb trees with Robert. It was totally ace!!! They are so down to earth!

When we finally parted our ways, Hannah (Terri's personal assistant) took us on a private tour of their animal hospital. Wow! It was incredible!

They treat approx. 130 animals every week - all wild life brought in by members of the public. There are lots of koalas, kangaroos and snakes that are brought in day after day, many injured because of cars on the roads. Look at this, poor little bugger!

But what's even more fascinating is that this hospital operates solely on the earnings the Irwins make through the zoo and media (movies) etc. All money they generate goes back into conservation - what an amazing family!

If (not if - when) you come down to Australia, make sure you visit the Australian Zoo!

Now, after we got back from all our lovely holidays (we have a two week break at school every 3 months), we got stuck back into studying.

In August, our school decided to host some students from Beijing Two teachers and 24 students came to visit our school for a whole week. Of course being the nice people we are, we put our hand up to host them in our house. No, not all of them! We ended up hosting one teacher and one student -an 11 year old boy.

Now, that was an interesting experience!

First of all, they didn't speak any English (well, the teacher knew a few words). Secondly, as this was their first trip overseas (ever) they were totally shell-shocked. All they were doing to communicate was bowing and saying hoi! Whatever that meant!

Their names were so long that however we tried, we just couldn't pronounce them - and by crikey - we tried! Eventually we just made up some names for them: Lilly and George. I think they liked them!

They were so shy, that it took us three days to figure out the ' trigger point' to shake their personalities out of them....

How did we do it?

The 'Gangnam Style'!

Even though the song is apparently in Korean (they sound similar, no?) mummy put it on in the car on Wednesday after school and what do you know...our Chinese guests started singing!

And so, our Gangnam style ritual started - we would play it all the time - after that, we couldn't wipe their smiles off their faces, LOL

Whenever they would get a bit serious, mummy would blast out some Gangnam music, and we would all dance. It was so much fun!

Before you knew it, Lilly and George had constant smiles on their faces

And jumped with joy!

We took them to so many places - we sure spoiled them rotten!

Toward the end of the week we could actually communicate: sometimes through 'charades' (i.e. talking with hands and legs) and sometimes through Google Translate. Daddy even found out that his iPhone can write in Chinese! How neat is that? No wonder they call them smart phones!

Finally our friends left back to Beijing and we got busy doing our own stuff. Like modelling for mum. Our uncle just opened a BBQ restaurant in Indonesia (his wife is from there originally) and they called it "De Koboi" (The Cowboy). As they needed lots of decorations and photos for the walls we were more than obliged to help out. You don't have to ask us twice to get into cowboy gear! LOL

Mummy of course could not be IN the shots because she was the one taking the photos - that's the disadvantage of being a photographer!

Well, unless she shoots towards the mirror, of course.....

The good thing about being a photographer though is that since we got back mummy signed up to a photography club and even though there is usually over 150 entries each month, mummy keeps on winning all the competitions. She got over 20 photography awards this year (not that she is counting). Good on ya, mum!

She gets us and daddy to often model for her. Here are a couple of photos she did with daddy being a 'homeless/drunk person'

'The Alley of Sorrow'