Feeding a tiger

Lots happened!! After having a fun Christmas at home, Sha ended up taking me to hospital. Anyway, we got up early the next day to go to Canberra by train. Beautiful journey. Kangaroos bounced alongside the train! The weather cleared up as we got away from Sydney.

When we arrived in Canberra, we checked into our hotel and then walked down to the lakeside (with a bit of a detour as I got us lost) and went to the National Museum of Australia. This is an interesting museum. We watched a film on the history of Australia in which the entire seats rotated around. In the evening we went to a Sri Lankan restaurant that seems to keep winning the "Canberra restaurant of the year". Very good!!

Yesterday we had a very arty day. During the day we went to the National Gallery of Australia to see the exhibition entitled "Masterpieces from Paris". The exhibit contained post-impressionistic paintings from the Musee D'Orsay. These paintings included La Nuit Etoilée by van Gogh along with his self-portrait. Sha is now very excited about seeing even more art in Paris. In the evening we went to see "Bright Star" a film about John Keats (oh ... in complete contrast, I should say that we watched Avatar in 3D a few days ago - that was an incredible experience).

Today was amazing. Sha and I went on the ZooVenture tour at Canberra Zoo. During this tour we got to help the zoo keepers feed the animals. Sha went first feeding a huge Bengal tiger. We also got to feed white lions (so beautiful), brown bears, a cougar, otters, giraffes ("deer with long necks" in Chinese) and a big antelope. We also got to hold a snake (the first time that Sha had done that ... in fact, it was the first time she'd fed a tiger as well!) and stroke a dingo. A wonderful experience!!