Stanley Says Goodbye - Thurs 11th Mar

Stanley's time in Canberra has come to an end. We are sad to see him go. We've had fun taking him around Canberra and elsewhere. He is looking forward to getting back home, and sharing news of his adventures with Gabrielle's family and her class.

Here are a couple of things that weren't included in the other blog entries that Stanley wanted included in the last one.

Some of the views from the home where Stanley stayed.

Stanley also got to see some Australian Rules Football on television too. He didn't understand the rules, but it was a lot quicker than American Football, and nobody was wearing any padding. The players were able to jump in the air and catch the ball, and kick it a long way. The East family are big fans of the West Coast Eagles, a team that plays in the Australian Football League, and wanted Stanley to see some Australian Football.

And finally, a video showing a bit more about Canberra.

Just to let you know that the American woman who is speaking in this video doesn't say Canberra properly. She says it so that it sounds like "Can-bare-rar" ... when Australians say Canberra, it sounds like "Can-bra" - the "e" isn't really pronounced.

Good Bye Stanley!!

Hot Air Balloons - 10th - 11th Mar

To help celebrate Canberra Day, during the last week, there has been a Hot Air Balloon festival in Canberra. Each year, Canberra has a Hot Air Balloon Festival about this time of year. Each morning, about 20 to 30 Hot Air Balloons go floating over the city. The one's Stanley saw were all shaped like normal balloons, but Adam showed him some photos of balloons in previous years. Some of those hot air balloons,were in different shapes like giant bees, a house, a birthday cake, and even Mike Wazowksi from Monsters Inc.

Stanley wanted a souvenir to take home to Gabrielle, that she could also show her class, so he got to go into the middle of Canberra on Wednesday with Adam. They went shopping and found something for Stanley to take back to America. We won't tell you what it is ... Stanley wants it to be a surprise.

Jewel's & Canberra's Birthdays - 7th-9th Mar

Fun and sadness for Stanley. He's gotten to do some more fun things, but he is sad that his trip to Australia will be finishing soon.

Monday was a public holiday. It was Canberra Day - celebrating the day when Canberra was founded. Canberra is only 97 years old, so it's still very young for a city.  The kids didn't have to go to school, and Adam & Elissa didn't have to go to work.

On Monday, Jewel also had her 6th birthday party. She invited 9 of her friends from school over for the party. Jewel and her friends played a lot of similar games to Jayde. They played the Chocolate game, and Don't Eat Jewel. They also played Musical Statues and Pass The Parcel. Jewel got lots of nice presents, including another Barbie. Jewel has a big collection of Barbie dolls.  She also got given a CD with lullabies sung by the singer Jewel.

Stanley got to try some different party foods - one that he liked was called Fairy Bread. Fairy Bread is made by spreading butter on a piece of bread, cutting the bread into triangle shapes and then covering the bread in "Hundreds and Thousands". Stanley said that in America they don't have Hundreds and Thousands, but they have somthing similar called "Sprinkles" or "jimmies". Stanley thought the Fairy Bread was yummy.

Jewel's birthday cake was Belle from Beauty and the Beast. The top part of her was a doll, but her dress was made out of cake. Stanley though that Belle the Cake was pretty. She told Stanley, that No, she couldn't go back to the USA with him ...

At the end of the party, they had a Piñata full of chocolates and lollies. The Piñata was shaped like a heart with pictures of the Disney Princesses on the front of it.

Something else that Stanley noticed that was different at Jayde and Jewel's Birthday parties was that after singing Happy Birthday, they then sang it again in a different language. Adam explained that the kids used to go to a different school. At that school, once a week they had a class learning about Japan, and they learnt some Japanese words. They even learnt how to sing Happy Birthday in Japanese. Since then, tt has become a tradition for Jayde, Seth and Jewel to sing Happy Birthday in both English and Japanese at their birthday parties. Most of the kids at the party didn't know it, as in the new scholl they are at, they don't have classes about Japan. They have classes about Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the countries near Australia. Stanley said that in America, the children sometimes learn some Spanish words, not Japanese or Indonesian words.

Stanley was thankful that he got to stay for Jayde and Jewel's birthday parties. Thank you Gabrielle!

Jayde's Birthday, Taekido and Emus - 3rd-6th Mar

More fun for Stanley over the last couple of days. Jayde had her 10th Birthday. She got a yummy roast dinner on her birthday - that's her favourite meal, and on the Saturday, she had her birthday party. She invited nine of her school friends over, and they had a "Masterchef Party". Masterchef is a TV show in Australia where people compete in a compettion to make yummy foods. At Jayde's party she and her friends all got to make their own pizzas for dinner, as well as decorating cupcakes, and making their own ice cream sundaes. It was a yummy party! Jayde got lots of nice presents too - clothes, and books were main thing. Jayde really likes reading, so people knew that books were good presents.

They played some fun games at the party. They played Sardines - the game that they had played at Family Home Evening earlier in the week. They played the "Chocolate Game". In the chocolate game, a big block of yummy chocolate is put on a plate, next to a knife and a fork. There is also a jacket, a hat, a scarf and some gloves next to the plate. Everybody sits aropund the plate, and then to start the game one of the players rolls two dice. If he get's two 6s, something special happens. If he rolls anything else, then the person next to them then gets the two dice and rolls them. This keeps on going until somebody rolls two 6s. When somebody rolls two 6s, they get to eat the chocolate. The catch is, that before they can eat any of the chocolate, they must put on the hat, the scarf, the jacket, and the gloves, and they can only eat the chocolate once they have put all the clothes on, and then they must use the knife and fork to cut up and eat the chocolate. Whilst the person is trying to get dressed and eat the chocolate, the other players keep rolling the dice. If they roll two 6s, then the first person has to stop eating the chcolate, take the hat, scarf, jacket and gloves off, the the new person who rolled two 6s must put them all on before they can eat the chocolate. The person wearing the clothes and eatingg chocolate changes everytime somebody rolls two 6s. You keep going like this until the chocolate is all gone.

Jayde really likes a book called Lord of the Rings. Her birthday cake was a "hobbit hole". Hobbits are characters from the Lord of the Rings. Elissa made a cake that looked like a house built into the side of a hill - because that's what Hobbits live in. The cake even had two plastic Hobbits in the front garden of the hobbit's home.

Stanley got to go with Jayde on Thursday night out to her martial arts. It is called Taekido. It combines two other types of martial arts - Taekwando and Aikido. She goes to martial arts for an hour each week. She is  a Brown Belt, and is practising to try and become a higher level.

Stanley also went out for a drive with Adam, Seth and Jewel down to Tidbinbilla. Tidbinbilla is a nature reserve about 15 minutes from the Easts house. When we got there, there was a group of about 15 emus all wandering around eating. Emus are very BIG birds. They are about as tall as an adult human. Stanley could then see that behind the emus, lying in the shade of the trees and bushes behind them were about 20 kangaroos, all keeping cool.

Stanley sees Kangaroos - Tues 2nd Mar

Stanley went to work with Adam today. The exciting part about that was the drive to and from Adam's work. On the drive there and back, Stanley got to see wild kangaroos. There were three mobs of kangaroos on the drive between the East's home and Adam's work. (A mob is a name given to a group of kangaroos).

The nearest of the kangaroos were less than a mile from the Easts home. There were about 10 kanagaroos in each mob. Most of them were spending their time eating grass. Some were lying down in the shade of the trees in the afternoon.

One time Stanley saw a mother kangaroo hopping with a joey hopping behind her. A joey is a name given to a young kangaroo. When they are really little, Joeys live in a pouch on the outside of the mother kangaroos tummy. You can sometimes see the joeys head's sticking up out of their mother's pouch.

The kangaroos were mainly in fields by the side of the road. Adam explained that kangaroos can hop and jump very well. This is a problem, because kangaroos can jump over fences - some can jump as tall as Adam. Kangaroos can jump onto roads during the night time and get hit by cars. In Canberra, there are about three car crashes caused by Kangaroos every day. That's over a thousand car crashes caused by kangaroos in Canberra every year! That's sad, as the kangaroos will often get badly hurt or killed if they get hit by a car. Stanley though that was sad too. Adam explained that there are lots and lots of kangaroos around because there were fields and bush for them to live in, but you normally wouldn't see kangaroos living in any of the really big cities in Australia.

Stanley wanted to get some photos of the kangaroos in the fileds to show Gabbi, but Adam was driving and couldn't stop to take photos, and the cameras are too heavy for Stanley to hold. Adam said that he was hoping to get to take Stanley to a park nearby on the weekend where he could get to see the kangaroos close up.

Stanley and Family Home Evening - Mon 1st Mar

The East Family had the missionaries from their church over for dinner today - they had an extra yummy dinner. After dinner, the missionaries stayed whilst the family had Family Home Evening.

Every Monday night, the family has Family Home Evening. It's designed for the family to be able to spend time together discuss important things and to have fun. The family start out by having one of the family member's start with a prayer. Then, each member of the family gets to choose a song which the family then sings. The songs the family sang included: Popcorn, Book of Mormon Stories and Advance Australia Fair (the Australian National Anthem).

After singing, Jayde taught a lesson. The lesson was about "Testimonies" - about what a testimony is. After Jayde's lesson, we played a game. Seth chose the game, and it was called Sardines.

Sardines is a little bit like Hide and Seek. Instead of one person counting and everybody else hiding, in Sardines, one person hides, and everybody else counts to 20 before going to try and find the person who is hiding. In sardines, if you find the person who is hiding, you then have to hide with them. As more and more people "find" the person who is hiding, they too have to hide in the same space  - so it can get really squashy - like a tin of sardines :)

Seth hid underneath a chair in the downstairs Family Room. he was hard to find. Eventually more and more people found him and were trying to hide under or near the chair so othe rpeople couldn't find them. Seth is really good at playing Sardines.

After playing the game, the family closed off Family Home Evening by havinga treat. Our treat was having some more of the Mexican lollies that we got sent.

Stanley goes to Church - Sun 28th Feb

Everybody was tired after the busy day and long drive home on Saturday.

Stanley got to go with the Easts to church today. He went to the Tuggeranong Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It's only small - there were about 80 people at church. At Church, he got to hear different people talk and teach lessons about how to live better lives. Everyone seemed to be nice and friendly.

In the afternoon, because everyone in the family was still tired, the family spent a quiet afternoon at home.

Stanley got to see some more Australian birds during the day. Some Galahs flew up onto the roof during the day. They are pink and grey colored parrots. He also got to see lots of Galahs in trees or one the ground when they drove to Church (The Chapel where the East's go to church is about half an hour drive away).

Later on, when the family was sitting down to eat dinner, they could see several Rosellas in the tree outside the window. It must have been dinner time for the Rosellas too, because they were eating some of the seeds on the tree they were sitting on.

Stanley in Sydney - Sat 27th Feb

Today was a very exciting day for Stanley, because he was in Sydney. In the morning, first Elissa, and then Adam went to the LDS Temple whilst the rest of the family were in the motel. After leaving the motel, the family showed Stanley around the Temple grounds - Jewel liked showing him some of the pretty flowers.

After lunch, the family drove into the centre of Sydney to go to Luna Park. We explained that Luna Park is sort of like an American fairground or theme park. It is in North Sydney, right next to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and opposite the Sydney Opera House. After driving in to North Sydney, we took a photo of Stanley in front of the Sydney Opera House.

We then walked under the Sydney Habour Bridge. Stanley thought it was really, really tall. Adam explained that it is about 440 feet high. That's as tall as two Salt Lake City Temples on top of each other. It's a really big bridge! The family all then went to Luna Park and had fun on the rides. Adam's favorite rides were the dodgem cars. Jewel went on some of the smaller rides, whilst Elissa, Jayde and Seth went on some of the bigger, faster rides. Stanly went up in a very tall Ferris Wheel with everyone, and got to look out over Sydney Harbour. He tried looking to see if he could see Nemo, but he couldn't see him in the water anywhere. Luna Park was a lot of fun, but very tiring.

After Luna Park, the East family had to go to an Engagement Party on the other side of Sydney. This meant that Stanley not only got to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but was in the car as we drove on it as well.  The family only spent a short time at the Engagement party, as they still had to drive back to Canberra that night. It had been a long and busy day - but very fun. It was so busy, Stanley slept for a lot of the drive back home to Canberra. That was good, because the family didn't get back to Canberra until 11 o'clock at night!

Stanley & the Big Merino - Fri 26th Feb

Stanley's stay at school overnight wasn't that scarey, and he got to listen to what the class was learning about. The class was learning about words starting with the letter M. He noticed that all of the kids were wearing blue and red clothes - that's the color of the school uniform that the children wear. As a treat, the kids got to have lunch at the canteen today - normally they bring in their lunch from home.

After school, Elissa picked up Stanley and the kids from school, then Adam from his work, and then drove up to Sydney. Luckily the Easts have a big car, because it was a long (3.5 hour) drive. The East's car also has a DVD player, which means that he and the children could put on headphones and watch movies while they drove. They got to watch the movie Garfield, a tv show about a man who travels in time called Doctor Who, and some Micheal Jackson music videos - Jayde is a big Michael Jackson fan. One was for a song called Thriller - that was bit scarey for Stanley - it had monsters called zombies in it. He and Jewel were both abit scared of that one.

Along the way they stopped at a town called Goulburn - about an hour away from Canberra. In Goulburn they have a building that looks like a giant sheep - called the Big Merino. A merino is a type of sheep. The building is designed for tourists to find out about how important wool is to that part of Australia - there are a lot of sheep stations (farms for sheep) in Australia. Jayde, Jewel and Stanley had a photo outside the front of the Big Merino. It is so big, you can hardly see the girls holding Stanley in the photo.

When they got up to Sydney, the family stopped at Adam's brother's house. There, they had a delicous barbecue dinner with Jon, his wife Glenda, daughter Natasha and grandson Joshua. After dinner, it was time to go to the motel to sleep, as it was going to be a busy day tomorrow.

Stuck in a School Bag - Thurs 25th Feb

Stanley went off to school with Jewel today ... but the teacher forgot about him - oh no! He's staying at the school overnight and hopefully will have a bit more of a fun day tomorrow.

Even more exciting for him is that after school tomorrow, he'll be taking a trip up to Sydney for a couple of days. Sydney is a very big city - it has about 5 million people, and it's very busy, with lots of cars and tall buildings. He'll get the chance to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, and hopefully do a bunch of fun things. It will probably be a couple of days until we get to read about his trip.

Sydney is a 3.5 hour drive from Canberra - I hope he doesn't get car sick!

Stanley tastes Vegemite - Wed 24th Feb

For breakfast, Stanley had a special Australian food called Vegemite. It is a spread/paste made from plants. It looks like a chocolate spread, but it isn't sweet, it is very salty. Australians sometimes eat Vegemite on toast for breakfast. Stanley got to try it - but it tasted too salty for him.

During the day, Stanley went to work with Elissa. Elissa works at Old Parliament House. Her job is to teach school children how Governments are elected, and how to vote. The building Elissa works in used to be the Australian Parliament. This is where the Australian Prime Minister (similar to the American President) and other politicians would meet to make laws. In 1988, the government made a new Parliament House, which was much bigger, and Old Parliament House is now used as the Museum of Australian Democracy. Stanley got to learn about different types of governments around the world and how people vote in Australia.

When the East family got home, they discovered that they had received a package in the mail from friends in Mexico. It was a box full of Mexican lollies (we explained that Australians use the word lolly instead of candy). Stanley and the rest of the family are looking forward to trying some of these yummy treats! We told him that we'll get some Australian lollies soon so that he can try them too.

Jayde has a part-time job of delivering the local newspaper. After dinner, Adam and Jayde went out to deliver the newspapers, and invited Stanley to come along too. He would have liked to help deliver them, but they were too big for him to carry. He got to sit in Jayde's pocket whilst they walked the streets, putting the newspapers in people's mailboxes. Stanley was excited to see some Rosellas in the trees iand flying around the streets. Rosellas are colourful red and blue birds that he might only normally see in a zoo back home. Adam explained to him that they quite often get galahs and cockatoos landing on the their house as well, so Stanley might get to see some more unusual Australian birds.

There was a bit of a scare whilst delivering the newspapers at one point - jayde realised that Stanley had fallen out of her pocket, and she had to go back and look for him. Luckily, she hadn't gone very far from where he'd fallen out, and he wasn't hurt by the fall.

Stanley Discovers Cricket - Tues 23rd Feb

Stanley got a tour of the East's home today. It's a three storey house on the side of a hill. Stanley really liked the view from the balcony - he could see the nearby Brindabella Mountain range. They're a lot smaller than the mountains back in Utah, but still nice to look at, espceially when the sun sets over them.

Elissa took Stanley to Curtin Primary School and introduced him to Jewel's teacher. Elissa thought it would be nice if Stanley got to a visit Jewel's Year 1 school class here in Canberra. Jewel's teacher said that Stanley could come in on Thursday, so he's looking forward to that.

In the evening, Adam and Seth introduced Stanley to cricket. Cricket is the most popular sport in Australia during summer, similar to how popular baseball is in the USA. Australia were playing the West Indies* in cricket, and the game was being shown on TV. Adam, Seth and Stanley sat down and watched the game on Television.

It was a special type of cricket game called Twenty20, which takes about as long to play as a baseball game. There are three different types of cricket - the longest, Test Cricket, can take 5 days to play a game! Stanley didn't understand all the rules of cricket, but there were lots of exciting catches and big hits that reminded him of home runs in baseball. Stanley also wasn't sure whether he should be barracking for Australia, or for the West Indies, because they're from near America.(Australians use the term barrack, not root, when they talk about supporting a sports team) In the end, Australia won, and he had fun watching the game with Adam and Seth. Seth even had a collection of cricket cards and they were able to try and find the cards of the cricket players when they were on TV.

Two minute video of Australia vs West Indies Twenty20 Cricket match

*About The West Indies
The West Indies isn't an actual country, but a collection of about 20 small countries near America, like Jamaica, Barbados, Dominica and Grenada. Most of these countries play cricket, and decided back in 1926, that because they were too small to do well by themselves, that they would work together and choose a cricket team from the best cricketers throughout all the different countries in the West Indies. Since then, the countries in the West Indies have joined together when playing cricket games. In the 1980s, the West Indies were the best cricket team in the world. This summer, it was the West Indies cricket team's turn to come and visit and play cricket in Australia for several months.

Flat Stanley Arrives in Canberra

Flat Stanley arrived at the East Family's house in Canberra yesterday. Flat Stanley is a friend of Gabrielle Northrup from Lehi, in Utah, in the USA. Gabrielle's class at school have just finished reading the book, Flat Stanley. Because Stanley is flat, he is able to travel by mail anywhere in the world.

Gabrielle's mum is a friend of Elissa East, the mum of the East Family, who live in Canberra in Australia. Gabrielle's Mum asked Elissa if Stanley could come and stay with us for a week, and we said yes.

We thought we'd provide a copy of Stanley's journal online so that Gabrielle and her class could see what he gets up to "Down Under".

Flat Stanley arrived by mail yesterday (Monday) afternoon. He was a bit jet lagged from the long trip - it took 13 days to get to Australia from the USA by mail. He was glad to get out of the envelope and have a stretch. He got introduced to the member's of the East Family. Adam, who is the Dad, Elissa who is the Mum (we pointed out that in Australia, we say Mum and not Mom)  and three children - Jayde, who is 9, Seth who is 7 and Jewel who is 5 years old. It's a shame Stanley is only here for a week, because Jayde and Jewel have their birthday's soon, and he'll miss out on their parties.

We pointed out that although Canberra is only a small city, of about 300,000 people, it is the Capital City of Australia. We also pointed out, that Stanley might get a bit warm here. Even though it is winter in the USA, it is summer here in Australia.