I just arrived in Adelaide, a city in the state of South Australia.  For the next few days I’m staying with an Australian family, a family whom I met on CICircle, a listserv for parents of children with cochlear implants.  One of the sons, A, has a cochlear implant and thus, it’s pretty cool to meet other people with cochlear implants from different parts of the world!  I’m giving a talk tomorrow to a group of parents of children with cochlear implants, cochlear implant users, and a few professionals about the benefits of bilateral implantation.  So, that’ll be exciting!

As soon as I landed, I took off for a mini-road trip.  I came across a yellow sign with a black shape of a koala.  What a shock!  I knew that Australia had unique animals and that there were yellow signs with a black shape of a kangagroo, but I never thought that there would be one for koalas!  That’s so sweet as koalas so cute that they deserve extra protection.  A few moments later, I came across a sign that had warnings for both koala AND kangaroos.  I know that some people think that koalas and kangaroos roaming through the wild is a stereotype, and they think that they just live in zoos, but I have to disagree.  I came across a kaola resting by a tree next to road!!!

I also took a walk, and throughout the walk, I saw a few koalas resting on trees and some birds flying all over the place.