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MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM AUSTRALIAAAAA
Just a quick blog to let my family know what I got up to on my upside down christmas on the other side of the world :)
Being South African and having lived there for half my live, Im used to the idea of Christmas being warm and sunny and not consisting of gravy and stuffing. However, my British friends were very dubious and perhaps a little scared of the whole idea. So to cheer them up and get them in the spirit I decided to decorate the flat to make it feel Christmas-y. I went a little wild in the dollar store on my lunch break one day at work and ended up coming home with a lot of Christmas banners, lanterns, tinsel and Santa hats. We decorated the flat, got our Santa hats on and headed out to take photos and videos for our families (on its way fam,promise).
Christmas eve consisted of more Santa hat wearing, tinsel and a lovely dinner out with some of the people that live in our building. The day was very hot and I was getting all hot and bothered, running around the city centre through the Christmas crowds doing last minute erands for Christmas day (posh cupcakes for breakkie, present for Nadine, pretty dress for me, etc). But the evening was a lot cooler and I ended up in my leather jacket at dinner, which was clever as it started drizzling as we left home. We had some nice food, couple glasses of sparkling wine and spent the rest of the evening chatting. Nadine and I got home, under the cover of my jacket as it tipped it down with rain, and were excited to open presents (we'd both brought presents with from home - and carried them around Aus for 7 weeks!) but resisted and ended up listening to Christmas songs before falling asleep in our little decorated flat. Next morning we woke up at 7am..so early!Feeling like little children again, we scrambled to our presents, finding we'd both bought each other the same thing, then had some posh cupcakes I'd bought, a chocolate one decorated as a Christmas tree and a yummy red velvet one with a holly leaf on it. We then spent a good 1-2 hours skype-ing various family members and friends, who were celebrating Christmas eve back in England.
We looked outside and the weather was, well, pretty British looking!It was overcast and windy!Australia - what the hell!The plan for the day was to spend Christmas on the beach in our Santa hats and swim all day!Well I love the sea and I wasn't going to let a little clouds ruin my Christmas swim, so I went and knocked for Chrissy and Will. Chrissy laughed when I mentioned a swim and was no way going to get out of bed to swim!I thought "well some people don't know how to appriciate being in Aus!" till I peeked my head out her window...it was raining!Seriously..AUSTRALIA WHAT THE HELL!Still, I was going to swim on Christmas day and agreed with Nadine to sort out lunch once we'd ventured to the beach. We convinced Lydia and Natalie next door to come with and trooped off to the beach, reindeer antlers, tinsel and all. It seems we'd chosen the only rain free 10 minutes to hit the beach but the waves were still pretty big! It was breezy but there were a few other (slightly crazy) people jumping in, with about 12 concerned looking lifeguards watching. I dumped my towel, shouted to Nadine to watch my clothes and ran in, not wasting any time dipping my toes in. It wasn't cold at all, but it took some effort to get through the waves without being dunked!The water was warmer than the atmosphere outside with all those clouds! I tried to coax Natalie, Lydia and Nadine in as they said they really wanted to swim, but there was a lot of head shaking and "nooo its cold". I played in the waves for a couple mins, watching some crazy kids take on some of the bigger waves with bodyboards, till I heard a shriek and turned to see Lydia running towards me straight into the waves, with Natalie following with a "wait for meeeee"! It was so funny with Nadine just standing there, I could tell she was thinking " I am NOT going in those waves!". Natalie got hit by a wave when she wasn't looking and was knocked to her knees right in front of a lifeguard haha but she said at least she felt safe knowing he was right there! Lydia was trying to make it out to me past the waves, and a HUGE one was coming so I shouted to her to dive under just before I dived under but she thought she would be ok...nope!She got smashed by the wave (it really was HUGE) and disappeared under for a good 10 seconds, coming up in the white froth spluttering. She was ok but she got straight out after that, and poor Natalie got too scared after that too. At least we all had some form of Christmas swim, even if the waves were crazy big!
We headed home bundled in our towels, and literally 10 mins later the sun disappeared and the rain decided to join us again. Curse of the British! After a quick warm shower, we went downstairs and played some drinking games with some of the french boys in our building, who kept shouting HAPPY CHRISTMAS in their french accents, cuties. After some socialising and Rachel and Georgie screaming Christmas songs for all to hear, we headed back upstairs and set up our Christma picnic lunch out on the floor of our flat, inviting Lydia, Natalie and the Swedish boys to join. Nads and I devoured pizza and cheeseballs whilst Nat & Lyd had spent a small fortune on picnic things like pickled onions, bree, chips and dips, samosas, salmon, etc (THANK YOU) and we all munched away, saving my my prized contribution to the meal for last...Chocolate mousse!I'd spent a good 20 mins Christmas eve whisking it with a fork and considering the instructions called for an electrical whisk for 4 minutes, I think I'd done a good job!Even the Swedish boys enjoyed it (once they'd figured out what it was ha). Natalie had a cool camping blow up sofa that we were going to take to the beach but since it was cloudy, we were stuffed and had already ventured out, the sofa ended up staying with us in our room playing more drinking games with the French, Swedish and British. The party went on till the early morning and it was a very good Christmas indeed! My night ended with a funny phone call in the early hours from Lindzi and Tori singing Christmas carols to me on their night out. So funny, perfect end to my Christmas :)
Boxing day, Nadine and I took one look at the state of the room and decided we start the day with some cheesecake for breakfast! A quick whiz around the flat chucking everything away and we were ready to walk off the Christmas day food and drink. I persuased Nadine to walk to the next beach to the south, Maroubra, a good surfing beach about an hours walk along the coast. I'd walked there and back before on my day off from work and knew Nadine would enjoy it as it was through a nature park, along some cliffs and past some of the most expensive looking houses I'd ever seen (think white, modern, infinity pool, all glass). The walk was really nice, and we even managed to catch some of the Syndey to Hobart sailing race! it's a famous boating race with 62 teams competeing, and we happened to be standing in a prime spot on the cliff to sea all the boats go past!That would explain all the people with binoculars and long lense cameras...haha. Even though the weather on Boxing day is significantly better than Christmas day (typical), we had an amaaazing Aussie Christmas and are grateful to all the people who joined in!:)
ps: dear family, I miss you!Christmas wasn't the same without Mom refusing to wear a Christmas hat, Dad winning at trivia and Daniel cooking an amazing roast!Thank you to whoever invented Skype!
- comments
debbie tomlinson lovely! Just for your information...this year Daniel won the trivial and dad was not happy!