Merry Christmas, everybody! Time to catch y'all up on my adventures from the past couple of days.Jen and I flew to Sydney on the 7:15am flight from Melbourne on Christmas Eve day. Thanks to our house-mate Brendon, we enjoyed the luxury of a taxi ride to the airport instead of having to take public transit. (Brendon thought it was rather ridiculous that we were going to spend so long on the train/bus just to save $20, so he paid for our taxi! Thanks!). I must admit it was nice to have door-to-door service for once. Unsurprisingly, the airport was pretty crowded with folks trying to get away for the holidays. However, our flight wasn't fully booked and we had space to stretch out once the plane took off.
Carroll's husband Nick picked us up and took us to Ruth's house, where we ate breakfast and unpacked all the presents and goodies we brought. For this trip Jen and I each ended up bringing our big suitcases instead of just the little carry-ons, because we had so much stuff! Bill took one look at our bags as we entered the house and asked us if we were moving in. No such luck - but we did bring a ton of stuff for Jen's mom to take back to Canada with her when she comes to visit us in February! :-)
Next came a wonderful surprise - Ruth and Carroll had bought us boogie boards! When we got to the spare room where we'd be sleeping, we found them all wrapped up at the foot of our beds. (I mean really - boogie boards definitely fall into the category of presents that you can still identify even when they're wrapped up.) Both Jen and I were pretty much dancing around the house - Ruth and Carroll had originally told us that they had arranged to borrow some boogie boards for us to play on while we're here, and instead we have ones we can keep. Cool! They insisted that we unwrap them straight away. Unfortunately, it was too cold on Christmas Eve to even consider trying them out - we left that for Christmas Day.
Carroll had a doctor's appointment down near the beach at Cronulla, so she, Ruth, Jen and I all piled in the car and headed down together. While Carroll was at the doctor's, Ruth and Jen and I explored some of the shoreline near where we would be swimming later on. I really liked the rocks that made up one of the headlands at the end of the beach - clearly some parts of the rocks were softer than others and had eroded away in a cool pattern, leaving the surface pockmarked with craters. In many of the craters we found tiny pools of water, and they were full of life. I never seem to have as much time as I'd like to explore tidal pools though, and before I knew it we had to head back to Ruth's house again.
Jen and I went to the local Catholic church for the Christmas Eve mass. The church was a very modern building and didn't bear much resemblance to any other Catholic church I've been in. For one thing, the pews were arranged stadium style, with the rows behind being elevated so you could see over the rows in front. Also, the altar was square (not rectangular) and placed right in the centre of the church, not at one end - it was kinda like watching the service in a boxing ring! The band consisted of two electric guitars, an electric piano and a drum set! They also had a set of screens on which they projected a power-point type presentation throughout the service, including the words to all the hymns and prayers etc. But other than that, it was still church, and in some way it was comforting to be there. I am not a big church-goer any more; I find my spiritual connections in other ways, but there are still times when I feel that connection in church... and Christmas is definitely one of those times.
We spent the rest of Christmas Eve watching part two of "The Hogfather" a made-for-TV movie adaptation of Terry Pratchett's book. It was great... although I must admit I was amused just as much by watching Jen as by watching the show. She loves all of Pratchett's books but especially this one, and she kept giggling before the funny bits because she knew what was coming! We went to bed about 11:30 after a long and tiring day.
I woke up early on Christmas Day, probably around 6, with a secret mission to fulfill. Several weeks ago Jen's mom had mailed me her Christmas stocking, and I was under instructions to fill it with goodies and leave it by Jen's bed - secretly, if I could at all manage it. Well, after getting up to go to the bathroom at 6am, I thought that this would be the perfect time to put out the stocking. I made more noise than I'd hoped, rummaging through my suitcase to find the darn thing (and let me tell you, it was a bit of a challenge getting that thing packed in the first place without her knowing about it!). I thought I'd done a good job of being quiet, but in the end it turns out that Jen is better at faking being asleep than I am, and she knew what I was doing all along. What's so funny is, pretty much as soon as I'd settled back down to "sleep" for a while longer, Jen got up to use the bathroom and to "secretly" put out the stocking she'd put together for me! We gave up the farce of pretending to be asleep soon afterwards (well, actually I ended it by lobbing a pillow at her head) and we opened our stockings together. Ruth and Carroll had also put together stockings for us, and we opened them too... all the while cackling over the Aussie presents we got, like vegemite and sunscreen!
Here's where Ruth and Carroll's families' traditions began to differ significantly from what Jen and I are used to. We emerged for breakfast around 8am, kinda expecting that we would be opening the presents under the tree soon afterwards. Not so much! The tradition here is for the families to get together and enjoy their big meal - lunch, not dinner - first, and THEN open presents between the meal and dessert! Ha! Poor Jen... she was SOOOOOOOoooooo anticipating being able to open her presents, and in the end we didn't get to that part until almost 4! I know that my family would have gone bonkers too.
Instead, Carroll and her daughter Jenna took Jen and I to the beach, so we could cross that off our trip to-do list. All along, we've been pretty hell-bent that we would spend Christmas Day on the beach! Well, wouldn't you know it, Sydney is enjoying the coolest Christmas it's had for many years. Typically it's around 35C and really humid... well, today we'd be lucky if the temperature topped 22! Which is certainly a whole lot nicer than what we get in Canada at this time of the year, but let me tell you, it was a little nippy on the beach. But I'd had enough of being thwarted in our plans to enjoy the ocean. We were GOING IN - even if it was for 35 seconds of photos! So off we went.
I will admit that both Jen and I did more than a bit of squealing as we went into the water - those waves were COLD! But after the first big surf wave smacked us full in the face and we were soaked from head to toe, it wasn't that bad! We paddled our boards out into the surf and PLAYED. We could've stayed there all day. However, we were expected back at the house so that the families could begin lunch, and we hadn't put on sunscreen since we weren't expecting to be out there very long. So we played as much as we could, and then reluctantly headed back to the house. I had forgotten how terrible the ocean tastes. I feel like I spent a lot of our surfing time spitting out ocean water. Gotta work on that tomorrow, 'cause you can bet we're going back! Carroll took all our pics from the surfing and cobbled them together into a slideshow - which is on my facebook page should you care to look. All the photos from the day are in my "Christmas" album for you to enjoy too.
So after returning home and having our second showers of the day, it was time for Christmas lunch! Here, the big meal of the day is typically lunch, not dinner. Like at home, each family has their own traditional foods. We had roast beef, cold ham, pork loins, and slices of turkey breast. There was potato salad, a yummy concoction of cauliflower and cheese, beans, green salad, and roasted potatoes. We also had prawns, served chilled and in their shells and pork crackling, which is squares of cooked pig skin. MMMmmmmmmmm. What a feast! I understand that most years, all the dishes are served cold ('cause it's too darn hot out to even consider eating hot food!). It was a leisurely meal and we didn't finish eating until almost 3:30.
Then it was finally, FINALLY time for presents! I took a picture of the Christmas tree with all the presents under it. Christmas here in general is much more subdued than it is at home, and the emphasis is definitely on spending time with family and friends as opposed to on the number of presents one receives. Between all of Ruth's family, Carroll's family, and me and Jen, there were actually more people at the party today than we have in my family back home. The pile of presents, conversely, was only about a tenth of the size of what I am used to. I loved it.
Jen and I had brought the parcels we'd received in the mail from our friends and family back home, as well as the presents we'd bought each other. (Yes, we're both still waiting for parcels to arrive... hopefully they'll be in Melbourne when we get back from our January travels.) My brother, Dave, and his wife, Carly, gave me a beautiful stone and silver necklace. Cat mailed me a really cool crocheted fishy hat and some yummy gingerbread cookies (which miraculously did make it through quarantine). From her friend Dan's mom, Jen got a couple of cool books and a CD. I gave Jen a t-shirt from our trampoline club, a necklace, and a book. She got me two fish hangings for my walls that are really beautiful. Carroll and Ruth gave us presents too - we got biscuits, tea mugs, and Aussie calendars, and of course some chocolate. In return, we'd made CD's for the two of them - compilations of Canadian music and some fun music for them to play for their Guides. We'd also made tins of Jen's famous cookies for each of their families. Really, everything was wonderful!
For dessert we sampled real plum pudding. It had been marinated in port (I think) and set ablaze! As the pieces of pudding were handed out, Ruth's son Alan was sneakily sliding coins into each person's serving, before Ruth poured cream over top. I had forgotten about the tradition of including money in the pudding, and was kinda glad that Jen found her coin - so I knew to look for one in mine!
By this time it was well after 7pm and we needed some fresh air, so Jen and I went for a walk around the neighbourhood to see the Christmas lights. In our neighbourhood in Melbourne, very few houses were lit up, but here it was a whole different story! It still looks a little funny without the snow, but we sure saw a number of beautiful light displays as we wandered around the streets. I really liked the one of Santa, riding in a ute (like a pickup truck but not quite), being pulled along by six kangaroos. Ha ha!
When we returned to the house, we discovered that everyone still there had just finished tucking into the leftovers from lunch! Jen and I were pretty much stuffed already, but I managed to find the room to finish off the rest of the prawns and to eat a little bit of salad. And then before we knew it, it was time to clean up and send everyone on their way home!
It was a truly wonderful day, and I enjoyed every minute of it. My apologies to all my friends who were hoping/expecting to get bragging text messages from me today, about being on the beach and all - our cell phone service provider, Vodaphone, had network problems pretty much all day long. We could receive calls but not send them, nor could we send text messages. (According to a number of the folks at the party today, Vodaphone is apparently a little notorious for having this sort of problem on high-volume call days like Christmas. Ah well!) We'll try again tomorrow. So let me take this opportunity to wish you all again a very merry Christmas! I hope that however you are celebrating, you are surrounded by family and friends, and enjoying everything the holidays brings you.
