Last night we held our house Christmas dinner. This marked the last time that all of my current house-mates would be together, so it was a fun but somewhat sad evening, if that makes any sense. Today we said goodbye to Irene, who has headed to Tasmania to spend the summer holiday with her boyfriend - and with any luck, she'll find work there and be able to stay! Irene, I wish you all the best.We also had a new guy move into our house yesterday, just in time for the party! His name is Olivier and he's on the far right of this photo. Olivier is from France and has been traveling around Australia for most of the last 8 months! He's come to Melbourne to find work for the next few months before he has to head back to France. Seems like arriving at "Balmy Lodge" just in time for a party is becoming a bit of a tradition! So we dragged him down to enjoy dinner with the rest of us.
The dinner itself was wonderful. Everyone contributed something. I made my (apparently famous) seven layer dip and also garlic mashed potatoes. Jen made trifle. Irene was in charge of the turkey, along with Yo, but he had to work at the last minute so Jen and I helped her to wash and prepare the bird. You know, I think that was the first time I've ever de-gibleted a turkey? EEEEW. The giblets weren't all nicely pre-packaged in a bag in the cavity; I had to do some, ah, rummaging around inside. Yummy. I also helped to stuff the bird. It was absolutely delicious.
Our other house-mates also contributed to the meal. Julianna made pigs in a blanket (pieces of sausage wrapped in bacon) and roasted parsnips, Brendon brought a pavlova (apparently a signature Aussie dessert, and MAN was it good). Yo helped make the veggie-friendly stuffing. Suzanna and Marya, who were unable to help with dinner prep as they were out all day, treated us all to a fantastic breakfast this morning instead. More on that later. It was just a wonderful evening. We pulled Christmas crackers and wore silly hats on our heads. Wine flowed freely but people were enjoying it, not just getting drunk.
After dinner was over and everything was cleaned up, we all squished ourselves into the living room to watch "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" (the original, of course, not the Jim Carey version!). It was funny - we actually had more people than couch spots for a while! And although the show was on, we were all more interested in talking to each other than watching the show! Brendon showed us how to do some silly drinking games (which Jen and I just sat back and laughed at; one of the things I love so much about this house is that we are not ostracised for being non-drinkers - we were just asked to shoot the video footage instead! Ha ha!)
A number of us retired to the upstairs common room to watch "Home Alone" (which, for some reason, has become THE Christmas movie to watch here) when it was obvious that the party in the living room wasn't going to be winding down any time soon. Unfortunately, I had a pretty wicked headache that had been slowly building all evening, so although I did genuinely try to stay up for the movie, I had to give up after about an hour and go to bed.
This morning, Suze and Maria hosted a champagne Christmas breakfast for all of us, and they served wentelteefjes, which are a Dutch version of what we know as French toast. So once again we all gathered together and had a leisurely breakfast. The weather both last night and today has been absolutely horrid, so unfortunately we weren't able to enjoy any of this wonderful food outside.
With the continuing downpour of rain all day long, pretty much everyone decided that today would be a good day for hibernating indoors. The Dutch girls have gotten Jen and I hooked on the TV show "Kyle XY". So far we've watched four episodes today, and as soon as I'm done this blog I'm heading downstairs again so we can watch another one, or two, or three...
One more day to go before our big trip starts! Jen and I tried to do some packing this afternoon but it proved difficult without having done the laundry - which we couldn't do because of the weather. Gah. So tomorrow's gonna be a busy day, with all the things we have to get done before we go. Jen's shocked at how much stuff we're taking with us to Sydney - we're each taking a big suitcase (we usually do our travels with just our carry-ons)! But between the gifts, parcels, and goodies we're taking for Christmas, the extra clothes etc. we're taking to Ruth's for storage until we can ship it all home, and our actual travel stuff, there was just no other way!
