PWF/Christmas/New Year
Well, the holidays are almost officially over for me. I don't go back to work until Thursday the 8th, thanks to the audit office or the government or whoever it was that decided that I needed two full weeks of vacation!
Australian Christmas. It was strange to have yet another warm Christmas. Christmas in Lima wasn't exactly warm last year, but same idea. This year I spent Christmas in shorts and a tank top and yes, it was weird. Marcus and I worked for half a day on Christmas eve (evil office dictators that decided we needed to work on Christmas eve I am not a fan of!). Anyhew, we met at the train station and began our three hour train ride up north. It's still funny to be one of those people who travels everywhere by train since my main mode of transport for almost my entire life was a car. Driving, driving, all the time, and although I miss being able to pick up my car and drive to the grocery store at any hour of the day or night (and the 24 hour grocery stores) and I miss a spontaneous drive over to friends' houses (and not having to worry about tolls for bridges and tunnels and just plain old leaving the city). But trains certainly have their charms--the occasional adorable train station, scenic routes that I can look at because I'm not driving, being able to read during the trip, the fact that I don't have to make car payments or pay for gas, insurance, or parking. Those parts I love.
Anyway, we had a nice little train ride, looked out the window a fair bit, made progress on our books (I just finished reading "Cloudstreet" by Tim Winston which is apparently a modern Australian classic, though it doesn't have much of a plot and is much more like "100 Years of Solitude" though less fantastical and much, much slower paced) and ate little Cadbury chocolate bars. We got picked up from the train station by Marcus's stepdad, Geoff, in his work rig and he even turned on the flashing yellow lights for us. It gave me a smile. :) And so Christmas commenced. On Christmas morning we woke up and Marcus and I lazed around a bit while everyone else got showered and ready for the big day...I'm so used to staying in my pajamas for all of Christmas day, I don't understand this "dressing up" business. I love being lazy on Christmas! I'm lucky if I actually get out of my pajamas at some point during the day. But I did manage to get ready in the late morning and changed into shorts and a tank top.
Now the Montana family doesn't do stockings, they do Christmas bags. Imagine the biggest gift bag you've ever seen, and then double it and you have a pretty good idea of what the boys' Christmas bags look like. Marcus's bag goes up to my mid-thigh and it was pretty much full of all kinds of gear, though a lot of it was actually useful stuff: t-shirts, shampoo and conditioner, socks and underwear, hoodies, books, DVDs, a nail grooming set...the list goes on and on, that thing was just full! And each of the boys' bags pretty much mirrored each other. We gals got our own little bags full of socks, tank tops, a funny bathroom rug set, a cookbook, and some other things that have slipped my mind. There was a bit of bumbling about for a few hours between the bags and the regular Chrissie pressies (there they go shortening everything again) and I got to enjoy a bit of the local fauna close-hand. There are these little birds that are a bit bigger than parakeets, but with the same beautiful colors, maybe more. I think they're called florakeets or rozelles? I'm not sure, nobody could really make up their minds what they were, but it was a beautiful little bird and apparently they like to eat apples. Two birds flew and landed on the ledge of our patio, so Geoff gave me some apple pieces to take out to them. I walked out and was maybe a foot away from them and I set the apple pieces down, and Marcus sat out on the patio drinking our tea and coffee just watching these beautiful little birds go nuts on their apple pieces. It was so weird, there should be snow and coldness on Christmas, but instead I was sitting outside in summer gear, feeding birds. That's definitely a first.
Eventually we got around to the Christmas presents, and the family went through handing out the presents one by one, everyone watching each person open their presents, oohing and ahing, and then continuing. It took us two hours to get through all of the present opening! Ugh, I felt like a bit of a present glutton, but next year, next year, I will hopefully be able to not do all that present business. Their house is just a short walk away from the piers where you can take dolphin and whale watching boat tours, so hopefully next year we can get everyone together for something like that instead. Maybe one day Christmas won't be focused on presents and shopping and santa claus and we'll be able to relax and spend quality time with family instead. Mmm, yes, I like that idea very much.
Now we move on to Christmas lunch which began with prawns. Seafood on Christmas day is a norm here which makes sense since it's summer time and you don't want a lot of heavy food on Christmas, but there was also turkey and ham. And lamb. And a cheesy veggie dish and salad and far too much food, which seems quite right. Then for dessert there was a Christmas pudding, which isn't actually pudding at all, but a big fruitcake concoction that has all kinds of dried fruit in it and rum and maybe sherry and Marcus's mom began this "pudding production" about a month before Christmas, when whe got the dough all prepared in a giant bowl that was pretty much the size of a laundry basket, then she wrapped it in muslin and boiled it. Then apparently you let it set for a month and then it's ready? I'm not sure how all of this works, but the end is a small mountain of fruitcake. There was also custard, but I always thought custard was a solid sort of gelatin but this was a thick liquid that came out of a milk jug! A bit frightening...and then last but not least we had trifle, which was gelatinous with fruit stuck in it and some cake at the bottom. I enjoyed the novelty of it all (though I was told that I had a somewhat horrified look on my face), but I made up for it later with some chocolate-eating.
That pretty much wraps it up for Christmas, though, since the rest of the day was a non-event. The boys went and played some tennis, there was a bit of family friction over nothing important, some movie-watching and more eating...all like any other Christmas. The rest of our time there was spent going to the beach, swimming in the ocean, riding bikes from one bay to another, reading, and we also took a tour of the Hunter Valley, a big wine-making region. It's funny, for a girl who doesn't much like wine, I sure have gone on a lot of wine tours! That was a fun day. It started off sunny, but then in our 1.5 hour busride to the valley, storm clouds rapidly made their way in. Smart move, Tina, wearing a little sun dress...yikes. So we looked out the window, dozed off a bit, listened to our tour guide, Graham, tell us about the local fauna, pointing out different kinds of trees, talking about the agriculture. The most interesting thing he told us is that Australia actually exports their sand. Did you know that Australian sand is found on Hawaiian beaches? I thought that was a fun fact. Anyhew, we went on our tour with one Aussie, two gals from Sweden, and another woman, a bit too talkative, who called herself "Scozzie" (Scottish and Aussie, which Australians pronounce "Ozzie"). As soon as we arrived to our first winery, the sun broke out and we spent our morning in some lovely sunshine.
We toured five or six wineries and two cheese places (which I loved!). We went to a place called The Smelly Cheese Shop which was fantastic! All of the cheese was fresh and delicious. We got to try five or six of their cheeses and it was my favorite part of the tour. Then I went and bought some seriously overpriced chocolates and enjoyed every one of them. By the time we went to lunch, though, the storm clouds had rolled in and blocked out all of the sun. We ordered our lunch and sat by a window watching the rain come down...harder...and harder...and then there was lightning and thunder and even hail. Graham decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to drive the tour bus in that weather, so we each went off to kill time in our own way. Marcus watched cricket, his brother Nathan and Nathan's fiancee Tina went and gambled in the casino area, and I just sat next to the entrance of the building and watched the storm. Lovely storm! I swear one bolt of lightning struck within a few hundred meters of the building because I saw the flash and the thunder followed immediately after, shaking our whole building. I jumped! (And loved it.) Anyhew, the storm eventually passed, though we were left with the clouds for the rest of the day. 
So much for nice wine touring weather. But we enjoyed the rest of the day and bought some wine and champagne for New Year's.
We left the next day to come back to Sydney after a family outing to one of the tasty fish and chips places on the pier. Packing up Nathan's car was a bit of a fiasco, but we got mostly everything in. Marcus and I squeezed into about half of the back seat with a mountain of stuff next to us. It was cozy. :) Although Nelson Bay was lovely, we were happy to get home and to be in our own space, to be able to put our things away (which we still haven't done), and to sleep in our own bed and get up whenever we wanted to. Mmm, it is nice to be home!
For New Year's, we headed over to the house of a friend of Nathan. He lives in a nice little area (in a $1.5 million townhouse) right next to a park that has a great view of the harbour bridge. So we ate and drank with good company and a little before 9:00 we made our way down to the park and scored a perfect spot where we could see the whole bridge. It was pretty great. The earlier kids' fireworks went off and we were lucky enough to have two sets of fireworks--the ones at a bit of a distance over the bridge, and then another set that was literally right behind us so we got quite a show. Then three hours were passed, talking, wandering (I got lost for about 10 minutes after which I did that handy retracing of the steps and found my way back to the group!) and then we got to watch yet another set of fireworks.
The coolest thing about those fireworks was that at the end, fireworks were released in tandem from the cross-sections at the top of the bridge. It looked really cool!
Australian Christmas. It was strange to have yet another warm Christmas. Christmas in Lima wasn't exactly warm last year, but same idea. This year I spent Christmas in shorts and a tank top and yes, it was weird. Marcus and I worked for half a day on Christmas eve (evil office dictators that decided we needed to work on Christmas eve I am not a fan of!). Anyhew, we met at the train station and began our three hour train ride up north. It's still funny to be one of those people who travels everywhere by train since my main mode of transport for almost my entire life was a car. Driving, driving, all the time, and although I miss being able to pick up my car and drive to the grocery store at any hour of the day or night (and the 24 hour grocery stores) and I miss a spontaneous drive over to friends' houses (and not having to worry about tolls for bridges and tunnels and just plain old leaving the city). But trains certainly have their charms--the occasional adorable train station, scenic routes that I can look at because I'm not driving, being able to read during the trip, the fact that I don't have to make car payments or pay for gas, insurance, or parking. Those parts I love.
Anyway, we had a nice little train ride, looked out the window a fair bit, made progress on our books (I just finished reading "Cloudstreet" by Tim Winston which is apparently a modern Australian classic, though it doesn't have much of a plot and is much more like "100 Years of Solitude" though less fantastical and much, much slower paced) and ate little Cadbury chocolate bars. We got picked up from the train station by Marcus's stepdad, Geoff, in his work rig and he even turned on the flashing yellow lights for us. It gave me a smile. :) And so Christmas commenced. On Christmas morning we woke up and Marcus and I lazed around a bit while everyone else got showered and ready for the big day...I'm so used to staying in my pajamas for all of Christmas day, I don't understand this "dressing up" business. I love being lazy on Christmas! I'm lucky if I actually get out of my pajamas at some point during the day. But I did manage to get ready in the late morning and changed into shorts and a tank top.
Now the Montana family doesn't do stockings, they do Christmas bags. Imagine the biggest gift bag you've ever seen, and then double it and you have a pretty good idea of what the boys' Christmas bags look like. Marcus's bag goes up to my mid-thigh and it was pretty much full of all kinds of gear, though a lot of it was actually useful stuff: t-shirts, shampoo and conditioner, socks and underwear, hoodies, books, DVDs, a nail grooming set...the list goes on and on, that thing was just full! And each of the boys' bags pretty much mirrored each other. We gals got our own little bags full of socks, tank tops, a funny bathroom rug set, a cookbook, and some other things that have slipped my mind. There was a bit of bumbling about for a few hours between the bags and the regular Chrissie pressies (there they go shortening everything again) and I got to enjoy a bit of the local fauna close-hand. There are these little birds that are a bit bigger than parakeets, but with the same beautiful colors, maybe more. I think they're called florakeets or rozelles? I'm not sure, nobody could really make up their minds what they were, but it was a beautiful little bird and apparently they like to eat apples. Two birds flew and landed on the ledge of our patio, so Geoff gave me some apple pieces to take out to them. I walked out and was maybe a foot away from them and I set the apple pieces down, and Marcus sat out on the patio drinking our tea and coffee just watching these beautiful little birds go nuts on their apple pieces. It was so weird, there should be snow and coldness on Christmas, but instead I was sitting outside in summer gear, feeding birds. That's definitely a first.
Eventually we got around to the Christmas presents, and the family went through handing out the presents one by one, everyone watching each person open their presents, oohing and ahing, and then continuing. It took us two hours to get through all of the present opening! Ugh, I felt like a bit of a present glutton, but next year, next year, I will hopefully be able to not do all that present business. Their house is just a short walk away from the piers where you can take dolphin and whale watching boat tours, so hopefully next year we can get everyone together for something like that instead. Maybe one day Christmas won't be focused on presents and shopping and santa claus and we'll be able to relax and spend quality time with family instead. Mmm, yes, I like that idea very much.
Now we move on to Christmas lunch which began with prawns. Seafood on Christmas day is a norm here which makes sense since it's summer time and you don't want a lot of heavy food on Christmas, but there was also turkey and ham. And lamb. And a cheesy veggie dish and salad and far too much food, which seems quite right. Then for dessert there was a Christmas pudding, which isn't actually pudding at all, but a big fruitcake concoction that has all kinds of dried fruit in it and rum and maybe sherry and Marcus's mom began this "pudding production" about a month before Christmas, when whe got the dough all prepared in a giant bowl that was pretty much the size of a laundry basket, then she wrapped it in muslin and boiled it. Then apparently you let it set for a month and then it's ready? I'm not sure how all of this works, but the end is a small mountain of fruitcake. There was also custard, but I always thought custard was a solid sort of gelatin but this was a thick liquid that came out of a milk jug! A bit frightening...and then last but not least we had trifle, which was gelatinous with fruit stuck in it and some cake at the bottom. I enjoyed the novelty of it all (though I was told that I had a somewhat horrified look on my face), but I made up for it later with some chocolate-eating.
That pretty much wraps it up for Christmas, though, since the rest of the day was a non-event. The boys went and played some tennis, there was a bit of family friction over nothing important, some movie-watching and more eating...all like any other Christmas. The rest of our time there was spent going to the beach, swimming in the ocean, riding bikes from one bay to another, reading, and we also took a tour of the Hunter Valley, a big wine-making region. It's funny, for a girl who doesn't much like wine, I sure have gone on a lot of wine tours! That was a fun day. It started off sunny, but then in our 1.5 hour busride to the valley, storm clouds rapidly made their way in. Smart move, Tina, wearing a little sun dress...yikes. So we looked out the window, dozed off a bit, listened to our tour guide, Graham, tell us about the local fauna, pointing out different kinds of trees, talking about the agriculture. The most interesting thing he told us is that Australia actually exports their sand. Did you know that Australian sand is found on Hawaiian beaches? I thought that was a fun fact. Anyhew, we went on our tour with one Aussie, two gals from Sweden, and another woman, a bit too talkative, who called herself "Scozzie" (Scottish and Aussie, which Australians pronounce "Ozzie"). As soon as we arrived to our first winery, the sun broke out and we spent our morning in some lovely sunshine.
We toured five or six wineries and two cheese places (which I loved!). We went to a place called The Smelly Cheese Shop which was fantastic! All of the cheese was fresh and delicious. We got to try five or six of their cheeses and it was my favorite part of the tour. Then I went and bought some seriously overpriced chocolates and enjoyed every one of them. By the time we went to lunch, though, the storm clouds had rolled in and blocked out all of the sun. We ordered our lunch and sat by a window watching the rain come down...harder...and harder...and then there was lightning and thunder and even hail. Graham decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to drive the tour bus in that weather, so we each went off to kill time in our own way. Marcus watched cricket, his brother Nathan and Nathan's fiancee Tina went and gambled in the casino area, and I just sat next to the entrance of the building and watched the storm. Lovely storm! I swear one bolt of lightning struck within a few hundred meters of the building because I saw the flash and the thunder followed immediately after, shaking our whole building. I jumped! (And loved it.) Anyhew, the storm eventually passed, though we were left with the clouds for the rest of the day. So much for nice wine touring weather. But we enjoyed the rest of the day and bought some wine and champagne for New Year's.We left the next day to come back to Sydney after a family outing to one of the tasty fish and chips places on the pier. Packing up Nathan's car was a bit of a fiasco, but we got mostly everything in. Marcus and I squeezed into about half of the back seat with a mountain of stuff next to us. It was cozy. :) Although Nelson Bay was lovely, we were happy to get home and to be in our own space, to be able to put our things away (which we still haven't done), and to sleep in our own bed and get up whenever we wanted to. Mmm, it is nice to be home!
For New Year's, we headed over to the house of a friend of Nathan. He lives in a nice little area (in a $1.5 million townhouse) right next to a park that has a great view of the harbour bridge. So we ate and drank with good company and a little before 9:00 we made our way down to the park and scored a perfect spot where we could see the whole bridge. It was pretty great. The earlier kids' fireworks went off and we were lucky enough to have two sets of fireworks--the ones at a bit of a distance over the bridge, and then another set that was literally right behind us so we got quite a show. Then three hours were passed, talking, wandering (I got lost for about 10 minutes after which I did that handy retracing of the steps and found my way back to the group!) and then we got to watch yet another set of fireworks.
The coolest thing about those fireworks was that at the end, fireworks were released in tandem from the cross-sections at the top of the bridge. It looked really cool!Then there were two uncool parts of our night. The first (and most uncool) part was this father-daughter pair that emerged into our group. The daughter was a friend of our hostess and she seemed nice enough. She had left her keys at the hostess's house earlier that evening. Well, Marcus and I had gone with a few other people to retrieve some blankets (it was a bit chilly out!) from the house and we ran into this lady and her father who had come to get her keys. We all ended up walking back to our fireworks-watching site and somehow I ended up in conversation with the dad. He seemed nice enough, rambling on about having relocated to Australia, how he's a jeweler, blah, blah, blah. Then he made an inappropriate remark about some party he'd had with his friends and how all they needed were a few naked young dancers to complete the Romanesque scene. Ooooooookay, so I changed the subject and looked over at Marcus who came over to join us. Marcus and I made our break from his company at that point. We watched him mac on our hostess a bit who was either too drunk or too nonchalant to pay any attention to it. His body language could not have spoken more clearly and I started thinking, Ew, dirty old man. Then we saw his daughter get money from him to go buy herself an ice cream cone. Strange. This lady was in her 40's, and was asking her dad for money for ice cream? Granted, she did seem quite naive and sheltered, but come on. What really got me was when the fireworks started going off. He put his hand around her waist, fine, and she held his hand behind her back, also fine. What wasn't fine, was when their hands started lowering down from the waist to an inappropriate place. Maybe it was borderline inappropriate, but it was not okay. I made eyes with Marcus--he noticed. I made eyes with another girl in our party--she noticed, smiled, and shrugged it off. Nathan noticed and saw the pissed off look in my eyes and told me to forget about it. There was a bad feeling about them, and it really put me off. Marcus literally stood in front of me, blocking them from my view, in an attempt to take it off my mind but it kind of ruined my night. We left around 4:00 and walked back to our abode for the evening and watched Happy Feet for a while. That made me feel better. :)
The rest of our vacation was pretty much spent in trying to figure out what to do. We played tennis one afternoon, watched half of Heroes season two, went to dinner with the brothers and girlfriends another night, a friend's birthday bbq another day...oh yeah, and then there's the fact that our house is sytematically falling apart. :) Within the course of a few days, three or four lightbulbs all went out. When we tried to replace the lightbulb in the bathroom, the pieces that hold the lightbulb in literally broke to pieces. Then that night when we were closing our curtains before going to sleep, one of the wall fixtures that holds the curtain rod broke. Then when we tried fixing that, the wooden holder broke again (so we glued it all) and when we nailed it back into the wall, the wall just crumbled behind it. I swear, the people that made this house just made all of the shortcuts they possibly could when they converted it from a shop to a rental house. Get this--before we moved in, this house was an interior design shop. Ha! Interior design! Everything in this house is shoddy, from the cracks at the bottom of all the walls, the ceiling (there's one in the lounge room where sand is falling through), and the stairs, to the gaping holes at the sides of our windows and the downstairs bathroom that was probably part of the back patio (and does actually have double doors to the outdoor patio)...it's a work of art, this place...
Well, my friends, a happy 2009 to you! Who knows what this year has in store for us, but hopefully a lot of goodness!
Comments
Thanks for the update, love ya!