Our First Christmas in Oz

 

  John and I just moved to Australia 4 months ago. Despite the ever cleverly masked hints from our families that they would miss us dearly on Christmas, we decided to stay in Australia for the holidays.

    Secretly, I wonder if our families weren't thrilled to have a holiday off from our demands to carry on traditions from childhood.  Some of which include making way too many cookies, candies, and cake rolls. John's family has hot chocolate in Santa mugs on Christmas eve. His parents have done a wonderful job of having enough mugs for the growing family. This means, however, that through out the year, a good number of their daily mugs are Christmas related. My mom made each one of us kids appliquéd stockings, which I have recently learned consume your free time. We tried our best to keep some of these traditions alive to preserve the Christmas spirit and embrace the other's family which we have been invited into.

    It was decided that the best way to enjoy our holiday and try to embrace the warm weather in December was to take a trip. We left on Saturday, December 22nd, and came back on Sunday, December 29th. This adventure included rock climbing over the ocean at Point Perpendicular, hanging out on the beach in Jervis Bay, seeing kangaroos, museum visits, eating, driving, hiking, staying at two hotels and a bed & breakfast... There may have been a partridge in a pair tree in there somewhere.

    The photos from the trip are fantastic and so I decided to let this post be a broad overview of the trip highlights. I will leave the specifics of each days adventures for another post. Enjoy!

We started our trip with a stop at the Royal National Park just south of Sydney:

We continued on leisurely making our way south to Nowra, where we spent our first night in a hotel. This way we could have an early start on Sunday for climbing at Point Perpendicular.

Point Perpendicular is used by the Australian Navy as a weapons range. These signs were every few feet along the road. 

My first Kangaroo caught on camera!! If he didn't pay attention to all of the signs, why should we?

John is checking out the cliff side for our first climb.

Here we are taking a look at our first climb for the day.

The view at Point Perpendicular.

 Climbing at Point Perpendicular was spectacular! Although, it was torture to hear the waves crash beneath us when we couldn't jump in the water. We decided to take the afternoon off, check into our bed & breakfast and hit the beach. Unfortunately, the camera got left at home because I am terrified of getting sand in it.
   Christmas eve, we went to the beach once again and tried a little boogie boarding. We had great weather all morning. By the time we got back to the hotel for some relaxation time, it was pouring rain. The cold front made it possible for us to enjoy hot chocolate on the porch.

We pretended that the mugs were Santa mugs.

    Pretty soon, it was Christmas morning! Despite my constant pleas, John made me wait until Christmas to open presents. We had gotten a big box from his parents and had a few things for each other too.

We are incredibly privileged to live in a time where packages can be sent from our families in the US and make it to us in Oz. We definitely felt the love of our families this Christmas.

This is John's new stocking and my attempt to keep my family's traditions alive.  I have no idea how my Mom made five of these! 

Woo! Climbing backpack.

Yay! Yarn for a new sweater.

As soon as we finished opening presents, John was ready to climb again! However, we hadn't yet had breakfast. Yes, we woke up around 6:30am to open Christmas presents, without an alarm. How old are we? We relaxed for a while. I'm glad we did because the B&B owners made a wonderful breakfast complete with crackers (an English tradition) and a dressed up dog!

This is Sundae, the resident dog of the B&B

   After a quick breakfast, we headed out once more to Point Perpendicular for an afternoon of climbing. It was a bit windy for my taste, so John mainly climbed and I belayed.

We brought all of John's new toys. He had so much fun with his new GoPro Hero.

John got to climb the first established climb at Point Perpendicular. We then headed out to the beach to enjoy a picnic of fruit, cheese and crackers.

We spotted another kangaroo! We were able to get a few feet away before he hopped off. 

One more night was spent at the B&B and then we made our way to Canberra. We made it to one more beach on the way, the famous Pebbly Beach.

Finally, we had our fill of beaches and made our way to Canberra. The next few days were spent seeing museums and capitol buildings.

John is standing near the current capitol building with the old capitol building in the background of this photo.

John was gracious enough to spend a few hours with me sitting in an installation by James Turrell at the National Art Gallery.

A view of the skyspace and reflection of the sun on the interior of the dome.

Ernie Gold's bicycle is at the National Museum. He became famous in the 1950's for his cross country rides. By the way, he was in his 70's when he began his adventures.

This is a Tasmanian Bark Canoe. Made from tree bark, this modern rendition of a 19th century aboriginal boat could hold up to 6 men. 

 After seven days, we were all tuckered out and ready to go home. The three hour ride was smooth and uneventful. Somehow, I forgot that you can still get sunburn from the car! My left arm is a little red. At home, we were greeted by boxes that were delivered while we were gone. Our second Christmas soon began.

With all his new gear, John set our early this morning to go climbing. Let me remind you, we got back yesterday!! Then again, I can't blame him. I stayed home to do school work. This included painting with my new Guerrilla Painter Box, knitting, and opening my sewing machine. We couldn't have planned a better holiday in Australia. However, we are looking forward to the day when we can share our new home with our family and friends in person. One last thing that I must mention is how fun it is to receive holiday cards from our friends and family in the mail (via both traditional post and e-mail). Thanks for thinking of us.

Happy Holidays! 

Cheers,
Carrie

IMPORTANT! Movies Are Different in Australia

This is a courtesy for those who don't want to be blind-sided by change. 

 John and I were channel surfing the other day and saw that a classic was on, Airplane! We settled right in and decided to watch it. Only, something was odd. The TV guide seemed to want to tell us we were watching a movie called Flying High. We didn't pay much attention to it, sometimes the guide is wrong. It wasn't until a commercial break that we got worried. One of the channel advertisements said something about how Flying High would be right back. No way folks!

For the record, Flying High is a terrible title for this movie. It is and always will be Airplane. Flying High doesn't even fit on the cover design.



Another disappointment came when I sat down for the time-honored tradition of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. John gave me the DVD as an early Christmas present. It was wonderful. One thing was wrong though, one of the songs was cut out of the movie. You know the annoying one. The one we all fast-forwarded through. Let me refresh your memory:

I'm not sure if I want to thank Australians for this one or be mad, because it's not exactly the same as it was when I was a kid.


The final and most damaging movie moment was last night. My roommate let me take some movies off of his hard drive. The Lion King was one of those movies, cool roommate points for him. So, I put it on while I was falling asleep. Then this happened:

'The Morning Report'! Really, that was a bad idea. Now I know this particular addition isn't Australians fault. The song was performed in the live version and included in the 2002 IMAX production. Either which way, the moral of the story is that classics shouldn't be messed with. These movies are full of flaws (I know this now), but they evoke a child-like nostalgia for a time when things weren't so complicated. I suppose I can adjust. I just hope this helps you get through similar traumatic experiences. I'm here for you.

Today I Cannot Complain

      Why you ask? Because, I got to eat a bagel and cream cheese! As if that's not enough good news, we also had a visit from the delivery man with our new furniture. You will all tell me that bagels are not a big deal and that you could do with out them. I would disagree. A bagel and cream cheese, and sometimes other toppings, is a wonderful morning hiatus from the usual granola and yogurt. So wonderful in fact that I have scoured grocery stores and bakeries in the greater Windsor/Richmond area. I have heard rumors from other expats about their successful bagel hunting excursions. However like any true treasure hunters, these people have politely excluded information regarding their treasure map when sharing such stories. 

Alas, I have beaten the system... Or perhaps the system has beaten me. I spent the better part of today making my own bagels.

I am not one for uniformity and perfection.

After a number of hours slaving over a hot stove, a.k.a doing schoolwork while the dough rose, I sat down to enjoy one of my creations. Better still, I had a new (to us) lounge set to relax on.

Yes, I think my mother and father might have owned a similarly patterned something in the 70's. Also, I'm not sure whether John actually likes the color or if he was just humoring me because I was so excited in the resale shop that I could barely sit down long enough to see if the couch was comfy. I hope he really does like the new addition to our house/room because these three babies are moving with us wherever we go!

Aren't they spectacular?

     Now upward and onward. I want to eat bagels for dinner, supper, dessert, midnight snack, breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, and afternoon tea. What happened to my self control? I don't have enough bagels for this. 

     No matter what time it is, you have my permission to go enjoy a bagel. 

 Unrelated Side Note: 

Take a look at the recipe I made for Thanksgiving dinner. It was such a tasty salad. Thanks 101Cookbooks.

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/hazelnut-chard-ravioli-salad-recipe.html