L & L Australian Adventures: December 2010

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Boxing Day

Boxing Day is celebrated on December 26^th in Australia and a few other countries. I have asked numerous Aussie’s, old and young to please explain what it is exactly and not one of them could give me a clear idea as to where it originated from. I’ve also looked online and found very different versions of what it is and why it is celebrated. Here are the basics and my take on what I’ve found out. Although it is called Boxing Day, there is no sport of boxing on this day, however, this is a big day to watch Cricket and the Sydney to Hobart Sailing Race. It’s also an extra holiday for everyone to get the day off. It is a holiday of British origin and has to do with giving presents to the less fortunate. Boxes of food, fruit, and gifts were also given to servants and tradespeople the day after Christmas as an expression of gratitude to those who worked for them. Gifts done up in “boxes” hence, Boxing Day. That’s all I’ve got for you on this for now, sorry! ;)

Luke and I woke up to a very rainy Boxing Day. We video chatted with my family, ate omelets for breakfast again, and hurried to catch a ferry. Luke got us a booking on the “Sydney Sundancer,” a 55 foot sailboat that does Harbour cruises. So we took a ferry by our apartment to another ferry wharf and then went on to Rose Bay to get picked up (collected) by the sailboat. On Boxing Day they do a cruise to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. The man and his wife who own the boat have been doing this for 20 years so they also have preferential viewing so we always had a front row spot. We compared the chaos to boating on the 4^th of July- there’s too many boats, too close to one another, in very rocky, busy water! It was great excitement for us!!! Then we followed the fleet for a short distance before going over to a cove to anchor and have a delicious lunch and some great entertainment from an American guy who has lived in Australia for the past 26 years.

Those of you who know us well, know that we love boating and being on the water rain or shine doesn’t bother us at all! The weather turned out to be perfect- warm and sunny making us wish we had brought our suits! Luke and I were definitely the youngest people on the boat which had about 35 passengers. We had a great time. For the whole 6 hours they served snacks, beer, wine, and champagne, as well as that beautiful lunch! As I mentioned in an earlier blog, they love their champagne over here…I believe I was the only female drinking a beer…oh well, I don’t think I would’ve made it very long drinking wine and champagne all day long like those ladies! We did take our wedding koozies (a.k.a. stubby holders) with us though.

We met so many great people and even a couple from Texas. The wife actually grew up in KC and went to Pembroke Hill! Very small world!!! The couple we sat next to was from Bisbane and were so great the whole day. They invited us up for a visit and we are hoping to take them up on their offer soon. She also gave us a good lesson on how to correctly peel our prawns in 3 steps. We’re practicing so the ones with eyes aren’t so intimidating to try to eat!

It was a very fun day and we’re so glad we got to have this experience. It was so nice to be on the water, meet some new people, and finally be able to truly relax. Luke has had Monday and Tuesday off this week, as well. It has been the best! He hasn’t even mentioned work which has been nice for both of us. We have been able to get a lot accomplished with our new apartment without worrying about other things at the same time finally. Once we get more settled and have things put away we’ll post more pictures.

We hope you all have enjoyed your Christmas celebrations as much as we did and are looking forward to what 2011 has to bring. I thought 2010 was pretty eventful for us…I guess we’ll see! J

Waiting to board the "Sydney Sundancer"

"Sydney Sundancer"

Happy Boxing Day to us!

The chaos!!

"And they're off!" The cannon was shot and the race began!

More of the chaos!!

A really cool scene

Lunch- bread, dips, salads, turkey, ham, oysters, prawns, beef, and more!

The calm cove

Our entertainment

"We Wish You a Merry Christmas!"

“We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is the song I heard when I answered my phone when it rang at 3:00 a.m. Christmas morning! The Freeman’s wanted to be the first to say Merry Christmas and we got a song at the same time. J We were a little disoriented with being in a new place and I wasn’t expecting a call from the US, but it was a very nice surprise!

We decided to spend the night at our new apartment for the first time on Christmas Eve since our mattress, bed, and couch had been delivered. We went to the grocery store to get things we would need for the next several days. Many restaurants, cafes, and several stores close down from before Christmas to anywhere from January 5-14. Without a fridge at our new place we had to be creative! I pretended we were going to be camping. J

With this being our first Christmas as a married couple we decided to start some traditions. So first we bought things for Luke to make omelets for breakfast on Christmas morning. We wanted to have a traditional Aussie Christmas dinner so we bought prawns (shrimp) and fresh fruit and veggies. We opted for the prawns that were ready to eat instead of doing our own peeling with the full ones with their eyes still on! We were trying to make things as easy as possible. So we went to our temporary apartment and I cut up all of the things we needed for the next day, made a pasta salad, and got everything ready for Christmas dinner. We filled our cooler with only our breakfast items and headed back to the new apartment. We had a full taxi with all of our food, more things to move over, and the Christmas tree. Yep, we took the Christmas tree over to the new place in a taxi!! I left on the lights but had to take off all the ornaments but luckily it didn't take as long to redecorate once we got to our new place.

Luke surprised me with a big, beautiful bouquet of flowers to brighten up our new apartment. This was great but we discovered that we hadn’t packed a vase. I decided that I would just use my cracked Pampered Chef pitcher (one of the few things that didn't quite make it safely!) and stick it in a bowl…see picture below…it did the job! We are making do with what we have for sure!

I received two special packages in the mail the day before Christmas Eve. One was a DVD that my cousin had made of my mom’s side of our family. The video included great songs and old pictures of my grandparents throughout their lives and each of my mom’s siblings and their families. My mom is the youngest of 8 children. It is amazing to see how much our family has grown with over 100 people and I really love that. The video was very special and it was so thoughtful that she mailed me my own copy to have before Christmas. I loved that at the beginning she used the quote, “All because two people fell in love.” So true!

The second special package was from a group of my good friends who had a cookie and ornament exchange for Luke and me. My eyes filled with tears as I opened each ornament and read my cards. The cookies even still tasted great after the long delivery!!! It really meant a lot to us and was such a thoughtful and special memory for us to have. The new ornaments really made our tree perfect. I think I will be leaving the tree up a little longer than usual, too, just so I can look at all of them!

A couple of weeks ago we found a very neat Christmas display called “Six White Boomers” which included a koala Santa on a sleigh with a little joey in a boot. Then there are 6 kangaroos with Santa hats as the reindeer pulling the sleigh. We decided we had to buy it to have for a fun memory of our Australian Christmas. I’ve included the picture below. Each piece was hand made out of pine cones!! I really don’t want to pack it away yet. It was believed that it is too hot for reindeer in Australia so Santa uses the “Six White Boomers” instead. There’s even a song…by Rolf Harris and John D. Brown and the chorus goes, “Six white boomers, snow white boomers, Racing Santa Claus through the blazing sun. Six white boomers, snow white boomers, On his Aus-tra-lian run!” If you heard the words to the song, you’d really enjoy it!

That night we watched “Miracle on 34^th Street” on the computer because we don’t have our TV yet. Our new couch is so comfy that neither of us made it very long before we fell asleep. When we woke up on Christmas morning we had breakfast and video chatted with Luke’s family. We are using our new coffee table as a kitchen table until we get one so you will notice us sitting on the floor using the whole space.

The weather was warm and beautiful so we decided to do one of Sydney’s best known coastal walks from Bondi Beach to Coogee Beach. It is a path that goes along the clifftops and beaches all the way to Coogee and is about 6km. We took the train to Bondi and couldn’t believe how many people were heading to the beach, too! (see pictures below!) You would not have imagined this was Christmas Day except everyone was wearing Santa Hats, red swimsuits, and had their coolers full for a barbie or picnic! So much for a quiet and relaxing day at the beach…I guess that’s what everyone decided to do. They definitely celebrate Christmas in a much different way than we do in the US. We enjoyed the views and the people-watching the whole walk as we passed by different beaches. Once we got to Coogee we found a great spot on the beach to relax after a quick swim to cool off AND the water was NOT warm so we cooled off very quickly!!!! J In the pictures you will see various beaches and also a couple of the natural saltwater pools they refer to as “rock baths” that are an alternative to swimming in the ocean in an actual pool.

When we came back we ran by the temporary apartment to get our Christmas dinner from the fridge and filled up our cooler once again to go back to the new place. We had simple appetizers and a delicious dinner and celebrated our first Christmas with a bottle of champagne. We’ve discovered that people drink champagne here for ALL occasions so we thought we should practice, too.

Luke and I really decided not to exchange actual gifts this year…we made a lot of purchases with our new furniture and we’re going to the Jimmy Buffett concert at the Opera House in January so we decided we didn’t really have specific things we needed to buy and wrap up for each other. As we sat silently on the couch that night I got an overwhelming and true feeling of Christmas that didn’t include exchanging lots of gifts but instead included being with someone I love and putting into words how we felt that night is very difficult...I wouldn’t have traded that moment for anything!

Our Boxing Day blog will be next…

Christmas dinner appetizers

My beautiful flowers in a broken plastic pitcher held up in a glass bowl!

"Six White Boomers" and comfy, new couch

"Miracle on 34th Street" on a DVD on the computer

Our tree! The big, bright ornaments are from my friends. :)

New Christmas tradition -Luke making our omelet breakfast

Brekky is served!

Bondi Beach

Bondi Icebergs Pool

Beach Hike

Another pool

A beautiful day!

Coogee Beach where we relaxed the rest of the day

Getting some sun finally

Merry Christmas!

Christmas dinner

Our First Christmas

Busy December!

We have had a very busy December! I’m not sure where the month has gone and I really cannot believe that 2010 is wrapping up already. I will give you a recap of our most recent adventures from the past couple of weeks and then do a separate blog about what we did for our Christmas and Boxing Day.

I’ll get the bummer part out of the way first! A few weeks ago, Luke woke me up very, very early to ask me about some random charges on our bank account. There were several random purchases, some worth thousands of dollars, and over $6500 was used from our account in only a couple of days. We spent the whole morning at the bank, working with a woman who was less than helpful but they were able to cancel our accounts and dispute all of the charges. They told us it would be a 21-45 day waiting period and we are still currently waiting. Apparently, someone was able to copy my magnetic strip from my debit card and make a copy that they were able to actually swipe and buy things all over without putting in a pin number. The bank said that it is unfortunately common and we just have to be mindful of where we use our cards. Well…I only used mine at a few grocery stores, a couple of restaurants, and a few taxis. Our guess is that it was the taxi but we don’t really have a way of knowing still. I’ll just add this to my “learning lessons” over here and pray it doesn’t happen again. It really creeped me out that someone was able to do that so quickly and easily. As you saw in my last blog, I requested this person be on the naughty list…I hope they were!

On to the better! J Luke’s work Christmas party was on a Friday evening at a great location that gave us a good view of the Harbour Bridge. At the end of the night they gave out prizes. Luke’s ticket number was called and we won a $50 I-Tunes gift card. Everyone was glad we won after the week we had had…again! J

We spent the weekend furniture shopping and looking around for all of the things we needed to fill our new apartment. We found some options but knew we better keep looking so I spent the beginning of the week looking for other possible options. On the 21^st we took possession of our apartment and I went back to several stores to purchase the furniture we decided on. Some of the stores were able to squeeze us in for a delivery before Christmas but we have a few things that will not come until mid-January, February, and March. I had to carry around wads of cash to pay for everything because our new cards had not come in the mail yet. Luckily, they all felt sorry for me when I told the story and accepted the cash! J Luke was able to take the next day off for us to move so we rented an SUV and moved most of our boxes and suitcases and then did more shopping since we had a car. We hit the IKEA store and had a lot of success there, too! So far we have a mattress, bed, couch, coffee table, TV stand, and an end table. Our fridge and washer/dryer won’t be delivered until the 29^th. Something I have discovered in shopping in the last couple of weeks is that they have a No Return Policy for “changing your mind” on items. I bet Christmas gift selections are very carefully chosen over here!! ;)

We were so happy to finally open up all of our boxes and suitcases! It really felt like Christmas when we opened each box and unwrapped the things that Luke tightly wrapped with bubble wrap and cellophane. It was fun to see what we had brought since the days right before we left KC became a blur and we weren’t really sure what ended up making it and what had to stay behind! We were very lucky because out of everything, we only had a handful of things that were broken and can easily be replaced. We’ve been cleaning, organizing, and figuring out where to put everything. Luckily, we both have our own closets!! We still have our temporary apartment until January 5^th so we’ve been using the fridge and washer/dryer which has been great.

Last week one of Luke’s coworkers had extra tickets to The Nutcracker at the Opera House. When they offered them to us, I was so excited because I haven’t been since high school. I was really looking forward to going…Luke was looking forward to finding out where our Jimmy Buffett concert tickets would be in January. We were in the theater part of the Opera House and the concert will be in the concert hall so Luke didn’t get to see! I think he still enjoyed seeing The Nutcracker – at least I hope so. J

The night before Christmas Eve we found a little fondue restaurant right up the road from our new place so we decided to try it out. It was very good and a nice change in our food options! The funniest part of the night was when our waitress scraped out the burnt cheese from our pot and told us to eat it because it was the best part! And we did…

I bought a little 150 cm. Christmas tree the second week of December. I found it at a little store and it only cost $14.90. They had very inexpensive and basic ornaments and lights so I got them there, too. In my pictures below you will see the ornaments with little strings that I had to tie on EACH one because they don’t have ornament hooks. It was a good thing I bought a couple of good Christmas CD’s to listen to the whole time I decorated because it took much longer than it should have! I’ll include a picture of the tree in the next blog.

Here are more Aussie’s words for you to practice:

pressie = present

Chrissy = Christmas

postie = postal worker

bedhead = headboard

tick = check or check mark (Santa “ticks” his list)

reckon = same way we use it at home but they say it a lot!

drink driving = drunk driving

Far Out! = WHOA, COOL!

Mozzy = mosquito

Cocky = cockroach

barbie = having a BBQ