Christmas in Summer:

Well, I did it. I made it through Christmas away from all of my family and the people I love most. While I definitely missed everyone and would have loved to be there to experience it first hand, I did have a good few days here. I guess the Christmas celebrating began on Tuesday night when we had our house Christmas party. Sue and Dale invited a few friends and we had a barbecue and played games. Emma and Vivian had to work until 9pm but we waited for them to have dessert and games. We played Pictionary and had a blast. Then Emma taught us how to play a game called 7 Level Pig and we played a round of that too. After a few hours of games, (literally, it was past midnight) we exchanged gifts. Emma got everyone little Pez-like candy dispensers that look like Wii remotes. Sue gave me a pretty journal and Dale gave everyone Mr Men/Little Miss stuffed toys - mine is Mr Strong. I just gave a house gift for everyone to enjoy...a Mario/Sonic Summer Olympics Wii game. Needless to say, we had to try it out before going to bed. I think it was about 2:30 before we called it quits and went to bed.
Christmas Eve Eve: I had planned to go home with Sue to her mom's house and spend Christmas with her family. However, on Christmas Eve Eve, I began to feel that I would be better off staying here so that I could get some school work done (or at least have the ability to get work done). I also just started thinking that it may be easier to not be with a family on Christmas - that way I wouldn't have a reminder of what I was missing back home. So, I decided to stay here. Emma, Vivian and Dale were all going to be here too so I wasn't going to be alone or anything. Also I had a frusterating day dealing with cell phone companies and was just getting to the stressed point where you feel like you can't have fun. I felt that going away for a few days might just add to that stress and I didn't want that. Sue ended up not leaving that day because she was planning to leave after work but ended up staying later than planned.
Christmas Eve: Anyways, so Christmas Eve I did manage to get a few hours of studying in and get some work out of the way. Then I ran some errands with Dale and went to the store for food since I hadn't been planning to be here for the next few days and was precariously close to having nothing to eat as the stores would be closed Christmas Day. While we were in the grocery store, Dale saw hard taco shells and asked me if I knew how to make tacos. So we decided to buy stuff for tacos/burritos and have that for dinner. I was, sadly, very excited about the prospect of Mexican food and got everything needed to make it work. I also decided to make a Christmas quiche because it is my favorite part about Christmas brunch with the Gaws - Jay's quiche. I had some trouble finding pie shells and ended up with two small, shallow flan pastry shells. I figured they would work fine. So after shopping, we just went back to the house to deposit the groceries and watched some Arrested Development. Around 6ish, Dale asked me if I had been out to the Spit yet. I said that I hadn't and so we drove out there. The Spit juts out into the ocean and you can see the city scape of all of the Gold Coast. (sorry no pictures of it now but I will take some and post them later) There were people out fishing and we just walked around for a bit. When it was dark we went back to the house and had a dinner of cheese, crackers, sliced ham and turkey, grapes and wine while watching Elf. It was a completely different Christmas Eve than I have ever had but that was nothing compared to how different Christmas was.

On to Christmas Day: I tried to sleep in but my brain woke me up at about 7:30 and wouldn't let me go back to sleep. This was disappointing as I had not gone to bed until 2am. I went ahead and got up and made the quiches because I figured, why not just do it now since I'm up. While they were baking, I read my Jesus Calling for the day. I spent some time reading the Bible and had some time to myself. The quiche was soon ready and I had no idea if it would taste good or not - I hadn't so much followed a recipe as I had just made up quantities and thrown stuff together. It actually did taste pretty good. I took a picture to share with you all:  

my attempt at Christmas quiche

I spent the morning eating quiche and playing Wii. At some point in the mid morning, I talked to mom, dad, Christopher, Nina & Jared on skype for a while. I was sitting in the living room while I talked to them so they were able to meet Dale and see Emma and Vivian in the background. Emma & Vivian were preparing for their friends to come over for games and a Chinese Hot Pot (I'll explain that later) and were chopping and prepping food so they didn't meet the fam. Their friends came over around 1:00pm and we played boys vs girls Pictionary because there were equal numbers. It was interesting playing with them because several times we had to explain what words meant and you never realize how hard it is to explain the concept of a word until you have to tell someone what it means and how they could draw it. It was also interesting because it is, obviously, the Australian version of the game so I hadn't heard of a lot of the places and sometimes, I would be saying what it is in American English and didn't know what it was in Australian English. One that I remember was when Emma was drawing a kiddie pool and I kept trying to guess different ways of saying "kiddie pool" and the answer was "paddle (or maybe paddling) pool" because that is what they call them here. Yeah, never would have guess that one. It was really fun though and the game lasted for about 2 hours. We played another game called Warlords and Scumbags and then played Mafia (or Killer, as Emma & Vivian call it) for a bit and then we were all getting hungry. They set all of the food up on the table outside and we sat down for my first Chinese Hot Pot. They had two pots of stock boiling on burners with herbs and spices and some veggies - one was not spicy and the other was. They had a large array of foods - prawns, beef, noodles, pork balls, corn, cabbage...etc. Then you put whatever you want to eat in the pot to cook it. They had an appetizer of sashimi (raw) salmon - which I ate, by the way. It always takes me a few minutes of using chopsticks to remember how to use them but I think I held my own. I also took some pictures of the hot pot dinner so you could see what I am talking about:

the Hot Pot spread

Dale, Emma and Vivian just before we began eating

Matt and Charlotte

Fiona and Jeff

playing cards

After dinner we played a few more games and then everyone went to play the Wii. I was getting tired as my previous two nights of staying up til 2am were catching up to me and I was going to be getting up again at 2am to skype in for Christmas morning at home so I went to bed around 9:00.

Christmas morning at home/Boxing Day here: I got about 4 hours of sleep before waking up at 2 for family Christmas at home. I was able to skype in and see what everyone got and I opened my box that mom and dad had sent and my box from Catherine. I hadn't mailed anyone's gifts that I bought but I showed them what they were getting. I stayed on skype until about 5am and was able to see/hear everything so it was like I was really there - except for the fact that I couldn't move myself. I was stayed on until I saw all of the Gaws too so that was really nice to see everyone. I went back to sleep for another 3 hours (after having a piece of leftover quiche for an early breakfast). I woke up and was hungry again and had second breakfast while I talked to Boothe, Paula, Nina, Mom, Selly & Emerette over at the Blantons while the guys were at the Titans game. It really made me so much less homesick to be able to see and speak with everyone I would usually see on Christmas. Whoever invented skype might be my new favorite person. After talking to everybody, Dale and I decided to get out of the house for a bit and we went down to the outlet shopping center, Harbour Town, with apparently every other person on the Gold Coast. It was a mad house. While we were out Dale bought an Aussie movie called The Castle so we watched that in the afternoon. I made beef tacos along with Lori's salsa & guacamole for dinner. Some friends of Dale's stopped by and they had dessert with us. Dale had some bananas that needed to be used and had asked me if I knew how to make banana bread. I said that I did but neither of us had flour to make it with. I thought about other banana things and came up with Bananas Foster. So, after I explained what it was, we went out to by the rum and brown sugar to make it. I made my first ever Bananas Foster last night and, thankfully, didn't burn the place down when lighting it on fire. It was really good and everybody liked it so I was pleased. All in all, a good Christmas and Boxing Day. It really made it so much easier that I was in a place that is nothing like home and that it's summer and to be around people who aren't with their families either. Now I just have to tackle the rest of my school work. My goal is to finish before New Year's - yeah, we'll see if that happens...