It's Chriiiiistmas!!

Christmas in the sun has been fantastic. There was plenty of barbequeing, swimming in the sea, lying on the beach, drinking sangria and so on!! It was so different, which I think helped me resist feeling homesick: I'd really expected to, but in the event the only brief moment of missing home I had was when I tried to call my family on the day and realised I had a wrong number (not for my own house obviously; I do know my own phone number off by heart. I was trying to call my Aunt's house where they all were). After trying for ages to get through, I ended up talking to this very confused old man, which was bad enough, but then I phoned back and got straight back through, this time to his wife!! I stammered out "Happy christmas!" and slammed the phone back down. There was nothing to be done after that, so I gave up on being a good daughter and concentrated on celebrating.

I had planned a quiet night on christmas eve, recovering from the day before and baking a cake. At about 8pm I was sitting in the living room, all the christmas lights on, with excellent baking smells emanating from the oven and some crappy christmas movie on TV, writing...it was the perfect peaceful Christmas scene. Then my housemates came home with a crate of beer and a karaoke DVD of Christmas music, and the classiness of the night deteriorated somewhat. I'm ashamed to say that there were aLOT of karaoke renditions of "Last Christmas" and Bandaid, etc. Think we're very popular with the neighbours now.

Christmas day itself was really beautifully sunny and we descended on Coogie beach along with the rest of Sydney (it was one of the only beaches in the centre that didn't have an alcohol ban enforced). I was with housemates and ex-housemates and also bumped into 3 different groups of people that I knew from work. There was a great atmosphere, barely dampened by a VERY visible police presence in the wake of all the riots - there was a police helicopter hovering around overhead and everything. People were swimming in bikinis and santa hats, etc...all the cliches you imagine about Christmas in Australia.

Then I spent Boxing Day at the house of some friends of my dad, who live out in the suburbs here. We had a really nice day - I finally got to eat turkey, and they looked after me wonderfully the whole time. Getting to slump in front of the Simpsons whilst they cooked me dinner really made me feel like I was back at home!

I'm planning to enjoy the rest of the week as holiday before I start seriously job-hunting in the New Year. Yesterday I nearly went to see Russell Crowe performing at this place in Newtown: the chef who works at the venue had told me that it was THE real Russell Crowe, as in Gladiator, and we felt the need to verify this. We turned up to find that admission was $22, which I feel proves that it must be him, but we didn't really feel we could afford to pay that much, so ended up going to the cinema instead. Saw "Broken Flowers" with Bill Murray - it's fantastic, really cool, quiet, slow film. I highly recommend it.

Feel like I might have a bit of a sore throat coming on today, so I think it's back to bed for a quiet day.