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Published: December 24th 2010
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Happy christmas and God jul!
Fra Maria:
Today is Christmas eve, that is 24th of December, and I've just been stung by a jellyfish in the ocean pool outside our apartment😊.
The only thing that reminds me about Christmas is the fact that I have opened all the doors in my advent calendar. And that we have a Christmas palm in the living room (photo attached). I've tried various things to get into the Christmas mood, so today Will and I watched Disney cartoons, with Donald and Mickey and Goofy and all, playing in the snow etc. Not quite the same version they show on Nrk, however, it did actually help a bit. Furthermore, I have made riskrem, Norwegian Christmas desert (photo also attached), which we had for brunch today. Another project of mine has been to make peppermint chocolate candy, old family recipe, and it turned out very successful on take 2.
But- we are not complaining, the weather is lovely, it has been a rather wet spring so we are happy it has finally cleared up. We both are going to have 2 weeks of holiday now, which will be great.
Tonight we are going to have french Christmas
celebration with some friends, as they also celebrate Christmas eve (and not Christmas day....??!!). Tomorrow morning we are heading to Melbourne to have Christmas lunch with Will's extended family.
And then- Tina and Thomas are over from Norway and will be in Sydney from the 27th of December. And to make my life even better, Marit and Sivert will arrive on the 29th😊 And we'll all have New Years Eve together!!
Apart from Christmas, life is better, we feel more at home (but still very far away!!), and for me it has been a substantial change to have something to do every day- after being without a job for 12 months. I am very relieved that I am now getting somewhere and doing something that I am quite interested in.
From Will
So, where to begin?! It's been nearly six months since our last update, which is a silly amount of time to try and cover in any detail. But it's Christmas! And we're over here and you're over there so we just have to share some of the highlights of life in Freshwater, NSW, Australia.
To get the boring part out the way - work
- which for both of us has become more of a means to an end than an end in itself. Maria is getting very stuck in to her PhD with some interesting sounding fieldwork visits 'in the bush'. She's got 2.5 years left after which the tentative plan is to come back home, or at least homeish. But that's a long way off still..
I've also been in the bush, or rather in India, which is some ways, if you use your imagination, also like being in a bush; uncomfortable, fragrant and frustrating. In any case I continue in my quest to find alternative gainful employment and there appear to be several opportunities emerging here as the climate change policy debate 'hots up' again. I'll keep you posted.
We did have a very enjoyable Christmas office party however. The CEO went all out and rented a 35 ft motor cruiser for the day complete with endless supplies of beer, champagne and canapes. We stopped off at a few popular swimming spots in the harbour and then tucked into lunch in pictoresque Watson's bay. It's incredible that one can do all these things right on your doorstep. It's literally
like being on a world class holiday next to the office..
I've also been getting wet on other occasions - swimming in our local ocean pool and...while indulging in my new hobby; spearfishing! Down on the rocks below our apartment chinese fishermen like to cast their lines. They usually never catch anything but are adamant that there are many fish down there. So I've decided to take the direct approach and go down there and get them! Queue speargun, fins, float and snorkel with a dutiful partner on "shark watch". The results? Erm...well not much yet. But I'm gonna keep on trying!
We've also finally gotten our dingy up and running. I co-own it with a friend Chris Pinks and it's stationed up on the shore in a nearby cove. Maria and myself and her mother had a spin in it last week and we even found a marina where they sell ice-creams for passing boat people (of the legal kind). It was just like Norway except for the warm weather.
We haven't been away so much recently mainly because I've been in India and Maria's been working hard but we've got plenty in the pipeline: Byron
Bay in the New Year with Sivert, Marit, Thomas and Tina, followed by Japan at the end of Feb for some awesome powder snow, sushi and a sojourn in Tokyo with Phil and Polks (Phil - if you're reading this, get the beds made up!). We can hardly wait...
Closer to home we've had some awesome nights out with some new friends recently (Alex and Julia Kent) and even saw U2 a couple of weeks ago at the ANZ stadium. They were pretty massive and cranked out their hits just like the good old days. However Bono, bless him, has become a serious crank - moralising and politicising like it's the end of the world (no pun intended)... It's hard to criticise him because he's right to do what he does but it's just not what you want from a 100 dollar ticket having waited hours on the hard aluminium floor.
Anyway, I digress. And at the risk of further digressions, I am going to ring off now with a very, very hearty Merry Christmas from both of us to all of you! It's a beautiful day here now - sunny, about 27 degrees - so time to
sit on the balcony and open our stockings..
We'd love to hear from you so do write back soon or, even better, drop us a quick telephone call over Juletide (+61 450 922 481 - Will, +61 433 937 012 - Maria) or (far cheaper) a Skype call.
XXXX
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