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Published: December 24th 2005
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Grinch
This one has the Grinch and the Abominable Snowman! Hello to all and Merry Christmas! It's been a long time since our last newsletter, partly because we have been so busy and partly because I have been trying to find one good website program to post my entries on. The aim is to find
one central website that shows updated news, photos etc.
We decided to host Christmas dinner at our house this year and sent out the message "the more the merrier". It didn't take long for us to realise that maybe we'd bitten off more than we could chew... we now have 21 adults, 4 adolescents and 10 "little tackers". The families coming represent The UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Chile, Canada and of course Australia.
We've borrowed 4 enormous trestle tables from the Navy base, which we've made into one long table and we've been clever enough to ask everyone to bring something. All of the things we're used to traditionally having for Christmas lunch/dinner we've included: lamb, turkey, ham, all the roast veggies etc. I had to ring home to get my Nana's famous "White Christmas" recipe and also the one for "Nuts & Bolts", which have both been a feature of Christmas Day for
Squirrel
One of the members of the Hallam oaktree circus. me for as long as I can remember. In addition to all of that, we've got some of the other ex-pats to bring their traditional dishes. I think we're in for a big feast! We had a giggle tonight in the supermarket when we bought 20 big Idaho potatoes. I think I'm going to be peeling them 'til the cows come home!
Christmas decorating in the US is pretty out of control. Take everything we do at home and then multiply it by an over-the-top factor of about 10, and you have a rough idea of what it's like. Near Adelaide, we have the annual "Lights of Lobethal" (Lobethal's a little town up in the hills). The locals go to great effort each year, decorating their houses with coloured Christmas lights, decorations and cutouts of Christmas characters. The town nearly comes to a standstill, from the carloads of people slowly driving the streets to see the display.
I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not, but over here the displays put Lobethal to shame. I think the thing that's most strikingly different, is that instead of just one township or the odd "slightly loopy" guy's
Ducklings December 04
This was the duck family shortly after we moved to Jacksonville. house in the street having a big light display... just about everyone has at least
something up and at
least one house in each street has taken it to the limit. Our contribution to global warming is simply a line of lights along our roof line. It looks nice. If you want to check out some more photos of the lights in our neighbourhood, click here:
Christmas Lights Off the topic of Christmas, we have settled into our life now here in America. A year ago we were terribly culture shocked and awfully homesick. Fortunately the culture shock has worn off. Apart from the odd difficulty with people not being able to understand the Aussie accent and occasional lapse in communication with different terminology for things, we seem to be able to live life a lot more happily.
There are many,
many things we still shake our heads at, but it has become more amusing (most of the time) than perplexing. I've learned that if I'm in a shop and they want to spell my sirname, I just hand them my ID and let them write it. Trying to spell "Hallam" to an American is rather interesting. Our "a"
January 05
They've grown incredibly fast in such a short space of time! sounds like "i" to them and they have no idea what you mean when you say "double L". Invariably, they become very confused and our name ends up as Hillim and the whole process can take up to 10 frustrating minutes. There are numerous things such as this, but I won't go into them all here and now. Let's just say it has given me a new respect for New Australians- particularly if they don't come from an English speaking background.
We're still homesick for lots of things, but it's not as acute as it was. We miss all the obvious things- like family, friends and of course our cats. In addition, there's different foods that we can't get over here and all of the little things you take for granted. I'm sure it will work the other way when we finally come home.
In the past year we've done an enormous amount of travel. We've seen the states of California, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. We've also both ducked over the border to Canada, visited Washington DC several times (awesome place), Clinton went on a trip to Tennessee (Memphis)
April
They've grown into "teenagers" and are that friendly, they'll jump in your lap if you let them. and Mississippi and I went on a cruise to The Bahamas. Some of these trips I've recorded on other logs or in emails. I'm really hoping to slowly catch up on the more recent ones, even if it's just a good record for us. Maybe some of you will find our anecdotes amusing. My biggest problem (as is the case in person) is my inability to keep anything brief, so recording stuff is so time consuming! Hopefully this site makes it easier for you choose to the bits and pieces of our news that you might be interested in. Stay tuned and hopefully it will all make more sense soon.
For those who don't know, I also made an unexpected trip back home to Australia, as my grandfather passed away. It was a very sad reason to go home, but it was a welcome reunion with everyone that I was able to catch up with (sorry to those who I wasn't able to contact in time). I was able to spend time with both my family and some of Clinton's and I even had the opportunity to spend time with my cats while I was home. The trip also
December 05
After ignoring us for several months (presumably, being typical teenagers- out creating trouble), they finally return, expecting us to feed them once more. helped me realise that (although tiring) it's not that hard to jump on a plane and get back if we need to.
Thanks to everyone who "put me up" and "put up with me!" during my time at home. All of your help and hospitality was greatly appreciated.
Well I'm sure right now it's quite sunny and pleasant (if not hot and unbearable) back home. It's night here as I write this and it's a chilly 2 degrees celcius. Tomorrow it'll only get to about 19, which is actually a bit warm for this time of year. We can't complain though, as it doesn't get as cold as up north and the winter here is extremely brief. Apart from the cold nights, I kind of wish this part of the year would last a bit longer down here. It's now that the squirrels are out in full force, racing about burying their nuts for winter. (Winter is only just officially on us here... the leaves are still on the trees. I think they're a bit confused.) Out the front of our house we have an oak tree. Every afternoon it becomes the big top for a circus of squirrels that swing, spring, leap, scurry and fall from branch to branch. It's better than TV. Once it heats up, they'll disappear again until the same time next year.
The other thing that's kind of nice as far as nature goes is our little family of ducks. I may/may not have mentioned this in the past, but when we first moved into our house, we were visited by a mother duck with her family of newly-hatched ducklings. (We've got a huge lake just behind our house, so we tend to have a fair bit of bird life.) We were missing the company of our cats dreadfully by this stage and it was almost as if these little guys knew we needed consoling. Anyway, I photographed them as they grew and then lost track of them for about six months. They've just returned to us in the past month or so, almost to remind us that we've now been here a whole year! If you want to check out any of the other "critters" we see around the place, click on this link:
Critters I think I've dribbled on long enough. We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and an even better New Year. Please stay in touch. We love hearing from people.
Love Michelle & Clinton
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Lee
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