Christmas in the Snow

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I've decided to do a current journal and fill in South America steadily. Sorry that it's all over the place.

After Curitiba when went up the Sao Paulo, for a night then ducked up to Rio for our plane to New York. We nearly froze when we got off the plane at 6am, but over the next few days covered most of what there is to see in the Big Apple. Lundy headed over to London on the 15th, so it was a bit strange saying bye in the subway after travelling for so long together. I will be glad however to not have to throw any more pillows at him to stop the snoring (hehehe, sorry Lundy). The next day I went to Chicago, which wasn't any warmer, and then caught a plane to Minneapolis.

I got into Minneapolis, Minnesota on the 18th of December and have been staying with Sauli and Jenn (Uncle and Aunty) as well as their parents, Ruth and Paul. It has been good to finally unpack my bags completly and discover a few bits and pieces that I thought had disappeared somewhere between Cairns and here.

Most days since then I've been looking after my 2 year old cousin, Annika, while Sauli and Jenn have been working over the Christmas break. They work at their parents jewelery store, which has been open for long hours for the Christmas shopping rush and I've been the stand in babysitter.

I had my first experience with changing a dirty nappy, which was quite horiffic. I've never really smelled anything bad enough to make me gag, except that. I hope they get easier to deal with otherwise I'm never having children.
Other than that she has been great, always happy and obedient.

They also have a 4 month old puppy called Muffin that has not yet been properly toilet trained. She has a habit of randomly crapping and peeing around the house after she has eaten, or really any time at all. She has a play pen that she can go in which sort of limits it, but then she craps in there and eats it if you don't pull her out right away. The other dog they have is Tripsie. She is very good and is well house trained.

Over the last week or so it has been very cold. It would have been good to put the dogs outside, except it has been about -10 to -15 during the day and colder at night. There has been a little snow as you can see from the photos, but they say that if the temperature get too low, then it's too cold to snow, and all you have are clear days. I think the coldest it got down to was about -22 or so.

One night I went into the city to see the Holidazzle, a big parade of lights that they have here each Christmas. It was about -15 that night, so just taking your gloves off to use the camera made your hands freeze. They have walkways between buildings called Skyways so that in winter you can walk between buildings and not have to get rugged up. Very handy.

Christmas day was great, especially as when I walked up stairs and looked outside it was snowing. We got about an inch or 2 during the morning, which covered up all the short grass and put a decent blanket over everywhere else. For Christmas lunch, which was actually closer to dinner, we had some prime rib cooked in the Webber, which was fantastic. No cold ham and salad, just a huge slab of beef with baked potatoes and vegies. We'd opened the presents before lunch, Annika open so many (hers and helping everyone else) that she didn't know what to do with herself.

On Wednesday we will be flying over to San Francisco via Chicago, which should be another interesting day of travel.

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Photos

Holidazzle
It was so cold outside that night, you can see the Skyway in the background.

Annika and Muffin
That little dog cost $1500, so I would be too scared to let anyone play with it. I guess thay could have a policy of "You break it, you bought it".

Clearing the driveway
This is the snow we got Christmas day. Luckily it was cold and dry, so it had virtually no weight in it. It was also a bit warmer than the previous few days, only -6. The whole drive cleared in about 10 mins.

Crazy Snowman
This one would race foward, stop and spin quickly around, then race foward again. Most of the time it looked loike it was going to fall over.