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Published: January 4th 2007
Christmas Day with the Vollies
Well for my first Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere I was expecting a bit of warm sun. Unfortunately Wellington did it's usual and was windy. The sun did poke it's head out and it was warm, but more muggy then beach weather. Jen and I did our best to pretend we were on that tropical island in the South Pacific and watched some very brave souls on the beach in swim suits having a dip in the harbour. After a leisurely breakfast we wandered on the beach and then caught a free bus into town. We were due up at the volunteer house for lunch but had to first scale 'The Hill.'
We were lugging our backpacks as were staying the night and also 3 bottles of fine New Zealand vintage and a Christmas cake, kindly provided by moi. Jen helped with the stirring of the cake and made some parcels to go under the icing tree. Thank you Jen!
We were sweating our way up the hill when a very kind girl stopped in her car and offered us a lift. Bless her! She lived at the top of the hill and said she
had struggled up the hill many times and thought we'd be her good Christmas deed. Now mum I wasn't hitchhiking so don't worry!!
Arriving at the volly house was great. There was a fantastic smell of turkey cooking and everyone looked very chilled.
Ben, although he had promised me he would, had not gotten up to cook the turkey and I have to thank Pippa and Jeanne for this. Everyone did help out though and we had loads of veggies, stuffing and gravy. Jen got very excited about her breadsauce and we had enough to feed about 20 people.
Before dinner though we all got to try out Tom's pressie. His parents had sent him a shooting range duck game. It is as though you are at the fair and have to shoot down the ducks as they move along. I had the high score for a while, but Tom, who I'm sure was cheating, beat me.
Dinner was great and we all ate far too much, as usual. After we all rolled off to the lounge and sand along to some Carols. Ben got a bit annoyed, as he doesn't do Christmas music, so we changed it for some
classics from Justin's iPod.
This was when I was introduced to Beer Pong. This is a quality game that I wish we had known about during my Hull days. You have two teams at either end of the table and each player has 4 glasses of beer. You then have to bounce the ping pong ball into the other team's glasses. If it goes in they have to drink it. Quite simple but lots of fun. Ben got very excited trying to prevent the ball at one stage and sent all the drinks flying across the room!
After this we just veged out on the balcony. We stayed out till late just chatting until the boys decided they were going down to the local park to look at some glow worms. They got dressed up in enough gear to head to the South Pole and headed off with torches and flasks of coffee. Apparently the worms were great!
So that was Christmas day. I got one pressie, a jar of Marmite from Jen. It was proper English stuff, not the rubbish imitation they have here. Yummy!
On Boxing day everything was closed so we ended up at the cinema.
It is a beautiful old cinema where they sit you on sofa's with cushions. Very cool. We saw Maire Antoinette, wouldn't recommend it!
Then it was back to work for three days! Oh well I have to earn my living somehow.
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Jen
non-member comment
Wooo im mentioned
yay look at my spastic xmas star on the tree! you also neglected to mention my demented angels that noone else seemed to notice..guess the cookies were too nice! lol Very well documented day! haha word of warning beer pong is only to be played with beer. not rum. especially not when tom pours. Thank you for a lurvly xmas!