My Australian Christmas

Sweet, I´ve finally finished writing about the East Coast road trip. Now I´ve been back in Sydney for over a week, and to be honest I´ve been counting days till my trip to Asia. It´s been a bit boring here… Living in Gumal has been fine, apart from having flatmates that eat my food :/ This is a really big housing unit compared to Geegal and the atmosphere is more anonym. Geegal people are spread out to different flats, but we see each other every now and then, either at someone´s flat or at the roof top. The UTS wireless network works at the roof top, so I just have to take my laptop upstairs to use the internet.

So, I had my first Christmas in the middle of summer this year :) At first it felt a bit confusing having Christmas decorations, songs, presents and everything even though it wasn´t snowy and cold, but it was fine after I got used to it. I had no special plans for Christmas, but ended up having a good time anyways. On Christmas Eve morning I was at the roof top surfing online, when these Austrian people came there to bake cookies. (Gumal flats don´t have ovens so people use the common one located at the roof top.) Even though they didn´t know me they invited me to join them for dinner that evening, which was really friendly of them :) So I went to Coles to buy some cake mix and baked muffins to bring to the dinner. I would´ve wanted to make rice porridge for lunch but couldn´t find proper rice, so I ended up buying just some sushi rolls. The dinner started at 6pm. It was around 10 people there and everyone had brought something: meat & veggies for grilling, bread, salad, desserts… It was lots of delicious food; a mix of Australian and international Christmas traditions. Australians don´t really have a lot of traditional Christmas food, though, but they grill a lot and eat sea food.

Christmas Lunch

Housing offered everyone a free lunch on Christmas Day. I was upstairs again, surfing online, and since Darkan was preparing the lunch by himself I offered to help. So I helped him to cook some of the dishes, decorate cakes and set the table. It was a lot of different dishes: salads, chicken, chips, Turkish yoghourt pasta, Indian bread and curry, fruit, pavlova, cakes… Quite a lot of people showed up and it wasn´t long until all the food was gone! Everyone felt so full after all the eating. Most people decided to have a nap, but Daniel and I felt like going for a run. So we did a nice, slow Christmas Day run to Centennial Park, where lots of families were grilling their lunch/dinner.

Preparing Christmas Dinner

A cake that I decorated :P

The weather was quite bad till Christmas, which was the main reason to my boredom. Fortunately it´s been hot and sunny the past days, and I´ve enjoyed being outside. I´m trying to consume as much sun and warmth as I can before returning to the cold Finland! The gym closed a week ago. I only got to go there twice – to do a workout with weights and to do Patricia´s super circuit class – and I felt kinda sad leaving the gym for the last time. Having being going there 3-5 times a week for a year, I had gotten to know people there and was kinda attached to the place. But I´ll find a new gym in Lappeenranta to keep up my training! This week I´ve been running and doing some push-ups, sit-ups and stuff in Victoria Park. And of course I´ve spent hours laying by the pool :) Besides that I´ve been to the hairdressers (got my hair died dark), Taxation Office, Darling Harbour (for ice cream and drinks)… And I got my spring semester results: Economics of the Firm 90% (high distinction - my first (and only) one, yey!) Human Resource Management 73% (credit – 2 more percents would´ve given me distinction) and The Financial System 65% (credit – I totally blew the exam, oh well…).

I´m flying to Bangkok on Monday, so I think this is my last posting from Sydney. It doesn´t seem real my exchange year is almost over. I decided I wanted to go to Australia already before I was accepted to LUT, and now I´ve fulfilled my dream. It´s been a great year and I wouldn´t change it to anything! A lot of people keep asking me if I´ll return to Australia. I don´t know. This is a great country, but there´s still so much more in the world to explore that I´ve never seen before. I´ll come back to Australia for holidays for sure, but about living here again, I´ll have to wait and see what future brings along…