Twas 16 "sleeps" before Christmas...Part 1

And the house was all clean.

The guest bedroom was ready,

and luckily no spider was seen...(yet).

I made my way to the airport,

welcome sign in hand. 

And waited eagerly for my parents'

international flight, to land. 

Here they are!

I waited among the crowd of people, all of us holding our welcome signs and mine a joking family nickname. I hadn't seen my parents in 5 months and after a few meals, a few movies, and an ambien they hopped off the plane looking excited and refreshed! We gathered their luggage and I impressed them with my newly acquired left-side of the road driving skills. 

We got going right away to stay on top of the jet lag and started our day with a traditional Australian brunch and took a long walk through the neighborhood and downtown to the market. My parents loved Queen Victoria Market, we tasted cheese and wine (favorite sparkling shiraz) and bought some fruits and veggies.  Jet lag started to kick in on our walk home so we made our way to the much needed gelato, and they were revived! We took the tourist bus around town to give them a feel for the city and some history, mum really likes to learn about history, but she fell asleep. 20 hours traveling, 16 hour time difference, and sugar coma, who wouldn’t?!  When Jaime arrived home from work that evening we ordered pizza from our favorite pizzeria and enjoyed having the excellent company. It was really nice to see my parents after 5 months and a move across the world, they settled into their little guestroom and it was just like home.

We told my parents to take ambien on the flight over so they could sleep a few hours, which they said worked great. Mum was told to take ambien again the first night in Oz to help with adjusting to the time frame. Mum went to get ready for bed and when she came out, she settled in on the couch with me, as we love to sit and chat. At this point I didn’t know she had taken a whole ambien. About 10 minutes into our conversation she appeared to completely and randomly fall asleep mid-sentence. “The dog was runni…ng…and……” her eyes squeezed shut and her head fell slightly forward.  I just watched her for a second thinking she was trying to remember what she was going to say. But when she didn’t say anything else, I started tapping her and saying “mom, mom”.  Nothing. Head forward, glasses on, sitting fully upright, and appearing to be fast asleep. Now again, I didn’t know she had taken an ambien. So I began to get a little worried, although it was so bizarre that I couldn’t stop laughing. Jaime was sitting at the table doing work, watching me as I was laughing and freaking out saying, “I don’t know what happened…she won’t wake up!” Jaime told me to check her pulse, but I was having a hard time focusing. Her pulse was low and her breath barely audible and so I was worried my mind was playing tricks on me. My mum doesn't drink much alcohol and never gets drunk, but if she were ever to pass out I would imagine this is what it would be like.  I am actually having a hard time writing this because I keep laughing. So after some more shaking and calling her name, Jaime came over and applied pressure to her shoulder, like they do to wake people up after surgery, and she groggily lifted her head and let out a really slow “o….o..o…owww.” I said “mum, you just fell asleep mid-sentence are you ok?” and she said “well apparent…….l…y” and boom…she was out again. So again, worried but unable to stop laughing, we concluded that she took the ambien already and that she probably should have just taken a half. I brought out her pillow and blanket and moved her so she was lying semi-upright, but comfortably, as I was still a little worried, so she could dream away her ambien overdose on the couch.

The next day we toured around Melbourne and passed by Federation Square just before Oprah arrived to say hello! So we didn’t see her in person, but she wasn’t far away. We ate lunch at the BEST dumpling place in Chinatown. The great thing about the ethnic food here is that it really is ethnic. In the US we eat “American Chinese food” here, we eat real Chinese food, real Indian food, real Vietnamese food etc…the same things you would eat if you were visiting the particular country. And it is delicious! I had to learn how to eat the dumplings correctly, you put it on your spoon, dip in your soy sauce with pieces of ginger, then you bite off the top of the dumpling, suck out the broth, and then eat the rest. They are so good and so addicting! Yum!

The next day was Saturday and Jaime had the week off, so we woke up early and began our travels. First stop, Christchurch New Zealand.  About a three hour international flight to Christchurch which is on the far east coast of South Island, New Zealand. (NZ is described as North Island and South Island). Christchurch itself was a small city but the biggest city in its region of Canterbury. We had a delicious lunch with the local beer, Monteiths. We had a few hours to check out Christchurch and then we began our drive west for our first night in NZ at a much anticipate (for me) farmstay. 

Warwickz Farm was fabulous! Run by a husband and wife team, (she is a true kiwi and inherited the farm from her family). We stayed in the red barn, which was half guest house, and half their little shop/workroom for all things made from wool or alpaca hair.  

They had tons of alpacas (related to the llama but smaller), two large Arapawa Island pigs with 5 new little piglets, tons of chickens, roosters, ducks, messenger pigeons, doves, sheep, rabbits and guinea pigs, all with a variety of breeds, a donkey and of course Tracey the angora goat. Tracey was born not too long ago from their resident angora goats, she has been raised by Chris since birth and so she basically follows him around like a dog.

Long-haired pig and her piglets (felt like a paintbrush)

Freshly sheared!

Hungry and curious...

Up close and personal!

One of many bunnies!

Beautiful rare-breed chooks

He loves apples!  

I love sheep! 

Perfect Easter bunny

Tracey makes her debut! Playing tag with dad.

That night we were greeted by our hosts with wine and fruit cake and were introduced to some beautiful angora rabbits, with really dirty feet!

The angora bunny has to be brushed for two hours everyday to keep her coat smooth and fluffy. She was soft and so warm, perfect for cuddling on a chilly night.

The next morning, we awoke early to the roosters “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” There were two roosters, one young one old, and so the cock-a-doodle doos always came in twos. One sounded normal while the older one sounded like he had just smoked a pack of cigarettes.

Glamour shot

I walked downstairs to my parents room (still in my pajamas) and found them sitting on the bed fully dressed, suitcases packed, talking and giggling. (This is usually how I found them in the mornings, up and ready to go with bright eyes and big smiles!).  While Jaime and I got ready, Tracey the goat and Chris set-up breakfast and we ate outside our barn right in the middle of the farm.

Chris and his helper...
This was right before Tracey licked Jaime's cereal bowl.

Breakfast on the farm

After breakfast they took us on a thorough tour of the farm and we met and learned about all the animals. They had some really great stories such as a random finding of a hedgehog family in some chopped wood, a self-made incubator for a special breed of chick eggs when the power went out after the recent earthquake, and a wool shedding sheep that gave Chris such a run around while he was trying to hold him that the whole wool coat came off in one piece in his hands and the sheep kept running. I was really excited to stay at the farm because I really wanted to hug or even shear a sheep. But the sheep were SO dirty that I opted for a hello wave instead. The farm was delightful, we all enjoyed seeing and petting the animals. Jaime was especially good, he didn’t have pets growing up and so he is not too sure about how he feels about animals, but he always ends up enjoying himself and the animals loved him! Chris grabbed a piglet for us to pet and this pig was squealing like a madpig, he was not happy but Chris didn’t put him down, just let him squeal and squeal, but then he passed off to Jaime the hypnotist and immediately that pig looked up at Jaime and went to sleep in his arms. Amazing! He also bonded nicely with Tracey, which definitely helps my case for getting a goat someday (zone permitting!).

Squealing Piglet!

Ah...warm and safe.

Best Buds!

To be Continued while we lure Tracey into our luggage...

Tis the Holiday Season to 'envisage' being Australian.

During my last two weeks of work at the National Stroke Foundation, I trained their new permanent hire to manage the helpline (turned in my headset) and was put on project work. The supervisor gave me and a seasoned employee, Sally, several tasks to work on and basically I wrote up drafts and Sally would edit them before we sent them on to the supervisor. In discussion, Sally often used the word, "envisaged" sounded like "en-viz-u-jed" i.e. "I thought we envisaged sending the survey out nationally." She used it unnaturally often. At one point, Sally was dictating and I was typing, she of course used 'envisaged' (never 'envisage' always 'envisa-jed') in a sentence, and I naturally wrote 'envision' since I figured that that was what she actually meant. When the draft was finished and she returned it to me with edits, she changed my 'envision' to her 'envisaged' and it came back underlined and highlighted three times by the computer editor. So, I got curious and did some research. Turns out envisage and envision may or may not be synonymous, depending on where you are looking.  The actual definitions are very similar with just very subtle differences between the two. On one forum (oddly, there was a whole discussion about this, you really can find anything on the internet) someone mentioned "envision means that we see something happening in our mind's eye, but envisage means that we can conceive of it happening but don't necessarily see it." I thought this was such a strange word to use if this was the case. Although, this conclusion doesn't match the actual definition. The Grammarist stated that both words mean to visualize, the difference is what is being visualized. Envisage is to contemplate or consider something real, while when you envision something, it is usually hypothetical, imaginary, or removed from reality. I often notice subtle differences in language/word-use and spelling, but this one I had to investigate, it just sounded so funny every time Sally said it I thought for sure she was mental.  But 'envisage' is a real word, with possibly more opportunity to be used than 'envision' if our interpretation is correct...but who knows! Give it a try and let me know how it goes. :)


A few weeks ago, Jaime went to New Zealand for a weekend conference. It was our first weekend apart since we have been in Oz. The weirdest thing was actually driving him to the airport, on the right side of the car and on the left side of the road, so he could take an easy flight to 'New Zealand'. Ya know, the usual weekend trip. While he was gone I spent one day at a BBQ in the park with some friends on one of the first sunny days we had had in awhile. The next day I had one free movie pass so I decided to go see Harry Potter on a Sunday afternoon. I went to the big theater in the center of town which is a chain and most of the theater chains here we discovered do assigned seating when you buy your ticket. The first time Jaime and I went we thought it was so strange we had assigned seats. When we got to our row someone was sitting in one of 'our' seats. Since the theater was huge...and empty...we didn't ask them to move, we just moved down a bit and sat in some other seats. As more people started arriving we realized quickly that this assigned seating thing didn't seem like the best idea, as there always seemed to be people in the wrong seats. Then you have to make a decision, do you ask people to move out of your seats when you are in a huge movie theater (where people aren't really used to having assigned seats) or do you just sit somewhere else. If you sit somewhere else then it becomes a chain reaction...if you happen to be sitting in someone's seat do they ask you to move or sit elsewhere and if you do move then you are bound to be in someone else's seat. Its quite the issue as you can tell. :) 
So I got my ticket for the movie and told the guy I had no seat preference so he just gave me a seat. When I got to my row there were two young kids, one of course, in my seat. Again, the theater was huge and empty so I just sat at the end of the row. Do I ask to two little kids to move only to continue to be pushed around the theater or do I sit in a random seat and try my luck while waiting in suspense until atleast 10 minutes after the movie starts? So, I just sit at the end of the row and now, I just have to sit and anxiously wait for someone to ask me to move. Sure enough a man with 4 kids came running up the aisle and stopped at my row...so I got up and moved to the other end of the row. I watched everyone around me run into the same problem. The whole row in front of me got all mixed up each time a new couple arrived due to one person stating that she didn't know there were assigned seats. Two rows behind me two guys made 4 people move only to find out they were in the wrong row themselves and the four people didn't really need to move. But when they figured out what row they were supposed to be in...oops, I had to move...again. This time I picked an obscure outside row corner spot that no one would pick and...success! I was allowed to stay in my seat and the movie was really good...someone tell me what happens to Harry in the end!...Mendy...Karen...anyone! (Jk, you've held out this long...I guess I'll have to wait for the next one and another assigned seat...oh the suspense!)


A quote from Jaime's work, "They don't call us the nation of holidays for nothing!" This my friends, is no joke. Aussies do enjoy a good holiday even if it is randomly dedicated and randomly placed. And I certainly agree with this perspective. Aussies are very good at working to live and enjoy life and in no way do they live to work. As Christmas approached, business owners started hanging signs that read Closed: 24th December - 4th Jan. Even the friendly couple at are local cafe were preparing for a nice two week holiday. Non-profits like my old job at the stroke foundation closed for the whole week after Christmas, you couldn't work even if you wanted to. And if you didn't work at a place that closed down, it was ok because you got plenty of holiday time. Christmas was on a Saturday and then Australia celebrates Boxing Day the day after Christmas. This holiday originated from the British, in the old days Boxing Day was the day for the servants to take the day off to celebrate with their families and to receive any new or re-boxed gifts from their masters. For Australians its just an extra day to wrap up the Christmas holiday and make your way home...unless it is this year. This year since Christmas was on a Saturday, Monday became the national holiday off of work (we did that in the US too) but then because Sunday was Boxing Day, Tuesday became the weekday Boxing Day public holiday. New Years Day was on Saturday and so, like the US, Monday was New Years Day holiday and in New Zealand they got Monday for New Years Day holiday and Tuesday for "Day after New Years Day" holiday. No joke. This was serious holiday time, which was nice for everyone. Jaime had a really light week at work, since no one was around, and so we had a lot of time to relax and enjoy the warm weather (finally!).  This was a church sign my parents and I saw when they were visiting, two days before Christmas. Even the church says it all. 

My parents came to visit for two weeks in December and we had a fabulous time! Will fill you in on the details in my next blog. We had a little Christmas dinner a few days before while my parents were here and then they left on the 23rd. So Jaime and I decided to escape for the weekend for a quiet Christmas at the beach. We headed toward the Great Ocean Road and stayed in a little resort town called Lorne, about 2 hours South of Melbourne. It was great timing because everyone that lived there left to see family and then everyone who vacations there came on Boxing Day when we were leaving. On Christmas eve, there were not alot of food options, we grabbed a cheese pizza and played each other in Buck Hunter and Speedway games. Jaime always gets perfect sites in buck hunter...I usually only hit the turkeys running across the screen during the bonus round. We stayed in a sweet little cottage attached to a house on an isolated street where we could look for koalas and kangaroos. How often do you stay in a populated area where you can look for koalas right outside your window! We didn't see any that night but we did hear some birds that sounded unnaturally like monkeys in the jungle. Christmas morning we went to a little Anglican church (most churches here are Anglican/Episcopal) so similar enough to catholic. There were about 30 people in this tiny church and this was probably the most amount of people in the church ever. I realized this when communion got a little crazy. There was not much organization as to which rows were getting up so eventually just one side of the church was going row by row, but soon the other side decided to join in. Instead of making two rows down the aisle, we made one, and so as people returned to their seats, the lined weaved from right to left, right, to left, to let people by. I was trying so hard not to laugh but Jaime's commentary behind me was cracking me up as we stepped from side to side. We made it back to our seats, sang my favorite Christmas carols and were handed a candy cane on the way out. We went back to our little cottage, made breakfast, opened our gifts (from each other and some special packages from Jaime's parents), skyped our families, made sure my parents were recovering from jet lag, and went to the beach. We had a really nice Christmas and drove back to Melbourne on Boxing Day and passed lines of traffic waiting to get into Lorne.  


New years eve everyone looks forward to the rooftop fireworks. Jaime and I went to a late dinner and headed down to southbank by the river to watch the fireworks. The fireworks go off at midnight from strategic large building rooftops around the city so there are many options for viewing areas. The best part is that you could literally turn around in a circle and see fireworks the whole way around. It was really really cool and a great way to ring in our new year far away from home. And we were second in the world, which was really cool too! (Second to New Zealand which is 2 hours ahead of Australia). The paper the next day reported that there were 450,000 people within Melbourne CBD on new year's eve for the fireworks. I have never seen so many Australians in one place! Happily, amongst our 450,000 temporary friends, we said a bittersweet goodbye to an amazing 2010 and looked forward to a new and exciting 2011! 


Rooftop fireworks 2011!

Me and just a few of our 450,000 friends. 

We wish you all a Healthy and Happy 2011! 


Love,
The Kraus Haus in Australia