It's been a long time since posting so I have to go ages back and start with Christmas eve. First off, Christmas in the summer is just weird. Especially in the city, it just doesn't feel very Christmas-sy and a lot of people don't put up decorations: me included. All that aside as a true Aussie would, we had a Christmas eve BBq. We had two mates staying with us from Perth for over a week at that point. As all of us were away from home, we ended up calling ourselves a family. The "Tram" fam. and we invited a few others over that were also away from their families. I ended up introducing them to foil packs where we used chicken and heaps of vegetables in foil that is cooked on the barbie for those that don't know. After dinner we went to midnight service at a local contemporary church.
The day after Christmas in Australia is called Boxing Day. It is a national holiday.I should say that nearly everyone has off a week for Christmas in any non-labor working job. The University actually shuts completely down for an entire week over Christmas and staff take their holidays. Boxing Day is essentially our black Friday where everyone has mega sales in all stores across the board. Me and the two mates from Perth had planned to get up at 4am to head into the city for Myer and David Jones opening at 5am. They even had a prize wheel they were setting up outside Myer and from 4:30 to 5:00 people were given a go at it. As I had done black Friday once with my mom, from this decided I would never do it again as it wasn't worth it. I wasn't necessarily keen on going. Luckily, their alarm didn't go off. When they didn't come upstairs to get me up I assumed they decided against going. At 4am after clonking out at 1am I didn't much feel up to it anymore or enough to get out of bed to go ask them. The next morning I found out there alarm just didn't go off but it was fine and just headed in to the city to check it out. There were still heaps of people and some stores just looked ravaged so I couldn't even of imagined the madness at 5am so next year I might give it a go just to see the rage that occurs.
Summertime here has been rather odd as it is still in the 60s/70s most days. I should note that this is not normal for this time of year but I can't complain as my house and my lab don't have A/C. Getting in the 90s and 100s for the few days it did was nearly unbearable aka new years was 100 until 9pm at night. Talk about sweating bullets and then the next day was a high in the high 60s. That's melbs weather for you. We'll see how the rest of the summer pans out because February is supposed to be the hottest and last year got above 45 celsius (113F) for a couple days. Other than that summer he is rather festive with heaps of summer events on and even a decent number put on by the city for free.
Next up is New Years and it was one of the more interesting fireworks shows I've seen. They had basically shut down the main city streets around Fed Square (center of the city). They had free concerts and other activites on. The fireworks at midnight we're in sync to the music being played at Fed Square. They were shot off from like the top of 10-15 buildings surrounding Fed Square. Although I've seen more impressive shows by far, it was pretty unique and could probably be seen from ages away from the city.
Next major holiday in Australia is Australia Day (Jan. 26). Again what do you know I went to a Barbie, lol. This was with nearly all born and bred Aussies. One of the topics that came up was what is Australia day. Like no one really knew what it actually stood for. So since I looked it up and realized it commemorates the landing by the British in 1788. Either way it's just excuse to have a day off to barbie and drink. We ended up playing b-ball after we barbie'd at a nearby college. This is where the day took a turn for the worst for me when a little 4 on 4 ended up with my right foot becoming nearly two feet as I somehow came down wrong on it. We thought for sure it had to be a fracture so I went to the hospital. Something I forgot to mention is that to go play bball we had to climb over a double story fence which made the climb back over with a busted foot rather difficult. Literally right after I got over, a lady came to kick us out so the others just got to stroll out the front. Either way I got to the nearby hospital shortly and they took x-rays but the doc said by the look at it it's probably a fracture. Luckily, the results came back negative and I'm writing this as I recover :).
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