Merry Christmas!

First off, we want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!! It is Christmas Day here and we are enjoying this holiday to ourselves. Our flatmates have gone away for a few days over the holidays, so we are enjoying having the place to ourselves to cook a “turkey” dinner and have a few glasses of the finest NZ wine! You would never know it was even December here, there are no decorations, no lights and barely any mention of Christmas. It is quite weird for us, considering how Christmas is such a commercial event at home. It’s a refreshing change, although we could have used a Christmas carol or two to put us in the cheer. Speaking of Christmas music, we just found a music channel on TV that was playing “Christmas Number 1’s” over the last decade. It was great until it got to the year 2006 when Gwen Stefani’s “Wind it up” came on as the number one holiday song?! It left us a little confused, but we enjoyed the 2000-2005 selections nonetheless.

In terms of other happenings, we had a party at our place last weekend, which was a blast. There are four guys that live upstairs and four of us downstairs so we hosted a “Heaven and Hell” themed party…upstairs being heaven and downstairs being hell. Kiwis take themed parties very seriously, so there was no lack of elaborate costumes. I went as an angel (obviously!) and Clem went as a “she-devil”. It took some convincing, but when six o’clock rolled around and he didn’t have a costume, the idea came in handy and he was beautified in no time. With his tights, boobs, eye shadow, toenail polish and skirt, he quickly became the highlight of the party. I now have some serious material for blackmail in the case that I ever need it….You couldn’t move anywhere in the house and everyone seemed to have a great time, not to mention the Brazilian cocktails that our flatmate Marceu whipped up for us!



Clem found a job a couple of weeks ago and has been working as a labourer with a construction company in central Wellington. He works long, hard hours but is enjoying it so far. He will work until the end of January, when his parents come to NZ for a month. He can be found in a “high-vis vest” and steel toe boots doing what he does best- SWEEP! Yup, ten hours a day are spent sweeping, lifting and moving heavy objects such as dishwashers, “rubbish” removal and hooking loads onto cranes. Needless to say he is beat at the end of the day!

Meanwhile, I’ve been spending my time reading, making copious amounts of peanut butter balls for local potlucks and lazing around on the beach. I had an interesting experience at the beach the other day that I should share. We live about a ten minute walk to the closest beach. My friend Terri and I decided to go for a swim one day after she finished work. They have a raft out in the middle of the water that you can swim to and laze on for hours. So on our walk down I interrogated her on the potential sea creatures that I may visit us in these waters. As some of you know, I am not a fan of anything that moves in the ocean, including any type of seaweed. She assured me that there wouldn’t be much to be worried about and we carried on. After all, the water is aqua blue and crystal clear. So we enter the water and are about hip-deep in this clear water. It was really cold so when she encouraged us to dive in at the same time, I told her to go first and I would follow. So she dives in and jumps up to encourage me to do the same…only I was already half way to the shore squealing like a two year old girl and cursing like a sailor. When she dove in, a HUGE stingray darted out from underneath her!! She didn’t believe me, so I’d like to give you an idea of our conversation (which was more like an argument):

Julia: TERRI, GET OUT OF THE WATER, I JUST SAW A HUGE STINGRAY!!!
Terri: Julia, no it’s okay, it’s just the weeds. Don’t worry about it. C’mon.
Julia: TERRI, I WOULDN’T LIE TO YOU. I KNOW WHAT I SAW!!!!
Terri: Julia, just get back in the water. Let’s go to the platoon. It’ll be fine.
Julia: TERRI, DO YOU GUYS HAVE STINGRAYS HERE? I MEAN, I KNOW YOU HAVE THEM IN NZ, BUT DO YOU HAVE THEM HERE AT THIS BEACH? I’M NOT ^&*$# LYING, I SAW ONE!!!
Terri: NO JULIA! It’s fine. I don’t believe you, you are just paranoid.
Julia: I’M NOT %^&$# PARANOID. I SWEAR I SAW A STINGRAY. GET OUR OF THE WATER, NOW!!

Anyway, you get the point. I was freaking out and Terri wasn’t happy. We sounded like an old married couple and argued back and forth for about five minutes before the two 20-something year old guys down the beach ran out of the water squealing like little girls. I ran over to them and asked what was wrong. They went on to tell me they overheard us arguing and thought I was just being paranoid about a stingray…all because of my accent (we don’t have accents, THEY do). So, I was right all along, there was an official stingray sighting by this Canadian tourist! The Kiwi boys went on a rant about Steve Irwin, who I couldn’t have cared less about at this point! The fact was that a stingray swam right in from of me!! Terri ran out of the water and apologized as we walked down the beach a little ways to watch all of the clueless swimmers enjoy their time in the water! Little did they know….

After too much “googling” and multiple Wikipedia searches, the last stingray stinging that happened at Oriental Bay in Wellington was a young girl in 2006. The reassuring statistics have told me that one is more likely to die tripping over their living room rug than from a stingray sting….whatever!

Other than that eventful day, we have been having a blast! We are celebrating our first anniversary on Sunday and are going to go to a Thai restaurant which is also a BYO – Bring your own wine. It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by, but we were reminiscing yesterday and while 2009 has had its ups and downs, it’s certainly been a memorable one! We are anxiously awaiting Clem’s parents’ arrival when we will do some more travelling. Until then, enjoy your turkey dinners, drink too much wine and as bad as it sounds, have fun in the snow and cold this Christmas! Love to you all!