Aussie Expats Update – The Long Slide into Holidays!

Happy Friday people everywhere!

As we slowly slip and slide our way down the final path into the break (James is off from the 17th), it seems that the days are far too long, and the mornings far too cold, for continuing to do anything more than hibernate, drink eggnog and eat fatty meals like oxtail stew and braised beef short ribs. Sadly, until the break, we’re stuck with early morning PT sessions for James… Though I really can’t complain because my brain has been creating some strange and fascinating things in my early morning free-writing sessions.

For those of you who’ve been waiting and chewing their fingernails to the quick, let me first reassure you: the combination of my sunshine-yellow toenail polish and my navy blue dress looked amazing. Hurray! Unfortunately, James and I completely failed to get a proper photo together on the night, but we did manage to take this selfie at home (so my makeup and hair efforts—yes, I know people, I did that all by myself—weren’t wasted).

Sadly, we found out that evening (after offering to drive Dave and Lee to the ball, of course), that despite the whole painful debacle we’d gone through to get our car repaired, the battery had conked out. Since we’d literally turned on the car ten minutes prior, there was some mild swearing and car-kicking all round (scout’s honour, it wasn’t me: I was wearing open-toed heels). However, even with that minor hiccough, we had a great night. A whole bunch of our friends were there, the food was somewhat edible, the speeches were loooong, but I suppressed the urge to nap, and we did a teeeeensy tiny bit of drinking—which is all that was necessary to determine that yes, my liver is no longer conditioned to be an adult—before heading home and collapsing into bed at a decent hour. All in all, a successful evening.

As for most people, weekends are usually our chance to do a whole lot of nothing, if at all possible, so it was less than thrilling to spend close to three hours trying to sort the whole damn car business out on Saturday. We had to get the battery jumped (Paul and Anne saving the day again!), then another two and half waiting to get the battery changed. No, the seats weren’t comfortable, and I got really hungry. Plus, we had no food in the house, so we had to go and buy groceries after that—once we ate a super late lunch and roused our sociable personas, we headed next door for Dave and Lee’s farewell party. We’re so lucky that we have an awesome group of people—both international military and their families, and American military—over here! There were some tasty sugar cookies—I love those things—and some great food too, so though the weather was truly crummy, we had a good time chatting (and eating).

It’s definitely starting to get cold down here: we’re regularly getting mornings (and days!) that are below zero (celsius, for any Americans who read that with wide eyes), which is not really my preferred kind of weather. Let me tell you right now, training in your garage gym becomes considerably less fun when you can’t feel your fingers and toes. We’re lucky that Dave and Lee bought a little heater to try and improve the general conditions… But regardless, we’re thinking we might have to move our morning gymnastics sessions inside somewhere, or risk farewelling some extremities. Those sessions, despite their deceptive simplicity, are kicking my butt as it is, without adding in the challenge of the temperature. Actually, I almost thought I was going to lose my respiratory tract the other day after doing some shuttle runs at about 1730: my throat and chest ached for easily ten minutes after finishing. Partly probably because running/cardiovascular activity aren’t my friends, but mostly because of the cold (I think).

This week has been a slog of writing essays, getting course work in and trying to get a bit ahead so that I’m not studying while James has some time off. It’s only a two week break, quite different from our long December/Christmas breaks in Aus, but we’re planning on doing a whole lot of nothing with hot chocolate in front of the fire and catching up on some reading, maybe some scrapbooking and some sleeping. We’ve also started thinking about our options for travelling at the start of next year. James’ class finishes in February and he’ll have a bit of time off before the next one, plus I have to leave the country in order to reset my visa: so we’re looking at getting some adventures in!

I’m excited about some new story ideas I’ve come up with recently, including one about a clocktower girl who becomes curious about the world outside. At about 80 000 words into typing up my novel, I’m finding flickers of fire re-ignited by some of the ideas within it and some hope for eventually re-crafting it into something worthwhile: so I guess the writing business is all going well!

We have three social events to attend on Saturday, which will be a challenge, but there will be sugar cookies at Anne & Silva’s christmas party (we bought ugly sweaters!), so we will be amply rewarded for our hardship.

On the flip side, everyone!

— Ana.