Aussie Expats Update – Some Pre-Christmas Adventures!

Hello world!

It’s TWO sleeps until Christmas: TWO! How time flies and how crazy it is to think that soon the jolly fat man will be bringing joy and gifts to everyone. Exciting times. It’s been some time since I posted; I decided last week that there hadn’t been enough happening to write an update post, especially as I was also trying (and failing, it turned out) to get ahead with uni so I’d have less to do this week while James is off work. Yet, despite our silence, we actually have been doing things (yes, I’m proud).

Last week was mostly focused on trying to get through uni and preparations for the holidays. Despite a hectic weekend over the 10th and 11th (see wonderful photo of us in our Big White toques below!), we had very little on last week and took the chance to rest a bit at home. We had the outgoing Aussies and the incoming Aussies over for a tasty spag bol dinner one night and were fortunate enough to also have a lovely lunch with them all to farewell Dave, Lee and the boys before they headed back to Australia. Couldn’t help but be a little envious of that!

We had a calm, quiet weekend—James did some running to continue developing his endurance and heart rate monitoring as he works towards longer trail runs next year, and I managed to type a bit more of my manuscript. We’re sitting at 103k words now and the end is in sight! Possibly a little overly optimistic to think I can get it all transcribed by 2017, but I’m determined to try (there’s going to have to be some serious typing in the next week). We also took the opportunity to set up our slack line—what? We’re (James) apparently very adventurous souls—and try it out. It’s brutally hard work, but I’m mostly blaming the Oklahoman wind for that, because I’m 99% sure we’ll be ace at it next time we try.

Monday saw me getting my knickers in a twist about needing to get some uni firmly under my belt (a common theme for this week), but achieving somewhere in the realm of nothing. Well, not quite nothing. James and I decided that it was time to move my desk from the lower-floor, back-of-house icebox to the warm, up-a-full-flight-of-carpeted-stairs, other room. It was an experience. For a start, the desk was too wide to fit through the doorway from the study into the rest of the house—we may or may not have scratched a whole heap of paint (keep that on the down low, thank you). Eventually we figured it out and did some fancy rotational business to get it out, but then we had to get it up the stairs… To save you all the pain of the tale, I’ll sum it up: sore ankle, bruised legs, smacked collarbone. I’m still aching from the process.

We went and chopped some firewood in the afternoon. It was nippy and I saw a skunk, but I can’t tell you the secret location because I’m not sure we’re legitimately allowed to chop wood there *cough*. We also discovered that I’m not very good at woodchopping: either I was never taught or I’ve experienced some serious skills fade. Whatever it is, we managed to pick a really hard piece for me to chop up and my hand is damn sore from doing so! Luckily Tuesday was a little more relaxed. We got a lovely invitation from the new Aussies, the Shanasys, to accompany them on a road trip to Chickasha for dinner and a tour of the Chickasha Festival of Lights. With the added incentive of heated seats and, as it turned out, truly excellent burgers at Interurban (I would argue among the best I’ve had since we moved to the US), it was an excellent evening.

Yesterday, James and I went on a whirlwind adventure to OKC. After our trip to Chickasha with the Shanasys on Tuesday night, he felt inspired to see what else was going on around the place. Despite the grinch he’s currently living with (feeling the pinch with uni a bit at the moment!), research revealed some winter/Christmas themed happenings in the city. So, after waiting for the Suddenlink technician to show up (they disconnected our internet yesterday while connecting the Shanasys!) we bundled ourselves into warm clothing, then into our trusty steed and hightailed it north.

We had a wonderful, magical day. We went tubing at the OKC Dodgers’ Snow Tubing Winter festival which included a kindly old man appreciating our accents & a wet butt for me (unknown about the status of James’s butt). We went down the slide twice & got some great footage of me being a goofball while James was too cool for school on his trip down. Then we walked to the Myriad Botanic Gardens, laced on some skates and managed to stay upright the whole time! It’s easily been about six years since I went ice skating and James was something similar, so we were wobbly at first. Luckily we seemed to find our ice-legs, despite the numerous crazy obstacles in our path: kids falling everywhere, some woman who’d smacked her head, and just generally people sprawling, struggling and slipping all over the place that I didn’t really have the skills to avoid. Our ankles aren’t really conditioned to ice skating and we were a bit sore by the time we finished. James had seen something about pop-up shops around the area, so we put on our own shoes (a thankfully stable surface after the ice skates) and set off.

For a capital city, there sometimes seem to be parts of OKC that are almost abandoned, or at least very quiet. It was a nice chance to just do some walking and get out and about though. Luckily, James was smart enough to pick us up some gloves when we went out to buy a new axe earlier in the week (he broke our other one chopping up the wood supply after our escapade on Monday… it was about 3 days old), because it was quite chilly. We strolled past a nice-looking little coffee shop on our way to the Christmas pop-ups, and ducked in for a hot beverage, which was a wonderful reprieve from the cold (we have to keep reminding ourselves that the new year will bring more cold weather rather than a quick transition to warmth again!).

The Christmas pop-up shops were wonderful. From a distance, they looked a little similar to how we might expect the colonisation of Mars to appear, with numerous little white dome-tent buildings. There were some wonderful kitschy, artisan pieces in amongst it all which I always enjoy looking through. There was a beer bar bus with taps coming out the back and seating inside:

There was also a darling little blue trailer where a woman was selling homemade hot chocolate and gourmet marshmallows by Katiebug’s. We ordered three different kinds of marshmallows (salted caramel, snickerdoodle and cookie butter, for those of you who are curious as to our culinary choices), and then we waited. And waited. And waited. Once, the woman serving up the orders looked out and asked us if we were waiting for the drinks she was holding out the window, but after our quick disavowal (well, we weren’t waiting for drinks!), seemed to dismiss us. So we waited some more. Finally, she looked at us again with a quizzical face and we jumped in to explain we were just waiting for our marshmallows… she’d lost the order. Oops! Luckily she was lovely about it and gave us three extra to make up for it (James wasn’t impressed—“we don’t need any damn extra marshmallows!”—but I was totally ok with it). I was happy – and they were really soft and tasty! They’re airy and sweet: delicious pillowy happiness in a paper bag. I’ve been pretty disappointed with the marshmallows we’ve had over here: I’ve found them kind of plastic-y and gummy, just really fake tasting, so Katiebug’s were really an experience… If you’re ever in the neighbourhood, I highly recommend them!!

We decided to have dinner while we were in town (and met a horse of the way to eating!), so pulled in at the Bricktown Brewery for some buffalo wings and really deliciously good pizzas before rolling out the door. It was surprisingly busy on the roads back to Lawton! One thing that I continue to find baffling about the USA is how they can be ‘advanced’ in certain ways, be widely accepted as a world power… and they haven’t yet implemented automatic tolls. Or PayWave.  What’s with that? I guess it’s easy for us to say, since our population is about 5% of the USA, but it can be frustrating to find yourself hamstrung in those respects when it would be so easy in Aus.

In closing, I must thank social media, which has once again presented me with a wonderful gift: a list of awesome sounding writing competitions running in 2017. Unable to resist, I’ve had a quick squiz through and have already started putting something together to submit for the Mogford Food and Drink short story prize. It’s exciting stuff, so if anyone else decides to get on board, please let me know and I’d love the chance to swap stories and chat with some people!

I hope you all have a very, VERY Merry Christmas with your friends, family and loved ones, some tasty food, some good books and some Christmas cheers. I’m not sure if I’ll get back on to blog prior to NYE, so I hope everyone enjoys ushering in the New Year (come on 2017, be amazing!) as well!

— Ana.