Santa on a Surfboard?

There are two days until Christmas, and I'm wearing shorts. Santa's suit is not fuzzy, red, and warm, no, it is a swim suit and his red Santa hat magically stays atop his head as he rides into town on his surfboard. From what I've gathered, Christmas day is spent at the beach, barbequing and frolicking in the ocean instead of curled up inside watching the snow drift by. Christmas in Australia is just plain odd, since Christmas and cold weather are apparently interchangeable in my mind. And Christmas day, here at the hostel in Lennox Head, Steve and I will be hosting the Christmas BBQ for all the backpackers since Graeme and his wife (the owners of the hostel) are having their family over for the holiday. I fully intend to nominate any backpacker who even mentions his/her skill on the BBQ as head-chef and will relinquish my duties...I mean, come on, me in charge of a BBQ?!

Life otherwise has settled into some kind of routine. Steve and I have been working hard almost 5 days a week at our job, remodeling a woman's backyard shed into a living space/meditation room/no more storage room. It has been great for the money, but the woman is a bit strange and hard to work for. Quite frankly, she stresses me out because she'll come in periodically to check our progress and change her mind about what she wants, list off 6 different things to be done (all contradicting one another), asks our opinions, and then promptly dismisses them because I don't think she was interested in the first place. As for the remodel job, I'd be surprised if the building was even standing if I came back in a couple of years seeing as she asked us to use rusted nails to hold the ceiling up and rotted boards as framework for the plywood walls. I almost want to write a disclaimer and hide it somewhere in the room, denying any responsibility for the shoddy craftsmanship because Robinson Construction taught me to build things better than what this lady wants.

Luckily, we're on a short vacation for Christmas, then we're working another week till New Year's and then she's off to Tasmania so I think work will be finished for a while and we can have a proper summer vacation at the beach, when it's not raining. Because that's what it does during an Australian summer. It rains, a lot. Although, as per Murphy's law, the rainy days seem to coincide with the weekends and the sunny days with our work week. I'm really not that surprised.

Yesterday, Christmas came early when we got back from work and found a huge package from home with all sorts of goodies and presents (prezzies in Australian). Mom and Dad sent us cameras, something I greatly appreciated since my current one has dust/waterspots floating around on the lens and I can't get rid of them. I think it's also a hint to start taking more pictures. And I really should since I've been in Lennox for almost a month and have about 2 pictures. Oops!

Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone back home and my friends in Europe! Love you all and I hope you have a great holiday season and enjoy your time with family. I miss you guys. Eat some good Christmas food for me since I'll be chowing down on hamburgers and most likely dodging raindrops. Happy Holidays!

...

The other day, Byron asked me a question. He asked me what my favorite thing about myself was. And you know what? I didn't have an answer. I thought and thought but nothing came to mind and the silence stretched between us as my mind whirled dizzily trying to come up with something as he waited expectantly. I had no answer, and I refused to make something up. It is devastating to know that I can name off the top of my head those things about myself which I loathe, that I have an endless list of things about myself I would change if I could, but I couldn't come up with one single thing I honestly and truly like about myself. I think it is time to do some reevaluating in my life. Now is some time for deep introspection.

when it rains, it pours

I've heard a lot about how Australia is and has been in the middle of drought for going on a decade. And then I decide to come to Australia and the rain follows. It's been raining for the most part of the last 2 weeks, at times down pouring in a monsoon. In one part of the country, people have had to evacuate because of flooding. In my opinion, that is hardly drought weather.

Over the weekend, Steve, Byron, and our friend Thomas, braving the rain, drove an hour north and inland to Mount Warning to camp for the night. We set up the tent in the rain, cooked and ate dinner in the rain, went to sleep in the rain, and broke camp in the rain. It was all really lots of fun, but that was just the beginning. The rain at this point was a mild drizzle, which you can ignore after about 20 minutes, but when we parked at the bottom of Mount Warning, suited up, and started our 4.4 kilometer hike to the top, the skies let loose. We started by avoiding the puddles and muddy spots, not wanting our nice dry shoes to get uncomfortable, but by about ¾ of the way up there, I'd stopped caring, mostly because I couldn't get any wetter, so I went slopping through the puddles.

The last bit up to the top of the mountain is described as a “sheer vertical rock scramble” in the words of whoever wrote the placards, and we had to haul ourselves up using toeholds and a chain to keep us steady. Mind you, the vertical rock we were climbing was a bit slippery, which added to the thrill and general level of danger. I spent approximately 11 minutes at the summit of Mount Warning, scarfing down a banana and staring at the beautiful view, of the inside of a cloud, decided it looked quite similar to what i'd been looking at the whole hike up, and turned around to go back down. At this point, my clothes are soaked, my shoes are squishing with each step, and the gusting wind brought out goosebumps the size of, well, Mount Warning on my legs. Needless to say, it took us about half the time it took us to get up there to get to the bottom, where I'm pretty sure I wrung a liter of water from my sweatshirt and shorts.

I am making sure that during my next hike the rain stays away.