I'm in Sydney again!

G'day!

I am so grateful to my hosts, Peter and Martin Wesley-Smith, for their hospitality.  They are not just excellent wwoofer hosts, they are terrific, interesting people too!  They opened their home to me for 3 weeks and made me feel very welcomed.  I enjoyed working, talking, and relaxing with them.  I had been dreading Christmas away from my family but their generosity and the warmth of their family made it so much easier.

So, I had a wonderful Christmas!  I hope you did too.  Although it was overcast or rainy the two days before,  Christmas was sunny and warm.  Well, actually, it was hot for me.  I'm just not used to mid 80's in December.  It's a tradition for my hosts to have seafood for Christmas.  We had tuna, salmon, and mackerel sashimi and raw oysters for starters.  The main course was an enormous snapper cooked on the barbie.  It was at least a meter long; the only place it would almost fit was the barbie.  Steamed with lemon and onion, the fish was good.

I'm in a new life in a new land.  I'm opening my mind (and my taste buds) up to new experiences.  I ate the sashimi and raw oysters with my new mindset.  I did not think about texture (which is what put me off in the past).  I told myself that it is a new food to try and to be open to it.  It worked.  I chewed and tasted the fish and the oyster.  Not bad at all.  I could get used to it.  I certainly won't say that I don't eat raw fish or oysters anymore, because I can.

Our next Christmas meal was baked oysters with ham and steamed oysters with a special sauce.  Both were absolutely delicious!  And garlicky prawns.  Yum!!!  And drinks with St. Germain, gin, sugar syrup, soda water, peaches, grapes and who knows what.  All I know is that they were good!

And now, I am in Sydney again.  I'm house/cat sitting in a lovely apartment a couple of train stops from Sydney's CBD (Central Business District).  I've been wwoofing for the past 8 weeks.  It's nice to make my own schedule again.  To play with Claudia, a 16 year old Russian blue cat who loves to be petted and purrs like a motor.  To just read and relax and do nothing if I don't want to.  Just for 2 weeks.  Then my twin, Sandy, comes to Sydney with her family.

Unexpected bonus:  I'm in Sydney for the New Year's Eve fireworks!  Over 1.5 million people are expected in the CBD tomorrow night.  It's gonna be a zoo!  I'm going to take my (absent) hostess' suggestion and walk up to Bald Hill in Sydney Park and enjoy the fireworks there.

Happy New Year!!
Cyn

Ps:  Cricket:  Australia lost horribly to the Brits on the fourth day of the match.  So the Brits win the Ashes Series.  This is the first time in a very long time that the Brits have won in Australia.  The last test of the series was supposed to start 3 January in Sydney. Almost 100,000 tickets were expected to be sold for that game.   I don't know what happens now.