Week ending 21-Dec

Michelle arrived back to Australia on Thursday morning which was very exciting!! In some ways 5 and a half weeks flew by but in some ways it felt like she'd been gone for ages! Work has been slowing down a bit leading into the holidays so I was able to see her for lunch and dinner on Thursday and then we got an early start to the weekend on Friday. We went to this restaurant in the Rocks called Phillip's Foote where you pick your own cut of meat and take it to the grill and BBQ it yourself…its kind of a fun concept (although it might just be their scheme to save on labor costs). Afterwards we saw the movie "Australia" which was kind of fun because of all the pretty outback scenes, but ultimately was a chick-flick love story. Entertaining enough though.

Saturday we made a revolutionary step in the world of the virtual power hour, v-power hour (copyright 2008). Eric Lee, in Chicago having just finished finals along with some of his friends there, and Michelle and I in Sydney, over video g-chat doing power hour (we flirted with the idea of extending to the century) to an hour long video of 80s tv show theme song intros. It was an epic event and one that we hope to repeat and expand on soon.

After a brief recovery Saturday afternoon, Michelle and I went out to "Carols in the Domain" which is a sydney christmas hallmark event. The domain is a big public park that is right next to the CBD and almost right up on the harbor and the event has probably around 20,000 (I'm guessing at the number, but it was a lot) people in attendance. People gather during the day and bring picnics etc and then in the evening various australian singers and choirs and groups sing carols on the stage while the throngs of people in attendance (many intoxicated) hold up candles and sing along. (giving that many open flames to drunk people can't be a good idea…) But it’s quite the feel good event that makes you think peace on earth can't be that far out of reach. On a sidenote, there is absolutely no political correctness here when it comes to talking about christmas/the holidays. You don't say happy holidays here, you say happy christmas and there is no mention of hanukkah whatsoever. Quite a contrast to new york.

Sunday michelle and I made christmas since we're going to be away on the 25th. We decorated the fake palm-like tree we have on our balcony and had a lovely pancake breakfast and opened a few presents. It was a very nice christmas morning.



In the afternoon we did one of our "urban" hikes around watson's bay to vaucluse. It was a really nice 9k walk that started on the pacific and went up to the south head and then along the harbour a bit…it was a gorgeous summer day (totally felt like Christmas…right). To wrap up our pseudo-christmas day we watched "fred claus" which was entertaining and anything with vince vaughn I enjoy.


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A link for more pics from our little hike:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=bqmhkbd.2y3a2kwh&x=0&y=-iwsu87&localeid=en_US