Big Adventures, Little World

Christmas came out of nowhere for us. It was almost as if one week we were in Poland and the next it was a few days until Christmas with us all rushing around trying to finalise all our presents for each other, for our Secret Santa’s at work and getting everything else organised. We’d got a tree and decorated it about the middle of November, much to the disgust of many around us, but the Adelaide Christmas Pageant was the day before so we were well within our rights to put it up. As well as the tree we had put stockings up for each of us and made our place a little bit festive where we could.

We planned on having our Christmas on Christmas Eve, as it was the only time we could all get off together. Our tree was surrounded by presents, each of us bursting with excitement of opening them all, and wondering what we would get. There were presents from each other, as well some presents from home as well and of course Santa, which I guess is the reason there seemed to be so many presents under the tree, not that we were complaining.

We’d been food shopping the night before and bought up everything we needed for our feast which Elese was spending half the day in the kitchen cooking as she had the day off. On the menu were two large roast chickens (turkey was too expensive at about 5 times the price) as well as an assortment of roast veggies. So while the oven did its work on those, myself, Elese, Kate, Lucas, Dung, Greg and Katie all sat down in the lounge to open our presents. Santa had come early to us, but considering it was Christmas back in Australia this wasn’t a problem at all. We spent the next half an hour ripping open all our presents and by the end of it there was wrapping paper everywhere and all our new gifts in amongst it all. While we were all overjoyed and excited to look through and play with everything, it was time to eat, which generally takes preferences as you get older and go through Christmas. I’m not saying that you lose the excitement at all, but your priorities seem to change and you focus on different parts of Christmas.

We all sat down to our delicious meal and ate and ate, like all Christmases and by the end of it we were all ridiculously full. Naturally we ate some more after that. I don’t think it can really be Christmas unless you feel so full that you think your stomach might burst. Kate and Lucas went back to Lucas’ to have Polish Christmas with Lucas’ family and the rest of us sat around nursing our bulging stomachs while we played London Underground Monopoly which I had got for Elese for Christmas. It ended up with just Greg and I playing as the other had gone off to make or receive phone calls which pretty much meant that it was a tie between the two us and no one could dispute that because they had left.

The rest of the night was spent sitting around relaxing and chatting away until we got to the point where we were all ready to lay day our full bellies and fall into the food induced coma we had all been waiting for. It was a necessity. We had all had a wonderful night and for us it WAS Christmas, even if the time didn’t agree with us. Even though we weren’t with our friends and families in Australia, we were at our home with our closest friends and that’s what mattered.