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.

So now it’s nearly Christmas which we will all be working at The Alexandra, and I am desperately hoping that the snow will come down over the next few days so we can have a White Christmas, but according to the weather man it’s not going to happen. It is London however, and things can change in the blink of an eye, so there is always a hope. Christmas Eve we will be spending time together and opening our together and then early in the morning we will be off to the pub for champagne breakfast. Then it will be the fun of a few hours work before we all sit down together, about 20 of us in all, and have a giant feast and some Christmas drinks. I think while we all won’t be with our families at home, we will be with our new friends we have made since being here which will make for a fun filled day.

On the 13^th of December we visited Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. There are rides and food and markets and a circus and even an ice rink. The ice rink was the main reason we were going there, so we could go skating. I had hoped that the lake would be frozen over and that was where we could skate, but my hopes where crushed earlier in the year when someone had told me it was a man made rink. It was still quite big though, but at the time we went there were so many people and that made it difficult to skate around at times.

I hadn’t ice skated in a long time, but it didn’t take long to get going again. A bit like riding a bike I guess, you never forget. We skated around in and out of people as much as we could and even managed to get a bit of speed at time too! Well, most of us did. Iwona spent most of the time on the edge holding onto the wall, and Kate did as well for a bit, but eventually we were all out on the ice and having a lot of fun, all 6 of us, Kate, Lucas, Iwona, John, Elese and I. After an hour though, our time on the rink was up and as we were checking out some photos from the skating a girl walked off with her hand dangling down. We think she had a broken wrist and were glad it hadn’t happened to any of us. We spent a few hours at Winter Wonderland and just wandered through the place, ate some food and checked out the markets. It was a lot of fun and makes me want to learn to skate properly, but would love to do it on lakes and ponds, although I don’t think it would get cold enough here to do so.

It was about a week of the weather reports teasing us before we actually got some snow but when it did come it was awfully exciting for us, but not many around us shared our enthusiasm. We didn’t care though. For a few nights walking home after work a lot of cars had been covered in ice but we were yet to see any snow. One morning I awoke to see a small layer of snow over some of the cars outside and on the ground, but no snow was falling. I went back to sleep and a couple of hours later when I woke up and looked outside, there it was, what we had been waiting for. It was SNOWING! I woke Elese up and we threw some more clothes on and went outside to enjoy our first snowfall. There wasn’t too much of it so all would could do was try and catch a few snowflakes on our tongues and throw a few small snowballs. It snowed throughout the day and it built up a little bit and we got enough to cover the ground. The snow is such a beautiful site when it is all white and covering everything. It was great for the next day.

After the snow starts to melt, it can get quite ugly and hard to walk through. While it’s soft and white, it is fun crunching through the snow and feeling it compact under each step. I love the sound it makes. Though it’s not long after you get everyone walking on it and it starts turning to brown sludge, and then eventually ice. It gets quite slippery and I found myself nearly slipping over a number of times on the way to the tube station, as well as seeing a number of other people almost slip over. You get used to though and it gets easier as you learn all the tricks for walking without slipping, or where the best spot to walk is, like in the still white, soft snow, or on the road where it has all melted away.

We had a bit more snow over the next week and which gave a nice cover and led to airports and being shutdown and the rail services running ridiculously slowly, but it wasn’t until about a week before Christmas we got a day where it started snowing quite heavily and completely covered everything. Elese and I were at home and I had noticed in the morning that it had been snowing, then throughout the day it got heavier and heavier until it was coming down so much you could barely see anything else. It was like a blizzard! It was so much fun to watch from the window and there was so much coming down. There was about 25cm of snow on our balcony so Elese and I ventured into the snow and made our first snowman. It wasn’t very big, or very good for that matter, but we gave him a Santa hat, a scarf, a carrot for a nose and cherry tomatoes for eyes. He stood about 70cm tall and that was pretty good considering the little amount of snow we had. Later in the day on our way to work Elese decided that the time had come to make a snow angel as well, so she lay down in the snow and there it was. It would have been better if the snow was deeper, but it was still pretty good!

So here it is in all it’s glory! The final day of Movember and my mustache looking amazing. After a month of growing it, this is how it ended up, and not too badly if I do say so myself. I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who donated to me, our team at The Alexandra and everyone else around the world. Look out for it again next year.