The holiday season is upon us! We've been busily preparing for our trip home, trying to wrap up work and squeezing in holiday festivities before we go. A colleague of ours invited us up to the Blue Mountains for his family's tree decorating day. Since we won't be around this Christmas, we don't have a tree of our own, so it was nice to still have the experience with our adoptive family here. We had a great time decking out the tree and assembling (and re-assembling) the train. We had a fantastic Aussie BBQ (complete with shrimp...er, prawns...on the barbie) afterwards on their deck out back. I brought dessert - a chocolate concoction I made out of 2 batches of brownie mix, dark chocolate melting buttons and chocolate icing to which I added mint extract, topped with chocolate mint ganache and crushed candy canes. Every time I try to make dessert, I find that either Oz doesn't stock the necessary ingredients (Cool Whip, butterscotch chips, |
peanut butter chips, mint chips, cream cheese icing, etc.) or I don't have the equipment (stand mixer, electric beaters) to make my own, so...this is what we ended up with. We heated it up and ate it with vanilla ice cream - it was tasty, but it was preeeeeeetty rich...definitely richer than what our Aussie friends are accustomed to. I brought chocolate peanut butter pie to our last get-together...I never give the impression that Americans take dessert "lightly".
Last week was also our School of Education "retreat". (It's called a retreat, but it's really a day-long school meeting...it's sort of like being "invited" to a (compulsory inservice) "party"). This one did end with Christmas festivities though! We were asked to sign up for teams prior to the day, so we joined up with a reindeer gang. We thought we'd lead the pack at representing our theme, as one of our teammates bought gold and silver antlers for us and I made up some name badges, but people brought some serious Christmas A-game to the event. We were beat out by the "tinsels" for best representation of theme, but there was also a tree decorating contest in which each team dressed up a member as their Christmas tree. Afterward (I think this was a last-minute mandate by the MC), the tree had to sing a song for everyone prior to the vote. Pickle sang the dreidel song...unfortunately, the joke didn't really land, as no one knew the song, nor did they seem to recognize what the heck the American was singing about...until he paused and finished with "I'm Jewish"...that got quite the laugh! Our little Jewish Christmas tree stole the show and won us the contest! ;)
This week, we headed out to the CBD to check out the holiday happenings. Our first stop was Santa Fest at Darling Harbour. We went on Saturday evening in order to catch a flick at the Open Air Cinema - "The Year Without A Santa Claus". If you're not familiar with this one, it's one of the good old fashioned stop motion animation pics (like Rudolph and Jack Frost). The stars of the movie is by far the two Miser brothers,
Snow Miser and Heat Miser. My sister and I like to sing along to this one...Anyway, the rest of the movie is ok, but this is definitely the highlight, so we stayed though the Miser brothers' performance, but then found it necessary to address the proverbial elephant in the room: there was a chocolate café in our line of sight, and it was far more appealing than the movie...Pickle decided on a mocha; I had a flat white, and we shared some fruit and chocolate. | |
We've actually had a little (welcome) cold snap this weekend - after hovering in the 90's a few days, we had to don our jumpers (hoodies) last night...we didn't complain. It was a little grey in the evening, which reminded us of Ohio, but once the sun set, it didn't matter.
Besides the Open Air Christmas-themed Cinema, Santa Fest boasted a seven-metre-high crate Santa...
A statue of Joan Rivers dressed as Santa...
...a Santa Maze...
...and a pretty spectacular fireworks show over Cockle Bay at the end of the night.
The next day, we hopped the train to the CBD to check out the holiday happenings there. The Queen Victoria Building is beautiful on any day, with its stained glass, ornate railings, beautiful clocks and grand arches, but it's particularly stunning this Christmas season. Thousands of lights adorn the railings and a huge rose-covered dome covers the dramatic fairy-guarded Santa house. The highlight of the decor is the three-story Swarovski Christmas tree. It weighs 6.5 tonnes and boasts 65,150 lights and 82,000 Swarovski crystals!
After our visit to the QVB, we scored some pork dumplings, noodles with spicy peanut sauce, and a lychee mint freeze at Din Tai Fung for dinner and walked around sight seeing a bit before heading to Martin Place to see the huge tree. We hit up Max Brenner's Chocolate Bar for chocolate souflé and ice cream before coming back to catch the illuminations.
The Martin place tree is interactive: you can text or tweet your holiday greeting to have it displayed on the ribbon...
There are digital light projections on the Martin Place buildings as well. We watched the on the Sydney General Post Office (clock tower building) before heading through the Boulevard of Light and on to St. Mary's Cathedral.
We took some video so you can see the projections in motion. This is the General Post Office...
...and here is St. Mary's Cathedral...
We've had a good time getting geared up for the holidays here in Sydney, but we're counting down to some serious family fun this week, as we head back to the States Thursday for a day-long layover in Honolulu, Hanukkah in Kansas City, and Christmas & New Years Eve in San Antonio. We're so pumped to be headed back home for a couple weeks. Wishing you happy holidays!