Buon Natale!

Buon Natale everybody! I hope you were visited by the fat man! I'm still away, so this isn't a proper update, but I had to post about one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen in my life, before I got home, procrastinated, and forgot it.

Being Christmas Day, and given that I'm in Rome, I thought I'd go to Vatican to see the Pope's blessing. The place was packed, but I finangled my way to a spot fairly close to the front. There was an Amazonian blonde German woman in front of me, which meant that I was doing the old duck-and-weave to see sometimes, but there was only one person in front of her, and then the space for the march past (more on that later) and finally the seating area, before the steps and the basilica itself.

Anyway, this is not what was so funny. I hung around St Peter's Square and Basilica well after Benny had finished reading his message to the masses and had gone off for the after party. There were nuns and priests absolutely everywhere, along with the other people who were either with their families and were watching their kids chase pigeons, or were like me and on their own doing a bit of touristy people watching. I was wandering around one end of the square, and I walked past a group of nuns eating fairy floss. For shiz. Honest to God (no pun intended), octogenarian Brides of Christ partaking in a little spun sugar. And loving every minute of it. Unfortunately, the batteries on my camera had just died, and there was no way they were going to understand my English (or limited Italian) for me to ask them to stop for a moment whilst I changed them over.

This is right up there with Sr Therese drinking beer and swearing. I don't know why I am not more religious, with these people as my role models!!!

Roman Holiday

Greetings mere mortals! It's 11pm on Christmas Eve, in good old Roma. And boy do I mean OLD. This is just a quick update to say Buon Natale to everybody, and in case I don't update again before it, Buon Anno Nuova!

Had a maaaaaaaassive first day in Rome, walked across the city and back it seems (only a slight exaggeration there). I'll of course give the full details and pics when I get home, as this is a free internet computer in my hotel and I won't/can't type properly (Italian keyboard) and can't upload the pics from my camera (computer restrictions).

Suffice to say, I'm shattered, I'm loving it, and I think I'm sunburnt. For serious. So worth it though.

Trip highlights so far:

• The Colosseum
• The Trevi Fountain (I was there for a full two hours)
• Piazza Navona
• Remembering the little Italian I learnt at school (Non parlo Italiano, scusi!)
• Having my hot waiter at dinner propose to me.

Given that I've only been here a day, the good things are set to continue! Tomorrrow is Christmas Day, and I'm off to see the Pope in all his Hitler Nazi Youth glory. If you think I'm kidding, google him.

In the meantime, buona notte, arrivederci, ciao!

It's "Australia" day!

In a strictly non-travel related post, I'm declaring today to be "Austraila" day! No, I'm not calendar-challenged; I know that it's not January 26. Instead, it's the day that I'm finally getting to go and see "Australia", which was filmed for two months in the town where I lived. It's the reason that I went to Leceister Square and souvenired the big signs.

Officially the movie doesn't come out here until Boxing Day, but there's a charity screening tonight and I've got a ticket. It's excitement plus here today! A couple of my year 7 kids are jealous, because they want to see it after me talking to them about it all, and they don't get to see it for another 8 days. I won't see them in class tomorrow because we finish early, but I'll surely be tracking them down to rub it in. That's the kind of mature, responsible teacher I am!

Lock the doors, call immigration - I'm coming home!

Alas, it won't be a permanent return to warmer shores, but I'm starting to feel like a bit of a toff. I'll be spending Christmas in Rome, and then I'm Summering in Australia - this is the life! Of course, that's a Northern Summer, which means it'll be Winter back in the Land Down Under, but I can almost guarantee that it'll be warmer there than it will here.

Now that I've finally gotten around to booking my flights, here's a few things I can genuinely look forward to without just dreaming about them:

• Proper fish and chips. I know the English claim this dish as their own, but really, no. Not a chance. I long for the days of nipping across to Beaches for a staffroom lunch, with crumbed and cooked to order reef fish - red emperor, coral trout, etc.
• Silverside with normal cabbage. Seriously - another supposed British dish that just isn't right.
• Prawns.
• Hog's Breath steak. I don't care what anyone says, Hog's Breath steak may not be the best steak in the world, but it beats the hell out of what you can get here.
• Mrs Bacon's roast lamb. It's tradition.
• Normal Cadbury's chocolate.
• Bundaberg ginger beer that I don't have to go to London to buy.
• Mangoes. Oh dear Lord, the mangoes!

Hrm, I've noticed that the entire list revolves around food. It's a given that I'm looking forward to seeing the family, as I will have been away for two years by the time I get there. Same goes for Samuel, the mischief-making chocolate lab who sleeps on my treadmill. I'm looking forward to more than one day (or more like one hour) of sunshine. I'm looking forward to going barefoot!

Sigh. 7 months and 2 days, but who's counting?

Santa came to my house!

It's a little more than a week away, but tonight Santa paid an early visit to my house. And no, I've not been drinking spiked egg nog.

Every year here the Rotary Club in the town where I live hook Santa's sleigh up to the back of a 4WD, and drive him around the streets to say g'day to the kidlets and to raise money for the good work that they do. I'd completely forgotten about this from last year, so while I was sitting here tonight procrastinating (I should have a PhD in that by now), I heard the fat man himself engaging in a bit of karaoke as he travelled around.

I took off down the stairs to see him, and nearly face planted along the way. Note to self - last year's lesson about ski socks and polished pine stairs not mixing clearly didn't stick! Regardless, I got downstairs relatively safely, donated my money to the Rotary 'angel', and stood with giddy excitement with the neighbour's kids, waiting to see the jolly old man. He didn't disappoint (nor did he truly believe I'd been good all year - Santa has clued up a bit in recent years!). The photos are dodgy, but seeing as I had to throw myself back up the stairs to fetch the camera before going back down (and I'd left the door open, so if I fell going down I was going to roll into the street), I think they're reasonable. Besides, the guy in the 4WD wasn't taking chances; he put his foot down as I was trying to take them!

Now that I've got the commercial side of Christmas out of the way, it's time to organise my trip to see the Pope and make Sr Therese proud of me!

"Australia" the movie - premiere!

Last year, before I left Bowen, the stars of the Australian film industry were in town for a couple of months, filming the Baz Luhrmann-directed "Australia". Last Wednesday night was the London premiere of the movie.

I know that it's been out for weeks now back home, but it doesn't come out here until Boxing Day *sigh*. There's a charity screening next week that I'm trying to get tickets to, but in the meantime, we had a lot of fun rushing into the city after work and checking out the red carpet at the premiere.

We were slightly delayed in arriving at Leceister Square, thanks once again to the outstanding success that is National Rail East Anglia. I'd really like to commend them on their ability to ruin any and all of our plans, no matter how last minute we may have organised ourselves. Anywho, Tamara and I met at our usual spot at Liverpool Street, and jumped on the tube. We raced around Leceister Square to get to the premiere side of it, and started to force our way through the crowd. Being as vertically challenged as I am, I saw a good portion of Nicole and Hugh wandering around through the screen of other peoples' cameras. Praise technology - if this was in the time before digital cameras, I would have seen nothing!

We managed to eventually squeeze our way through to the front of the crowd, or near enough, after a little while. With that magic gift I have of finding the perfect spot at the right moment, we found ourselves right where the cars were pulling up and the stars were getting out. We'd missed the arrival of Nicole, Hugh and Baz, but we were there for Twiggy and Konnie Huq. Having forgotten the date of the premiere, I wasn't prepared for it and didn't have my camera, but luckily Tamara did. She was all set to take a photo of the next car to pull up, but I don't think she managed to get the photo. We were too stunned - it was Elton John! We were seriously like 3 or 4 feet away from him, and more than a little shell shocked. I'm still waiting for Tamara to upload her photos, so I don't know if she got one at all (he did move away quite quickly).

We hung around until the end of it, hoping to see a few of the other stars up close and personal, but it didn't happen. It was so cold, no wonder they went inside! We'd said when we first arrived that it would be great if we could get one of the big signs on the fences keeping the plebs back. Well, we managed that (thanks to my sheer brute strength, unlike the pansy men standing around wishing for pliers), and then figured we could probably go for one each. That started a trend - one each became one for each of us and one for Millsy for her media classroom, and then one each for three of our Aussie friends who couldn't make it. That was 6 all up. Then we scored two more, so that Tamara and I had one for home and one for our classroom each. By then the security guards were helping us out, so we walked away with ten all up!

They're massive, and even carrying 5 each, they were damn heavy! We had to walk them around to Leceister Square tube station, down the stairs, through the gates and down again before getting onto the train. Then we had to change tube lines at Holborn, which involved walking down stairs and around a corner. Let me just say, those suckers caught the wind and it was like we were kite surfing! We then had to get back to Liverpool St, before we took them up the stairs to McDonalds for dinner. We then of course had to take them back down for our trains home! The next morning the kids were laughing at me because I could barely lift my arm to write on the board. It hurt like hell, but was so worth it! They've actually got pictures on Bowen on them, and of course the large picture of Hugh Jackman doesn't hurt...

You can see on the left of the photo an A4 page on the wall. That gives you some idea of how big the signs are - that and the fact that you can't even see the chair that it's on!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's that time of year again. Time for carols, fairy lights, too much food and obnoxious children. Christmas!

With this being my second Christmas over here, I decided it was time to buy a tree. I only bought a little one, just 3ft, but I think it's all I need. I also put the lights up in the window and on the stairs again, and added a few extra decorations.

Wembley!

That night, it was time for rugby, take two: the Wallabies v. Barbarians. Despite the fact that it was bitterly cold, that it was a work night, and that I was still pretty shattered from the weekend in Wales, there was much excitement.

I somehow managed to arrive a full hour before the other two girls, so like the true nerd I am, I sat in the seats of Wembley and read a book. Granted, it was a novel that I'm teaching at the moment and was trying to catch up on (the kids were further ahead with it than I was), but still - I'm in one of the greatest sports arenas in the entire world, and I was reading a book.

Being so early meant that I got to hear the background story to the game. It was the first rugby match to be played at the new Wembley, and was the centenary anniversary of the 1908 London Olympics (which, conveniently Australia won the rugby gold medal at over the British). The British team at the time were represented by the Cornwall County team, so instead of playing in their home socks, the Barbarians played in the current Cornwall County socks. Also, her highness the Princess Royal was there to present gold medals to the winners, and silver to the losers, to commemorate the event. Took me quite a while to figure out that the Princess Royal was Princess Anne (I knew it was either Anne or Margaret, and that one of them was dead - thanks to the British guy who sat in front of me and told me!).

The seats we had were incredible. I don't know how I managed to pick them, having never been there before, but I managed to fluke it. 4th row, right behind the try line. Outstanding! We were in a prime position to watch the warm up, to see the tries being scored, and to try to get George Gregan's attention as he warmed up for the Barbarians, traitor that he is.

The coup de grace of the evening actually happened after the match. We hung around to watch the medal ceremony (Australia won, 18-11), and the players came back down onto the pitch. We lined up at the fence with the boys from Nudgee College who happened to be on their rugby tour, and three of the Wallabies came around to shake hands. Not only did I touch three Wallabies, but they also signed my boxing kangaroo flag! How excitement!

Oh yeah, and one more thing - we managed to get into a bit more drunken singing! We were sober, well, I was sober, the girls had just had a couple of beers, but somehow on the trek back to the train, shuffling along with the thousands of other people, we came across some really drunk Aussie boys. and got into the spirit by singing a few Australian songs. Tamara and I were in stitches - you can't take us anywhere!

Jimmy the Ice Cube

The following Wednesday, this was the sight that greeted me when I came out of the house:

Poor, icy Jimmy. I had to pry open the door, and I had no hope of opening the windows. Luckily I had bought some de-icer spray the day before, although I'm not sure it's so good for my car. It immediately turns the ice to slush, which is plain weird. And heaven forbid you should leave trace elements of it on the windscreen! That stuff is harder to get rid of than a kid on Christmas Eve.

That Wednesday also marked my first experience of driving on ice. I don't like it. Torrential rain? No problems. Oil on the road? Sure. Ice? Hell no. It's just plain unpredictable. Granted, I'm being a bit of a wuss, because it wasn't black ice. But you just can't count on seeing white stuff on the road and thinking that it's frost. What also didn't help was that a taxi driver smashed his car up on the road I take to go to work. It caused all kinds of problems with traffic (not helped by the fact that every road into London from the south east was closed due to other accidents). My usual 15 minute journey took a lot longer than usual, broken only by a small touch of the giggles when I finally got the windows to open and the ice literally cracked and flew off.

Long story short, driving on ice is sucky.

This is not a misleading heading.

I didn't realise until after I looked at the actual post of my last update just how big it was. No wonder I couldn't be bothered doing more of them at the time! Anywho, it's procrastination time, ergo, it's update time! Yay!

The weekend after our day out in London at Harrods and the Christmas markets, we went on a mini-break weeked (minus Hugh Grant and a bunny costume). We went to Wales for the rugby union match between the Welsh and the Wallabies. I picked up a couple of Aussie girls on the way, and stayed with the family.

The atmosphere at Millenium Stadium is unbelievable. There were 70 000+ people there, the vast majority of them Welsh (naturally). There were small pockets of Aussies around the stadium, and it was very pleasing to still be able to hear them on occasion! I was a bit mixed up over who to support in the end. I wore my Welsh jersey, knowing that I'd be sitting with 4 members of my family, not that you'd have known it because it was SO COLD, and I only unzipped my coat for a few moments at the time. I accessorised with a green and gold beanie and an Aussie flag tattoo. This covered all bases, even though in my head I'd been planning on supporting Wales.

This photo was taken about 2 minutes into the game. One guy from each team was hurt. The Welsh guy got up first, and played on for a few minutes with what turned out to be a skull fracture. The guy is apparently a medical student - note to self, don't go to see a doctor in Wales!

It turns out that it's hard to switch off the innate need to support Australia. My cousin thinks that I was supporting whichever team was winning at the time (and in the end it was a Welsh victory). Really, I just didn't know who to support, so I cheered on anything and everything - made especially hard because of my inability to understand the rules of the game! AFL I understand, rugby league I understand, rugby union, not so much. I think it's all about stacks on and man love. I would never voice this opinion in the middle of a packed stadium; I value my life.

We wandered around Cardiff for a little bit before heading back up the mountain on the train. It was really just too cold to stay outside! I'd heard all about the singing and whatnot that takes place on the trains on the way home from matches, but we didn't see it to start off with. We stopped part of the way home for dinner (best Chinese buffet EVER - namely because we were freezing cold and starving), and then hopped on another train. Jackpot! Drunken revellers! Drunken Welsh singing!

It's hard enough to understand Welsh when the person saying it is sober - vowels are in existence for a reason! Add alcohol and singing, and it's just noise. Apparently they were singing the words wrong anyway, and they were certainly not on key, but they were enthusiastic nevertheless! We managed to have them singing Waltzing Matilda before we left them (and it was the clean version, even though we'd struggled momentarily to remember the words to it!). Success!!

The next morning we departed the Rhondda, and made our way to the Big Pit in Blaenavon. I'd been there before, back in April, and loved it. I'd told Tamara about it, and promised to take her if we ever went to Wales, so down we went. It was a slightly different tour this time, and didn't cover as much as the last one (probably because our guide this time looked ready to have a heart attack any moment). He told a few different stories though, so it was still good value.

After a brief lunch stop, we hit the road. Another successful weekend road trip!

Updates ahoy!

I've had two big weekends in a row, and now it's time to stop procrastinating (marking) and write some updates (procrastinate a bit).

The weekend before last, Tamara and I went into London for the day. We had two main missions - to go to Harrods (I'd been a couple of times before, but Tamara hadn't been, and I needed to pick up a couple of Christmas presents), and to go to the German Christmas markets in Hyde Park. We also had plans to check out some of the Christmas lights around the city.

We started by going straight for the centre of opulence - Harrods. We ended up wandering around for a good four hours. We picked up lots of presents, not that I can mention too much here, as it would give too much away! We spent a fair bit of time in the jewellery and watch sections, scoping out loot that was worth more than our annual salaries combined. We also found pens worth more than our salaries - and I seriously think my supermarket biros are of more use!

After Harrods we regrouped and headed over to Hyde Park for the German Christmas markets. They only opened that day, and it was amazing. There were all these wooden huts selling all kinds of gifts. We started out with a bite to eat, as we'd been going all day without a break. It didn't help that the first couple of stands that we came across were the food and drink huts, so naturally we had bratwurst! They were being cooked on this huge round brazier, and smelt delicious. They tasted pretty damn good as well - we were talking about them again just last night! We also managed to score a freebie taster of Pimms Winter - Pimms mixed with warm apple juice.

Yes, yes - I do realise the sexual innuendo here!

The Pimms teapot/van

Once our bellies were full (and we'd taken some photos), we wandered around the stalls. There were some awesome beanies for sale, and I'm kind of kicking myself for not buying one - it was cold. Oh so cold. My ears were on the verge of dropping off methinks! A lot of the stalls were selling crafts made in Germany. There was so much that I wanted to buy, but I did manage to be at least a little bit restrained! One end of the market had lots of rides, like they used to have at the show. We didn't go on any of them, but it certainly added a festive atmosphere. Of course, the ice rink that had been set up helped with that! We finished up with Tamara having a mug (glass? cup?) of mulled wine, and the fake snow machines kicked in. Turned out, fake snow was actually bubbles!

Our next stop was Covent Garden, as I'd been told that the Christmas lights there were worth a look. Turns out it had been a bit of a miscommunication. The lights weren't up at all! Apparently last year's lights were spectacular, and the friend who told me about them was planning a visit this year, but hadn't yet been. Nevertheless, a trip to Covent Garden is never a write-off, thanks to the Australia Shop being located there. We walked down there, intent on just one purchase - Bundaberg Ginger Beer. Well, it was a great theory at least. All that way, and not a drop of ginger beer to be found. I won't even go into how upset we were. Let me just say that we seriously contemplated going to this convenience store on Fleet Street that I know stocks it. From there we wandered to Leceister Square, contemplating dinner. We decided to go to Chinatown, and somehow came up with the idea of dim sum, as neither of us had had it before. Again - good in theory. We looked at a few menus to see what they served for dim sum, and whilst the odd dish looked good, the chicken feet, intestines and pig's organs really did manage to turn us off. We still somehow managed to decide that we wanted Chinese food for dinner, and had quite a good meal. I think I'll be back to that restaurant!

After dinner we headed down the street, stopping for a quick bit of shopping (new beanies), before reaching Picadilly Circus. There was a vague thought to go to Hamley's Toy Store, which is on Regent Street. We played tourist, as neither of us had photos of the big signs at night. We then noticed that Regent Street had these huge stars stretching across the street, and they were pretty! We followed the stars, stopping periodically for photos and to readjust beanies to cover our ears, and finally got to Hamley's. Sadly for us, Hamley's had closed over an hour before, so there was no re-enacting Tom Hanks' role in "Big" by playing with a giant step-on keyboard. Shame, shame, shame. Regardless, we amused ourselves with the window displays.



After we grew bored of staring into the windows like the children in "Oliver Twist", we headed another block down the street, and found our way to Carnaby Street. Well, not so much found out way there, as saw a sign, swivelled on the spot, and saw the giant snowmen! We took a few photos, and broke into song with Christmas carols that were actually relevant for a change ("Frosty the Snowman" and "Walking in a Winter Wonderland"). By this stage were were both shattered and frozen, so it was time to commence the journey home!