Christmas in Australia

Seasons Greetings!! It has been a sort of strange holiday season so far, seeing as how it has been warm, sunny, and there isnt christmas music playing in stores like back in the states. But, despite all of this, we are finally getting in the christmas spirit now because we have a tree! We had waited too long and they sold out at all of our local stores, so Lauren and Mike took a bus to a store in a neighboring town and bought us a wonderful christmas tree for $9. We decorated it yesterday with lights and ornaments while listening to some christmas tunes that Laura has on her ipod. Now we are officially feeling the christmas spirit!


A couple of days ago, we attended a Lucia party (apparently a huge Swedish holiday) hosted by our Swedish friend, Elin. We ate all sorts of Swedish treats and drank Glogg (Lar and CK, I'm sorry to tell you that it tasted way better than yours did on christas eve...but done be sad, it was made by a real Swedish girl, after all). We also learned a "Lucia" song in swedish and sang it multiple times (although we probably were way off because swedish is a very hard language to learn).

In a week, Lauren is heading west to Perth with her friend, Nick (who studied abroad in Berkeley) to spend the holidays with his family. Laura and her fellow roomies plan to go to Bondi beach and BBQ for the non-traditional christmas celebration, if they dont have to work, that is. Lauren gets back from Perth on the morning of New Years Eve, we still dont have plans for that celebration, but it is one of the craziest holidays here so we are thinking about heading into the city (Sydney) to watch the fireworks over the harbour bridge. We hope you all have a fabulous holiday and stay warm!

p.s. sorry about the sideways images, i cant figure out how to rotate them!