Xmas

24/12/11-26/12/11

Christmas Eve resulted in me leaving the city centre to join my first home stay just in the western suburbs. I was to be the guest of Ray and Lu, a retired couple with Ray being related to a family friend back home. He straight away took me on a bike ride to see the 2000 Sydney Olympic site. If I thought we were going for a gentle bike ride my suspensions were immediately on alert as Ray stepped out of the house dressed in full cycling gear. Riding there I was absolutely fine and we stopped off at the archery centre to watch someone practise. The journey home was a different matter; lack of exercise finally began to tell as any in climb sapped all energy in my legs, by the end the pain was too much as acid burned in my legs. Stopping off at one point to rest I lost sight of Ray for one moment, continuing on after several moments he was nowhere to be seen, by myself I remembered the turning off we had used earlier and so waited until he returned again to find me. Back home and on aching legs I found out we had covered a distance of over 60km! No wonder I was in such pain, but this matter was soon relieved as the spa was started up and we took a dip, once out I felt a lot better. That evening we had a bbq steak dinner before me and Ray ventured out to look at house decorations and to have an ice-cream with a flake in it.

On Christmas morning I woke up and opened up a package I had been sent from home, inside were several Christmas cards which I proceeded to open over breakfast. My hosts were going out that lunch time to a Christmas lunch so I was left alone that afternoon but having just received my MP3 from home and my New Zealand travel guides I happily spend the afternoon relaxing and chilling out, once again I jumped into the spa. In the evening we went round their sons houses for Christmas dinner. After the meal they opened their Xmas presents with me receiving an aboriginal Christmas tree decoration, something to cherish for holidays to come.

Boxing Day the roles were reversed as family members were coming over for lunch that afternoon. With the Boxing Day test on TV we prepared the food for that afternoon. Being in Oz I had yet to do a BBQ so with meatballs needing to be cooked I was selected to be the tong master for the event. I must be good because in the end we used a whole packet of 100 meatballs up! Of course all this was done with me wearing the classic strongman apron with six pack on show (I wish). After all the food was done we hosted our own Boxing Day test on the back lawn, I wasn’t to know at this point that over the coming week I would be playing a lot of cricket. After everyone had left and we had cleared up it was time once again to jump in the spa for one last time, that night we chilled out to a film.