11/21/11 – Manly, Australia
This morning when I woke up Tommy
brought “Adventure Kait My Cooking Mate” breakfast in bed. That is what he now calls me after the
last cooking blog. Pretty clever
if you ask me!
11/22/11 – Manly, Australia
Rainy days...
As we walked to town to the
grocery store, we could not help but realize the dark clouds turning a nice
shade of black. Sure enough as we
stepped outside of the market an hour later ready to walk home, it was
pouring. We sure do know how to
pick the ideal time to do our grocery shopping, a 15-minute walk from our
apartment. Clad in shorts and
t-shirts, we arrived back to our apartment looking like we had just taken a
nice dip in the ocean. A nice
soggy dinner sounds delicious right now…
11/23/11 – Manly, Australia
It is still raining…
Talk about cabin fever! The rain keeps Tommy and me locked in
our little apartment aching to get out, stretch our legs, and overcome our
boredom. There are only so many
movies to watch and cups of hot cocoa to drink!
Luckily my volleyball coaching,
although initially canceled, was still on for today. No, we did not play soggy beach volleyball, but got moved
indoors to the school’s gym. The
15 minute run through the rain, with the lack of a car or bike was lovely as I
showed up to coach looking like a drowned rat, but the idea of cash in my
pocket at the end of the day left a smile. Desperate times call for desperate measures…just kidding.
Town hall lit up for Christmas in the city.
11/24/11 – Manly, Australia
Of course another Thursday was
canceled from rain. At this point
we need a rowboat to get across our patio to our garage. The rain has not let up since Tuesday
afternoon!
On a better note:
Happy Turkey Day everyone! I know your Thanksgiving does not start
until tomorrow, but we are celebrating in Aussie, GOBBLE GOBBLE!
We are attending a Thanksgiving
Party on Saturday with the entire spread of the festive foods, so we did a
modified Thanksgiving feast for tonight.
Buying a whole turkey was just too expensive for us, so we opted for a
half of a turkey that was more similar to cold cuts…works for us! To supplement our turkey, we picked out
a few of our favorite dishes, which resulted in a sugar fest! We gorged on sweet potato casserole and
baked Brie. The sweet potatoes
were whipped with cinnamon and nutmeg spices, and topped with brown sugar and
marshmallows before being baked in the oven to create this heavenly dish. The baked Brie was smothered in a
mixture of caramel, brown sugar, and pecans, acting as our appetizer when in
reality it was a dessert. For
dessert we had a pecan pie, meaning more sugar. It is not surprise that by the end of our meal we were dancing
to our Christmas music to work off our sugar highs!
Thanksgiving is a day to give
thanks, and today I am most thankful for my family. I miss my sisters and parents everyday, but am so lucky that
they support my passion for travel and adventure. The support of my parents has allowed me to travel across
the world to Australia, and they push me to strive for more everyday. I am thankful for my sisters because
they are my best friends, and not many siblings can say the same. I feel blessed everyday to have such an
amazing family that I love so much!
I miss you all and hope you have a wonderful Turkey Day back at
home!
Of course I am also thankful for
Tommy, my fellow adventure-er! He
is my partner in crime, and has made this journey better than I ever could have
imagined! Today was our first
Thanksgiving together on our own, and I’d say we did a pretty dang good job
together!
11/25/11 – Manly, Australia
RAIN…more movies. Thank you iTunes.
Pecan Pie and a Root Beer Float for dessert.
11/26/11 – Manly, Australia
RAIN RAIN GO AWAY!
Well, the rain finally let up
this afternoon, just in time for our Thanksgiving party. Eric, a contact living here in Manly, invited
us to his annual Thanksgiving party with a handful of Americans thrown in with
a large group of Australians. It
was fun to share our holiday with the mouth watering Aussies, and three 16
pound turkeys were enough to feed us all, and then some. I was on salad duty and made a goat
cheese, apple, candied pecan salad that was well loved by everyone at the
party, but the highlight of the evening was the pumpkin pie. An older man from Colorado brought 5 homemade
pumpkin pies made from scratch, and from scratch I mean he made them straight
from the pumpkin. I have never had
and never will have a pumpkin pie as delicious as this one! Tommy and I were thrilled to take home
the pumpkin pie leftovers.
11/27/11 – Manly, Australia
SURPRISE!
Tonight I threw Tommy a surprise
birthday party with four of our friends.
I wanted to do something special for him because he had a bit of a tough
time missing Thanksgiving back home.
I had set up a dinner at a restaurant called Out of Africa in town by
the wharf, and had Jon, Hanna, Gina and Travis waiting at the decorated table
for our arrival. When we walked in
the restaurant, I pointed out the table to Tommy with our friends anxiously
waiting, and of course he thought it was a coincidence they were all their and
went to tell the hostess our name so we could be seated. I had to drag him over to the table for
him to understand that it was a surprise party for him and we were not
coincidently all having dinner at the same restaurant the night before his
birthday! As much as I would love
to make fun of him for this, this is something I would do, and in fact did the
exact same thing when Kirsten threw me a surprise birthday party my senior year
of high school. After the
realization that everyone was there for him, he was very surprised and had a
great night followed by a chocolate dessert at Max Brenner.
11/28/11 – Manly, Australia
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Tommy!
Today is the one day of the year
that Tommy gets to be treated like the ultimate king by me, so I set the alarm
clock to wake up early and start the preparations. As he slept in, I baked him a yummy birthday cake and set up
his presents to surprise him when he woke up, and then brought him some
breakfast in bed. But, the
ultimate surprise came after he had opened all of his gifts, which was my
surprise present: SURF LESSONS! We
threw on our bathing suits and headed to the beach for two hours of surf
lessons. We had the best time ever
riding in the waves, and I must say that Tommy is becoming a really good
surfer! The afternoon was spent
giving Tommy his free volleyball lesson before heading out for a mouth-watering
steak dinner in town.
11/29/11 – Manly, Australia
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas
tree, how lovely are your branches…
We made the trip over to the Warringah
Mall today to find our perfect Christmas tree. Online we found that most of the inexpensive trees were sold
out, and the cheapest one left was $45, but when we arrived at Target, I found
that the elves had left us a little present! Hidden behind the expensive trees was the most perfect $15
tree that someone had returned, marking it down to $10. We snagged it right away and brought it
home to decorate.
After brewing up some hot cocoa
topped with whipped cream and two candy canes, we cranked up the Christmas
music and had a little Christmas tree decorating party.
Step 1: Unpack and unfold the tree
Step 2: Put on the lights and the star.
Step 3: Prepare the ornaments for hanging.
Step 4: Put the ornaments on the tree.
Step 5: PICTURE TIME!
12/1/11 – Manly, Australia
25 days until Christmas and 24
days until my family is here!!!!! The
countdown has begun.
I was not surprised to wake up to rain on this THURSDAY morning, but was not
very happy to see the rain let up on the one day that I am not coaching on the
always rained out Thursday.
Luckily I had a babysitting job to occupy me, but really my luck is
terrible! Tommy and I watched
little 3 year old Charlie at our place all day, and are just happy right now
that our apartment is in one piece…
RIBS!
12/3/11 – Manly, Australia
Santa with his beer...
Today was the Christmas Staff
Party for all of the volleyball coaches.
I brought Tommy along to meet everyone and to share our night of fun,
and boy was it fun…
Although the night started off
pretty tame with our potluck picnic in the park, it turned a bit wild after
that. On the party invitation, it
said to dress festive fancy, which turned out to be a bit of a language
difference. To us, festive fancy
meant for me to put on a party dress and Tommy a button down shirt and khakis
and then top it all off with a Santa hat, but to Australians, fancy actually
means costume… So, when we arrived
to the picnic dressed to impress, we were slightly embarrassed to find everyone
dressed up in elf, Santa Clause, and other crazy Christmas costumes. We did find it weird that we had to
dress fancy to go sit in the park, but it all made sense when we found out that
their meaning for fancy was a costume party! Luckily our apartment was only two blocks away, and we
immediately raced home to change into our “festive fancy” attire!
Lots of food and a few beers later, it
was time for the Secret Santa gift exchange. We played a fun game called Claps to pick and trade
presents, leaving me with a skippy beach ball (a present I picked for Tommy
since I lost this exact ball of his over summer while I was babysitting), and
Tommy with a bottle of wine that we immediately popped open and shared with
everyone. Now it was time for the
fun to begin…we
were given one clue and spent the next few hours searching
for clues around Manly. Every few
clues would lead us to a bar where drinks would be waiting for us with a fun
drinking game to play. At one bar
stop, we got nametags and whatever our nametag said we had to act out before
drinking or while drinking. So,
for the remainder of the night, I had to say HO HO HO before every sip, Tommy
had to pat his head, another had to drink in the squat position, etc. Based on what color our name tag was, we
were put into 3 teams of 3 to run around taking pictures in front of many
different places with our teams, with the losing team left to buy a round of
drinks for everyone. Luckily
Tommy’s team finished first and my team finished second, allowing us to be
treated instead of stuck paying! The night ended in this awesome club for a huge dance party,
but I really should say the night had just begun…
Talk about a fun Christmas
party!
12/4/11 – Manly, Australia
After waking up to the most
gorgeous morning in Manly, a cold wind blew through in the middle of my
volleyball class, sweeping in a dark, threatening cloud with it. Just as I made it home from coaching,
the heavy cloud released a downpour of huge rain drops…the rain is back.
I must mention that before I woke
up to this beautiful morning, I was greeted by another type of friend… As I reached out to take a sip of
water, a cockroach crawled from the glass straight up my arm into the bed! Now I am totally freaked out! One word: GROSS!
