2012

I'm taking advantage of a rare Gab nap to write TWO blogs of surpassing dullness. This one is all going to be a bulleted list and will walk anyone with far too much time on their hands through the events of 2012 for me - just in time for the year to be over and a new one to start.

• I rang in 2012 in rubbish style. On New Year's Eve, I went wine tasting in Maclaren Vale on a 40 degree day with Beth, Gab and Sarah. We had a whale of a time, but a combination of the terrible heat and the fact that the girls were heading off on a cross-desert golfing trip the next morning led to them calling off the celebrations at 11.30pm and going to bed! I was home before 12am. What a terrible start to the year.
• On a much happier note, 2012 was the year that I moved in with the lovely Merilyn and Christina. Leaving all the work of finding a place to the girls, I swanned in an took up residence in our lovely Lilypad (as we liked to call it) within walking distance of the bay run, an organic farmers market and the best ice cream in the world (Bar Italia in Leichhardt). Living with these ladies was absolutely one of the highlights of my year and I miss our little home more than most things in Sydney.
• I had two weddings in one day - both former housemates and both exciting and joyful occasions.
• I turned 25 and had THREE birthday cakes.
• I lost two colleagues to pregnancy - this meant that I got an office with 25th-floor views of Sydney but also meant that I was sad and lonely for many months.
• I booked a certain plane trip, after much indecision.
• My church opened the doors of its shiny new building, six years after the old building was lost in a fire. There were bagpipes playing amazing grace. There was an army marching down City Rd with umbrellas. There was rejoicing. Lots of rejoicing. There were brightly coloured child fences and the fear that we would actually lose a child out the massive, easily-opened doors onto the street (as far as I know, this never actually happened).
• We hosted not one but TWO dance parties at our house. It was so much fun. The second one had a smoke machine and coloured lights. We are basically the coolest household that ever was. (I acknowledge that we stole the smoke machine idea from Bec, but since she lives there now she can be part of the household coolness)
• I quit my job of two years with Macmillan - a job that I loved, but it was time to move on. Also it had got really lonely.
• About a month after announcing my resignation, I found out that I had a job in Cambridge and would not be living on the breadline.
• I moved to Cambridge.
• I met approximately 1000 people. I still struggle to figure out who is who and who does what, but I promise I'll get there!
• I went to London, Brussels, York and Edinburgh.

I feel like so many things have happened this year that I've barely scratched the surface. I made many friends in Sydney, or deepened existing friendships with people I love dearly and miss terribly now that I'm here. I met a ton of wonderful, lovely new people in Cambridge who I suspect will be in my life for a long time to come. More than anything, I've loved talking, laughing, dancing and praying with all of you. It's been hectic, and stressful, and emotional and overwhelming at times but I think I'll look back on 2012 more than anything as a year of joy, full of laughter and fun - a year when I've been wonderfully blessed by God.

So nothing remains but to say, Happy New Year!

Christmas is Christmas the world over

Yes, Christmas is over. Yes, I missed the boat. But I did so much Christmas this year and I've been so busy doing Christmas that I didn't write anything about it so I'm going to write about it NOW. If this is not acceptable, please do feel free to save this up for Christmas 2013.

There is something about being away for Christmas that leaves you with two choices. You can either be a Scrooge, reject the whole notion of a proper Christmas and pretend the whole thing isn't happening. Or you can do what I did and embrace the season with a strange enthusiasm that scares those nearest to you. This included reading A Christmas Carol, hence my reference to Scrooge. I wonder how many of my generation saw The Muppet's Christmas Carol a thousand times as children (and it was fantastic every time) and as a result, they now picture the characters of A Christmas Carol as muppets (and Michael Caine) - because reading the book, I realised that in my head it was all muppets.

I am feeling awfully lazy so I'm just going to list a few things I did for Christmas this year.

Two Christmas parties with work: How did our team manage this? Somehow, we have managed to winkle our way into another team's Christmas festivities as well as our own. Total win, because the one that I don't really think we belong at was in Newnham College, which puts on a fantastic Christmas spread in a very picturesque dining hall. The other is just a run of the mill pub drinks do but it involved a Secret Santa. I got to try mulled cider and there was much Christmas cheer.

Choir - Christmas concert. Actually two Christmas concerts. We sang carols at a street fair AND we had a proper end of year concert in a church with an audience and I knew lots of the words to the songs as well which was a win. This also involved mince pies.

Church - I managed to go to a candle-lit carol service, another non-candle-lit service that had a proper little orchestra, and a Christmas morning service. All of these involved mulled fruit juice (Christians) and mince pies.

Christmas dinners - the first one with my housemates, who cooked up a delicious feast. The second one, Gab and I cooked ourselves and it was not in the least a disaster. I can now put 'Christmas roast dinner' on my resume. (This is in reference to the fact that one ought to be able to list one's professionally useless but hard-won accomplishments on one's resume. For instance, I always know how much water to put in a kettle; I can list the monarchs of England in order from Richard III downwards; and, now, I can cook a decent although not astonishing Christmas roast.) The second Christmas dinner was referred to as the ex-pat dinner. Originally it was going to be just Gab and me rattling around Cambridge on Christmas Day, not entirely sure what to do with ourselves; but in the end, I found us two other Adelaide girls with nowhere to go and we threw in a Dutch girl for good measure. I suppose you could make a comment about misery liking company but I've never been totally sure what that phrase means. And, actually, we weren't miserable at all. That evening, to deal with the Christmas Day fullness, Gab and I went for a long night walk around the completely empty streets of Cambridge. On Christmas night, Cambridge is a ghost town. No students, no tourists, no one at all! The river was marginally overflowing its banks (although subsequent experiences in York show that it was not properly flooded), the Christmas lights were lit and we only got a bit drizzled on. It was a lovely evening.

Throughout, we also drank mulled wine and cider and sang Christmas carols and altogether had the most Christmas I've ever had in one holiday season.

And above all, while I know that the original festival is about pagan midwinter, I do love being reminded that Jesus came into the world as a human child, and that he came because I needed a Saviour. And that's always a joyful thing to remember.

I hope every one of you had a wonderful Christmas full of joy and laughter. I'm sorry that I didn't get to talk to you and I hope we'll have lots of time to compare Christmas tales soon. And - several hours late for some of you, and still quite early for me - Happy New Year!