Sydney Christmas Parade

Let us be the first ones to wish everyone a Happy Christmas! Last weekend we went to the first annual Sydney Christmas Parade. It has been three years in the making according to the website, but was in reality barely better than the Picnic Day Parade in Davis. Here are some of the highlights from the parade. There are some interesting "floats" that are Australian for sure. One of our favorites was the heart with legs and the bee on the float. Although just like the UCD parade there were Double-Deck buses in this parade as well, but this parade also had multiple kilt wearing bands. There were many more memorable entries, the bouncing kangaroos, the Australian space shuttle?, the platypus, and the square covered wagon. I don't know if anyone noticed, but the lion is wearing a purple Kings uniform just like Slamson in Sac. Apparently we moved from one Kings basketball town to another.




Here in OZ every parade must have a beer sponsored vehicle in it, and Miss Australia walks alone, no float for her. At least Santa was wearing red, yelling Ho Ho Ho, and riding in a sleigh.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We forgot when Thanksgiving was going to be this year and Katie worked that night. We debated about forgoing Thanksgiving, but at the last minute we decided to have turkey, and the rest followed naturally. We ended up having a small feast for our little family.

K-Rudd Wins Election

It's official Kevin Rudd wins the election and is the new Prime Minister of Australia. This means that Katie had a chance to talk to and discuss health care and our position in Australia with the Prime Minister. Now we will see what the Labor government is going to be able to do with the country. G'day PM Rudd!

Poll question answer

So the answer is: a mixture of second generation accents mixing together.
Actually all answers have some sort of merit to them and seem to be popular among people. Linguist however agree that the children of immigrants mixed their various accents to get the Australian accent.

Another short ride

Added a few additional photos to this post. Check out the Skippies in the wild.





So here is another ride that we took through some of the Eucalypt forests around Sydney. The photos are from a camera phone and aren't that great, but will give an idea of what it's like. It was very nice to get out of the city again and see some wilderness where all you could hear were the bugs and birds making noise. It was very relaxing, and passing by several fields of cattle and horses it almost felt like going into the foothills. In fact one of the towns we went through looked very much like Forresthill without the conifers. Note the color of the river, the picture doesn't do it justice but it was very red from all the iron deposits.

Our 8 year anniversary

For our anniversary we were going to go on a motorcycle trip and get out of Sydney. The weather forecast called for rain though so we decided to scrap the trip and go another day. Instead we got a hotel room in downtown Sydney and went to the Opera House for a performance. It was the Australian Chamber Orchestra doing Rapture. It was amazing and the acoustics were spectacular. Most the photos of the city are from our hotel room, except the photos of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Those were taken from a bar we visited for a pre-dinner drink. We also had the good luck to get a reservation to one of the best restaurants, and probably the best seafood restaurant in Sydney. The food was delicious, the fish were very tender and partnered with some very interesting ingredients that worked very well together. It turned out to be a great day and as you can see in the photos not a cloud in the sky.