Monday, 12/28/09: Sydney

It’s Lucy’s 8th birthday today. Happy birthday, Lucy!!!!

It started to rain in the middle of the night. Soft drumming at first, wonderful to hear as I drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the night. At dawn, though, the floodgates opened, and it began to rain so hard that I felt transported to India in the monsoon season (not like I’ve ever been there, but I did see Monsoon Wedding twice). It didn’t really cool down much at night (high 60s), so the rain felt warm and tropical. Lying in bed, listening to the rain and feeling the warm summer air--all the while knowing that I could stay in bed as long as I wanted--was incredibly relaxing.

After coffee and some blogging, Heather, Katrina and I went to the store (“the shops”, as they say here) to buy groceries. The supermarket we went to, Woolworths, is in a small indoor shopping mall. There are quite a few small stores that sell everything from produce, seafood and baked goods to shoes and flowers. I found it very interesting to walk around the aisles and look at the stuff they sell. It’s like a combination of a U.S. and European supermarket.

Had to photograph the Vegemite and milk displays. Nothing says England & the former colonies better than Vegemite. And the milk in the U.S. is typically fresh and in a cooler case, instead of the ultra-pasteurized long-life milk which Europeans (and apparently Australians) like and doesn’t require refrigeration.

Bill’s brother Michael and his wife Fiona came back at around lunchtime. They live in Southern California but are in Sydney for the holidays. We’d met Michael and Fiona at our house in September and had a great time with them, so we were really looking forward to seeing them again. We did a lot of yakking, fueled by a glass or three of wine. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. Later in the afternoon the adults went for a walk to Flat Rock Creek, a local green area, where we saw all kinds of vegetation unknown to me, including paperbark tree and angophora, not to mention tree ferns in their native habitat. Really, really beautiful.

Many houses here in Willoughby have plumeria trees (called “frangipani” by the locals), and they’re all in bloom. The scent is heavenly. I’ve always associated plumerias with Hawaii because the house we rented in Kauai in 2003 had a huge plumeria tree, but they seem to be very common here as well.