Bye bye good old 2011

The day I've been waiting for, New Year's Eve.  What am I doing; nothing.  

At first I was meant to go to the Hunter Valley Gardens or to Newcastle with my host family, but after my first host sister offered me a chance to go to Sydney we cancelled all the nice plans with this family; and you may guess the end of this story.  Yesterday my host sister sent me a message saying that I couldn't go with her, so I was left with no plans at all.  Cool, not exactly the New Year I was dreaming of.  Oh well.

So despite of my pathetic Aussie New Year's Eve, I wish you all the best for year 2012, hopefully it'll be the best one so far. :)

Write to you again next year,

Liisa

P.S. And just to make me more annoyed and jealous, this is how it was like in Sydney at nine o'clock.  That's called the children's one, but for me it looks good enough!!

Bushwalk

We went to the Barrington Tops National Park today.  It is really pretty out there, but because of the continuous raining the path was quite muddy.  It was still great to see a different part of Australia's nature, and get to go to a rain forest.

Shoes full of mud,

Liisa

Finally!

Merry very different Christmas!

Full of Christmas food,

Liisa

Christmas Eve

This will be really short post, but only thing I want to say is that I had a great great day, different but very lovely Christmas.  Thank you to my first host family for having me, and thank you for the amazing night we had.  I feel lucky to be here and I'm happy that I have loving people around me. After a fantastic day with my host family number one and skyping with my original family I can go to bed smiling.  What a wonderful people I have in my life, it has been a pleasure to get to know you.  This day was something I'll remember the rest of my life. :)

Surrounded by presents, even though it's not even Christmas yet here,

Liisa

P.S. Today five months in Australia! :)

Crazy lights

My host mum took me for a drive around the city tonight so I could see the craziest Christmas lights.  Yes, we do have lights back home, but the house we would say has too many lights is called lame and average here. :D  Here it's not unusual to drive around just to see people's lights; something I've never done before.  In front of the houses with wildest lights there were cars lining up, and I'm not even exaggerating.  But I guess that's exactly what some people want, because some of them even have signs saying that you're allowed to walk in their garden to see all the lights.  Ah, and besides the lights they might have carols playing or people have dressed up like Santa Clause and they are giving away  lollies.  What craziness!!!

Less is more,

Liisa

P.S. CHRISTMAS EVE TOMORROW!!!!!!!!! :)))

It's getting closer!

Only one day before Christmas Eve, I'm getting really excited!  Today we baked and decorated gingerbread with my host sister.  At first we were meant to go flying with my host uncle, but the weather was too bad so we couldn't.  Such a shame, that would have been a great experience.

So on Christmas Eve, I'm going to my first host family's place, because they celebrate Christmas on the 24th like we do back home.  And on 25th I'm with this host family.  They'll go for Christmas lunch and dinner to different places to see the family, so it'll be really busy.

Looking forward to different Christmas,

Liisa

Old photos

I finally got the photos from Armistice Day.  They are not the coolest ones, but at least I look important... :D

Casually chatting with the mayor and an army boss.  :D

Three more sleeps to my first Christmas, four to the second,

Liisa

Christmas Lights Spectacular

THE POST NUMBER 1 0 0 ! ! ! :))

Today we went to Hunter Valley Gardens for the Christmas Lights Spectacular.   It was cool out there; so many colorful lights.

Going shopping to Newcastle tomorrow,

Liisa

5 / 12

FIVE MONTHS, FIVE MONTHS!  I haven't decided yet if this is a good thing or not.  I'm really happy that I've survived almost half of my year and I'm going home in seven months, but mainly I'm just sad.  I've met such an amazing people, and unlike my family and friends back home, I might never see them again.  I try not to count the days, but you can't really help it.  

We were meant to go to the Gardens tonight, because they have a huge Christmas light thing there, but because of the rain (yes, again...) we didn't.  I hope it's not going to rain tomorrow so we could go, I'd really like to.

I guess I don't have anything else to say.  Just wait my 100th post! :)

So thankful for the lovely people I've been privileged to meet,

Liisa

First Christmas present

My friends from school remembered me with a Christmas present, which was lovely and totally unexpected.  After ruining their plan to have a lunch with me one day (I was really busy) they gave the gift to me on Thursday, which was my last day in school this year.  I opened it before Christmas because that's what they wished, and only thing I can say is that they picked amazingly well!

I wish you the best Christmas, I've been so lucky to meet you and get you as my friends.

Thank you for making me feel special,

Liisa

Before Christmas

Home again after having such a great time!  Feels like I was away for several days, but actually I left yesterday morning, unbelievable.  Maybe the fact that we were being busy and didn't sleep properly has something to do with that... I didn't take many photos yesterday because I was so excited about spending time with the other exchange students, but I'm still going to share the few I took.  

Another girl and I brought our gingerbread doughs, and as you can see the recipes in different countries differ from each other. :D  If you want to know how I made mine, just check this.  We had whole lot of cool shapes; including different sized moose, ninjas and a bit more traditional hearts and stars.

Concentrating on the decorations! 

After that we played some games, and just spent time together till we went to Warners bay.  They have a live band performing there every Friday during the daylight saving, so we went there to have dinner and listen some music.  Before coming back and watching movies we went to one of Newcastle's popular beaches to play some touch football; it was my first game so I was really bad, but with nice people it was still great fun! :)

I was just thinking that I'm finally starting to realize that Christmas is getting closer, but after  checking the calendar (which says it's next weekend) I'm taking my words back; definitely doesn't feel like that.

Going to bed smiling after having so good time in Newcastle,

Liisa

P.s. I got almost sunburned today, so I guess we are finally getting summer!  People have been telling that it's the coldest summer in 50 years and that normally it's steaming hot this time of the year, but so far the weather hasn't been too nice.  Didn't rain today - we are getting there! :D

Gingerbread house

Finally!  Day before yesterday I told you how to make a gingerbread dough. Today I'll show you how did I construct a house from it.  There are million ways to do this, so this is just one of them; my way.

- Cut the pieces of out from baking paper first if you feel like you'd like little help when cutting different shapes from the dough (this is good thing to do, because if the pieces are unequal it'll make it hard to stick them together).   So there are 5 different pieces, and you'll need two of all of them!

> The piece on the up left is the wall (13cm x 8cm)
> The bottom left is the roof (17cm x 9cm)
> The bottom right is the other wall (10cm x 8+4cm)
> The little square in the up right corner is a  chimney (3,5cm x 3cm)
> And the last one next to it is the other chimney part (4cm x 3cm)

- Then use the rolling pin to make the block flat, 3mm might the best thickness.

- Use your baking paper pieces to help when cutting out the shapes from the dough.  You don't have to, but if you want to you can cut small windows to the walls.  And don't forget the door, I did! :D

- Heat the oven to 200°C.

- It's a good idea to put the big and small pieces into the oven separately; otherwise the small ones will be burned while some big ones might still not be baked.

 - Let the pieces cool down first.

- From the rest of your dough (should be almost one block left) you can make a random shaped huge gingerbread, which you are going to use as a base to your house.

- Pour some sugar onto a frying pan and melt it.  This is going to be your 'glue' to make the pieces stay where they are supposed to.  Don't melt too much at the time, because I can almost guarantee that your sugar will be badly burned (that means it tastes bad) before you are done with all the gluing.

- Start from the walls.  Try to place them as equally as you can, so gluing the roof will be as easy as possible.

- After walls and roofs, place the chimney and the shutters.  It doesn't matter if it doesn't look perfect yet, you have plenty of opportunities to make it the most amazing gingerbread house by decorating it in the way you want.

 - There are plenty of options for this as well, but I use the mixture of icing sugar, water and lemon juice.  Just be careful that you only mix couple of drops of water; otherwise your mixture will be too watery and keep coming down without getting hard.  The drops of lemon juice are just to make it taste nicer.  Put the mixture into a small plastic bag and cut a tiny hole to one of the corners.

- Just use your imagination!!! :)

One more assessment to go and I'm officially on holidays,

Liisa

P.s. I'm off to Newcastle tomorrow morning, and I'll be back on Saturday night.  There's a great meeting coming with some my favorite people!