Christmas in the Summer

It took me about a week to get adjusted to the time difference but now I'm on board. Of course, just as I was getting properly caught up on the sleep/time diff, the "travel-cold" hit me AKA the "went from snow and cold in detroit to warm in LA to hot in Australia to cold and rainy the day before Christmas and back to hot again for Christmas." Christmas, was a blast, as the family I'm staying with - the Crabb's, the son, Adam, who is my teammate and good mate from the Israel league, have pretty much adopted me for the winter/summer (throughout this blog I will use those interchangably, since even though it's summer here the majority of my audience is still in that winter perspective) and included me in their Christmas celebration-Aussie style which consisted of a lot of eating, drinking aussie beer and wine, and exchanging presents, sitting out on the patio looking out on a stunning view of the ocean/gulf st. vincent while spitting american sunflower seeds which cannot be purchased here (i "smuggled" them over) and of course watching the beginning of the 5-day cricket match between australia and india on Boxing Day, a Aussie tradition!

and now my first installment of Aussie Observations (Not to be confused with Belgium or Israel Observations):
words here tend to be shortened at every conceivable chance... examples:
Breakfast - Brekky
Dodger - Dodgy
Dinner - Tea
Tasmania - Tazzy
Every 2 weeks - fortnight
Dude/Guy - Bloak
Female/Gal - Sheila
Think - Reckon
Tons/Lots - Heaps
Scandals - Thongs
Ketchup - TomatO sauce
Red Pepper- Capsicum
Barbecue - Barbie
Pop/Coke/Soda - Soft Drink
How Are You Doing? - G'Day
Thanks - Cheers
Candy - Lollies
Fries - Chips
Chips - Crisps
Cookies - Biscuits
Bars/Club - Pub
Adam Crabb - Poof
Sweatshirt/Long-sleeves - Jumper
Steal something - Pinch
Bad - Brutal
Complain - Winging



other things:
hungry jacks instead of burger king
fosters (ya know Australian for beer is not even served here)
haven't seen any kangaroos or koalas yet (sorry rachel prinstein)
pool tables are half the size of american ones, and the balls are the size of ping-pong balls
driving on the left?! insane!
jack daniels and jonnie walker in a can with coke - premixed! (see picture above)
ordered a hamburger and it comes standard with a sunny-side up egg, pineapple and beats (yes those purple things!)
the phrase "No Worries" every five seconds
throw "mate" at the end of every sentence, even when talking to parents, females, teachers, cops, doesn't matter...
wearing heavy zinc oxide (sunblock) on face and lips
meat pies and pastys need to find their way to America - so tasty
as the value of a gold coin increases the coin size decreases
as the value of a silver coin increases the size increases
however the biggest coin is a 50 cent piece while the dollar and 2 dollar coins are smaller - CONFUSED YET?
all the "notes" aka dollar bills - are different colors - starting at 5 dollar bills (no singles)

and i'm sure plenty more to come...