Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

Hello everyone, Christmas in Sydney has been fun, although the weather has been wet and windy, not the sunny Christmas we were expecting. We both will have to pay excess on our flight to China, due to the large amount of food we have consumed. On the 23rd after we arrived at our excellent flat in Sydney (thank you Kate's cousin Lizzie), we went to the supermarket and stocked up on a 3.8kg turkey and all the trimmings. On Christmas eve I went to the National Maritime Museum to see the Endeavor replica and to take a tour around a 1959 Destroyer and a Diesel electric Submarine. Kate went to the Aquatic centre to see the sharks and some fish. Later we went to Darling Harbour to watch the carol singers and the fireworks.

Christmas day was spent watching films, including Muppet's Christmas Carol, Love Actually, Black Adders Christmas Carol, Elf and Die Hard. Die Hard is a Christmas film and has the best line that I have ever heard Alan Rickman say, "Now I have a machine gun, Ho, Ho Ho".

Australian Christmas TV is the worst on the planet, a mixture of Greek news, mass and sport, the only film we found was Elf, the rest we watched on our laptop.

We both brought each other a selection of stocking presents, Kate got me a cool wooden puzzle in the shape of a 3D snow flake, a pair of pants and a couple of baking powder powered submarines. I got Kate some Vaseline and a bottle of shampoo. After Kate stopped shouting at me we had bucks fizz and croissants.

On boxing day we went sale shopping to the macpac shop, I almost brought a down jacket and Kate brought 2 t-shirts, a pair of long johns, a fleece hoody and a hoody jumper. Draw your own conclusions.

Yesterday we went to the Blue Mountains, if you have been there then send me the pictures as I would like to see what they look like, the weather was so foggy that we could only see about 10m for the most part, the best part was using the bush telephone!

Today we have been getting ready for the next phase, I don't think we can access our blog during our spell in China, although I should be still be able to make updates to it via email. We'll keep you posted on our progress.

Take care, Tim and Kate