Third month:
Christmas:
I love Christmas and it's always a really big deal at home. So not being home for Christmas is really, really hard for me. I tried to get into the "Christmas spirit" but it just didn't really work out so in the end my strategy was just to survive. Christmas Eve I spent with my flatmate Matt and our neighbor Jordan. I cooked this soup that I have with my family every Christmas Eve and Matt made some lamb (which he always cooks in a lovely way) and we ate it all on the porch of Jordan's house (which has an even better view than my porch) so it was a really great evening. We then played monopoly and ate christmas cookies and they drank for the first time German Christmas tea.
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| Czech Sauerkraut soup |
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| Jordan (our neighbor) and me |
The next day we (Jordan, Matt and I) went over to Matt's parent's house which is around a 20 minute drive away. His grandparents, his other grandmother and his brother were also there and we had a great time. There was soooo much food. We started out with prawns and oysters, then we moved on to turkey, mashed potatoes, etc and ended with dessert, which consisted of a Christmas pudding, trifle and cheesecake. After that eating marathon I didn't eat anything for 5 hours. And when I did it was just a few cookies. The evening was spent watching Love Actually and munching on some Christmas cookies.
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| in front of Jordan's tree (that I helped her decorate) |
Altogther Christmas wasn't that bad in the end (even though I spent most of Christmas Eve crying because of a few different conflicts that had come up), but I'm happy it's over with now. I finally got my family's package a week after Christmas, which wasn't too bad, because if I had opened it on Christmas I probably would have cried even more. This way it was just like a package with presents, not especially a Christmas package. The same way Christmas was just a special day with nice food and not really Christmas.
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| Our tree...and yes it's fake, but real Christmas trees are really hard to get and reeeeeally expensive. |
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| Our living room decorated christmasy (all done by me) |
Physical Condition:
Now for everyone who doesn't know about my condition if you want details please email or write me a fb message. The short of it is that 3,5 years ago I was diagnosed with Juvenile Polyarthritis and 7 months ago I was diagnosed with Polymyositis and Systematic Scleroderma. Now you can gladly look up the more detailed description of the conditions on wiki, but in short: my immune system is attacking my joints causing them to be stiff, my muscles cause them to be inflamed and feel like I had maaaaaaassively sore muscles and my skin causing it to harden and be sensitive and less flexible. Anyways since especially the scleroderma has been getting worse in the past few months I decided with the recommendation of my doctor here to do a harsher treatment. This treatment had me go to the hospital twice with two weeks in between. The medication was given to me via IV and theoretically it takes 4 hours (5,5 with getting there and waiting an hour afterwards before you can leave) but the first time I was in for 10,5 hours and the second time 6,5 hours. The first time took so long because I had an allergic reaction. It wasn't bad, I just started to have 3 red, itchy dots on my face, but since it's a rather serious treatment it took a while till I could continue the treatment. Now this all may sound all good, but December was filled with me trying to decide what treatment to take. On the one side there's the risk of the possible side effects of any of the new treatments I had to choose of, not to mention the fact that the doctor can't guarantee that any of the treatments will work. On the other hand I could have stayed with my current medication and waited to see if that kicked in, however with the danger of my condition getting worse while I was waiting, and yet again without knowing if the medication would kick in. Being away from home when you're not feeling well and have a very important decision is a very hard decision, not only for me, but also for my family. In some ways I think they were doing worse than I was, knowing that I needed them and that they couldn't be there for me as much as they would want to. However I have to mention at this point that God really carried me through that time. No matter what I knew that God had a good plan for me and that he was with me at all times and that gave me so much strength. In the end I went for the treatment/medication called rituximab. I still haven't noticed any improvement but it can take a while before I notice a difference, so it's normal.
January:
I started writing this blog during December but now it's already January and I've been here for 4 months. Only 6,5 months to go. I can't believe it and am started to get worried about the time passing so quickly. I'll have to start looking into colleges soon. I am so not looking forward to it, because one of the reasons I went abroad was because I didn't know what to study. Well now I'm going to have to start the decision process...
New Year's Eve:
Over here you aren't allowed to have your own fireworks (you can in Germany) but different suburbs have their own fireworks. Since our house overlooks the whole valley and a few of the suburbs we had a party at our place (or to be more exact at our neighbor, Jordan's place). She lives with this rather wealthy family and the house is amazing. The porch is really big and has pool and everything, very nice :)
Around 20 people came and it was a great, chilled party. On the next day I got up at 4am to go watch the first sunrise of the year at the beach and it was amazing! Such a beautiful sunrise. And here are some pictures:
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| the sky before the sun had risen |
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| amazing pink clouds, the camera however didn't even capture how bright the colors were |
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Over Christmas I had 2 weeks of vacation, which were mostly filled with sleeping, watching Downton Abbey and playing board games. BUT I did actually leave the house once in a while. Here are a few of the things I did:
(Oh and I wrote holidays instead of vacation, because I've actually gotten used to saying that. I know it's sad, but if I say vacation everyone here looks at me weirdly so I've adapted :D )
Ice-skating:
So who would've have guessed that I would be in Australia when I ice-skated for the first time in 2 years?? The ice-skating rink was really small and the ice was quite cut up. Added to that I was one of the best skaters, which was a surprise to me, since whenever I went skating in Germany I was usually in the lower middle area. But I guess people just don't skate much over here (which makes sense). The temperature difference wasn't actually that weird. It definitely was warmer in the rink than in the ones in Germany, but it was cold enough that when I first started out skating I had a fleece jacket on. Altogether it was a lot of fun. Especially since it had music playing the whole time and the lights were always changing.
My Claim to Fame:
So at church every service there's a video shown called "God is Good". Basically it's a testimony by someone describing how God has changed them, touched them, helped them in their life. Well the guy in charge of Media asked me if I would like to do a video and I said yes. Well here's the result:
GodIsGoodSUSAN 301212 from CalvaryMedia on Vimeo.
Kondalilla Falls:
This is a waterfall in the bush (and yes Aussies really say that when they talk about any forest/"wilderness"/area where not a lot of people live/etc) up in a more hilly region called the Hinterland. We had to walk around 1,5 km through the bush to get there and actually in the end we found out that we hadn't walked all the way to the actual falls, but just to a little waterhole. But the actual falls were 1 extra km away so we were happy with our waterhole. Especially since the water was the perfect temperature. Not too cold and not too warm. Plus there was a rope hanging from a tree that you could use to jump into the water. It was pretty cool :) And here are some pics:
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| by the waterhole |
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| a few of the Hinterland |
Well that's finally it from me. Sorry that the blog post was so long and that I haven't written for 2 months. But well it's been a busy two months.
Peace and Love,
Susan
