News from the other side of the Ashes battle

Hi Everyone!

Sorry I haven't written in a couple of months.

November was a quieter month for me than the last few I have written about. In fact I did not even leave England. The time was spent working, going out with friends (including a marathon 12-hour Monopoly pub-crawl, visiting pubs on many of the Monopoly board streets), going to gigs (including Aussie bands The Living End and Wolfmother) and generally hiding away from the increasingly British weather.

It has been fun being an Australian amongst the English because it allows me to give them a hard time for what is happening to them in the Cricket. On the down side, not only can I not go to any games because I am on the wrong side of the world, but I can't even conveniently watch them on TV because the time difference dictates that they start at about midnight each night.

December has been all about Christmas shopping and more prominently Christmas functions. I have been to various work Christmas lunches and parties, enjoying all the free festivities.

Yesterday I did my first bit of international travel for almost 2 months, going on a day-trip to Lille in France on the Eurostar train. It's a great city and, despite the cold rainy weather, I still had a great time as always in France, trying to communicate in worse than broken French, I like to call it "Shattered French". The famous Lille Christmas market was nice but smaller than expected but the shopping malls were huge with great shopping (something you come to appreciate living in London). It was also good to get away from the cold and rain, even though being on the giant open air ferris wheel in the rain was kind of fun.

Next week I'm off to Prague to have a continental Christmas and New Year. Then its back to England for a last few weeks of Winter. I'm due back in Melbourne on January 25th, so hope to see those of you in Australia some time soon after that, and those of you in Europe before I head off. At this stage I am not 100% sure if I'm coming back to Oz long term, or just for a short break from the winter and coming back to Europe, although at this moment it looks like I will be coming back to Melbourne to look for a lawyer job. We'll see what happens!