Dec 28, 2009

Christmas here was good. It didn't seem like Christmas, just a nice relaxing day. We only had to work for about a half hour or so, just some tidying at about 11am, then we were off. That meant I got to sleep in till 10ish, which was awesome. After the cleaning Dani and I did some prepping for food. I made a fruit salad and she made apple crumble. Once that was all done we just sat out at the pool for a few hours. Most of the day was just Dani, Rob, and I. Joe had a few friends in town from Tully so he was with them most of the day getting drunk. Annika was with Tom, and Vinny was helping in the Kitchen and hanging with the DJ. I was sort of hoping we'd all be together all day so that was a little disappointing, but we did all manage to come together for our gift exchange. We each just bought cheap $10 gifts and drew out of a hat to get a gift. It was over pretty quick, but we had a good time while we were doing it. It was pretty Christmas-like. After the gifts we watched Home Alone. There were a few guests that joined us for that. Great Christmas movie. For lunch we were hoping to get our little "family" together and eat alone. Somehow we got roped into eating with the entire hostel, which pissed us off a little, but it wasn't too bad. We had ham and prawns, potatoes, salads and a few dips. It was pretty delicious. The DJ works at or owns the big bar around here, so he brought most of the food. After all of that and a little while visiting Dani Rob and I headed to the beach for a bonfire. We invited the entire hostel, but most people were too drunk or in their own little party to show up. I was happy with it being just the three of us. Annika, Tom, and Engin joined us a bit later. We managed to get down there early enough for there to be some daylight and we got back fairly early. Everyone left at the hostel was pretty drunk so we hung out with them for a bit and went to bed. Again, not very Christmas-y, but a great day.

Joe left on Saturday. It's sad that people are starting to leave. We filled his spot this afternoon. There's now a stranger sleeping in the other room in Joe's bed. So weird. It's going to happen a lot from now on I'm sure, but it'll take some getting used to. The managers Deb and Adam are leaving this week. I think their last day is Wednesday. Everyone is pretty sad to see them go. They are headed to the Gold Coast and have offered everyone jobs there when we make it down there, so this week won't be the last we see of them. We've met the new managers on Christmas. We're all a little nervous for them, but I'm trying to be optimistic. Bonus though is that Peta will be working here full time training them and she has suggested that I use that time to take some time off and head to Port Douglas for a few days. I was thinking maybe she'd have me go to Fraser Island or Whitsundays, but I have a week or so to plan it so I'll talk to her about it a little more and see what she says. She made a call this afternoon for me to skydive on Wednesday. I didn't hear how that worked out, but it's in the works. I'm going to talk to her about going to the reef this weekend as well! Should be a busy couple of weeks.