Mandarin picking

I've had a bee in my bonnet for a while about going to pick mandarins from a local farm that sets aside a grove for public picking. Last Sunday the weather was a little bit iffy-looking, but we decided to go for it! We grabbed a car and set off on the hour-long drive north to the farm.

The drive itself was really nice. We were out in farm country, where every half mile there were signs for local produce for sale. There were also these little roadside sheds, where you could stop and leave money in a box for whatever you took.

The farm was down in a valley called Wisemans Ferry. Before we headed down into the valley, we stopped at an overlook of the river.

I was starting to get a little concerned about our gas gauge at this point - we'd left Sydney with half a tank and I had cheerfully assumed that on what looked like a major road on the map, there would be plenty of petrol stations. That had not turned out to be true. We decided to go past our turnoff for the farm and go into the town of Wisemans Ferry and hope there was a station. Luckily, there was! It didn't look like much, with just three pumps with the old-fashioned click-over numbers. But it got the job done!

Then we headed down into the valley and onto a one lane, packed-dirt road.

Luckily we only passed two cars on this part of the road! And this creepy old food trailer.

We made it to the farm without incident. And there were actually a surprising number of other people that had made the trip. We quickly paid our $10 for our mandarin-collecting bucket and headed deep into the orchard.

The sounds of shouting kids were pretty muffled back in there,  and we were basically by ourselves. Toby scouted out some good trees for us.

Even though our bucket was pretty big, filling it up with fruit took no time at all!

We had learned when we got our mandarin bucket that we could also pick mushrooms from their mushroom shed. We decided we should do that too!

The mushroom picking was just as fun as the mandarins. We used scissors to snip them off at the base and then brush off the dirt from them. We ended up with a good-size paper bag full of them. Too fun!

We were pretty happy with the $20 spent on mushrooms and mandarins. Especially when we got home and put our mandarin bag on the counter - they had somehow expanded in the car and we had way more than we could ever eat! But between juicing them and giving some away, it worked out OK!

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A few nighttime pics in the CBD

On Saturday, I met up with some of my expat friends for a late afternoon high tea in the city. It was lovely!

 

We had such a good time talking and laughing that it was dark by the time I walked back to the train station. It was also pretty quiet in the city, as it usually is on the weekends. So I took the opportunity to take a few pics of the city as I rarely see it.

Memorial in Martin Place

The fountain in Martin Place - it was made famous by being in The Matrix

 

One of my favorite things in Sydney

 

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World Cup Mania

So now that the World Cup is over, we can get back to our normal sleep, work, and blog schedules!


World Cup games were at pretty inconvenient times here in Australia. Many of the first round games were at 2 AM and others were at 5 or 6 AM. That didn't stop us from watching every USA, Australia, Germany, and Netherlands game. And a few others as well!


Most of the games we watched at home. 2 AM games were watched from the sofa-turned-bed. Some 5 and 6 AM games called for fun game food before we headed off to work.


Like the England game we made mini breakfast pies for.

And the final, when we made German Apple pancakes. Adele came over in her PJs for the game before we headed off to work.

We also ventured out to watch the Netherlands versus Argentina game. Quite a few pubs opened for the early games around Sydney, and because there are so many expats, I think they always had a crowd. On the Thursday morning we went out, the pub was pretty full: it ran out of food and it was packed with Argentina fans chanting and singing!

We learned at this game that it's never too early for a beer - even if you're heading to work afterward!
We found our friends from Holland. It was pretty easy to spot the few orange shirts in the crowd of blue and white!

Game watching aside, Toby stayed in the World Cup spirit with his soccer-style hair. He'd agreed with his workmates to start the tournament with a mohawk. And if the US made it out of the group stage, the mohawk would be dyed red. So even when there was no game to watch, he was fully in the spirit of things!

It was a fun month - always something fun to talk about with fellow fans at work.  I don't know what we'll do with ourselves now that it's over, but I'm sure I will find something!

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The Big Dance

On Sunday, I took a walk across the bridge over to the Opera House. I'd read about an event happening that morning called The Big Dance. The idea was that three locations around the world perform the same choreographed dance at the same time: Sydney, London, and Glasgow.

As I was walking across the bridge, I could see the dancers practicing. The dance crew was made up of people from all around Sydney who just signed up online to participate. They went to practices over the past few months and watched videos online. I was pretty impressed with their dedication: especially because it was really, really cold that morning!

They opened up the balcony of the Opera House for the spectators. It's not usually open to the public, so I was pretty excited to go up there to watch the dance.

The dance itself was pretty cool - and surprisingly long for the amount of people that had to memorize all the choreography (4 minutes or so). There was a big countdown at the beginning so all the countries started together.

After Sydney danced, they showed the dances from London and Glagsgow. It was dark there, but it didn't seem as windy as in Sydney!

As soon as it was over, I caught a ferry and headed back home to warm up my toes!

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French Festival

Saturday found us catching the ferry over to Circular Quay. There was a French Festival on at Customs House, and we were excited about the prospect of a French morning!

It wasn't a huge festival, but there were plenty of food stalls to choose from. Most of them were baked goods, and there were some that were making food too.

We went with a hot chocolate and a cheese crepe. Mmmm!

Everyone we talked to at the booths was very French. Some of the accents were so thick it was hard to understand them. This guy was especially cute - he was so excited I was taking his picture he told me to put it on Facebook!

There weren't many stalls that were selling food, but there were these cute refrigerators next to the tent for cooking classes!

We had a really great time just wandering out, listening to the lovely accents around us, and buying a few treats here and there.

It was one of our favorite festivals yet, even though it was small and pretty quiet. Maybe France will be our next destination?! =)

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Sydney Cooking School

This week my team from work had a fun activity: we spent the afternoon at the Sydney Cooking School! The cooking school didn't seem to be an actual training school; I think it was pretty much for parties and events like ours.

My team is pretty diverse: three Australians, two Brits, two Americans, and one Chinese. So no matter what we cooked, we were all guaranteed to learn something new.

We made quite a few dishes. Well, we really did quite a bit of watching while our chef demonstrated how to make things and had us help in a minimal way. But we did get hands on with some chopping, mashing potatoes, AND making pasta! I was especially excited about the pasta making because it's something I've been wanting to do for a long time.

We ended up making (or contributing to) a lot of dishes: ratatouille, Paris mashed potatoes, tomato sauce, lamb racks, pasta, and melting chocolate cakes. It was amazing!

It was a super fun afternoon. And I liked the ratatouille so much, I made it for T a few days later!

 

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22 months and still strange...

We're coming up on two years in Sydney. Most of the time, Sydney feels like home. We have got the public transportation system down, we have some circles of friends, and things like going to the grocery store or driving aren't scary adventures anymore.

But every little bit, something will happen that reminds us that we are still living in a strange place. This past week was a good example, with three separate incidents that left me scratching my head. Usually these incidents stem from Aussie slang, which is often impossible to decipher, even if it's in context. This week was no exception.

First was running into some people from work while I was out at the markets. I started chatting to a friend and asked him what he was up to. He said "We've been out op shopping at the Salvos at Tempe." Now, if I'd seen that written down, I probably could have interpreted it. But having it come out in a fast, accented stream during the conversation, I was absolutely baffled. It made me feel stupid, but I asked him to repeat what he'd said more slowly so I could understand (something that I have to do occasionally, even though everyone is speaking English). After a couple of exchanges, I understood that he'd been to the suburb Tempe, where he'd gone to the Salvation Army for secondhand shopping (op shopping). Not such a leap once you know, but hard to catch on the first go!

The other slang-related incident happened at a meeting at work. We were discussing some issue that had come up, and one of the Aussie born and bred attendees said "Well that sounds like a bit of a furphy." Since about half of the people in the office are expats, there were enough puzzled faces that he looked up the wikipedia entry to explain what he meant. It turns out that "furphy" means an erroneous or not-quite-right statement. It comes from the name that was written on water carts that were pulled out to soldiers in Australia during World War I. The soldiers would gather around them and share gossip - which often turned out to be incorrect - and hence the word "furphy" came about. How obscure is that!? We non-Australians really don't stand a chance!

The last thing that happened this week was learning to boil water in an electric water kettle. The hot water tap near my desk is temporarily out, and since Australians really can't be expected to work without their tea, they've replaced it with a temporary water kettle that plugs into the wall. Having never seen or used such a contraption, I got one of my Aussie co-workers to walk me through how it works (basically you fill it up like an iron and then push a button) and the common courtesy for using it (you look around for other tea drinkers and add additional water based on how many don't already have tea). He found it pretty humorous that an American didn't understand such a basic societal behavior. But he was nice in instructing me. And it's one more thing about living here that I am mastering!

The dogs of Newtown

On Saturday, a friend from work and I headed out to the hippiest suburb in Sydney: Newton. Another friend from work makes and sells vegan cheese and has a stall at the weekend Newton Markets. So we decided to visit her, buy some cheese, and stroll around Newtown.

The lovely Becc with her famous cheeses!

 

The Newtown Markets are way different from the Kirribilli Markets that happen right near our apartment: they really mirror the hippie, earthy vibe of Newtown, whereas ours are a bit... different. For example, there were lots of people at Newtown who seemingly just showed up with a rack of their old clothes to sell. So there wasn't as much browsing as I usually do at our markets, but it was still fun.

One of the best things was all the dogs. Newtown is dog-crazy and they were everywhere!

This dog was so cute, I bought a candle from him. How could I not?! The dog's human stood up the whole time we were there, while the dog sat in the chair. =)

We didn't stay in Newtown for too long, but we had a great time. There was a fun vibe there, with everyone just happy to be out on a sunny Saturday. It was a lovely day in a different kind of place!

 

 

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