What is wrong with me ? I could remember clearly the Christmas and New Year's celebration 3 years ago but I couldn't recall what I did and where I was last year ?! If any of you out there was with me last year, or remembers where was I, could you please drop me a line ? Anyway, I'm sure that I'm not gonna be able to forget this year's Christmas. This is my first REAL Christmas celebration, where we gathered together with family and friends spending wonderful time together. What I like most about the Christmas celebration here is that we are truly sharing the moment with everyone - a stranger on the road or a patient who walks into the hospital, they'll get all excited just by wishing them 'Happy Christmas' or simply asking ' How's your Christmas preparation going?' It's a great feeling when you see the person's eyes lighted up when they start telling you all about their plans for Christmas and the people they are going to meet.

My celebration started 2 days before the actual day. We ( Tim and I ) drove down to Hobart on friday after work to meet up with Linda and stayed a night over at her place. The crazy adventure begins the next morning. We woke up at about 7.30am, had breakfast, loaded all of our stuff into the car and head off to ( errr ) somewhere near Lake Peddar [ I think :p ]. There, we did a crazy 14 hours hike – all the way up to Mount Eliza and then Mount Anne. According to the map, Mount Anne is about 1430m above sea level. Even though it was exhausting, it was totally worth it - standing on top of Mount Eliza overlooking the lakes and range of mountains. It was BREATHTAKING! To summarize the hike in short – FANTASTIC is the word. I had so much fun, soooooooooooooo much fun doing it especially the rock climbing part. The adrenaline keeps pumping, doesn't even feel tired at all during the walk. It gets harder and harder as we approach the peak of Mount Anne – the path gets steeper and the boulders get bigger. I wish I could have pushed myself a little harder in this walk. Anyway, Tim and Linda did the hardest bit of climbing, making their way up to the peak – They conquered it!! I am so proud of them, their strength and determination is just incredible! I'm so glad that I did the hike despite 500,000 people have been telling me not to do it. I agreed that it is quite a challenging and dangerous hike, but it is totally do-able, just have to be extra careful :) I'm glad, really. Walking down after sun set was really exciting – walking with torch and moonlight. I have always been looking up for stars at night, but the sky I saw that night was magnificent! We took a 5 mins break just to give our shoulder a rest from the heavy packs we carried, and as soon as I tilt my head up – I was amazed. I have not seen anything like that before, millions of bright stars twinkling across the sky. It was beautiful, really really beautiful. We got back to the car at about 12am, reached home at about 2.30am. I couldn't remember anything at all after that.

The next morning,( Afternoon, errm Evening? – to be exact ) we drove back to Launceston and went to church to make some christmas hampers. It was good fun at church as well, singing carols, everyone with high spirit and happy. Tim cooked us beautiful Christmas lunch on Christmas day and we went over to Sue and Peter's for dinner later in the evening.

I am so lucky to have wonderful people around me, taking me under their wings, taking care of me and making me feel at home. I'm being very spoilt. I have never thought that I could fit in to a foreign country in such a short period of time. Not only that it felt good being here, the funny thing is - I felt as though I belonged here and its now hard to imagine myself leaving Australia.

This is the third attempts to write this blog entry, I think its a good idea to stop and post it now before something happens again.

It has always been difficult having to share your true feelings and thoughts with someone else, without worrying about :

{ 1 } What if he/she doesn't agree with it?

{ 2 } Is he/she going to judge me ?

{ 3 ) Is he/she gonna look at me differently from now on?

{ 4 } Will I still be able to keep the friendship / relationship / ___ship ?

{ 5 }  What if the issue that I've just shared bothers him/her?          

{ 6 }   What kind of impression did I made by that?

{ 7 } And 1001 other questions, keep popping up in my head.

Yes, I still do worry about all those, however - I found out that there are still  some people  that wouldn't mind of your past, no matter how wrong it seems in your own opinion. You just have to have the RIGHT person. Having said that, I'm sure its not gonna be easy to share your opinions/feelings/secrets/wrong doings, but its definately worth trying, rather than living in denial and lies for the rest of your life. I am truly blessed to have found mine, somebody whom I can trust and be comfortable with in my own skin. Besides being non-judgemental, the continuous words of encouragements, supports and solutions which were given to me were TRULY AMAZING!

The conclusion that I've made was : The "listener" will have the privilege to choose whether or not to accept you for who you are. In the end, its their decision, and on our end - we knew that we did the right thing for telling the truth.

"When you are with someone you trust in, never needing to pretend " - Amanda Bradley

Alrighty, I've made my decision now. I'm gonna be going for the Picnic with the special kids next tuesday. I've already called my friends letting them know that I will not be able to join them for the 'chinese banquet' on Tuesday night. I figured I can just walk into that chinese restaurant anytime I want in the future, and I am very sure that I'll have 100x more fun being around the kids.We are guessing that there'll be approximately 25-30 kids  joining the picnic, Really looking forward to that. Promise that I'll take lots of pictures :D

I have everything lined up til Sunday!! Lots of things happening now, especially when its drawing closer to christmas. Lets see :

Wednesday (tonight) : Collage making at church

 Thurdays (Tmr) : Keep Pene company while Cameron rides his bike, dinner afterwards.

 Friday : Tim just called asking me to watch 'Bush Walking in Tassie' at 7.30pm

 Saturday : Company's Christmas dinner til 1.30am

 Sunday : Barbeque lunch, and church and probably christmas carol performance.

Its been great these few days, except that there's a huge bush fire in Georgetown ( bout 40mins from Launceston), has been hazy since yesterday morning. The weather has been wonderful for the past one week, average of about 20 degrees with clear blue sky. Its just WONDERFUL!! No complaints  Many of my friends and collegue asked me : Ashley, did you watch the christmas parade last saturday in town? I didn't get to watch the parade because I was IN IT !! Timing has been perfect, I've made it to Devonport after the parade. Did some shoppings for clothes and pants... Yeah...what's new

Beautiful day today, especially this morning when I woke up, its all sunny and warm. An absolutely perfect day for me to wear something 'summery'. Wore my new cargo pants, black baby-t, and sandals. All set and ready for church. Today is the first time I wore my sandals since I got here coz most of the other days were too cold for me not to wrap my feet with socks and shoes. Anyway, as I was happily skipping down the steps, I ALMOST slided as it was so slippery as if I was walking on ice. I thought *Phew*. Anyway, regardless of that, I just told myself to be more careful. I keep walking up towards my post box to check for any letters or bills. Ok post box clear, and just as I turn around and put one foot on the road ( quite a steep angle), I slipped and fell flat on the road. Thank goodness it was 9am on a Sunday morning,  praying hard that my neighbour didn't see or worse, hear me. I quickly got up and ran back in to my apartment, sat down and check if I made any holes to my new pants. The good news is that my pants are perfectly fine, but as soon as I rolled up the pants to check my knees,two BIG bruises!! One on each knee!! As soon as I saw that, I felt the pain . As I sat in my lounge recovering from the shock, I'm blown by another more shocking moment. WHAT AM I GONNA WEAR FOR CHRISTMAS DINNER WITH THOSE BRUISES???!!???