Learn Australian English in this Aussie English episode of Walking With Pete where I give you an Xmas Day Recap.

WWP: Xmas Day Recap

Hey guys, what’s going on? Welcome to this episode of Walking With Pete.

I thought I would make this at my folks’ place. So, I’m sitting here in the courtyard. It’s pretty quiet. It’s about 9:43PM. So, 9:43 in the evening, and I’ve just had a long long day of socialising, hanging out with relatives, doing all THAT SORT OF JAZZ. So, doing all THAT SORT OF JAZZ is another expression I should probably explain. If you do THAT KIND OF JAZZ it’s kind of like saying you do that kind of thing. So, if I’m doing all THAT KIND OF JAZZ, JAZZ like J-A-Z-Z, JAZZ like on a guitar or a piano, JAZZ, it’s just to be doing that kind of thing.

So, I was doing all THAT KIND OF JAZZ, hanging out with my folks, my sister and her boyfriend, and just chilling out at my grandparents’ place. So, my cousins were there, my uncle and aunties were there, I had second cousins there who were the cousins of my parents and their children and their childrens’ children. So, the relationships get pretty complicated after that, but it was a pretty big one, it was a pretty big one.

So, we had like all the tables lined up through my grandmother and grandfather’s living room, and we had a few different courses, we had like an entrée, which was a salad with different cheese and some jamon, I think, so, different ham. And then, we had, what else? we had the main course, obviously, which was a roast. My grandparents always do a roast every year for Christmas they do a roast where we have roast lamb most often, but I think this year it was turkey and chicken, and then we have like potatoes and peas and beans. Although, my sister who was meant to make the beans this year forgot them. So, we didn’t have beans this year. Onions, meatballs, even peaches, we have peaches with the dish as well.

So, yeah, my grandparents, or my grandmother is the one who organises these things every year, and she normally gets everyone to sort of make a dish or bring something. So, my job was soft drink, soft drink or fizzy drink, which is the name that we give “soda” in Australian English. We don’t say “soda” or “soda pop” or “sodies” as they say in American English. We say “fizzy drinks”, ’cause they fizz, or just “soft drinks”, because obviously they’re soft, there’s no alcohol in them as opposed to hard drinks, I imagine. So, that was my job, which was a bit of a cop-out, and a cop-out is that it was incredibly easy, it was something I sort of got out of doing anything difficult. So, I copped out, it was a cop-out, I didn’t have to do anything too hard, but my sister had to cook beans, although she forgot them. I think my mum made fruit cake for the lunch, and then there were obviously other people who did the gravy, the potato, the beans and all the other things that were consumed on the day.

And so, it was pretty good. I had quite a few beers. So, I was pretty merry, pretty cheerful hanging out with my sister’s boyfriend all afternoon and sort of joking around with my younger cousins. So, my uncle has three boys who are I think maybe 8, 10 and 12 years old, and they’re little rascals. So, they were running around all day playing with toys, shooting nerf guns, you know the nerf guns with the little foam bullets that you can put in the gun and shoot them around. So, they were doing that and playing, and yeah it was pretty funny, it was pretty funny.

Anyway, so we had lunch and then we obviously have dessert, and my grandmother makes every year as a, I don’t know if it’s an Australian tradition but it’s a family tradition, she makes a plum pudding, which is kind of like this cake that’s like a fruit cake sort of shaped like this. So, I guess it’s made like this and then it’s put upside down, and she puts coins, old old coins, inside of it. So, you’re not meant to eat them, you’re meant to find them, give them back to her and she gives you money in return. So, this would always be for the kids. When I was growing up we would look for the coins, and some of them were, I think, pennies and shillings, old old currency that’s not used in Australia anymore. So, we used to do that and then you’d find them, bring them to her at the end if you had quite a few in your piece of cake, and she would give you 20 cents for a shilling or something, and 50 cents for a penny. I don’t even know, but yeah, we were doing that. We have that for dessert. She puts rum on it and then lights that on fire. So, that’s pretty cool, and then serves that up with ice cream, rum butter, which is like a kind of butter mixed with rum and other sugar in it. And then, yeah, there was fruit as well. So, we had strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, different kinds of berries that came with the ice cream and the cake at the end as well, or the plum pudding*.

So, that was really nice. Then after that we kind of, you know, sit and relax for a little bit, because we’re pretty full and we need to digest. So, again, we had a few more drinks and just, you walk around doing your own thing, hang out, all THAT KIND OF JAZZ. And then we do the gifts where we all sit around in a big circle in the other part of my grandparents’ living room and different families do the gifts that they’ve prepared for all the different people in the room. So, they will go into the corner where the tree is and all the gifts are arranged, get into their gifts and then give them out to the respective people that those gifts are for, and usually the kids help when you’re giving the gifts out or grabbing all of the paper that’s used to wrap the gifts up, we rip it off obviously, and there’s a big box in the middle of the room where the kids will get the paper and put it in the box to sort of clean up as we go.

So, that was fun. I got some really nice coffee, some homemade jam, and a few other things from my other cousins. What else did I get? My grandparents, I don’t think they ever really know what to get me so they always tend to give me money or gift vouchers for things for me to go and spend it on. Yeah, and so, we did that and then afterwards we helped clean up. So, funnily enough, my cousins and uncle and aunties and everyone kind of BAILED, and TO BAIL means to leave, to escape, to run off, to go away. They BAILED early, luckily for them and left us with the clean up. So, my father, my sister, her boyfriend and I were all in the kitchen cleaning up all these dishes. So, you can imagine, we had a big… the sink here with all of the dishes laid out here, and they were all along the wall over here as well, and we had to go through and clean knives and forks and plates and all of the stuff that had been used, all the glasses, the wine glasses, and it took a long time. But, we did that and then my other cousins and uncle and aunty arrived for dinner with my grandparents, but we left and drove home.

So, my grandparents live in Camberwell, which is a suburb on the northern side, north eastern side, maybe to the east of Melbourne, and it’s about an hour and a half drive. So, I’m in Ocean Grove at the moment, which is down the coast past Geelong. And so, we always drive up on Christmas Day for about an hour and a half to get there and then we try and leave at about 5PM in the afternoon, drive an hour and a half again back. And the traffic wasn’t too bad. I was expecting it to be a lot worse than it was, but I think that we missed rush hour in that we left in the morning at about 10. So, it wasn’t really early morning. So, the highway didn’t have a lot of people on it when we got there, although, when we arrived in the city there were quite a few people on the road. And so, there was a little bit of a build-up of traffic once we reached the city and were driving through the city, but when we got on the other side again it was easy, and then on the way back it was much the same story. So, it was much the same situation, the traffic wasn’t too bad, (it) didn’t take too long and I kind of fell asleep I think. I got in the car and was a little tipsy still after a few beers that I’d had and just decided to pass out, fall asleep and woke up when we were almost home.

So, that was good. But, yeah, so that’s Christmas in Australia. You’ll notice it’s… I’m in a singlet and I don’t really wear there very often but today it’s been 37 degrees and I think it was 37C all day, and at the moment it’s about 33 I think. So, it’s really really hot, really hot, and inside it’s even hotter because the doors have been closed all day at my parents’ place. My poor little cat, the cat that lives here has been inside the whole day. It’s had access to water and food and everything, but he’s been a little warm, so, as soon as my parents turned on the air conditioning he just lay down underneath the aircon and was just like “Ahhhh!”.

So, yeah, I thought I would just come and make this video, chat to you guys, recap on the day. And TO RECAP on the day just means to go over the day, to talk about it, to go through all of the details about what I did. So, (I) thought I would RECAP on what an Australian Christmas is like, at least for me. It’s probably different for a lot of other people, but yeah, this is a summer Christmas, and on the way back driving through Ocean Grove there were parties everywhere where people HAD SPILLED OUT into the streets. So, TO SPILL OUT means they’ve just come outside of, and literally, as if you poured a glass, they’VE SPILLED OUT into the streets. And they were just running around laughing. Some of them were dressed up in some bizarre costumes. I think we drove past one house where there was a party and all these people were dressed up like the fish from Finding Nemo. So, like that coral-coloured fish, what are they called again? that live in the anemones, and swim through the anemone tentacles. Oh what are they… clownfish, clownfish! Someone was dressed up as a clownfish. I don’t know how they dealt with the heat though in that sort of a costume. But yeah, so we drove home, (we) got home, (we) got ready I guess to go to sleep and (I) decided to make an episode here. So, it’s probably long enough, guys. I hope you guys had an amazing Christmas Day. And yeah, this is what a summer Christmas is like in Australia. Tell me in a comment below what Christmas is like where you’re from. I would love to know.

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