aggienaut | Feb. 9th, 2026

   Okay it's time to catch up on actual events before details get too fuzzy.

   We had a Christmas party at our place. It was actually really fun. Once again various friends from the latino community all ended up coming over, joint efforts were made to make a huge amount of food. Cristina (since I just added a bunch of people from the LJ Revival community I should note my wife, Cristina, is from Venezuela) had decorated our christmas tree (fake, but christmas being in summer here real trees die to fast) really beautifully. With presents for the White Elephant game and specific presents for various people there was quite the elegant pile of presents under the tree.

   The party went on till 2 or 3 am with dancing and revelry.

   In the ten years I've been here in Australia, especially at first I was often invited to people's houses for Christmas. I actually found it more sad/lonely/alienating than if I just stayed home -- this is another family deep in their family time, celebrating the most traditional cultural distillate there is, that they've been marinated in their entire lifetimes, and no matter how good of friends we are and well intentioned, I still feel like an outsider.
   This was the second Christmas since Cristina was here, last year we just had a quiet christmas just the two of us, and she made Venezuealan tamales (hallacas), apparently a Venezuelan christmas tradition. It seems I never posted or wrote about that so here's three pictures from Christmas 2024:

   But back to this Christmas. This party. Celebrating with a community of fellow immigrants, of my wife's culture, a combination of parents with kids and unrelated people, for the first time in ten years it genuinely felt like Christmas to me. We're all immigrants struggling together to find that sense of home. I never felt this with the groups of "Americans in Australia" because half them are always "I'm an ex-pat not an immigrant" and they are the must insufferably privileged people imaginable.

(This most recent Christmas)