24-25/12/02
ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRAlia Christmas with the DePasquale's. Again. I love spending time with my Italian-Australian family away from
home. My first trip to Australia led me to spending Christmas with them. I met Lozza up in Brisbane at a week long uni (university)
course he was taking that my supervisor was teaching. I was around collecting fish samples for my Honors thesis back then
in 1996. We've been good friends ever since. It is an interesting feeling to have Christmas when it's 33 degrees
(90 degrees F) outside. Since the last Christmas i spent with the DePasquales there have
been a lot of new additions! 3 nieces for Lozza: Carla - 4, Celeste - 1.5, and Latisha - 10 months. I haven't had Christmas with babies around in a long time so it
was nice to have all the talk of Father Christmas (Santa Claus). We actually celebrated on Christmas Eve and had an extravagent feast
with 15 people. Some of Latisha's family from Portugal flew in, so along with me, it was quite the international celebration as well.
