Auckland - Christmas Special

-- 12/23 to 12/25/2016 --
A New Zealand Christmas in Three Parts

1. Our Christmas weekend started off Friday night with a trip out to and Irish Pub called Muddy Farmer's. We were supposed to start at 7, but everyone else was running late, so we held off until 9 when the sun was just starting to set. It was a cool night at the end of a hot week, with patches of rain clouds drenching parts of the city for 5 minutes at a time.

It turns out that Muddy Farmer's, an Irish bar in New Zealand, holds salsa dances every Friday night with lessons taught by an Indian. Such is Auckland in a nutshell. Our bartender, Julia, is friends with John and Sehui, so she took our order, finished her shift and then joined us for some drinks at the back away from the salsa class. By the time everyone arrived, we had most of the Pacific Rim represented at our table. We were from Kamchatka, Canada, the US, Colombia, New Zealand, Korea, and India (well that's not a Pacific country, but it's more poetic if we pretend it is). Such is Auckland.

2. On Christmas Eve I made a classic American brunch for lunch: bacon, eggs, and pancakes. There wasn't any maple syrup for our pancakes, but we managed just fine with jam.

So that part wasn't very New Zealand-y, but after lunch I got on a ferry and went across the harbour to Devonport, a neighborhood that has a charming mashup of artsy communities and landed gentry. My friend Julie from the Anthropology department picked me up from the ferry terminal and brought me to her house to play board games with her friends. We made guacamole from under-ripe avocados with an immersion blender, drank lots of eggnog, had prosecco, and Simon made a pork roast (served with ketchup and mustard on white bread) and boil up (potato, pumpkin, greens, and dough balls boiled with fat) for dinner. A very Kiwi dinner indeed.

After dark, Julie drove me back to the ferry terminal and I made my way home. A couple blocks from my house I saw a drunk trying to get the attention of a woman sitting alone at a restaurant by calling to her from outside. I loudly cleared my throat when I walked past him, thinking I would divert his attention, or let him know that he was being watched, I dunno. He immediately started following me. Calling out to me a couple times, then faking a rush at me to get my attention. I kept walking, and he was either trying to catch up and attack me, or just playing at making me feel threatened. When I got to a populated corner I turned up the street and ducked into a convenience store (to get away AND because I needed butter for a recipe). I went out cautiously but he was long gone.

I got back to my flat without any issues and found out there was a party happening. John had two Colombian friends over, and Sehui had two Korean friends over. I stayed up with them, talking, playing music videos, and drinking a couple more beers after I'd digested a bit of the boil up and eggnog. It turns out Koreans and Colombians both celebrate Christmas the same way we all celebrate New Years: by getting drunk and staying up til midnight the night before! When I went to bed at 2, there was someone in the city blowing constantly on a whistle for hours.

3. I got up early on Christmas morning, even though my body protested, to have a skype chat with Jess, and to talk to my parents on the phone as they drove from California to Oregon. It was definitely worth it, and the eggnog hangover was not as bad as I was expecting.

In between and after all the calls, I prepped and baked some sweet orange rolls (this recipe!) while listening to Christmas songs. My mom has always baked Pilsbury orange rolls for holiday mornings as long as I can remember, and I went to the super market earlier in the week to try and find something similar but they didn't have anything. So I resolved to bake my own. The recipe I found is actually a copycat of the Pilsbury rolls, and it's really easy. I love the way the dough turned out, and they ended up being way better than the one's I grew up with. Unfortunately, I haven't quite figured out my flat's oven yet. There's only room for one rack, it's 50°C (!!) too hot on the top and 50°C too cold on the bottom. I didn't have any aluminum foil, so the rolls were totally unprotected, they totally burned, and I got to try and fan smoke out of the flat with my towel for a while. Still, the bottom 3/4 of each one was excellent, and I got jacked up on the glaze I poured over them (which didn't turn out as well as the Pilsbury icing).

In the afternoon Melinda picked me up and took me to a party in Mt. Eden hosted by some archaeologists and their families. We played ball with Theo, a chubby faced 2-year old with golden locks of hair, and ate lots and lots of food. The main dishes would totally have passed for Thanksgiving dinner: turkey with gravy, green beans, salad, Mediterranean grain salad, stuffing, ham with pineapple, cranberry sauce, and asparagus. I was stuffed after one plate, and then turkey (free range from the South Island) was passed around again and I couldn't say no to a medium for more gravy.

Then there was dessert. We had two kinds of trifle: one with cream over layers of gooseberry (what Americans know as kiwi fruit), blueberries, and cake crumbles, and one that was just a giant bowl with two kinds of cream. We had pavolva again, this time with whip cream coating the whole outside evenly like icing on a cake, and with raspberries and gooseberry slices arranged on top. All was served with vanilla ice cream.

At the end of the night, our host Julie (different from the Julie I spent time with the day before!) gave me a present, which turned out to be a bag of chocolates. The Anthropology post-graduate advisor gave everyone a beer. I was handed a pail full of cream (in the form of the two trifles and the pavolva leftovers). Melinda gave me a beautiful, wood-handled wine opener shaped like a fish.

Overall, it was a great Christmas for someone who observes the holiday culturally but not religiously. For the most part, it didn't feel like Christmas to me at all. The sun should have set much earlier, and I expected much more bracing weather. People don't really decorate their homes, and a lot of people living in Auckland have vacated to their baches (a Kiwi term for a small holiday house) for the summer. But I could get used to this kind of Christmas day, and all the great feasting opportunities. The only thing I worry about is, does the Southern Hemisphere have any winter festivities, and how will I get through the winter months if there aren't any?