Dec 25 - Apartment and Christmas on the Beach

Got up around 11 today (hey, the sleep-in is justified, we were up til nearly 3 last night with church and watching the light show). Put on some presentable clothes and walked over to Riley Street to meet the lady who was showing us the apartment. She met us there with her boyfriend and they took us up to the apartment on the 2nd floor. The building looks like an apartment on 7th street, but it`s in a decent neighborhood that's also quiet and centrally located, so overall not bad. The apartment itself looks nice and is...cozy...in that it's a studio apartment of maybe 400 square feet including the kitchen and bathroom. The bed is in the living room (the only room, really) with a little kitchen to the side with a fridge and sink and stove/oven and a little bathroom with a shower and toilet and sink. We went downstairs and signed a little rental agreement and forked over a $200 deposit. We get to go back on Monday in the afternoon to take over the place and need to bring the rest of the $600 deposit, plus the first two weeks' rent (at $450 for the first two weeks, then $420 for the remaining weeks). So we're going to fork over a big chunk of change on Monday and thus I need a job even worse than before.

We walked back to the hostel and started to figure out what to do for accommodation for the 26th, as we don't get the apartment til the 27th. I booked us into a new hostel via hostelworld, but then we checked at the desk here and they have space tomorrow (albeit at a higher rate than the $30/night we pay now) so we booked that because it's easier and cancelled the other reservation (thereby forfeiting the $5 deposit). Easier to just move once instead of twice. Packed up our beach stuff, then walked to Hyde Park and took the 333 to Bondi. The beach was hopping today (they claim Christmas brings over 40,000 people but there was maybe half that) and we plopped down close to the water amidst the Christmas revelers. It seemed like half the beach were wearing santa hats. Christmas seems like New Year's Eve over here; everyone gets dressed up in some type of festive outfit (mostly santa hats or santa suits) and wanders around in it all day. I headed for the waves quite quickly as I tend to do at Bondi and spent a little over an hour in the water, but it wasn't much fun today. There were significantly more people in the tiny flagged off swim area in the water, there was a ton of seaweed and crap floating in the water, and the waves weren't very big or powerful (couldn't even body surf them). Thus, before long I was back on the beach and reading. Brennan and I each did a walk of the beach and some reading. Stayed on the beach til nearly 7, then took a bus back to the hostel. For dinner, we made grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato (they pronounce it toe-mah-toe rather than toe-may-toe) soup. Not the most festive of meals, but last night's supper was pretty epic. I finished my Craig Ferguson book tonight and I'm going to tackle Catch 22 next. But I'll take a break for a couple days first. Brennan took a nap and I walked back to the Cathedal we were at last night. I watched and filmed all the patterns projected onto the church (which I'll post on Facebook) then went back to the hostel. Split a pack of Tim Tams for dessert as I browsed for jobs on Gumtree (emailed one guy who needed painters). Tomorrow I'm going to print off a big stack of resumes and hand them out at places until I get a job somewhere...anywhere.