Summer in Winter

Welcome to 2020, Tara here.

How is the new year treating everyone so far? I hope it’s off to a great start!

Although this happened in the past, I want to share about my holiday in the land down under: Australia.

For Christmas and New Year, my family and I decided to celebrate in Australia. It was the first time for my husband and I to visit, but both of my step-daughters had been before. Well, one is still living in Sydney now.

Since the country is in the Southern Hemisphere, we wanted to enjoy the warm weather as much as possible and became beach bums.

We visited three major places during the trip.

First, we went to Melbourne. It was an interesting city with some nice places to visit like Queen Victoria’s Market, which is like a daily Farmer’s Market’. Also, the riverside was beautiful with lots of eateries and activities going on near the Southbank. However, it is a rather small city and so we saw all that wanted within the first couple days of our five-day stay there. Therefore, we found the beach a couple of times.

Our next stop was a short flight to Byron Bay. Byron Bay is near the Gold Coast and is known as a hippie town. While I didn’t really notice that so much, the whole family really liked the vibe or energy of the small beach town. The beaches there were also very beautiful, so we spent a lot of time each day on the sand making it a wonderful spot to celebrate Christmas.

After a lovely stay in Byron Bay relaxing, we moved on to Sydney. Our Airbnb was in Balmain East, so most days we went into the center part of the city by ferry. On our ferry rides, we always got a wonderful view of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

We also had the perfect area to ring in the New Year with a view of the famous fireworks in the Harbour.

This video is just a very very small glimpse of what the show was like.

Overall, we all enjoyed our trip and both my husband and I are looking forward to another visit to the country.

As a side note, even though there is a lot of news about the bush 🔥 fires these days, we were lucky enough to not have had any experience with them. However, there is a lot of damage to homes and wildlife that will need to be rebuilt and protected.

If you get the chance to visit, I highly recommend it!

Here are some terms to consider:

“land Down Under”

This is a term used to refer to Australia due to its being located in the Southern Hemisphere and was found ‘under’ Asia. It has been used in different context such as songs or as a nickname.

e.g. “One of my friends is from the land down under where it is summer in our winter.”

“beach bums”

This is generally used as a way to refer to someone who spends a lot of time on the beach or in the ocean. ‘Bum’ is somewhat negatively used to describe someone who does not work much or at all.

e.g. “It is a dream of mine to become a full-time beach bum and spend all of my days on the sand.”

“eateries”

This is an informal way to refer to a restaurant or cafe. The singular form is ‘eatery’.

e.g. “There are a ton of eateries in my neighborhood.”

“hippie”

This generally refers to a person who was part of the counterculture in the 1960s of America. Nowadays, it often describes a person who goes against the conventional ways of society.

e.g. “The atmosphere of the town was hippie, meaning that people were free to be whoever they wanted.”

“vibe”

There are different definitions in modern use, but in this case, the feeling or atmosphere of a place is how the word is meant to be understood.

e.g. “I’m getting a definite good vibe about this eatery.”

フルーツフルイングリッシュで英語表現の楽しさ感じてください 。初めての方には英作文添削チケット2回分をプレゼント。
「無料英語テスト800問（解説付）」メルマガも大人気。今すぐチェック！

Tara

アメリカ育ちで日本で９年間英語を教えた経験あり。日本以外にもAbu Dhabiでも英語を教えていたベテランの先生です。 ヨガを教える資格も持っていてとてもアクティブで、「諦めずに頑張って」とモチベーションをくれる指導スタイルで人気。
座右の銘は「We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit」。