There's a whole lot to be said about living in the inner-west in Sydney. It's an incredible melting pot of cultures, and with that, opportunities. Every cuisine imaginable, every kind of music, clubs and social groups of many nationalities and neighbourhoods offering the opportunity to meet people from every corner of the globe. 
Francis and I have made it our business to immerse ourselves in as many different kinds of opportunity as we can absorb into the time available. We love the Addison St market in Marrickville with it's Casa Latina where the latin american community meet and dance and play and sing on a Sunday. We enjoy the Gladstone Pub, also in Marrickville, where our friend Mary-Jane Field has introduced us to the Bolivian community who spontaneously celebrate their music by jamming together on some Saturday nights. We follow our friends Marlene and Faramarz around, watching their festival productions of the Chilean national dance, the Cueca, and have even learnt it (at a time when I was about five months pregnant!). We frequent the Camelot Lounge, a club run by a chap called Yarron from Port Elizabeth who is known for his amazing band, Monsieur Camembert. I don't think there are many places in the world with more camels under one roof - big ones, small ones, pictures of camels, even flying camels - or more stairs to reach a club! One of my best evenings there was a Yiddish night which I attended with Marjorie, the woman who was my nanny when I was a child in South Africa. I think she knew more of the culture than some of the Jewish people there.
This Christmas has been, as usual, a multi-cultural one. The annual Heighway Avenue Street party was, as usual, filled with foods from many nations, games for the children, and great music and even some dance in the middle of the closed street. As anyone who has visited us at our home knows, within ten doors of where we live are representatives of New Zealand, China, Australia, Pakistan, India, South Africa (Durban), the Phillipines, Mauritius, Ireland, Lebanon, Poland... the list goes on. The kids are like a troop this time of year - dashing through the street on bicycles, jumping on one another's trampolines, dropping off hand-me-down clothes. 
Christmas Eve was our annual meeting-of-cultures in Baulkham Hills - yes, out of the inner-west - with our Chilean, Iranian, Chinese and Australian friends. It's always an outrageous evening of foods from our various cultures and a wild game of giving and stealing Christmas presents. And over the last two years the addition of the new generation, Jethro at 2 and Kian at 6 months, has added new flavour.
To top it, yesterday was Christmas in Ashfield with Francis' parents - something we often do at Christmas. While almost everything is closed, the Ashfield shops remain open with up to 20 Asian Eateries doing business as usual. This year we took a friend of mine's niece, Kristin from Germany. She has been backpacking and had been staying with us earlier in the year with her friend, Judy. They house-sat our home while we were traveling. After a fruit-picking stint up north, she and Judy moved in with Nikki-next-door to couch-surf. Over the season two more friends have joined them - one from Germany and one from Sweden. So we invited them to share Christmas. Another adventure in sharing stories of different cultures, and what we all usually do at Christmas. They turned up, all clean and shiny in their party frocks and joined us for dumplings, and later for fruit and other delicacies at home.
It's been another year of enjoying all that Sydney has to offer. A highlight was West African drumming with Saul of Soul Drumming. Brooke dragged me along, and I've taken to it like a duck to water. There's discipline and fun, and the body percussion (see picture) works well when your hands need a break from beating those drums. The pictures are of the performance on our last night, in Newtown. Four of Saul's groups came together to drum - about 50 of us in all - and Jethro was pretty taken with it all. At two, he is now "drumming like mummy" at every opportunity. Long may he have the opportunity to glean from Sydney all that Francis and I have been lucky to have in the inner-west in our seven years here.
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