Welcome Home: Turkey, Broken Shoes at Weddings and Birthday Bar fights

I have been home nearly 3 weeks, so I decided I needed to update the blog so my Aussies know what I am up to.

The first week was kind of a blur... or blurry, rather. It took me all week to get my sleep schedule back to eastern standard time. I was dozing off at 3pm, and waking up at 4am. But I think I finally worked it out. I had a hotdog roast and wilderness walk at the "Caswell Estate" the first weekend I was home. It was great to see all of my Cheek family and my curves girls and spend some time out at the farm. Then Thursday was Thanksgiving. I technically had 2 thanksgivings because we ate lunch with the Rudisills in Raleigh, then had dinner with the Cheeks in Efland. SO MUCH FOOD, but it was all so good. The weekend was Dan's wedding. It was so great to see many people I had not seen since college. I was "Australia girl" all night, which was fine, at least I had something to say to people. Matt had an atrocious "No shave November" flesh colored mustache, which he spent explaining to strangers all night when introduced. I enjoyed teaming up with his girlfriend Esther to torture him all night; Esther has my stamp of approval :) (Love you Matt, haha). I got to see Couch for the first time since Hines's wedding and talk to him a little. I also talked to JP, Dave, and Andrew, people I haven't seen in a long time. At first, people were a little awkward, but it was funny to see that when drinking, none of them had really changed from how I remembered them in college, haha. I ended up with an unglued shoe by the end of the night and had to walk shoeless to the cab, but it was a great night.

I spent 4 days with Grandma in Efland, which was wonderful. We did a lot of baking, making biscotti and almond cranberry cake while I was there. I made my spaghetti sauce for them one night; both she and Pop were very impressed and Pop had seconds of just the sauce. I was sad to leave, but will spend a couple more days there before I go back to Australia. Last night I went out with Elizabeth for her birthday. We ate at an Italian restaurant name Gravy then went out to bars. In a place called The Oxford, some very drunk guy started a bar fight with a woman. He grabbed her face and pushed it away, then everyone was pushing and shoving. I swooped Elizabeth out of the way, saving her life, haha. The guy was ejected from the bar, and some other man that saw how close we were to danger bought our whole group aftershock shots. It was a good ending to a bar fight.

I've got lots of stuff planned in the coming weeks: Christmas parties, cookie baking, more visiting and socializing. Yay Christmas!