Day 112: My Aunt

On Tuesday, I took a 50-minute train ride to Sefton, a suburb outside of Sydney to visit my aunt. With only five days remaining in Australia, I finally got around to seeing her, partly because she was traveling most of March and April, and partly my fault. You see, my aunt probably knows less than 30 English words, combined with my 2 year-old Vietnamese vocabulary (Chinese is even worse), it's quite hard for us to communicate. I was kind of dreading that awkward silence when two people cannot communicate, and even if we could, what would we talk about? Even though, I've probably exchanged less than 100 words with my aunt in my lifetime, for some reason, she always tells my dad that she is quite fond of me. When I arrived to her home, she had cooked all of my favorite foods and we shared a really good asian meal, something I've missed greatly during my time in Sydney. Then she took me to the China Town in her suburb where she introduced me to a yummy sugarcane drink, and she bought me avocados and several types of tapioca desserts to take home. I don't know where my Aunt gets her money, but when I offered to pay for anything, she immediately and vehemently slapped my hand away. At 79 years-old, my Aunt is still quite active and independent. In fact, I learned that we do have something in common, we like going to the beach. My aunt often takes the hour plus trek by train and buses, solo, to get to Bondi Beach, a favorite destination of hers. According to my cousin, her social calendar is quite full and she has some type of activity each of the days of the week. After spending more than 3 hours together, and sharing less than 10 words, I left my aunt wanting more. That was a nice feeling. I got more as she insisted that I go with her to eat dim sum on Thursday. It was my pleasure.

Tomorrow, I pack all of my bags and bike to fly back to Kona. Sydney is approaching winter and it has been cold and rainy here. I've averaged less than 100 km of cycling the past two weeks due to the rain, so I'll be cramming mileage on the bike in my lead-up to Hawaii 70.3. It's time to chase summer #2.