An Australian visitor at Christmas [ Stories from Siberai cont] An Australian visitor at Christmas [ Stories from Siberia continued] Translated from Lithuanian from the memoirs of Irena K In November 1991, Victoria and I became rather anxious when we received the long awaited letter from our Australian grand niece, who wrote that she was going to visit us in Kaunas at Christmas time. “Oh my God Irena! What will we feed her? “ lamented Victoria. “Everyone knows that westerners only eat fresh food and our tiny fridge won’t be big enough. What sort of Christmas can we possibly afford to give her?” “Do you think she’ll expect cereal for breakfast each morning?” I asked Victoria. We wondered if Jura would be comfortable sleeping on the divan in our tiny lounge room. Then we debated the cost of her going to the hairdresser every day, as we had heard that was what western women did. We looked around our little flat. The worn linoleum, the faded curtains and our home made mop made us feel very ashamed of our poverty. For once, even our yellow canary Dory couldn’t cheer me up. We need not have worried, because once we met our Australian grand niece, she put us at ease. We realized that that all our preconceived ideas about western life were based solely on the TV series that Victoria and I watched. Fortunately our grand niece brought an adaptor plug along with her hairdryer and was very competent at styling her own hair. We were glad that Jura loved the snow and liked going to cafes as much as we did, cheerfully paying for our coffees as well. Our grand niece arrived with an envelope full of dollars as our Christmas gift which had been entrusted to her by our Australian relatives. Victoria and I couldn’t stop crying. That sort of unexpected generosity touched our hearts. We would certainly be able to afford a real mop and even fix up our old bathroom as well. I have decided to leave my memoirs to Jura, because as a history teacher, she was the only one who showed the most interest in our Siberian exile. Her spoken and written Lithuanian were quite good, but she spoke with an unfamiliar Australian accent. She didn’t know any current Lithuanian slang either, but we soon taught her some phrases. We took a trolley bus into the centre of Kaunas to show Jura our city’s beautiful Christmas tree all lit up. The three of us got on so well, that from then on, we called her ”our Australian angel.”