Christmas time is here...

The Christmas spirit has been coming on strong here for the past few weeks! It's amazing how much you can get done with a little holiday momentum behind you. We've tick-boxed our way through the usual holiday/end of year stuff and are just about finished up with work! Tomorrow we leave for sunny Spain to spend Christmas with Kristy's childhood best friend, everyday playmate, and carpool ballerina, Amy!

Yesterday I took part in my very first British pantomime! All of the teachers at work decided to throw a Christmas/end of year party for all of our students in college. Rather than just tossing a Christmas tape into a deck, (well, we did that, too) we decided to put together some quality entertainment. It was also a good chance to get the guys to dress up and embarrass themselves! The students got a kick out of it, anyway.

My students are such great people to work with; I have learned so much from them! The last few days they've brought in amazing homemade biriyanis, samosas, picoras… you name it (and some things I can't name, but they were good, too!) On top of that, most of them (and even some students who aren’t my students – go figure that one out) gave me cards, gifts, and flowers. They are so generous and warm, it is sometimes overwhelming to be given so much by people who have so little!

Bubbling with Christmas cheer,
Kristy

Turkey Day

I got to go back to the good ol' USA for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving with the fam this year. It was an amazing feeling to be back! It's been four years since I've had a proper American Thanksgiving, so the turkey and pumpkin pie were even more appreciated than usual. I don't know any Americans or Canadians where I am living at the moment, so it was really nice to be back among my own kind (^_^).

Actually, I feel like the past year has really given me a new appreciation for Americans since there haven't been any around (maybe they are hiding?). Not to honk our own horn or anything (there are plenty of things to criticize, of course, nobody's perfect) but I really found the friendliness, openness, and cheesiness of Americans really refreshing to come back to! My family went to a Christmas lighting thingy in downtown Indianapolis the day after Thanksgiving, and it ended up being a huge deal: lights, food, a stage with a live band, loads of free stuff being given out, the streets full of Americans dancing and singing Christmas carols together and hitting each other with blow-up candy canes... it was great! You know, I had forgotten what America is like!

I love living abroad and meeting so many amazing people, but being home felt so great - I am so excited about moving over next year and starting the next chapter of our lives (which will hopefully be entited "Kristy and Ian settle down into a more stable life"). Ian and I have hung little postcard pictures of Chicago up on our wall, which we refer to as "our dream". For awhile "the dream" (which is just made up of post cards, some string, and some Blu Tac) kept falling down. Every morning I'd get up, and the dream would be on the floor, so I had to keep putting it back together and hanging it up again. When I talked to Ian on the phone from the US on Thanksgiving, he said, "Oh by the way, I've figured out a way to fix the dream!" How about that Kiwi ingenuity!