Fête Noël

I spent Christmas in Popenguine, a little beach town just south of Dakar, it was wonderful, and here are a few of the highlights. 

MERRY HAPPY!

Chrishaunakwanstice, Fancy Baking Day, Christmas Adam, White Elephant Night...  I love the holidays. And Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, and Tamharit, New Years' Eve, those are nice, too. 

This year I'll be spending Christmas in  Popenguine with some Peace Corps friends (including Emma and her family visiting from Amerik) and I'm sure that Christmas on the beach will be fantastic, but I know that part of me will be thinking of another West Coast. 

Family time, gingerbread houses and a Cheeseboard cheese platters... winter in California is generally pretty lovely, and last year was no exception. And now I'm feeling all nostalgic.

Merry Happy, Everyone! 

Care Package Paradise

This weekend I'm going to write a post all about In-Service Training and work stuff and what I've been up to and all that, but right now I just want to talk about some of the wonderful things that have arrived in the mail recently.
First, from my mom, this pink mini-sewing-kit egg, which came in a box filled with protein bars and postcards and whatnot.

Miniature Things That I Own 

Then, from my brother, a pound of Peet's coffee (Major Dickason's Roast, my favorite) and cat postcard, which I loved and used to make a new nametag for my basket in the Regional House kitchen hut. 

AND THEN this arrived via Diplomatic Pouch:

(My brother is the best brother.)

Dried fruit, BBQ sauce, iPod cord, chocolate chip cookie mix, OREOS, Ritter Dark with Hazlenuts, Toblerone, Tom's of Maine toothpaste, Hawaiian Punch (Juicy Red Flavor), dental floss, facewash... OH, and A NETBOOK. And an external hard drive. It was a little overwhelming, like Christmas and Easter and my birthday all at once.

So, now I have a computer again (and a battery, which arrived separately) and I'm super thrilled about it (even though Windows is ridiculous) and will be doing my best to catch up on e-mail and Facebook and all that.

Nostalgia for the Relatively Recent Past

Another fun thing for those of you not on Facebook: Last Christmas I made gingerbread houses, one for my family in Berkeley and one for the kids I babysat while I was in California. I got pretty into it, melting LifeSavers into little windows and everything. I haven't baked anything as ambitious since I was living the Swiss Life...

When we were little we would decorate gingerbread houses during the holidays, and then my brother and I and our cousins would use a toy tool set to break them into gnaw-able chunks. It turns out that smashing a gingerbread house is fun for grown-ups, too, and I finally uploaded the pictures into a Picasa album. I think it's fun to watch as a slideshow set to the fastest setting, like a virtual flip-book.