The holiday started at Karin's house. I know Karin through my Chinese class. She is here with her parents and they needed some extra children to fill out their fairly large dinner table. It ended up being Karin, her mom and dad, me, Degan (a Canadian guy also studying Chinese), Priscilla (Karin's Brazilian friend) and Frederic (Karin's Swedish friend). Dinner was delicious, including all of the traditional Swedish dishes, i.e. meatballs. Everything was delicious. We all ate until we were stuffed and then began our "white elephant" game. Of course the game was hilarious and Degan, who started out with no presents, made out like a bandit and took everyone else's! It was quite hilarious to see seven "adults" running around a dining room table singing Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs waiting for the buzzer to go off so we could take a seat. It was like I had an extra, extended family that I had never met before! Basically, the evening was fabulous and enhanced by the presence of Glogg wine and a live Christmas tree, not to mention wonderful company.
Me and the lovely tree.
Me and my Swedish substitute parents!
Today has also been lovely. I surprised my roommate with a miniature Christmas in the middle of our room when she came back from her lesson this morning. She was very excited and after warming up some hot cocoa and cinnamon rolls, we sat down to open a few gifts. I think my favorite part is that we Skyped with my parents while we opened gifts, in a way it was like they were there...which was nice. We just kind of enjoyed ourselves through the morning. It wasn't fancy, it wasn't home, but it was definitely what I needed.
Mini Christmas!
Mun and I in our lovely hats.
It's a family Christmas!
Later we met up with Professor Wu from Willamette! He took me, my roommate, Corinna and his pianist to a delicious Cantonese style lunch. I'm calling it my Christmas dinner though. There was definitely enough food to warrant that. We were at the restaurant for roughly three hours, I'm beginning to think that this is just the average time one should spend at a meal. Who knows. It was delicious and the company was excellent. And now, I plan to spend the rest of my evening tucked snuggly warm in my bed watching movies and drinking hot cocoa.
No comments:
Post a Comment