Christmas day 2012       1630

That’s it - work finished until the morning, two taxis organised to come from town to pick us up and in two hours we are off for our version of Christmas dinner.

I opened Sonya’s gift to me and there was a card, a tub of chocolates and a Santa hat which I will take tonight but probably get one of the girls to wear. It’s cold again today and I notice they are forecasting sleet or snow for tomorrow. Just my luck they say it will rain on Thursday when I will need to go to town shopping. If it is wet I will be forced to take the bus, so will probably leave early in the hope there won’t be many students taking it, thus trying to avoid a repeat of Sunday. With a couple of bags of shopping that would not have been fun at all.

Boxing day    0030

Ok so I thought I wouldn’t post - and shouldn’t seeing as I should be in bed by now because I am working in the morning but it IS Christmas after all!

The taxis arrived early and eight of us (Cassandra cried off at the eleventh hour for some reason I have yet to be told) sat down for a celebratory steak meal. Olivier (I am now ribbing him about being gay because he seems to bring boys as his dates even though he is married and with a second child arriving imminently), American Kevin from California, a boy, Kevin, Daisy, Kiki, Joanna and me. Everyone had steak even though there were such things as pizza on offer. Aside from taxis I forked out 300y in the restaurant which means with the additional special offer we got for buying a discount card the bill exceeded 1,000y. I would like to be able to say the meal was entirely satisfying but I can’t. Call me fussy if you wish but the T-bone I had must have had the living daylights kicked out of it to make it that tender and unrecognisable on the palate as being beef. It came with a modicum of spaghetti, peas, sweet corn and a fried egg although the pepper sauce was good. It really needed a good portion of chips! It was edible though, the wine was half decent even though we drank them dry and for the last bottle we had to order an expensive one. Because the occasion was not going to be about the food (sadly) I resolved to enjoy it for the company instead. It was great fun with two English at verbal war with a Yank and a Frenchy! All in good fun of course and indeed Kevin the American fired a few salvoes of his own back in our direction. I could not have been happier with Kiki and Joanna seated either side of me - both looked adorable.

Unfortunately the second taxi bringing us back deposited Ollivier and American Kevin outside my block just as I emerged from my cab. Manners dictated I invite them for a glass of plonk and the buggers polished off a bottle and a half - ok I helped - before I threw them out. It’s ok for Olivier because he has hardly any classes but I have more than both he and Kevin - almost both combined.

On the whole though, a good yuletide night but one on which had I known the portion sizes I would have ordered a starter! Here are the photos and one of them may appear in the local newspaper seeing as they asked to cover the laoweis celebrating their “special” day. Night all, and I hope everyone is up to the gills in cranberry sauce and booze.