Weeks 14 & 15 - The Countdown is on!

So here I am.  Three days from now I'll be arriving in Montreal, the halfway point on my journey back home for the holidays.  Before we get to that though let's see what's been going on for the last two weeks!

This is a random picture of the mail pickup truck.  I thought it was interesting to see the little modification to the tires so that there is a little bit more traction.  There is a massive amount of ice on the roads right now so this is probably a very good idea.

Last Saturday was our school Christmas party at Omerone's house.  It was an interesting evening.  The food was pretty good (Omerine and Raymond are an older french couple and definitely know how to cook!).  I'm glad that some of the younger people were there so that I had some people to talk to.  It gets a little awkward for me sometimes when I'm surrounded by older people and little children.  At one point though someone busted out their accordion and people started singing Christmas carols. This was my cue to hit the dusty trail...  Anyway, I had been warned that there would be massive amounts of food so I decided that I would make some Ciabatta as an accompaniment to the main course.  Everyone seemed to enjoy them and Omerine was quite happy to have the extras.

I think they turned out reasonably well considering I haven't made these in over 2 years.  Although they weren't as airy as I wanted.  Next time I'll have to let them rise more.

One of the interesting additions to our school was a new ornament designed by the art teacher called the Northern Lights.

It's a fairly interesting construct made from pieces of green and purple glass wired together.  It's quite nice when the light illuminates the glass.

Over the last couple weekends (last weekend and this weekend) I have been working on making Christmas cookies for all the students.  I thought it would be nice to have the teachers come down on the last day of class and get some for all their students.  I made them some sugar cookies, belgium cookies and mexican wedding cakes.  I think in total there was around 200-250 made.  This week Nancy came in and lent me a hand!  It was nice having her there since decorating the sugar cookies on my own generally becomes very tedious and makes me question my 'good ideas.'

Here is the Maestro in the middle of decorating some cookies.  She brought some of the kids in too and they have fun decorating too. :)

Finally, here are some of the interesting things I have bought while I've been here.  Some of these are made from soap stone, others are made from bone or some other type of stone.  It seems a little strange to me that no one carves things out of wood, but it kinda makes sense though since there aren't that many trees around here, and the ones we have are soft wood.

Anyway, this is it! The next time I post I will most likely be sitting in Delhi with a nice mug of hot chocolate and a cookie!