Low Points:
Trying to sleep with 12 pounds of butter in my stomach after Christmas Eve dinner, realizing that I am almost incapable of actually relaxing (must! do! something!), only reading 1.5 books, and feeling generally miserable on Christmas Eve morning when it really set in that I was spending my 2nd consecutive Christmas away from home.
High Points:
Hanging out with some girls on my floor that I don’t usually have time to hang out with, having free reign of the main building, making dinner on Tuesday night with Heather and Andreas (pesto! feta! bruschetta! glory!), baking 4 times and having a 100% success rate, spending time with two wonderful families on Christmas Eve (pictured above) and Christmas Day, enjoying 12 pounds of butter, sugar, and flour baked into various forms on Christmas Eve (some pictured right), talking to my family on iChat for an hour on Christmas, and…opening my gift from my mom – The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2! (cough – nerd alert)
Okay, so being away from home on Christmas is never ideal, unless, I suppose, you are with your entire family on holiday in some amazing location like Vail or Santorini or whatever. But I survived…I didn’t just survive, I had a good week. I’m pretty much exactly halfway through my time here, which is amazing and crazy and sad and wonderful and overwhelming all at once. Sometimes I wish I could stop this train, but here it comes anyway, rushing at me with increasing speed. The students are back, the New Year’s Festival starts tomorrow, and I leave for outreach in 2 1/2 weeks. Ready or not, here comes Round 2.
I don’t usually start listening to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving. That’s fair, right? I’m not the kind of person who’s super into it, but I definitely listen to it like 75% of the time for the month of December. But my love for holiday music is not an unconditional love. Far from it. There’s certain Christmas songs that make me want to dance and kiss someone under the mistletoe and give rosy-cheeked children mugs of hot cocoa with candy cane straws. But then there’s Christmas music that literally makes me turn off the radio and cringe. I’m not talking about carols here…I definitely have my favorites of those (We Three Kings; Joy to the World, ahem, NOT because of my name, thank you) and the ones that I feel guilty for hating so much (Silent Night, What Child Is This?). But for the sake of a simplified list, here are my best and worst of holiday pop music: 
I’m starting to find ways to be excited about being one of three people left at Grimerud over the holidays. Besides the obvious: peace and quiet, forced rest, copious amounts of time to catch up on my reading and movie watching; I’ve thought of something else. I’m going to pretend I’m like Harry Potter staying at Hogwarts over the holidays…I mean, he saw it as a good thing, so why can’t I? Too bad I don’t have Ron and Hermione to keep me company, and house elves to make me a magical feast every day. But still. Whatever works, right?
