Christmas Day!!!

The temperature was 30 degrees, so it took some convincing for me to believe it really was Christmas day! But having a parcel to open from the very lovely Jackie Twitchett and Lerryn Gray helped me believe that santa really was around! I had a great little haul of Christmas gifts, I can make myself a nice cup of tea now thanks to Jackie and have great memories of the Grays to look at whilst planning my time here! Thanks guys! I hope the other parcels arrive shortly….

Then the celebrations began, we decorated the house and played Christmas tunes - which mainly referred to snow and cold weather we discovered! 

Food prep then began in full swing, we had 17 people to cater for! Luckily we’d divided up responsibilities, so we had a great feast of stew, chapatti, chuckalucka, chicken, moi-moi, rice and potatoes – food from around the world! 

Our christmas feast!

My christmas food - yum!!

Stacey and I were responsible for desert, so we had healthy fruit along with rice crispy cakes! The cakes had to be worth the 3 burns Stacey and I got trying to melt the dairy milk – we discovered that chocolate sold in Africa has an anti-melting ingredient, not useful when trying to make rice crispy cakes……. Nikki made a lovely lemon pie which was a great addition to the desert table (probably nicer than our rice crispy cakes to be honest). 

Thanks to Jackie we had crackers to pull, which was the first time some of our African and American friends has experienced Christmas crackers! And they came with the usual hats and awful jokes! 

The christmas crackers!

Our crazy christmas hats!

Leanne enjoying christmas!!

More friends popped by in the afternoon, which was lovely and I got to see Jack open his Christmas present via skype! I was very jealous of his dinner, he seems to have taken my place in the family by eating all the Yorkshire puddings!

The day was lovely, lots of fun, chat, laughter and games. Was exhausted by 11pm though and so full of food – slept so well! Was glad to have a fun Christmas and not to feel too homesick – would have loved to go home for 24 hours and see family, open presents and eat roast dinner though!