Christmas at Home

So, a Christmas post. For those of you in the US, I was incredibly homesick this year. If someone had offered me a plane ticket home, I would have jumped at it and not even asked if it was round trip. I had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit and just wanted to be home in the States for Christmas. Becky was able to go home again for Christmas and I think that just made my homesickness even worse.
Thankfully, all of that changed thanks to wonderful friends and "family" here. For starters, Karin and I were able to attend a performance of the Nutcracker, thanks to one of my students, Mišo, who sang for one of the dances. We had a hard time finding the performance at first, but it was worth all the wandering around in the cold and dark.
The next day was Christmas Eve and I had no time to be homesick. I had to be at the bus station to pick up our first guests, Laura and Sarah (teachers in Czech), at 9am. We went into town and I showed them around before heading to the train station at 1pm to pick up our next guests, Steph, Jason and Jon. We all headed back to our flat then, where Karin was making her famous Texas chili. She and I had been shopped all day the day before to make sure we had enough food (and miraculously, we did!). At 5pm Kate, Katie, her parents, her brother Evan and his girlfriend Lindsey arrived. Finally at 5:30 the D'Ettorres (Vic, Darla, Dominic and Ana) arrived, bringing our grand total to 17 people. We feasted on backed potatoes with all the trimmings, Texas chili, hot wine, cornbread and an array of baked goods and candy. We pulled out Apples to Apples and had a large, rousing game, using up all of the cards. The families left around 10 and we found beds for everyone else.
Christmas morning, Laura and Sarah left early to catch a train to Prague and Steph, the boys, Karin and I had a late breakfast of eggs, bacon and cranberry scones. I went to my Slovak family's house to hang out and play games. They gave me a handpainted flower pot and wire jewlery they had made themselves. I was so impressed with the wire jewlery that they pulled out all the materials and taught me how to make it myself. We played Settlers of Catan, drank tea and ate Christmas goodies for the rest of the afternoon. When I came back home, we opened the few gifts we had (Karin and I haven't yet gotten our packages from our families). We both got beautiful earings from Steph. I was able to talk to my family and found out the wonderful news that I am going to be an aunt! Yeah! So, at the end of the day, I was still a little homesick, but very happy to be here in Slovakia.

Christmas at home