The Holiday Season

We are exactly 34 days from Christmas - the holiday were families gather around the lighted fir tree and spread yule time cheer. Smells of cookies baking in the oven swirl through the air and sprinkles of red and green are everyewhere. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the holidays. It seems that between 31. oct and 2. jan a lot of important holidays get shoved in. Between the fired turkey and honey baked ham something happens - you can't see it, but rather feel it. We all know it - the feeling that puts an extra spring in our step and some carols in our mind.

This time now the city has been placing giant (somewhere between 15 and 25 feet) fir trees around and beautiful garlins with lights between buildings. It would be a lie to say that I didn't miss my family a little. The holidays are thoes times when you usually want nothing more than to curl up with the ones you love while sharing a hot cup of cocoa and reading The Night Before Christmas.

But the best way to cope is to find things to look forward too and, well, I'm looking forward to the holidays! As days go by, I don't think we really stop and realise that never ever again will that day happen again. As long as some form of human existense is around, today will never happen again, nor will yesterday or tomorrow. So why waste the day? Why not make today or tomorrow something to remember? Well, that's what I'm trying to do. But, back to the holiday excitement.

There are two main things I'm super excited for. One is having the 2008 Christmas in Denmark. From what I've read, they go all out. It's a holiday they love and celebrate all of the wintery December month. The second thing I'm excited for is Saai, my Thai friend. This Christmas is her first Christmas. I can't denie that there is something special about that. When we walk to language school together we sing Christmas songs and I try to teach her new ones like the twelve days of christmas. For most Americans, Christmas is something you grow up with. You wake up at 6 a.m. to see all of the gifts Santy left for you and to see if he at the cookies and milk you left out and the teeth marks in the carrots from the reindeer.

The holidays are a time of giving and caring - were friends and family come together to appreciate each other and what each person means to the other. To have the opprotunity to spend it here and to teach another our holiday is an opprotunity I wouldn't miss.