Ten Lords a-Leaping

What do you call Santa's helpers?

Morning! It's a lovely sunny day here in Prague (hurrah for the sun!), and I'm feeling MUCH happier now than I was this time yesterday. The homesickness seems to have passed for the moment, and hopefully it won't return. If it does - well, I'll try to do what mum and dad suggested: cry for a bit, and then be thankful that I'm used to having Christmases that are so good that they are worth crying over when I don't have them!! :)

I went out for lupper (lunch/supper) yesterday afternoon with some friends, and it was very nice. We wandered into a little Italian place to eat, and I had spaghetti. It was sooo nummy. Then we wandered off to a pub, where they had some really nice apple cider. Cider was seriously necessary yesterday, as the wind was blowing like it thought it was in Alberta, and it was snowing a bit. Damp cold = yicky!

Then I headed off for the carol service. It was lovely. The church was FREEZING, even though they ran hot pipes under the pews. My bum was warm, but the rest of me was totally icy! The music more than made up for it, though. They alternated scripture readings with carols sung either by the choir or the congregation. The theme was "voices" (which may be traditional in Anglican churches, I don't know), and so we had the voice of the angel (a reading about the angel, then a song about the angel), the shepherds, the wise men, etc. The choir was excellent and they sang some truly beautiful pieces. Afterwards there were refreshments - yum for traditional Czech cookies. I've also discovered that I quite like mince pies. They've got a bit of zip to them, and they're especially tasty warm. I can't believe all the new stuff I'm trying this Christmas season!

My morning classes went well this morning, with nothing too exciting happening. Lots of conversation since everyone's barrelling towards Christmas with lots of fun stuff to chat about. One of my students told me that she hasn't done ANY of her Christmas shopping yet! It's her tradition to leave her shopping til 3-5 days before Christmas Eve. I told her that that would have caused HUGE problems in our family - the kids always expected to see the gifts starting to collect under the tree by mid-December at the latest! :)

I also saw my first carp here today. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this or not, but the traditional Czech Christmas meal is served on Christmas Eve, and it consists of fried carp and potato salad. The old-school way is to buy the fish live, and keep it in your bathtub til Christmas Eve. Then you kill it, and fry it. The carp I saw today were in big round tubs, swimming around and around, and looking like they had no idea that their days are numbered (and that number is 5). I guess more and more people don't like the fuss/mess/fish-in-the-bathtub, so you can also buy your fish dead.

Ooh, I have a funny story for you! We got a fair bit of snow this week, and it was really wet and sticky. I was waiting for a friend, so I was standing out of the snow, and watching people go buy. Lots of hats, umbrellas, and coat collars pulled up high. Then I saw this older man go buy... he was balding, and I expect he doesn't like having a damp head. To avoid this, he had put a clear plastic bag on his head (hence I could tell that he was balding). This is funny enough on its own, but the best part is that the bag was quite small, so when he pulled it on, air got caught in the bottom (now the top) of the bag, and it was standing straight up off of his head! He had the bag handles draped over his ears, looking like they were hanging on for dear life. It was soo cute, and I had to turn my head the other way and giggle to myself until he got past me. Yay for middle-aged men wearing plastic bags!

Hope you have a super Monday!

Love,
Elizabeth

Subordinate Clauses!! Probably funnier for the linguists among you... ;)