25/12/10

Thursday my mom, brother, Erin, Ann, and I headed down to the beach at the lagoon to escape from the heat a little. Nice relief.
Yesterday Matt came to Inharrime to join us for the day and night. For the second year in a row, it seemed that Christmas Eve (notably the three hours we spent in Midnight Mass) was the hottest day of the year. But mass was beautiful again, and the youth from the congregation put on a small theatre telling the story of the birth of Jesus before mass. Afterwards we had a wonderful Christmas dinner with everyone from the mission and also the Salesian priests from across the street. We made Thai red curry and massaman curry and since we didn’t make them spicy at all (we messed this up at lunch), everyone really enjoyed them.
Merry Christmas. My second Christmas spent in Africa and, even with the heat, it was wonderful. The biggest perk about being here is not having to listen to bad Christmas music starting in November. We watched Love Actually and It’s A Wonderful Life to help get ourselves in the Christmas mood (and looked longingly at all the snow in both movies) because sometimes it hardly feels like Christmas here. As always, the mission where I live is an incredibly loving and warm house and there is no better place to spend a holiday like Christmas.