Emuzines

The holiday season has officially begun (in David’s and my opinion, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons begin on November 1)! The next few weeks hold a lot of excitement–a lot of celebrating.

Nik and I head to Amesbury on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. We are SO excited, and have been so for weeks and weeks. It will be Nik’s second time to New England. Seeing as how he was swayed enough by the area last time to hint at wanting a house out there, I know he’ll have a good time again. He also gets to be reunited with my cousin Billy, who he gets along really well with. Good thing Billy is bringing his girlfriend so I’ll still get some Nik time in! And I always have a great time there. It always feels like home. I get to see everybody, relax in Memere and Pepere’s house, and eat Memere’s wonderful food!

The week after we get back to California will be hectic, but with a lot of fun things. Class wraps up that week as well. On Friday, my friends and I are going out to Bistro 33 for our thrice yearly quarter-end celebration. We have developed a tradition of going out–always to Bistro, it seems–at the end of every quarter to celebrate. It’s even more welcome now since we’ve dispersed a bit in terms of classes. I only have classes this quarter with David, Abby, and Kyle. Not enough time to see Maciel, April, and Natalie. Here we are at one of our old quarter end celebrations. This is actually at the end of our first quarter–the bootcamp of the program. We had shots this night. We earned them.

As you can maybe see, the fall quarter quarter end happens to be our gift exchange too. Last year we did a White Elephant, and exchanged and “stole” the gifts. This year, since we know each other so much better, I organized a Secret Santa, and we’re shopping for a specific person. Nik drew names and passed them around.

The next day is our second monthly First Saturday Dinner and a Movie. This one will be chili in bread bowls, cornbread, and apple turnovers made with Memere’s homemade apple jam. We’ll probably watch a holiday movie, but votes on which one are pretty spread around, so I have to tie-break.

Lots of other things are planned–drinks with our stats professor, the Mind Institute Thank You party, etc. Can’t wait!

Today is my first official day of winter break!  Ok…maybe yesterday was my first OFFICIAL day, but I worked all day…so today is really it!

We sure celebrated on Thursday after our last day of classes.  Here we are at Bistro 33.

We had a pretty good, but uneventful, last two classes (April and I gave a great puberty-related presentation, and David was a champion wrapping up Piaget in an exact hour)…and then headed out to Bistro 33.  We had some mojito pitchers and sweet potato fries, and had an exciting White Elephant gift exchange.  It went so fast and we were all so polite about (not) stealing gifts that we invented a new, Forced-Trade Gift Game after we were done, to up the competition and laughter.  It was a great time, and we moved inside (thank you, my Southern California, flip-flopped in 39 degrees toes said) for shots…yes, shots…  It was tough to get up for work yesterday, but it was completely worth it.

I made it through yesterday without a zombie-day, which I’ve had 2 or 3 times since starting school, and even just 1 caffeine.  Sally and I worked for a solid few hours on our chapter, which was great.  After work, I lounged around, watched a movie and lots of TV–totally lazy. 

I slept in very, very late today.  So did Nik and JoJo.  None of us had any idea it had already hit the PM.  Nik and I did some Christmas shopping, went out to lunch, and grocery shopping.  It’s so nice not to have to read all weekend, not having enough time to lift my head for a drink of water.  I do have some work on my chapter to do this weekend, or Monday, but I enjoy it and am super-excited about it, so it doesn’t count.

Anyway, yay to winter break!  I’m relaxed already.