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The Holiday Season

This holiday season was a new experience for me. As much as I love the season, it was a little bittersweet this year. I was missing family and our traditions, it felt weird to not decorate the tree with my parents and Cameron. We also did not have snow here so it felt like something was missing, in fact, the day before Christmas I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof! Crazy stuff!






I really enjoyed celebrating with my class at school, we did a secret Santa of sorts and then everyone brought in food and we had a 'Christmas Eve' dinner all together. My secret Santa gave me some cozy socks, chocolate, and lotion, she also wrote some sweet little notes on them for me :)

The 24th I went with my host family to their parents' houses (about an hour away) for more festivities. That evening we had our big, traditional meal, featuring all things mushroom and cabbage!  It is tradition to have 12 dishes on the table for Christmas eve (none with meat!), we had about nine dishes because there weren't enough of us to eat that much. After dinner (when the first star came out) we exchanged gifts. It was odd for me to open gifts on the 24th!



Another tradition they have is that before the meal, a thin wafer called opłatek is distributed and you offer some of this wafer along with a wish or hope to everyone at the table. This was one of my favorite traditions, it made things feel a little warmer and Christmas-y! Some families also put straw under the dishes to signify the place that Jesus was born. Christian families also attend a midnight mass on the 24th, we were planning to but people were tired from the activities of the day so we decided to go on Christmas day.  

 More Celebrations

Just a few days before Christmas, we celebrated Olivia's 18th birthday! Her host family had us over for cake and presents to help her celebrate :) Weronika (Olivia's host sister) made a delicious chocolate cake and Pawel (Olivia's host dad) made a version of Baked Alaska, it was a decadent evening!


New Years Eve Olivia and I had a girls night in! We decided that because Olivia was getting over being sick it would be nice to just hang out at home :) We made a hair mask and did face masks too. At midnight we could see the fireworks from the window, we had the perfect view! It was so strange to see the New year come and know that all of you still had six or more hours to wait before you watched the ball drop. It was a new perspective for me.

I am now counting down the days until my host family and I go to Italy for our ski week! (11 days!!!) I will keep you posted on how my New Year is going and hope you all do too :) 

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 9, 2018 at 6:23 AM

    We missed you terribly Hannah! So cool that you are experiencing new traditions - maybe you will bring some of them home with you and we can adopt them here. I hope the skiing in Italy is amazing. As much as we have had more snow to ski on this year, it has been bitterly cold! So I wish you snow & temperate weather! Sending lots of love from us to you!

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