merry christmas!
currently sitting in cozy central london flat, quiet for the moment as 6 of 8 have gone off for a blustery day walk and last minute grocery shop for tomorrows epic christmas day breakfast (the cinnamon buns are currently proofing behind me next to the radiator).

this paragraph here is a massive, gratitude filled, overwhelmed emotional shout out to robin cicansky. my partner in skipping the country for year crime, she's studying up in northern england, and thus i have someone to regularily chat with on the same time zone, which in itself is a wonderful gift.
however, upon arriving here in london, a couple hours into conversation, my hosts casually mentioned that packages had arrived for me, and continued on to tell the story about going to pick up the packages from the post, only to be disapointed that they were for me. it took me a second to process this, but then finally.. "hold on, hold on..what???! there are packages HERE?? for ME???" i can't even tell you the level of excitment and joy i felt upon seeing that it was true. my hosts thought it was no big deal beacause they just figured i'd been giving out there address to everyone so that such a thing might occur. they didn't count on the surprise element. and neither did i. only later upon checking facebook did i see that ms. robin cicansky confessed to the jig. oh man. that everyone should have people like this in life. i can't believe the thought and generosity. robin. thanks.

tonight is the midnight christmas mass at paul and louanne's church, which i'm stoked about, followed by chistmas day service tomorrow, and then the whole christmas day to chill out and eat and read and play games.
we've already broken out the skip bo, which playing last night felt so right amongst the music, and conversation and coffees..louanne even said that she might be able to get her hands on a box of settlers of catan, which i admit i over reacted to. settlers? on christmas day?? can christmas day possibly get any better?

sufficed to say,
things are really, really good on this little island (that has cheerios!).
so merry christmas.
i miss you all.