Nice things

Brr, it's cold. I've just spent the morning out Christmas shopping, and there's a nasty chilly wind. Much better to stay inside and play with some of the nice things I've recently acquired.

At our St. Nicholas party, my friend Evert gave me this very handy and thoughtful gift. It's an organic vegetable planner, which will come in very handy indeed for my new plot! It's a brilliant invention; it tells you when to sow, when to reap, what sort of soil to plant in, and even has tips on crop rotation and what plants grow well side by side.




Alan and I went to London on Saturday, as I'd promised to take him out to dinner for his birthday. But before that, we did some shopping. Alan bought some shirts, and I got hold of this pretty bottle of organic rum:




Here's another thoughtful gift I received, from one of my colleagues at school. It's a Victorian baking set for making shortbread - one of my favourite things! I guess my baking skills have not gone unnoticed!




Yesterday was a cold but lovely day, and Alan and I took a walk together to make the most of the sunshine.





Winter is nice, but mostly for sitting next to the radiator with a mug of hot tea!

Freedom!

Well, the end of term arrived at last, and after a very fun last day at school, I am now free to rest and relax, and not crawl out of bed at 6.40 in the morning! Of course, it's lovely to have a holiday, but I'm so glad that I don't feel that I NEED this holiday - I've really been enjoying my first term of teaching and I love my school! I've recently been given extra responsibility and I really feel like building a career here. It's very nice to land on one's feet!

But it has been busy; too busy to write about the Saint Nicholas party we had last weekend! I did not want the traditional Dutch Sinterklaas to pass unnoticed, so I invited a few friends and I spent a day baking pepernoten, the spicy little biscuits that accompany the festivities. I love them to bits myself, and I even made some more to hand out to my pupils on the last day of term.



One of my friends is also Dutch, and he brought along a fabulous surprise (pronounced a la Française) containing some lovely gifts, accompanied by a brilliant poem. Though his Sinterklaas did look slightly scary!


I had done my best to get as many traditional sweets as possible, including these cute marzipan beasties.


I had also made a little surprise for Alan in the form of an effigy of himself:



I had also made him a marzipan 'cake' with candles, as it was his birthday the week before. Somehow he acquired three bottles of port in the course of the evening!

All in all it was a very good night. We played a game in order to win presents, and there was some fooling around with the fur hat Alan had brought back from Budapest.




It was very gezellig!