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!