Week 32: T'was the week before Christmas..

And all through the lab... People kept falling all over the place because outside is glare ice. The temperature has been hovering around 0C for several days now, so everything keeps melting and refreezing. But it's really beautiful!

On Thursday we had a lab holiday party!! The party was held at the International Hall, where I live. We mainly ate hot pot, so there was a big pot in the centre of each table, and inside we cooked tofu and mushrooms and lots of veggies (and, at other tables, meat). It was really good! There was also lots of sushi and oysters. My friend's husband and my prof serenaded us on the guitar and violin.

On Saturday I went snowboarding again, and my friend's daughter came to go skiing! We had fun, but the snow was really wet and very heavy, which even I know is not exactly optimal for skiing or snowboarding. In total we probably have about 40 cm of snow on the ground, but there are already some pretty impressive piles, especially under the overhang of the roof. All of the roofs are metal around here, so there is constantly snow sliding off of them. Some nights it sounds like a neverending avalanche as giant snow chunks keep rolling off of the roof. 

Avalanche remainders

On Sunday we went skating again!! We also had a bus adventure; it was really so icy that it wasn't possible to actually walk to the subway station, so instead we caught the bus that stops just outside the research station. 

I know I said before that when I went skating with a few people from my lab, they were the fastest skate-learners I had ever seen... but today my friend's husband tried skating for the first time, and he is officially the fastest learner ever! I was talking to him while he was doing some really awkward shuffly-walky thing that is common in new skaters, but all of a sudden his eyes lit up and he was like "I should move like a penguin!" And that was it! He just starting skating! 

I can't believe that this week is Christmas. It felt like it was a few weeks away for several weeks.... and now it's just a few days away! I'm really glad that the 23rd is a holiday (for the Emporor's birthday!) but Christmas itself isn't a holiday. I plan to spend the 23rd baking and cooking with my friend and her family, and we'll have a Christmas meal together on the 24th or 25th. I feel really lucky to have such nice friends to share Christmas with here. They have really taken me in as part of their family and I know I'd be feeling pretty lonely without them!