Holidays Abounding

So it has been a while since I posted anything. It's been busy. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Reading week. Best invention. EVER. A reading week is an entire week off of classes. Why in a 10 week semester would they give us a full week off? How can they justify giving us a degree after this little work? Well, it would seem the solution is to cram in a full 14 week semester into 9 weeks. Not fun. I am in a constant state of freak out, my stomach is a hot mess, I drink too much coffee, when I try to sleep I have crazy back spasms... but next week I have no class! It's like spring break! Oh, life is sweet.

Well, what has been going on lately, you ask?

Halloween.
Observations: no one here cares. Well, ok, they care. Like, they know when Halloween is. And sometimes they do small fireworks. But no one gets hyped about costumes. Generally people wear their normal clothes and put on zombie makeup. Or they get a t-shirt that looks like a skeleton. It's lame. Well, I went as Tinkerbell, and received much praise. I already had a dress that I sometimes wear for Latin competitions, and I got a pair of wings. Add gold shoes and a little glitter makeup, and hooray me. I went to a costume party that was also a birthday party for two of the second year MAIPRs and had some fun. Wrap your mind around this, however. Take a bathtub. Fill it with ice. Insert your recycling bin. Add white wine, champagne, vodka, and some kind of juice. Serve with a coffee mug. Drink from plastic cups. I left before anyone blacked out, and I stand by that decision. Oh grad school, the things you do to people...

Dancing.
So I've been practicing (that is a generous term, I mean we've had all of maybe 3 hours of practice) with a friend of mine, John, from the ballroom team. Next Sunday there is a competition, and John's partner can't make it, so he and I will be dancing together. Well, this past Sunday afternoon there was a mini comp on campus to get the baby dancers ready for competition season, and Sunday morning I got a call from John, his partner backed out on him at the very last minute and he wanted to dance with me. Picture: it is the morning after the Halloween party. I have not eaten or showered. I am in bed in pjs and glasses doing some reading and talking on Skype with my mother, and I am looking a hot mess. So, you should all be impressed that in 25 minutes I was out the door, hair and makeup done, makeshift costume in my purse, a borrowed can of hairspray in my hand and a prayer on my lips. Got to the competition in plenty of time, however (oh, did I mention I only had 25 minutes because that was when the competition was supposed to start?) because the other team that was coming to the comp was running very late, bless them for it. Well, John and I got to dance, and we had a lot of fun. We didn't place or anything, but we didn't expect to (there were only two levels, brand new and everyone else, and we had to dance the higher one against people who have been dancing years longer than John, but all in all he held his own and danced quite well I thought) and we had a blast. And our team (Team Sex. Apparently there is a back story about Warwick always naming their teams Team Sex. Several versions of how this came about have been told to me, no consensus can be reached about which is the definitive story, much like an urban legend... but it is HILARIOUS to hear these little British kids in fancy outfits and silly accents yelling "Warwick wants sex!" across a ballroom. Go ahead and get a mental picture of that.... Nice, huh? You're laughing, aren't you?) won the team match! So, now John and I know what we need to practice for our next competition, so more fun to look forward to. Dancing is awesome, and so is my dance team!

Thanksgiving.
Canadian Thanksgiving is in October. US Thanksgiving is in late November. So, we had MAIPR Thanksgiving yesterday (since it is right in the middle of the two and we don't have class on Tuesdays). So, our task: cook an authentic Thanksgiving dinner for 13 (turned out to be only 12, I'm still a little bitter at the one person who didn't show up...) to introduce the kids from the program to this joyous holiday.
The Challenges:
-13 is a lot of people
-gas oven
-conversions (weight of turkey in kilos, oven temp in Celsius, measuring devices... for example)
-no fully stocked kitchen (roasted turkey in a foil pan from the grocery store with a cookie sheet under it for support, for example)
-no full set of utensils (wine in a paper cup, ate my dinner with a spoon, my soup from a Tupperware container, for example)
-kitchens here are tiny, so we had to cook in two kitchens
-ovens here are tinier. Like, redic. Like, I had my hand in the oven over open flame as I desperately tried to bend the sides of the roasting pan to make it fit in the oven. I would have been ok if I had set myself on fire. Somewhere in the world is a picture of me lying on the floor with my arms outstretched to God thanking him for allowing me to be able to origami that pan enough to fit the turkey in the oven. Or I would have cried.
-THE TURKEY HAD FEATHERS STILL IN IT. So, did you know turkeys don't come from a grocery store? They actually come from farms. Without instructions or pop-up timers. And to get one here, we had to call a farmer, get him to kill one for us, and walk it back to one of the houses. We'll not mention the part where the turkey fell out of the box and onto the street on the walk home. Hey, it was in a bag... So when I got to the turkey, the majority of the feathers were out, but the, well, basically the hair follicle of the feathers, were still in the bird. Somewhere in the world are a series of many photos of me plucking (first with my hands, then a knife, then tweezers) feathers out of a turkey.
You get the idea of the copious challenges. Well, I got to be the turkey girl. So I plucked, washed, and prepared Susan (Nevena from Serbia likes to name things), stuffed her (Susan, not Nevena)with risotto stuffing made by my partner in crime Erin the Canadian, covered her (Susan, not Erin) in--wait for it-- beer, and set her in the oven. Left some instructions on the fridge for the girls who would be staying at that house on when to change oven temps, when to uncover, when to rotate..., and hopped over to Erin's house to help her cook. She had lots of things going, so I just worked as grunt labor to support her wonderful things. She made the best pumpkin soup ever, which I aided in its cooking process, pumpkin pie which I rolled crust for, and helped her pick out her outfit, which, I might add, looked lovely. Somewhere during this time a wine glass broke and I managed to get glass in my finger, because I can do NOTHING without getting hurt. I'm just glad it was glass in my finger and not setting myself on fire. Then, we grabbed the food and headed back to the Turkey house. Turkey came out, we heated other dishes, and I made some gravy. Then everything went out to the table. Final food inventory: Susan the Turkey, gravy, candied parsnips, life changing pumpkin soup, risotto stuffing, mashed potatoes (from Sarah the Irish girl), green bean casserole (from Justin, it was amazing), a salad (from Nevena who restrained herself from naming her salad), cranberry sauce, and a supporting cast of bread and wine. All in all it was a great success, with food comas for all. We had a great time just being together, talking and making fun of each other, writing down quotable moments, and not being in class. On a serious note it made me really homesick. Well, not exactly like I wanted to go home, more like I became aware that I wasn't home. It wasn't a bad thing, just odd. But I was glad to be with fun people. Mostly I was so proud of myself and my domestic goddess-ness. From now on I am certain I can meet any cooking challenge in America, as so many odds were overcome in this one extravaganza. Though, I haven't seen anyone since the meal, guess I'll just need to check tomorrow to make sure no one had any food poisoning... Oh, and don't worry, everyone in my program is camera happy. There will be MANY a picture of me with my hand up a turkey, me covered in smelly turkey parts, me plucking a dead yucky feathery turkey, me dancing with a turkey...

Well, that was my exciting holiday-filled weekend. Pictures to come.


Shout out to whomever wants to be my date to Owl City on Feb 24. Yeah, that's the day after Glen Hansard. I will learn nothing that week. I need to get my tickets!!! Owl City doesnt go on sale until Friday morning, but I can't seem to get my American credit card to work to purchase the Swell Season tickets... I'm scared they will sell out!