Happy St. Nick's Day!

Happy St. Nick's Day! In our flat, we put paper stockings on our doors with our names on them, and Valentina gave us all little Santa-shaped chocolates and clementines. Yummy!

Last night we made gingerbread cookies. Valentina had made the dough the day before, so all we had to do was cut out different shapes (we used jar tops or glasses to make circle and square shapes) and decorate them with sprinkles. The cookies turned out pretty hard, almost like biscotti, but they're really good when dunked in cocoa. Mmm, mmm!

A bit of awesome news: I get to stay in London over the Christmas holidays! Gabby's friend has a flat in London and, as he'll be out of town during our break, he says that we're welcome to use it. How cool is that? I'll get to wake up every day and be in walking distance of all these great museums and parks and things. I can't wait! We're leaving on the 19th of December and we'll be staying until sometime in the second(ish) week of January. It's going to be amazing!

Well, it's finally starting to get cold here now. Though, from what I'm hearing from home, it's still not as cold here as it is there. I don't think we've really had any proper freezes yet. Alas, we don't have any snow here yet either. I'm hopeful that at least sometime before Christmas we'll get some snow.

Two more weeks of class and then I can start the serious business of full-time sight-seeing and traveling, starting with more of London. I've got two essays to write before the end of term, but I don't think they'll be that hard. Everyone in the flat seems to be buckling down for two weeks of work, but at the same time we're all excited for break. And to celebrate, we're having a Christmas dinner this coming Friday, which should be lots of fun.