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Published: January 9th 2010
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Christmas in Ireland
December has been a very busy month. It was packed full of dinner parties, birthdays, christmas markets, carousel rides, christmas lights, lots of work, and of course christmas and new years. So this will be a very full blog edition so sit down and get comfy cause here we go...
The first week of december marked 'little christmas' here in Dublin when everyone can begin to decorate their trees and the decorations on the streets can go up. The street decorations around Dublin were amazing. Carol and I decided to take a walk about town one evening to check out all the decorations. Unfortunately for Carol, I kept getting distracted by all the beautiful sparkly decorations and couldn't keep up with our conversations... what can I say, I like shiny things. We walked around for hours, heading into the shops to listen to the christmas music. The best part of our walk was when we were on Grafton st. passing the Brown Thomas store and all the sudden there is snow falling... I look up and all I see is the giant Candian flag hanging off of the Brown Thomas store with
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carol " katie..katie.. umm hello.. are u listening to me?" snow fluffing up the sky around it. I was confused for a moment until I realized that it wasn't really snow but bubbles being sprayed down from the store to look like snow. It was definitely a nice touch.
Another important part of christmas time in Dublin is the Christmas Market that goes up across from my flat on the docks. You can find all sorts of hand made presents and foods at the market for the christmas season. The had christmas trees up and fun music playing, it all gave the neighbourhood a really cozy feel. The markets also made it incredibly busy at my work so I ended working an aweful lot those 3 weeks leading up to christmas. I did get to visit the market on a few occassions and grabbed a delicious donut man with chocolate and sprinkle pants. But I did find some time for dinner parties and birthdays!
My Brazilian friends invited me over for dinner twice in the first weekend of december. Edilson decided to cook some feijoada, which is a traditional Brazilian meal. It is basically black beans and pork. Knowing that I do not eat pork Edilson made me
some chicken with my own personal black bean sauce so I could still get a taste of the meal. The black bean sauce was really tasty and everyone enjoyed the full Feijoada. After dinner we had our own dance party and danced and laughed into the wee hours of the morning. The next night Edilson was cooking a giant roast beef and some chicken for me. Again, the evening ended in a dance party and jokes.
The second weekend in December was my coworker, Esther's, birthday. She had a huge party at her house with loads of people. Esther is a lovely person with a huge heart. She is one of those people that can't say 'no' to anyone or anything. She would give you the shirt off her own back simply if you asked. The party raged on, literally all night until 4pm the next day, but I headed home at about 3am.
To finish off the preparations for christmas we decided to put up our christmas tree in our flat and make some delicious gingerbread houses. I had to make the gingerbread from scratch because Ireland doesn't seem to carry the pre-fab gingerbread homes. Carol helped
me make and decorate my house as she has never seen or done it before in Brazil. Monika made her own gingerbread house but did it differently then how way we do them in Canada. They don't use any candy to decorate the house AT ALL!!! They use chocolate and icing to paint the house. During the house making evening, our candy house was coming along great but monika's house kept falling apart and she couldnt seem to get it off the ground. But then things turned around on us. The candy house was complete but I think we were a llittle overzealous with the candy application which made the roof too heavy and resulted in the house falling apart... but it was tasty. Monika's house, on the other hand, ended up very nice in the end because she decided to scrap the tradition peaked roof and went with a flintstones style house which was easier to stay together. All in all, it was a lot of fun and the house sure did taste good. After our gingerbread house making and candy eating Carol and I decided to go out dancing to try and burn off the sugar high before
we fell into a sugar coma. We decided to meet Carol's boyfriend and his friends a Howl at the Moon. The dancing definitely helped.
As it got closer to christmas I was working harder on my Xmas stockings that I was making for my flatmates and friends, as it is not their tradition to have them. I bought the basic stockings at the store and then I embroidered their names , the year, the city, and snow flakes onto the stockings to personalize them for everyone. I finally finished them in the last hour and was very pleased with how they turned out.
My final fun before the big christmas festivities was a carousel ride with Esther before she went back home to Alicante Spain for the holidays. The christmas market had a beautiful carousel that I had been dying to ride on for weeks so on Esther's last night we decided to run over to the market after we finished work for a quick ride.
And then came christmas...
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Margery
non-member comment
Did Santa get there?
Very impressive !- gingerbread from scratch- Xmas stockings - what a smart gal you are! Can hardly wait for the next episode. Hope you are keeping warm - I understand the winter is bad this year over there.Not so hot here either -24 -(wind chill -37 ) today LOL margery