Christmastime in Bermuda

So this is Christmas, and what have I done? It's certainly kind of strange being somewhere that is warm, when I associate this time of year with the cold and snow (I do kind of like that there are Christmas lights around the palm trees in town). It's harder to get in the spirit, but there are lots of festivities which certainly helps.

The month started off with the Pantomime put on by BMDS. The show went for 2 weeks at city hall and was 100% sold-out. I helped paint the set, and worked 2 nights backstage on wardrobe. My job was to put the tree costume on someone a few times – very important work!

Our work Christmas party was a full day thing. We were told to expect not to work all day and not to show up until 10. About 11 we started things off by playing board games and drinking mamosas (champagne and OJ). This was followed by a late lunch at Harry's and then heading back to the office to do the secret santa gift exchange. After all this, some of us thought it would be a great idea to head to the bar downstairs for 'one' more. Famous last words.

I'll be going back to Canada on the 24th, but there are quite a few people I know staying here. Flights over this time fill-up fast and can cost quite a bit more. I'll enjoy being with family over the holidays, but I have to admit that it would be fun to stay. Apparently in the morning, everyone goes down to Elbow Beach wearing Santa hats and drinks champagne.

Maybe next year I'll do Christmas on the beach.

American Thanksgiving

As we have a large kitchen, our American friend Monbill wanted to host (and cook) a Thanksgiving dinner for a few friends at our place. I thought this was a great idea – especially since he said he was going to cook a Turducken. For those who have never heard of this, a turducken is a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken.

The facebook invite went out, and before we knew it, 35 guests had confirmed. This wasn't including all the people who weren't on facebook. A few days before, we thought there might be as many as 50 people. I admit, I started to panic a bit... 50 people coming to our house FOR DINNER!!! My roommate and I made a trip to the bulk store one lunch to get lots of paper plates, and plastic cups and cutlery as we weren't about to do dishes. We also delegated various people to bring chairs and obviously more food.

Monbill arrived at 9:30 on the big day to start cooking. He obviously had it all under control by the amount of food he'd brought. And once people had arrived and the food was all laid out, I could see that nobody would go hungry. Aside from the Turkducken, there was another turkey, ham, fish, lasagna, 2 kinds of stuffing, rataouille, 2 green been dishes, mashed potato, scalloped potato, salad, Boston fish chowder and pumpkin soup (and that's all I can remember). Then there was desert with homemade key lime pie, papaya cheesecake, chocolate cake, pumpkin squares (made by yours truly), brownies and ice cream. Everything was delicious! The amount of leftovers is insane. I froze some of it, and made 3 kinds of soup last Sunday.

Dinner was followed by performances on Rockband on the Xbox (I was happy because I got my karaoke fix). Our neighbours also came that night, and as rock music isn't their thing, I think they were quite entertained with this game. Once most people had left, those of us still there turned off the game and turned up the tunes.

For more photos, visit the album on Facebook.