Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Christmas in Senegal

It's not too long since I last wrote but the last few days are of course significant to document in British culture (a culture of which I am more aware of my heritage in now that I am living in a multinational, multicultural, Christian community).

My Christmas was actually very British in many ways. On Christmas Eve I played cards and cherades with the Moltons (a British family, the school coordinators) and afterwards led our midnight carol service on the theme of Immanuel (the name given to Jesus, meaning 'God with us').

On Christmas morning the single Britons met for a full(ish) English breakfast after which we went to the school Christmas morning service in the chapel and then I retired home to a lunch of bread and cheese (our traditional family Christmas lunch when we're not at a Granny's house for Christmas). I met with the other Brits again at 3 to listen to the queen's speech on BBC Worldservice (not as good as last year's but still alright), some insisted in joining in the national anthem afterwards too and Bob Molton stood up throughout the whole speech. After the speech I went home to cook roast potatoes for our staff Christmas meal that evening.

The meal was fantastic. Everyone signed up to cook part of it and there was far more food than we needed. Starters included home made spring rolls, garlic bread and olives, the main course had BIG portions of roast chicken, various potatoes and assorted roasted and boiled veg along with stuffing, gravy and home made bread. Pudding was fruit salad and chocolate mousse (very rich) followed by hot drinks and gingerbread houses in Eagle lounge where we opened our presents to one-another. Afterwards we watched 'Cars' on the projector in Falcon dorm lounge.

On Boxing day I decided to start working again as I don't have much to keep me entertained when I'm not working so I finished my training to become a qualified Cambridge IGCSE Computer Studies coursework moderator and started work on the internal phone system which isn't working in places.

On Christmas Eve we went down to the village as a school and sang carols in French and presented a short gospel message through an interpretor. It was fun and all the village kids were enjoying messing around with my guitar and drum before we started.

I should cook up my left over potatoes now as I'm going to the sports hall at 8 and it's 7:31.

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