Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays!
Life got a little crazy with ‘finals’ (end of semester assignments and exams) so this is going to be a long catch up blog. Basically the highlight was Max arriving mid November but there have been lots of others....
Thanksgiving
The ultimate American holiday. While the politics of what is being celebrated are questionable, the food was amazing. Laura cooked for 12 in our tiny apartment, which was an amazing feat, especially given she made everything from scratch – and I mean everything – including bread to make into stuffing. YUM.
Aside from the food we also made a committed 5.45am trek to the Macy’s parade – an impressive spectacle of American consumerism.
Max found the balloons creepy.
Philadelphia
Max and I then headed to Philadelphia for the long weekend. We got a lot of American history. We enjoyed learning about ‘we the people’ at the Constitution centre and loved the Philadelphia food market and the Museum of Modern Art.
Max in Manhattan
As I said, this was a crazy time for me, and Max was working hard too – he’s got an internship at the American Civil Liberties Union in the human rights program and is working on a big international mooting competition (where one pretends to be a lawyer – although it’s more important than that makes it sound). We did manage to do some fun exploring though. Probably the highlight was a free party at the Brooklyn museum which they hold every month. It’s amazing. They open up the museum for free and have all kinds of activities and have a dance party in the gallery. It’s walking distance from my house and the event represents the diversity of my neighbourhood so well – there were Caribbean mothers dancing with their children next to wealthy looking 60 year old couples who were dancing next to fashionable hipsters of all ethnicities. It’s so unusual to have such a cross-section of society enjoying events together and I loved it. We’ve done lots of other New Yorky things including Central Park, the Met, shopping in Soho and watching ice-skaters at the Rockefeller Centre.
Christmas
Next was our WHITE Christmas. In fact, I was regretting wishing for a white Christmas after we got stuck in the snow for 9 hours on our trip back from Boston. Anyway we went to Boston to some of Max’s family who were ‘fab to the Max’ (one of their phrases). We loved Boston. We caught up with a friend who’s at Harvard and gave us the tour – it was particularly picturesque in the snow, the whole city is very picturesque in fact. Christmas was great. We had a Christmas Eve party with Max’s aunt and her friends, then went out to another of her friends’ families for Christmas. Everyone was very welcoming and I got fab presents – lots of cookbooks and candy.
Now I’m back in New York and enjoying being on holiday especially as Phoebe, Alice, Stacey, Beth and Mikey are all here from NZ. It’s fun being a tourist with them. That’s all for now as I’m off to meet Phoebe and Alice to go to MOMA. Sending you lots of love from the blizzard in New York – seriously cars are buried under snow drifts!
xxx
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