Happy Holidays [Christmas Party 2009]

What with Christmas being 1 month away, and term being 1 week from over, a CHRISTMAS BASH was in order.

Yes, I know it was almost a month early.
Yes, I know it was the Friday night sandwiched between Thanksgiving and our CME Thanksgiving potluck.
Yes, I know we went all out with Christmas music, tinsel, holiday finger paintings, and gold/green/red/silver ribbons.


And YES, it was AMAZING.

[11/27/09]

Food:
- Mince pies
- Mulled wine
- German stollen (authentic!)
- English "Christmas cake"
- Cadbury's chocolate fingers
- Shortbread cookies
- Bailey's/hot chocolate/marshmallows
- miscellaneous snackfood

Music:
- Walking in a Winter Wonderland
- Sleigh Ride
- Let it Snow
- the entirety of Andy Williams' Christmas collection
- all of Josh Groban's Noel
- etc.

Artwork (finger paintings courtesy of Nina, Alexa, and Ellie):
- Santa going down chimney
- reindeer with boobs (refer to fig. 2)
- assorted presents
- gold star
- Christmas tree
- questionable-shape-turned-stocking
- gold/red/green/silver ribbons
- red/green/silver tinsel



[fig. 1 Alexa, Ellie, Nina - decorating for CHRISTMAS BASH]


[fig. 2 Reindeer With Boobs, painting credit: Alexa]


[fig. 3 Holiday festivities in swing]


[fig. 4 Christmas food]


[fig. 5 holidayyys]


[fig. 6 chicas]


[fig. 7 guys singing OPERA?!]


[fig. 8 christmas bash]


[fig. 9 people who love Christmas ... and food]


[fig. 10 aftermath/cleaned up]



HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

CME Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving 2009 celebrated in the UK.

Irony.

"Hey guys, let's celebrate this holiday in the country from which we fled!"


Thursday rolls around, and here I am, like any other day, sitting in hall, chatting with Richard about how his history exams work at the end of third year, with my bookbag, about to run off to another lecture .. and I realize -- OH HEY the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is airing on TV right now in the states!!! And everyone in the US is at home, with their family, watching the Macy's Parade, maybe already starting to prepare their massive Thanksgiving dinner, playing holiday music throughout their house, basting the turkey, boiling the potatoes ....

Last year, Thanksgiving consisted of things like this (reso retreat Thanksgiving dinner):


[turkey prepping all day]


[mashed potatoes in the making]


[Reso family dinner]

Needless to say, the lack of holiday spirit in England was a bit disappointing. But the CME program put on a Thanksgiving dinner for current exchanges and CME alumni to recreate the festive atmosphere we would've been surrounded by back at home ... King's hall, MIT friends, old CMEers ... much needed gathering to make up for the lack of holiday warmth all our MIT friends were enjoying during their break, and the countless Facebook statuses of "Turkey!!!" or "home <3" or "mm, wonder how much I'm going to gain from Thanksgiving dinner at home" ...

11/26/09


[Serving proper American Thanksgiving turkey!]


[CME Thanksgiving in King's Hall]


[proper turkey, potatoes, and cranberry sauce!]


[PUMPKIN PIE yummm]


[Home away from home - Alyssa, Kathleen, Caroline, me, Arjun]


[Recreation of Thanksgiving family dinner :)]


[Joe, Jon, me, Caroline, Rachel]


--------------------------------------

11/28/09

Had a CME Thanksgiving shindig two nights after the CME dinner. Organized it to be at one of King's dorms that has full kitchens, in anticipation of making turkey and other delightfully American foods. ... we ended up having a ton of store-bought desserts and some random foods, but still, it was good to see everyone again!

Halfway through, Spalding hostel's fire alarm went off -- and everyone basically thought, "Oh Arjun!" while Arjun (who was in the kitchen making tacos) thought "great, I bet everyone thinks it was me ..." haha. Turns out, someone on the other end of the hall had set something burning in an oven or toaster or something, so we all just chilled outside for a while in the drizzling rain. 15 minutes or so of Cambridge fire truck-ness, we all filed back in, at which point the entire population of Spalding residents had flooded into our potluck room and were questioningly standing around wondering whose food all of it was/whether they could partake. So, we ended up having a massive Thanksgiving conglomerate of snacking ... way to go, TGDinner v2.0!


[Thanksgiving potluck]


[waiting to go back inside]


[Dina, me, Alyssa, Elijah]


[self-serve]


[Thanksgiving 2009]

Thanksgiving Superformal

King's College Thanksgiving Superformal 11/25/09

1920s Jazz & Blues New Orleans theme


[1920s extravagance.]


[MIT crew at King's]


[laughs all around. sophisticated laughs, o' course.]


[Black Tie superformal for men]


[16-piece live jazz band playing in King's bar for post-formal ents, while all the uni kids dance around wearing tuxedos/dresses and sipping wine. I mean, that's what you'd expect ... right?]


[Fig 1. example of quintessential Cambridge]


[Post-formal entertainment in King's bar]


[The gang, all jazz-ed up!]

American Breakfast Sundays

Since the first American Brunch Sunday with CMEs who craved old fashioned American-style sweet breakfast food, we've started a brunch revolution.

I mean ... gotta make good use of this huge set/room I've got for this year and this year only :)

Therefore, brunch parties every weekend. Solid.
It's always potluck-style with ingredients - Alexa's getting bread, Jade's bringing juice, Chris has got eggs, etc.
and works amazingly well. Each time we end up having a bit of variation, although you can't really go wrong as long as you have bread, eggs, and some sort of fruit. Oh, powdered sugar and syrup is a must - until Alex and Anna introduced nutella and whipped cream into the equation. Now I've got an accumulating stock of King's cafeteria silverware/glasses, plus two jars of maple syrup, a box of powdered sugar, and three containers of nutella in my cupboard. Looks like brunch will be happening every weekend from now on ...



Sunday, 11/8




Sunday, 11/15




Saturday, 11/21




Sunday, 11/22










Saturday, 11/28


aw, we finally all fit around one table!

Holiday SPIRIT

Alexa, Michaela, and I, being Americans, have been raised in the overly-commercialized, Hallmark-monopolized, decorations-ridden, color-explosion world of HOLIDAY SPIRIT ... and WE LOVE IT.

So, when we come to Europe, we DO NOT let the lackluster "yay .. er .. Christmas .." (spoken in ~5dB) stop us from our (somewhat premature) festivities.


We could not WAIT to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we got a little headstart mid-November.
(oh, and Halloween too.)


PIES. Pies are essential. We have ovens. Why not make pies? They're easier than cooking an entire turkey. Plus, we'd been severely craving pumpkin pies since Halloween. So ... we embarked on our cooking adventure, the entirety of which ended up being a 4-hour endeavor. YESS.


[all the tasty spices ... smell the HOLIDAY SPIRIT!]


[making pumpkin pies ... from scratch]


[pumpkin pies, fresh out of the oven]


[pies, milk, whipped cream, roasted pumpkin seeds ... check]


[DELICIOUSNESS]


[festive pies with the Americans]


[PIE TIME]



[Market Square Cambridge city Christmas lights "Big Turn On"]


[11/15 lighting of Christmas lights in Market Square :D]


[Market Square with a ... sheet? of lights]


See, even people in overly-holiday-eager America would say 11/15 was a bit too early to light up the town with Christmas lights ... I say it's never too early.

In my book, the existence of each year is simply 10 months of waiting for October to roll around so we can start GETTING IN THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT AGAIN!!!