Merry Christmas, Happy New Years and all that jazz

To everyone who may read this I just want to say that I hope you had a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and I hope you have a magnificent New Years.
My Christmas was great. Quite traditional for the Hargrave family. I jumped in my parents bed at 6:30 in the morning to wake them up, put on a pot of coffee - Had some Bailey's in my coffee (GOOOOOD MORNING!) woke up Grumpy went out fed the dog and cat - had a smoke. Came in the house had coffee and Bailey's #2. Went down stairs to open presents - half way through presents grabbed bottle of champagne #1 - a ten year old bottle from France. Finished opening presents, finished bottle of champagne - went up stairs started making breakfast grabbed a beer, finished beer - breakfast ready bottle of champagne #2 - Played with my Marie Antoinette action figure with the ejecting head - checked out my new nano then beer, beer, beer - blur. People came over - Bobbie, Jay, Hayden, Grace, Jeremy, Jaime, Meighan, Phil - big turkey dinner more beer - Leshelle, Cameron blur, blur blur - was supposed to go out, it was 10pm but I was still in my pyjama's and was in no state to see people - so a few more beers and I fell asleep on the couch! It was quite the happy drunken Christmas as usual at the Hargrave house.
So here was my x-mas day, I hope you all had a great one too.
Happy Holidays, and to my Berlioz girls I'll see you very soon
Tara

Home for the Holidays

my title is deceiving - because this entry has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am home right now. In fact it is a telling of my last week in Nantes.
Where shall I start....
1)my gnome Gnorm got stollen from me and I received ransom notes along with pics of him. Apparently he went to the north pole to help santa. The good news is he's back. In fact Christina is babysitting him for me, he will be going to Prague with her on thursday!
2)Me and the Berlioz team - went out on thursday night and did some christmas caroling at our host families houses. It was good times. Let's just say over the course of the night our singing got a little bolder as each fam had us in for cookies and wine!
--just a side note - when christmas caroling on public transit in france, remember that there are a few people who can speak english - therefore when you start singing your own rendition of the 12 days of christmas that is rather obscene - some people may understand you! Luckily the woman was hillarious and had just got back from a little trip to canada, she had been visiting her sister who is the newest Much Music VJ! She ended up singing with us on our bus ride.
3) My newest most efficient teaching strategy has become throwing chalk at students!! I could never get away with this in Canada, but I'm in France so meh!!! My little french students like dropping in random profanities while they are speaking in class so I just throw stuff at them. It is a highly effective method of handling the little buggers.
4)My last night in Nantes was great - me and the girls did our own little x-mas party with champagne etc. it was great. We also did our secret santa. I had a blast.
Now I have to go, because Jaime is summoning me on MSN - so demanding!
love ya'll
Tara