It Didn't Snow On Christmas

Our makeshift Christmas set-up included three trees (one that Kenzie brought all the way from home) and lots of ribbons and earrings as decorations

Holidays are harsh when you're not at home. You've got a lot of fond memories and suddenly you're not allowed to live out your family traditions anymore. I spent a lot of this winter so far wondering whether lack of snow was going to be better or worse with regard to nostalgia, and now I think I have come to a conclusion. 

If it had snowed, I would have been able to look outside my window and pretend I was in America. I would have been tempted to go running outside through the slush and smash it into walls and build little frozen people. I would have bundled up and layered on clothes before venturing out the door. But these are all things I do at home. 

Instead, the heat and the sun and the lack of (much) visible change to the weather or landscape allowed me to fool myself a little, to make spending Christmas abroad that much more bearable.

And then, of course, I was also with the other girls, which made everything so much nicer and meant that we got to have a mass sleepover which concluded in everyone getting around three hours of sleep in a sort of pile on top of a mattress. It was, as Linden has trained me to say, "solid". 

Overall I think spending the holidays abroad is a good thing, if you only do it a few times. It brings you to appreciate everything you have waiting for you even more, and steadies you with the knowledge that, if you made it through the holidays, you're going to be just fine.

And now, the weather:
It's been sunny and bright and beautiful and hot since I arrived, with the exception of the one day where it rained as well as the slowly (and slightly) decreasing temperatures the winter seems to have provoked. 
There is no snow, but there is still lots of sand, which is useful for blowing in your eyes when you are trying to see things, as well as getting all over your shoes so they begin to camouflage with the environment.
All in all, it's a very unusual winter.

🎶San Francisco - The Mowgli's🎶

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