My Exhausting Christmas

Sorry to be skipping around a lot with content. I'm hoping to put up most of my Zambia posts later this week. And there's a lot going on right now, so hopefully I can put that up soon too!

Anyway, when I got home at 5:30 in the morning on Christmas, I found the front door locked. The gate was open, so I sat on the front porch and played with my puppy (I need to write a post about him too!) for a while. He's in that biting phase, so after I got tired of being a chew-toy, I plugged in my computer to our outlet on the porch so that I could watch a movie. At about 7:30, Jodie woke up and saw me through the window and told me that I was ridiculous for not knocking. I told her a bit about my journey and then decided that I smelled so terrible that I should just jump straight in the shower.

When I was out of the shower, I realized that I was actually pretty alert in spite of the fact that I was coming off of three straight nights of very little sleep. I saw that there was already quite a bit of food that was ready and I hadn't done anything. Most of the food was prepared by my new housemate Joanna and her sister Becky (Joanna moved in to our extra room while I was in Zambia and her sister Becky apparently stays over sometimes). I had met them both a few times before, but we took some time to get to know each other (I was not exactly in my best form in my sleep-deprived state) and bond over pop culture.

I headed to the fruit stand near our house and was surprised that most of the shops and businesses were open. I bought some unripe mangoes (the seller thought my request was a bit weird, but he was happy to help out). Back home, as I started peeling the mangoes, our first guests arrived (guys from Mic's dance crew and their girlfriends, who are mostly white volunteers). They were excited for breakfast, so they helped me peel and slice the mangoes. Once they were ready, I boiled them and made some mangosauce (it's like applesauce with a substitution) to go with the pancakes that Joanna and Becky were making. The mangosauce had to be hurried, but we were happy with the result and we had a gorgeous breakfast spread of fruit salad, pancakes, yogurt and mangosauce.

After filling up a bit, we cleaned everything. Actually, the cooks skipped the clean-up, so it was mostly Tanzanians taking care of that (though I should be clear that Mic probably makes the best pancakes of anyone there, but he was busy hosting). After that we got everything ready to lay out some snacks for the afternoon. We put some episodes of Glee on the TV and most people seemed to enjoy watching it. After that we switched to Lion King, which was really popular and all of us were shouting out lines and singing along. We also had some veggies and hummus and cheese and crackers for snacking.

I asked how I could help and was offered the job of making the stuffing. I've never actually made stuffing before, but since none of the other people had used our "oven" (pot inside pots) I got the job. They handed me the recipe and it was a nice guide, but I added a few creative touches and set it in the oven. I was a bit skeptical, but my track record of beginner's luck with recipes seemed to carry over, and aside from being slightly burnt, it was pretty delicious. I was also sharing the kitchen with people making chicken (deep-fried), mashed potatoes, candied carrots and green beans, so it was pretty busy. I had to drink plenty of Pepsi just to keep up with everything. After the stuffing was finished, we went outside and played monkey-in-the-middle and keep-away. It was actually a lot of fun, but after that I decided that I needed a break, so I grabbed an hour and a half nap in my room.

I was still exhausted after waking up, but the house was buzzing, so I went and ate dinner, which was delicious. I tried the sangria, but realized that I was going to crash if I had any more alcohol, so I stuck with my Pepsi. After that, we had dessert, which was amazing. There was cheesecake with a caramel sauce (some people also opted to put mangosauce on theirs) and an apple-mango crisp. I thought I would go into a food coma, but with a heroic regimen of Pepsi and some scintillating conversation, I wound up staying up until 2 AM. I didn't break my personal record, but 7 sodas (at 350 mL apiece) is probably not terribly healthy. At that point, I crashed and had a phenomenally restful night of sleep :)