Happy Christmas!

Is everyone having a good Christmas?

I'm having a very merry Christmas. I have been visited by Father Christmas, and I have tasted the figgy pudding. It tasted like fruit and booze.

The Christmas pudding is made with a very rich cake, stuffed with fruit (presumably figs) and then soaked in cooking sherry. You steam it for an hour, so it cooks off, but it leaves a pretty strong flavor behind. There's also a warning about putting it in the microwave, as the pudding could catch fire. Which I thought was funny. I don't remember the exact wording, but it went something like this:

Warning: This pudding might spontaneously combust when exposed to high temperatures.

We went down to London and went to the Christmas festival in Hyde Park. I bought some beautiful German ornaments carved out of wood and reeds. I also got a crepe stuffed with cherries and nutella, which tasted amazing. I love eating something hot out of your hands when your walking around in the cold. It seems so wintery. They also had ice skating, but it was sold out.

That's okay. I've never been ice skating, but given my roller skating experiences I'd guess I'd spend most of it falling on my backside.

After the park we went to a Japanese noodle house called "Wagamamas" and I had some amazing Ramen. Before this, Ramen was the super cheap meal you ate in college. But this Ramen came with chicken, fish, tofu, spinach and a pickled something or other on the top. It was pink and white, but it didn't taste like a radish. You ate it with chop sticks and this enormous wooden spoon. Seriously, the thing was more like a ladle than a spoon. The tables were community tables, and the girl next to me would load up her spoon, and then just chew stuff off the front end. I couldn't quite manage that without spilling soup all over me, so I would sip the broth off the side of the spoon, and eat the noodles and meat with my chopsticks.

We stayed at a very nice hotel which had a full English breakfast in the morning.

Other than that I've been enjoying the English countryside. I've been helping my friends get ready for Christmas, making cookies, dropping off neighbor gifts, and playing Santa.

Last night we attended an Anglican Christmas Eve service in the little village church. The church was built sometime in the 1300s, so it was really beautiful, and really cold. There were readings and Christmas carols I had never heard before. After communion they passed out candles, turned off the lights, and we sang "Angles we have heard on high" to candlelight.

It was really fun. Although the highlights were probably when the bats woke up (It's so medieval! Stone work, large creaky doors, stained glass, bats, it was awesome.) And when my friend accidentally set her hair on fire during the service.

Father Christmas even managed to find me, and brought me the DVD of Hogfather, which I've really wanted, and some cool Warcraft goodies. He also brought me Haribo gummies, which just seem to taste better when they're eaten out of German packaging.