Secret Santa

For years and years, my Norwegian friends and I have exchanged holiday gifts via the pseudonym Secret Santa.

Since there are so many of us (I think there were 15 participants in this last one), we decided long ago to opt to give one larger, useful, well-thought-out gift to one person rather than 15 tiny, useless ones to all 15 people, even though everybody loves everyone else just as much.

One designated individual, the only one who knows the whole spiel, usually draws names out of a hat and links them to the receiving end sometime in early December. On December 22nd or thereabouts, the whole gang gets together. Each person puts their parcel into a huge burlap sack, making sure no-one else is watching to see what kind of wrapping paper he or she used, and then the gifts are distributed, but not opened. Everyone must wait two more days until Christmas Eve to open the gift at the proper time. Secret Santa is not a game.

Barcelona!

As earlier advertised, I just spent 3 marvelous days in Barcelona visiting my two friends, Tesse and Stefan, who're studying there this year.

Absolutely everybody I talked to about Barcelona before I went is crazy for the city, and raved about how beautiful, gorgeous, and amazing it is. And it turns out, I wholeheartedly agree. I fell in love with the city at first sight. And first taste.

Pre Barcelona Tapas

Today I leave for 3 days in Barcelona, then two and a half weeks in Norway for the holidays!

How is this happening when I'm without a steady job and my savings are depleted? I ask myself the same thing.

Edible Happiness

A friend of mine has a few weeks off from working this month, and has taken the opportunity to explore what New York has to offer in the form of activities. He's been to meditation groups, free yoga (suggested donation of $5, apparently), taken up voice lessons, the works.

Today, after work (yes! I'm working for PAY this week...), I met up with him for another event he wanted to try out, a group called Rooftop Films. They arrange screenings of films (sometimes short, sometimes feature length, sometimes fiction, sometimes documentary, sometimes somewhere inbetween) that aren't distributed through other channels. It's a great opportunity for the filmmakers they select to get an audience and create some hype around their films.