My plans for Christmas break

One of the perks of being a teacher is that you get relatively lots of vacation. At least here you do. Apart from fall break, spring break, may break and summer break I also get two weeks off for Christmas. My vacation will start tomorrow and here’s how I plan to spend those 2 weeks.

Today after work I’ll be leaving for my parents place to spend Christmas at their place. We’ll most likely watch the National Lampoon’s Christmas movie if it’s on on Christmas eve or Christmas day, but my family can’t have a single Christmas without ‘gourmetten’. Gourmetten is a typical Dutch way of a Christmas Day dinner. You pretty much gather a few people around a griddle type like thing, which comes with 4 – 6 small pans. You put small pieces of meat, fish and vegetables on the table and top it off with bread and several sauces. The idea is that you use your miniature skillet to prepare your own food and chat and have a good time while waiting for stuff to cook. It doesn’t require hours of cooking in the kitchen and you still get to spend proper time with your family. Which is what Christmas is about in the end.

This year, I’ll be celebrating Christmas Day with just my parents since my brother and his girlfriend are going to join her family for Christmas Day. In Holland, however, we also celebrate Boxing Day and that day we’ll be going to visit my grandma and in the late afternoon we’ll be going to my uncle’s place to see some more family and to have another dinner. My brother and his girlfriend will join us for that too, so that’s when we’ll have everyone together.

The 27th I’ll be meeting up with my best friend, and on the 29th I’ll be having dinner with another friend plus we’re going to see Harry Potter 7.1, which I have yet to watch. With said friend I will also be discussing some more details about our Dublin & London trips. That same day I wanna go to a hairdresser to get my hair cut and colored. I will post pics as soon as it’s done! On the 30th I’m planning to go to a museum and see an exhibition which I’ve been wanting to see for months but I haven’t had a chance to do it yet. It’s an exhibition on Munch in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, so I’m really looking forward to that as well.

On the 31st I’ll be going to see some more friends, cook dinner for them with another friend of ours and celebrate New Year’s Eve over there. On the 1st I’ll be going back to my parents’ place, if traffic & weather permits, to visit the yearly New Year’s reception thrown by my mom. That will mean more family. I’ll be going back to Leiden on the 2nd and have a few doctor’s appointments planned for that coming week, as well as dance class starting again. Since I still have a few extra classes left, I’ll be going to some extra dance classes and get a proper work out. I also wanna go shopping in Amsterdam some time that week. Most likely on the 4th or on the 6th, depending on when I feel like it. There’s two other movies that have come out that I’d like to see, so I may go there as well some time during my break. The first one is Burlesque with Christina Aguilera, simply because I like movies with singing and dancing in them and I also want to go see a Dutch movie called Loft. I know that movie is a remake from a Belgium movie, but the trailer intrigued me.

As you can tell: a pretty full schedule and if I feel like it I may even decide to get some wool and make myself a hat, mittens and a scarf. So I’ll be busy busy busy. Of course I’ll be keeping you up to date via this blog on what’s going on and will post pics, reviews and other things that are relevant to my going ons.