Today is the first day of my Christmas holiday and I couldn't be happier. I slept in until 7:30 am and then I lay in bed for another half an hour before determining that I was in fact not going to be able to make myself fall back to sleep--even if it is vacation. Mind you, sleeping in until 7:30 am is pretty good considering the fact that most mornings I am already out of bed and making coffee at 6am.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Teachers in the snow"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium" title="Teachers in the snow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6557925721/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7166/6557925721_e2301d49a3.jpg" alt="Teachers in the snow" width="500" height="375" /></a>[/caption]

I'm at home drinking coffee, reading the internet, downloading photos and uploading them to Flicker, thinking about doing a load of laundry, plotting about what Santa will bring me this year and thinking vaguely about what I'll make for Christmas eve dinner with my friends. Maybe clam chowder.

Yesterday ended with the perfect mix of school and friends. <!--more-->The day started off with snow. Lots of it. But not even that could damped my spirits. We had a half day of school and then a second round of the Christmas concert. Our students are so talented but more than that it was great to see them having fun on stage. We danced our two Bulgarian national dances for a second time and we headed outside to dance the horo in the snow. This of course is a beautiful but dangerous and slippery proposition.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Dancing at ACS"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium" title="Dancing at ACS" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6557923041/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7011/6557923041_9ef8d99bb1.jpg" alt="Dancing at ACS" width="500" height="375" /></a>[/caption]

By 3pm, I was back in my classroom changing into my regular clothes. I had a moment where I thought I'd lost (or someone had stolen) my pants and I had visions of myself going home in my national costume in the snow on the bus in order to get a pair of jeans. Luckily they were tucked under my winter coat. Crisis averted.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Dancing the horo in the snow (the woman at the end is 92 years old!)"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium" title="Dancing the horo in the snow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6557924915/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7157/6557924915_8e0c97b46e.jpg" alt="Dancing the horo in the snow" width="500" height="375" /></a>[/caption]

I headed over to my friend H.'s to play card games, eat snacks and drink wine. You know, because I clearly haven't been eating enough junk food these last couple of weeks. Snaking turned into dinner (kind of) and playing cards turned into an incredibly long game of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/MayFair-Games-MFG3061-Settlers-Catan/dp/B000W7JWUA/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1324623585&amp;sr=1-1-catcorr" target="_blank">Settlers of Catan</a>. <em>Boy</em> do those Germans know how to make a board game.

Oh and PS I heard that Orange book store in The Mall (you know because because in Sofia we have a mall named The Mall) is selling a Bulgarian edition of Settlers of Catan. In case you need to get on this wonderfully fun but rather nerdy bandwagon.

By 8:00pm the only thing I could think about was getting home and crawling into bed. P. and I left shortly there after. Once at home, I had a cup of tea, thought about writing some Christmas cards, decided against it and snuggled into bed with my kindle about 9pm. Because, I'm awesome.