ebbst.se

Everyone knows that Christmas is a time to spend with family.

But when momi, dadi and sis are located on the other side of the world I am lucky to have a Taipei family as well. This year I will celebrate Christmas together with Patricia, James and Sara.
I have been looking forward to have pickled herring on the table but unfortunately IKEA were out of stock. Instead we got ourselves a “pepparkakshus” (gingerbread house) which we happily took home, put together and decorated. We even put a little snow man next to the house, very cute. What we did not think about (and probably neither did the IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad) was that gingerbread houses are somewhat sensitive to humidity. So, within 24 hours our nice little gingerbread house gave in and collapsed.

But instead of being sad about the ginger bread house we are happy about our nice little Christmas tree which looks very pretty and will probably never give in since its all made of plastic.

The Christmas menu this year is smorgasbord styled and Pana-Swed-American inspired, and it will be a feast. It includes:

Cold cuts: Gravlax (Marinated salmon), Gubbrora (”Old-man-mix”), Xmas cod-roe eggs

Main courses: Carrot’n'cabbage salad, Panamanian Christmas ham, Swedish meatballs, varmkorv (sausage), salami, Potatoe salad.

Desserts: Tiramisu, “James surprise”

Drinks: Mimosas, Bubble bobble
Merry Christmas!

Additional xmas pictures can be found here.

(To Nathan: too bad you are not here, we miss feeding you, and btw, your room is still prepared for your return )

Although Christmas is hardly a traditional taiwanese tradition the xmas spirit is present even here, among plastic Christmas trees, blinking lights and xmas card sell-outs. I am not, however, expecting a white Christmas

To help set the mood the Swedish trade council in Taipei arranged a Lucia party earlier this week offering swedish glogg, Christmas ham, Lucia buns and to top it off a beautiful Lucia procession singing all traditional swedish Lucia songs you could ever wish for. Too bad I did not to bring my camera, it was very nice and came with plenty of Kodak moments. I also received a package from home this week (can’t wait to open it), Im ready for Christmas.

The event was a nice break from my thesis that currently takes most of my time as I am trying to conclude my research. After a lot of hard work the research turned out quite good and I feel good about what I’ve accomplished. Too bad it is over very soon, I have only about one week left on the implementation which. After that I have to finish the written report and voila, Im ready to graduate