Winter Holidays

Finally, a day to relax. It's Monday, midday, a few days before Christmas. I'm in San Francisco, where despite a crispness, the weather is acceptable. Yesterday, when we arrived from Santa Barbara it was raining heavily. We are doing a house swap with a family. They have an amazing house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. The house - one of those original Victorian houses - has an uber-modern interior. Three levels - open plan - practically no interior walls with wooden and bamboo floors and leather, chrome, glass furniture. Everything here is state of the art. When you enter through huge, old world style double doors you come into an enormous entry hall which is visible from all parts of the house. A huge skylight above keeps the interior bright and airy. We are thrilled to have this place for a week. We hope the family isn't too disappointed to put up with our simple abode back in Santa Barbara.

The last weeks of teaching were bloody draining. I had my students perform a play called SANTA CLAUS FOR PRESIDENT. It turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. But they enjoyed making posters and flags and various little props for their performance. So it was worth it. Another big project I was forced to do on account of it being a tradition at the school was gingerbread houses. Using graham crackers, frosting,a nd the most ghastly candy imaginable, the kids created little alpine like houses. They had fun, but my big thrill came when it was all over and every tiny morsel of candy was cleared out of the classroom.
Christmas in the northern hemisphere is definitely not my favorite. Perhaps it's because when we are in South Africa it's so much fun. Warm weather, beaches, pools, tropical fruit salads, sipping cold beer on a terrace watching giant waves crashing, and being with the family. How can a cold, gloomy, grey Christmas compete with that?
But while we are here in San Francisco we are going to live it up.
We started out by going to Greens Restaurant for dinner. This veggie place is famous and upscale with the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge in the city. They always have unusual, innovate dishes on the menu. I've never eaten anything there that wasn't superb in every way.
This morning I walked out to California Street and found a few gourmet markets. I bought chanterelle, portobello, and shitake mushrooms. I also got freshly ravioli stuffed with porcini. So tonight's meal is going to be top notch.
I hope to get a lot of reading and writing done in the next two weeks.

I wish everyone an enjoyable festive season.