How To Love Life in 730 Days: Tip #9

Merry Christmas! Nolaig Shona! (Gaelic)
Apologies for the delay in my weekly posts, but as you likely all can understand, December is always a very busy time of year for anyone. The pub I work at has lost a couple of full-time servers - ironically, they both are traveling to Canada to work and do the same thing as myself - love life. That being said, I've been working pretty much 6 days per week and it's pretty exhausting. The weekly paycheque has been nice for Christmas presents for those back home and also to start saving up some funds for some upcoming tours/trips.
I'm trying to think what has all happened since my last post, other than working. We had our staff Christmas party and it was fun to hang out with my coworkers outside of our busy pub and get to know people a bit more. I also managed to injure myself slipping on the icy streets here and sprained my ankle and knee so after a week or so now, my legs and knees are a nice black/blue/yellow collage. They are slowly but surely healing and I had to take a few days off of work because I would have been pretty much useless to them seeing I could barely walk and definitely could not do stairs - which are quite common at our pub.
Other than that, I just did some xmas shopping for the fam back home, spent some time with the girls/Jonny and getting prepared for Christmas. We hosted the Cdn girls and Rachelle's cousin that's visiting for Christmas yesterday. Made my first ever turkey and it turned out great. (pic of before and after below).

I also made butternut squash, stuffing, gravy, cauliflower/cheese sauce all from scratch and, well, attempted mashed potatoes. Now, I have made mashed potatoes with no fail at least 20 times in my life (I have many witnesses) but when I went to check on them as they were boiling, they literally had evaporated into potato BROTH. We concluded that we got a bad bag of potatoes even though they looked completely normal. When I told my family about this later - the average comment was, "Isn't Ireland known for their tasty potatoes?" and yes - this is true but I guess not in my case on Christmas day. Either way - we didn't really miss them because we had so much food as the girls brought CHEESE (lots of it), salads, and desserts. We also did a fun little Secret Santa exchange and listened to lots of Christmas music. Even though we were all deep down somewhat sad that we weren't with our families back home, being together seemed to bring our spirits up and we made the most of the day.

Some of the feast - lots of leftovers. :)

Our Canadian-Galwegian guests

So my tip for the day is, if possible when traveling...try to take advantage of what the great world of technology has to offer. In that I mean - the world wide web, Skype, Facebook, email, etc. If it wasn't for Skype, email and my great international phone plan that I have now with my new iPhone 4 (product placement inserted here...haha), keeping in touch with my family and friends would be so difficult, especially yesterday when I wished that teleporting was a REAL thing. I skyped with my aunt/uncle/cousin and of course my family and even my precious pup - Chelsea. Maybe she can't talk but just seeing her with her reindeer antlers and covered in her traditional xmas ribbons made my heart smile. Yes, technology can be frustrating and some do misuse it more than less it seems these days but I definitely would have a hard time living without it. I'm also thankful that my mom is 'in the know' with all the gadgets and such. For example, with her new laptop, she was able to bring me along to the Landreth Christmas so I could even skype with my Grandma - a first for her and she loved it...and so did I!
I do agree that sometimes receiving cards and letters in the mail is still a great feeling (thank you everyone that sent me some and I'm sorry that I'm so slow with sending mine out) but on an everyday basis, it's great to see emails from my Mom (everyday - thanks momma!!), my family, my friends and such in my inbox or messages on Facebook or comments on my photos because I feel like I can share my experiences with you all back home. It's hard to think how life was before the web and the digital world.
Anyway - that's my tip for the day and my update. I hope to have another update next week but if I don't have the chance, I wish you all a happy and safe New Years! Here's a few more pics from the last month.