{"id":997,"date":"2009-12-29T10:37:09","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T18:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/?p=997"},"modified":"2014-11-11T20:28:13","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T04:28:13","slug":"christmas-day-december-25th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/switzerland\/christmas-day-december-25th\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Day – December 25th"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t get the white Christmas I had hoped for. But it was still fun and seeing the green countryside during our drive to Christmas dinner more than made up for it.<\/p>\n

I woke early in the morning to call my parents during their Christmas Eve. As I was sitting on the stairs getting the computer ready I heard the phone ring a floor up. My dad had called Desiree to ask her where I was, as I was apparently supposed to call them 5 minutes ago…patience please, try not to wake the hosts of the house. But we all got to say hi and it was fun.<\/p>\n

Jamie then opened her Matryoshka doll I brought her from Europe and I slipped back off to bed for a few more hours.<\/p>\n

I woke to the sound of a remote control motorcycle, a gift from Jamie’s godfather, Mike.<\/p>\n

Jamie kept chasing Sally around the house with the bike.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Then I ate some Muesli with yogurt and got dressed for a short run. The scenery is quite relaxing and it felt good to go jogging around town. I took roughly the same route as last time but reversed the order of the loops and extended it a little bit. The elevation change didn’t have a noticeable effect on me as my first run here. Anyway, it was a nice Christmas run and I got to practice my Swiss German greetings with others who were also enjoying the day outside.<\/p>\n
When I got back, we hung out for a little and I did some work on the computers in the house before getting ready to drive to Desiree’s sister’s house for Christmas dinner. I told Desiree that I could spend all day in the passenger seat of a car driving around Switzerland. There was so much to see, and the roads here are much better for driving than the ones in California, especially when Marcel is driving.<\/p>\n
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The table is set for raclette, a traditional Swiss dinner where one melts cheese on a lower grill while cooking meat on the upper grill, then drenches the potatoes with the melted cheese and feasts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Nikki, Natalia’s and Wimi’s dog decided to join us for dinner from her bed in the corner. She was a fun one: kept growling at me with the tug-of-war toy in her mouth with tail wagging at full blast. That toy reminded me of Rhodee and how she used to play with one like it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Then, we ate. And man, we ate, and ate. There was a process too. First we grilled some bacon to grease up the grill so the rest of the meat wouldn’t stick. Then it was pretty much a free-for-all.<\/p>\n
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Grilling my meat in the foreground: chicken on the right, pork on the left. Remember: Swiss chickens don’t have salmonella.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Bacon, cheesy potatoes with mushrooms, and herb spread. What more could you want?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I quickly figured out there was enough space to grill more than one piece of meat at a time, unlike last night. Eager to fill my stomach, I began grilling at a faster pace than I could handle. So I went from the slowest dinner of my life, in terms of eating (which was still fun and no less rewarding) to one of the most stressful dinners of my life. I began working up a sweat managing all my meat. Cheese is already melted, take it out. Nowhere to put it? grab a potato. Oh my meat is burning, flip it. Get some veggies to put into the cheese before it cools. Replace the cheese with a new slice so it’s ready when the meat is…and so on.<\/p>\n
And then, I was full. Again, I had eaten too much, but it was all so delicious. We took a break and we proceeded to open presents.<\/p>\n
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Natalia on the left with Jamie, Luca checking out their fun. D\u00e9sir\u00e9e in the middle, Lidya in front in pink, and Bea to the right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Then back to the table for dessert.<\/p>\n
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Fresh pineapple, kiwi, mango, and grapes to put in our ice cream. Kelsey should have switched places with me at this point. She would have devoured the ice cream and fruit. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was great but she’s more of a diehard fan of pineapple.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And small baked goods. The gingerbread had a little extra taste to it that I was not familiar with American gingerbread.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The adults of the party. Starting from front left: Marcel & D\u00e9sir\u00e9e, a space for me, Mona: D\u00e9sir\u00e9e’s godmother and aunt, Natalia: D\u00e9sir\u00e9e’s sister, Wimi: Natalia’s husband, Bea: D\u00e9sir\u00e9e’s aunt, and her husband Willy, and Andreas: Wimi’s brother. D\u00e9sir\u00e9e’s parents were vacationing in Spain for Christmas and therefore could not attend.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The party was great, the food tasty, the company fun, and the drive home very relaxing. I slept most of the way. I don’t know how Marcel didn’t fall asleep. He said he was pretty full too. I needed to sleep somewhat early so I could wake and pack before leaving for Salzburg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn’t get the white Christmas I had hoped for. But it was still fun and seeing the green countryside during our drive to Christmas dinner more than made up for it. I woke early in the morning to call my parents during their Christmas Eve. As I was sitting on the stairs getting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebca.com\/fromrussiawithlove\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}