Veterans Day (It's a real holiday here!)

For some unknown reason (although I suspect it has to do the with crazy patriotism here) all schools have Veterans Day off. This year the holiday fell on a Wednesday which beautifully cut our work week into two manageable two day bits.

A few weeks ago we had been postulating on what to duo with our surprise day off, Thanh and I offered to have a party at our house if it was ok with Salu and Ben. As soon as we mentioned it Taylor and Scott offered up their house and Thanh and I not-that-grudgingly deffered to them as they do have the beach house. Also as Taylor's B-day was on the Monday before, we figured that a Tuesday night party would be an awesome birthday celebration.

When Tuesday came around the plan ran smoothly. As many of us needed to catch the bus out to their house in Failolo which only ran until 5, and Taylor and Scoot didn't get out til 5 they left the key to the house in their outside dryer.  Thanh and I left immediately from school and took a very fun ride on the school bus with our students to their house, which the students absolutely loved and they were amazed that we were actually visiting their west side. After waving goodbye to our students as the bus pulled out of the drive way, Thanh and I got down to the serious business of cooking up some grub.Thanh used her awesome genetics and prodigious cooking talent to whip up some awesome seaweed/kimche/mushroom/tofu soup while I got overzealous and baked a two level birthday cake and some spicy chicken wing dip (thanks to my mummy for the recipe). 

A couple hours later everyone had arrived and we had a very nice and fun party that lasted decently late in the night. I however had tried to sneak to bed early as I was very tired form school, but was aggressively wrestled out of bed by a mob of friends, which at first extremely annoyed me, but moments later I felt the unmistakable fuzzy friendship feeling of being loved my my equally stressed palagi friends. 

After finally turning in, we awoke to some ridiculously amazing breakfast thanks to John and Cynthia, but some not so awesome weather for our purported beach day. However God provides, because as we were wondering what to do we discovered that there was a Top Chef marathon on Bravo! I'm not ashamed to say that their may have been some tears of joy in my eyes, but before you think me sociopathic try living without movies, TV, and good food for a few months and then see how much you appreciate the stress relieving and food fantasy inducing power of Top Chef in the company of good friends. The rest of the day was a jumble of Top Chef, beach walks and much snacking and BBQing and is most definitely the best Veterans Day I have yet had.

Veterans Day!