8th December, 2012: Leeds Christkindlmarkt
WOOPS finally updating, but going back to fill in everything I forgot to, so I'm starting here with Christmas festivities :)
Our House planned a house trip to Leeds, a nearby city to York, to go to the German Christmas Market they were having there! Throughout England, they have Christmas Markets, but only a couple are the German style ones, which would be the closest thing we get here to the authentic wonderfully Christmassy markets in Germany!
First, we explored a little bit of the city centre in Leeds, which is where this big christmas tree decorated with massive baubles was. It's a lot bigger and more modern architecture/layout than York city centre. It has more of the pricey stores and variety, in contrast to York's classic, medieval, specialty shoppes.
This is all of us waiting in line for Nando's, a yummy Portuguese restuarant, famous for it's spicy grilled chicken and peri peri sauces.
Nao took amazing pictures with his massive professional camera!
After, we walked a bit to the outskirts of the city centre to where the Leeds Christkindlmarkt was being held, in Millennium Square. Wow, it was really packed with visitors dressed in snug christmas jumpers and coats. They had numerous stalls of holiday cheer like an onion stall, sausage/meats, donuts, marshmellows, potato pancakes, german sausage hot dogs, profiteroles, mulled wine and German beer, roasted mixed nuts (they had many cool flavourings of every kind of nuts, like a baileys irish cream flavor and cinnamon, and lots of cute toy/cold weather accessory stalls. There were also carnival rides, so a few of us went on Disco Fever, where we would be circled around in the air on this weird contraption, but it was a lot of fun!
Left: Big O Tannenbaum decorated with shiny lights!
Right: Marieke and I
We finished this night with some drinks at the local pub around campus when we got back, the Charles XII. We were very exhausted :)
12th December 2012: Christmas HOUSE PARTY!
It's that time of year where I play Christmas songs every second of the day until Christmas day!!! Our wonderful House A put on a Christmas Dinner and Secret Santa gift exchange night for the 10 of us housemates. On the menu, we had a Halal chicken roasted with vegetables, roasted parsnips and potatoes, brussel sprouts (yakk...), gravy, stuffing (instant but it was amazing), carrots simmered in honey, homemade garlic bread, with apple pie and raspberry pavlova for dessert! You can imagine we were all overstuffed turkeys afterwards. We all exchanged secret santa gifts and I got lovely gifts from Marieke! She drew me James Morrison in a frame (ze best musician!!!!), got me a knitted jumper, and a necklace. We also had party crackers to pull to get very oversized party hats we all tried to wear anyways. Emma also brought a little christmas tree from home, and we dubbed him Herbert. Poor Herbert got knocked over many times...but he survived through the holidays I'm glad to say!! I also discovered I do not like the Baileys irish cream that night, yakk. The kitchen was very warm and full of cheer that I can say, especially with the 10 of us squishing around the table. 
Here's the 10 of us, the merry bunch!
Back Row (L-R) Alio, Graeme, Sam, Ant
Middle: (L-R) Emma and I, Marieke, Belle, Sabrina
Bottom: Nao
EARLY! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEARS FROM YORK!!
Soon after, we all parted ways for our separate winter holidays with out families in various parts of the world!
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