it is quite official now. the lecture phase is done. today was the first day of my christmas holidays & i spent it the way any normal person would spend their first day. slept in, ate chocolate first thing, surfed the net, and then continued on with my day in that sort of manner. it was great. bonus was that it snowed some today! the snow hasn't been staying on the ground....but it's been quite cold the last couple of days, so i'm hoping that it will this time. in other news: it's dark. except for approx. 2hrs of each day where we enter a bit of a twilight zone...the rest of my day is dark. but we try to keep the lights on inside, so that helps :)

here are some pictures:

the faucet in our room drips...like every minute. drip drip drip drip drip. so Bex invented this nifty little device which allows the water to flow down instead of dripping, which then allows us to fall asleep at night.

Thursday night we got spoiled by God. it was 12:30am and Bex and I were about to go to bed when Lenneke came into our rooms & told us that there was some northern lights out. So bex and i grabbed our sweaters & went out into the cold. it was worth it, i'm telling you. i know that i'll never be able to explain in words or even show in pictures how amazing it was. it covered the entire sky & did some wild things! we even had shooting stars. 2hrs later we came back inside, ate some soup, talked a bit about our experiences during the lecture phase & then decided it was best to go to bed. here are some pictures from the northern lights show:
(you can click them to make them bigger)

the girlzHelen bought us a gingerbread house.....on Thursday night we worked together to put it all together

Lenneke wanting to be like our house
There's a christmas tree in our kitchen!
Bex is lovin' washing the pots

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

last night we had our Borgen christmas party. the girls got dolled up, the boys put on their suits & combed their hair and we had a party. Everyone from the base came our. First we ate supper together, then we had a little childrens program, then we took a break for the parents to put all of their kids to bed, & then we resumed our party. it was so relaxing & christmasy. we had a gift exchange, ate great Norwegian dessert, & sang christmas carols. We also had the people living in/around the base pray for us going on outreach. it was great.

and that's it! I hope that you are all enjoying your Christmas. much love :)