Christmas Eve at my friend's house

I really had a niiiiiice Christmas this year with my friend and her family and relatives!!! I appreciate them so much that they kindly invited me to their house around Christmas, and treated me like a member of their family. I can’t thank them enough. Thank you!!

I cooked 肉じゃが and ちらし寿司 on Christmas eve and brought them to my friend’s house in Scarborough. Oh there are so many people at the shopping mall where my friends picked me up. We had 肉じゃが, ちらし寿司 and beef stakes cooked with red wine for dinner. The wine was called “20 bees”. As it says, it tasted a little honey, which was good. We also had a glass of “20 bees” wine with dinner. I am glad that they liked the Japanese food.

Then we headed to their church for Christmas Eve Family Service (Ebenezer United Church). The Minister was Korean who has also lived in Hakodate, Japan, for three years. We sang various Christmas songs and read lines out loud after the Minister. Some songs are well-known in Japan too, but I didn’t know the lyrics of them… My friend introduced a Japanese student to me. He is an exchange student who is staying at her friend’s house for a year. Some of them seemed not to have met for a long time since some stopped going to church when they are teens or twenties. It’s nice to meet them again at a church like a reunion after a while.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. –JohnⅠ: 5

My friend’s son drove us around the town when we were on the way home. He drove us around so that we could see various Christmas lights at houses. There is one big famous house with lots of decorations around there. A lot of people pulled over their cars along the street and were seeing the heart-warming Christmas lights on Christmas Eve.

Since we had dinner earlier in the evening, some seemed hungry again. We had crackers with cheese and spicy jelly, scotch eggs, which is a tradition in the family, cookies and rum and “egg nog”! Egg nog is alcohol, which is like Baileys or Kalua. It was like 10:00 or 11:00 pm, yo!

I’ve been to a Chinese church in Toronto, but I didn’t understand what they were saying because they we attended the Chinese mesa instead of the English mesa. I am not that religious, but I was curious what they are doing in churches, so it was nice that they brought me to their church, explaining about it to me and introduced me some of the people there.