Tuesday morning

Having gone through the first volley of emails for the day, I'm now sitting at my desk eating a big bowl of fish stew. It's been nearly five months since we left our home in Asia to work for a while at our home in America, and- besides our many friends and colleagues- I'm starting to miss hand-pulled noodles, boiled yak meat, and raw cloves of garlic. I'm also, surprisingly, missing the holidays in our little grey city. Coming in from the dark and frigid streets to our warm apartment to find Shinay cooking something hot and delicious, snuggling under warm down comforters while ice crystals formed on the windows, trimming our little tree, singing carols at the home for the unwanted- those memories will now forever be a part of the collage of images and emotions that form Christmas.