Christmas Update

I’ve been meaning to post here for a few weeks but I keep putting it off, and coming up with excuses not to. Tomorrow I’ll have been back at home for two weeks already. I havn't really been up to much apart from christmas shopping and not nearly enough revision for my January exams,

About a week ago my family went to dinner with our neighbours; its a yearly tradition that we all meet and go to pizza express around Christmas time. My younger sister is on a gap year at the moment and is working with three others her age who were also at the dinner. So the majority of the time, the conversation was limited to the four of them talking about work, which I couldn’t really contribute to. Though even when something came up that I could have talked about I still didn’t speak up much. The only time I really spoke was when asked about my dietary habits - I’ve been vegan now for about 9 months, so I was quizzed about that for a few minutes after ordering my cheese free pizza. I hadn’t been around that many people for a while and found the whole thing pretty overwhelming.

Fast forward a few days ... on Christmas Eve my parents held a drinks party with about 20 guests. My sister was working so I was on my own pretty much; normally I would lean on her in those types of situations. It started off badly; as soon as the first guests rang the doorbell I started panicking; I was desperately trying to listen to who it was to see if I knew them. Luckily I did so it was OK. Anyway I felt really uncomfortable for the first hour or so but then once more people started to arrive I started to feel better, probably because I could blend in with the crows more. I spent quite a long time talking to this girl who I used to be was friends with when I was a toddler but don’t really see anymore. Anyway my mum later said to me that she had been watching me and thought that I had done well talking to people J And it’s not very often that she says thing like that so I was pretty happy.

Christmas day we went to some friends for drinks at about 12, which wasn't too bad - I managed to make some chit chat. Then my aunt and uncle and two cousins came over for christmas lunch. All in all it was an OK christmas - I'd even go so far as to say it was slightly better than average.