David's Diary: Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Christmas Day in Tunisia

Christmas day started before daylight as Allen woke up at 6:00 AM. Even though he wasn't suppose to he immediately woke up Kevin. The two of them opened their Christmas stocking presents and played quietly in the main cabin until our agreed wake-up time of 9:00. We were not surprised that Allen was the first awake, he has been so excited about Christmas in our adopted home of Tunisia that he has had a "funny tummy" since the beginning of December. With sunlight streaming through the main cabin windows, we had breakfast and then enjoyed opening all of our presents. We had lots to celebrate as all five Dragonsinger crew have got through another year of growth and health.

Dinner with friends

While Tunisians are the largest eaters of turkey per capita in the world, they rarely sell it whole with the skin on. Yesterday, we made a special trip to the market to pick up the whole turkey that we had reserved, complete with the skin. The turkey was too large for the oven onboard Dragonsinger, but fortunately the oven in the apartment we are renting was big enough for it to fit. We celebrated Christmas dinner with our friends Tony, Maggie, and Charlie on Ganymede. We started Christmas dinner at 4:00 in the afternoon and continued until after 11:00. We had several courses and even played games between some of them. After cleaning up, the kids watched one of the movies that they got for Christmas while the adults settled in with a coffee. It was a wonderful way to complete our Christmas day.