Reflection: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

This was a particularly uneventful week. I will come right out and say that for the first time I'm kind of at a loss for what to reflect about.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I'm so excited to go home and start the season of all my favorite traditions. My mom taught me how to make boereg a few years ago--it's one of my favorite foods in the world. It takes forever to make because we usually do a ton in one sitting, and it's also really tedious and you have to make it fast because it's made out of layers of filo dough, which is so thin it rips really easily and dries out super fast. But it's so much fun because my mom and I sit side by side and pop in a movie and just sit and make tons of boereg.

Thanksgiving is also the day that we have, every year without fail, listened to "Alice's Restaurant." I don't even really know how the tradition started (I think it's on the radio every year?) but all I know is that when I was little, I didn't realize he was saying "Alice's" and thought it was "Allison's Restaurant." Every year I thought we listened to it because it was about me!

And then soon after Thanksgiving it's the Christmas season! Nothing is better than a snow-covered ground, hot chocolate, a crackling fire, and my favorite: skiing.

I was talking to Gina the other night about how one of the best feelings in the world is when you peel off all your layers from a successful ski day, your face still chapped from the cold, your hands clasping a steamy cup of cocoa, and you're cuddling up with a blanket to watch a movie with your family and friends. I would give up ever seeing summer again to relive the perfect winter day over and over.

Skiing is one of the best ways to get a natural high. When you're teetering on the tip of a mogul, too scared to move because everywhere you can go you're convinced will lead to your death--trees, rocks, ice, grass--and it's all way steeper than you remember. You look up and know you can't hike back up, and you look down and start to feel dizzy. But everyone's ahead of you and you can't stay there forever. It's such a mind game, and you try to plan where the best place to go would be, but when you finally make the move, shaking and crying, you lift your skis and just drop. Suddenly you're flying and that spot you had spent crying over is now miles in the past. When you get to the bottom you collapse, and look up at what you just accomplished. And you feel like you can do anything.

(Photo is from Lower Glade at Mad River Glen, the best mountain ever!)