-> a day of getting the school ready (technically not actually christmas day, but plenty relevant to this post)

-> playing cards with the guys until 4am

-> community feast (hats off to the gals who made the food!)

-> video call with the family

-> getting to dress up as santa claus, at the end of the feast, to hand out stockings to the kids (THE highlight of the day for me

-> snow

-> christmas gifts from home (hats off to USPS for delivering mail to the edge of the world, and hats off to captain mike for flying a chopper to an island in the middle of the bering strait)

i love it here :-)

PS
some things happened, some ideas went through my head, and an idea came to be, and the idea’s this: all the pain and ill of the world vanishes, even if for a moment, when a child smiles