ONE DAY TILL CHRISTMAS!!!! I'm really excited for Christmas!  I was thinking today about what I am learning about family and  friends while being away from my family.  When I am older and have a family i am going to make sure to invite whoever is away from family to my house for Christmas.  Families in the ship have been so welcoming and inviting to me.  it's been such a blessing.  And it made me realize how lonely it would be to not have a family 'adopt' me for Christmas.  I want to be able to bless the people in my future life who either aren't able to go home for Christmas or have no family to go home to.
Today was full of adventures and excitement.  About two days ago i turned to a coworker and said "hey what do you think about making the Africa Mercy out of gingerbread?" She thought it was a great idea so we've been working on recreating our beloved ship into an edible creation.  So far it looks pretty darn good (the unveiling will be on Christmas to the crew).  We tried our best to take pictures as we went ( i don't have all the pictures though, Julie has the ones of the baking process and of the decorating we did today.) So here's assembling it.

 Ken found a lady in town who owns a bakery and in the midst of talking with her and chatting she found out we are making this gingership so she took us to her shop and gave us fondant and food coloring.  It was so sweet of her! This is her shop.  It was very small but pretty nice.

We wandered around Community 1 for a bit longer and found a lot of uh...interesting street vendors.  We happened to wander through the raw meet/butchery market.  The walkways were so narrow (literally one person at a time) there were butchers complete with huge knives, dirty tables, no light, and lots of raw meet and gross smells every where you looked.  On every side you were bombarded with raw smells. I was not a fan.  

Raw pigs feet we came across.

After the market we went to Melcom's it was so packed! Even in Africa everyone does last minute shopping. We waited in line for 45 minutes to get the decorating supplies we wanted for the gingership.  We had been waiting for about 20 minutes when the cashier decided she needed a potty break.  So she just left for about 7 or 8 minutes while there was a huge line of people waiting on her. This is Africa. lol.
Like I said, a lot happened today.  Tonight on the ship they had what's called Open Cabins.  It's a lot like having an open house.  People sign up and you get a list of the open cabins and then go wander around the ship eating cookies, playing games and just hanging out with the different families and cabins.  It was really fun.  The group I was with decided to go caroling to all the cabins.  So we sang 'we wish you a merry christmas' to all the cabins before we went in and had cookies.  it was really fun and by the end we sounded pretty good i think.
It was a crazy day! I ended up finding some absolutely adorable vintage dance shoes at one booth in the market.  I am so excited about them! i can't wait to wear them!  But right now all i want to do is go to bed.  It's been a very long and exhausting day.  Merry Christmas to all!