How to throw a Christmas Bauble Party...

What?  You've never heard of a Christmas Bauble party?  Dahlink!  I just can't imagine... Oh, wait.  That was me two weeks ago.  But then an invitation dropped into my inbox, and on Wednesday this week, I went along and was introduced to this hilarious (new) Christmas tradition.  I had such a good time, I thought I would share it with you, so here's my step by step guide.

1.  Invite a group of probably between 10 - 20 girlfriends over.

2.  Ask your girlfriends to go out and purchase a Christmas bauble for anything from £1 - £10.  (Please note; it does not have to be an actual bauble, but something that can hang on the tree is good.)  Instruct them to wrap their bauble as prettily as possible - so that it can't be seen - and leave it on a table just inside the front door when they arrive, so that no-one knows who has brought which parcel.

3.  Once everyone has arrived, ask them to draw a number from 1 to whatever the final number of people is, and hold onto their ticket.

4.  Get everyone seated, and put the pretty packages in the middle of the room.  Then invite the holder of ticket #1 to choose a parcel.

5.  #1 must open the parcel in full view of everyone in the room, so that all the other guests can see what they've received.

6.  Then #2 is invited to take a parcel.  OR - and this is crucial - they can also choose to 'steal' the bauble that has just been opened by #1.

7.  If #2 chooses to steal #1's bauble, #1 gets to choose another parcel to open.  The contents of which may be stolen yet again, by #3, who#'s turn it will be next.  #3, you see, gets to choose a gift from the table, or to steal either of the bauble's already in the possession of #1 and #2.

8.  And so it goes on, with each subsequent person in the numbered order getting a wider choice of baubles to 'steal' from the other players - or of course they can choose, sight unseen, to take a wrapped one from decreasing number on the table.

What is very important to know, however, is that each bauble can only be 'stolen' 3 times.  The person who steals it for the 3rd time gets to keep it.

This party is perfect if you have a group of friends who can be relied upon to keep their sense of humour if their new favourite Christmas decoration is stolen from them at the last minute by someone they usually call their bff, if they find themselves opening the booby prize of the most tasteless bauble imaginable, or if they end up as the new owner of the pair of novelty pants that some joker decided to throw into the mix for a laugh.  Which of course didn't happen to anyone I knew...

And that, friends, is how to throw a Christmas Bauble party, and I promise you - you won't regret it.

You're welcome.

You never forget your first time...

A good friend of mine is hurting.  She arrived in Moscow only a few months ago, a first time expat, and fit right in.  She is outgoing, bright, fun to be around.  She's an asset to any group, ready to get her hands dirty, and a joiner.  Not surprisingly, those of us who have been here a little longer found her a breath of fresh air and sucked her right in - and she loved it, throwing herself into expat life with vigour and making new friends in the way that some expats do; whole-heartedly.

She made one new friend in particular, a 'newbie' (her phrase, not mine) much like herself, and they clicked.  They set themselves the goal of making the most of their time here and experienced Moscow to the full, getting under the skin of the city, travelling by metro and joining groups, not allowing themselves to be phased by anything (or not for long, anyway), because they were together, and stronger for it.

And now, in the expat way of things, my friend's buddy has been whisked away to another continent out of the blue.  Contracts change, agreements alter, everything is fluid in the bubble that we inhabit as expats.  You can't count on anyone being here next month let alone next term or next year.  It's part of what keeps this community vibrant and moving, but it's also something that - when you first experience it - knocks the breath from you with the loss that you feel once that person has moved on.

Sure, you can - and will - keep in touch, by email, by skype, on holidays.  The good friends that you make will probably continue to be a part of your life.  But they won't be there with you, giggling at the extreme bad temper of the babushkas shouting at you for letting your child outside without a hat on a +18degC April day in the sunshine.  They won't be there to nod knowingly and say "T-I-R"* as you recount your latest experience in the supermarket when you tried to pack your own shopping and the woman on the till ignored you and stowed all your purchases into flimsy plastic 'packyets' that will split the moment a third can of coke is added to it.  They won't be there to hold your hand when the intensity of life here gets that bit too much.

I was a first-time expat when I arrived in Moscow, and clearly remember the first time this happened to me.

I wish I could tell my friend that it gets easier, that you learn to be a little more restrained in the amount you give your friendships, that you start to lean more heavily on your nuclear family because they are the ones that you can be sure will still be there with you when the new school year starts.

But I still view the end of each school year - and the good-bye's that they bring - with trepidation and an anticipation of forthcoming regret that people who have been a part of my day-to-day life and local support structure will no longer be around the corner.  It's the flip side of being an expat, you see.  These people with interesting lives, entertaining points of view, and engaging stories?  They didn't get that way by staying put.  They don't consciously look to leave (my friend's friend certainly wasn't expecting to), but more often than not, they do.

So, what to do?  Close yourself off?  Not bother to go out and find new playmates once your old ones have left town?  Withdraw to your sofa and stick to the same old routine - school, shops, supermarket, holidays back 'home' in the summer, repeat to fade - for fear of having to go through the process of making new friends year in, year out? It's certainly tempting.

Or, do you get out of the house, put yourself out there, and start over?

I know my friend will do the latter.  But I also know how much it hurts to say good-bye, that first time.



*'T-I-R' = This is Russia.  In case you were wondering.

On the 4th Day of Christmas, this expat blogger is looking forward to...

... meeting up with old friends.

Post 4 from the Next Christmas campaign (click here to go to the post where I explain what that is), and my wish today is for some unhurried time with my girlfriends over the holidays. This has probably been prompted by the weekend I just spent back in the UK without my family at a christening, when I suddenly realised that my oldest girl friends, a gang of 5 who have been close since university, and who have been meeting regularly for the last twenty-mumble years, are shortly to be scattered again. Obviously, this is partly my fault (although Moscow is a suburb of London, surely?), but over the last 4 days two of them announced they too are leaving London, one for the north of England and the other for the far east. (Some people just have to go one better, don't they?).

I know it was foolish to think so, but I kind of imagined when I moved over here that nothing would really change back home, and that when we do return I would just be able to fit seamlessly back in to my old life.

Silly me. My life has moved on, why shouldn't everyone else's?

Today's Top Pick from the Next Site

I'm going to pretend that money is no object here (it is, obviously, since I'm writing this post), and think about what I would buy for these 4 long-standing girlfriends if I had a few hundred pounds to spare. I think it would be this - or something like it. Plus one for myself, obviously. Well, you can't expect others to wear what you wouldn't yourself, surely?

Plus, PLUS, click here to enter Next's fabulous Christmas Giveaway. (Today's object of desire is an Ipod Touch and accessories worth over £300...)