Christmas Eve starts off with a festive dinner, as you can see below. The paper crowns are a relatively new addition to the festivities, and you can see that Dad really gets into it. We then eat a piece of meat and twenty five cakes and pies, and call it a night. Christmas day consists of watching the nephews and Pomme open an endless supply of presents. My invisible sister, the procreating one, once asked me if I were nervous showing all this personal stuff on the internet, obviously misunderstanding the incredibly tiny size of my audience. But I know she's nonetheless not big on this sort of thing, so we'll gloss over her photo and instead focus on Mom, who's more into the celebrity that comes from a starring role in this blog. Here, in a scene straight out of A Christmas Story, Mom plays the part of Ralphie and tries to shoot her eye out.

Rounding out the tour of Monroe sights, I took him to our oldest school, the East Village schoolhouse. That used to be the town's only school for a couple hundred years before we sprouted suburban tract housing, now we're forced to go there once a year and our teachers have to dress up in colonial garb. I also showed him Monroe Elementary School, where I joined in fourth grade after we moved from Puerto Rico. I was born near Hartford, CT, then took a slight Puerto Rican detour, then moved to Monroe. Notwithstanding that I'm as whitebread as can be, I was still referred to as the Puerto Rican while attending elementary school. I then moved to Chalk Hill Middle School, an architectural monstrosity so hideous I was ashamed to show Somchai so we skipped that, and moved on to Masuk High School. Weirdly we didn't take any photos of the school, but lots of the football field/running track, so that's what I've included here. I also searched the blog for photos of Monroe schools and came up empty, so our little town needs to get on the information superhighway ASAP. The other non-schol photo was of Great Hollow Lake, a pretty nature reserve. It was of course frozen over, but I couldn't get Somchai out on his skates.

Now, onto the sights of Monroe. The main part of town that hasn't been suburbanized is the town green. Like almost every town in New England, the town's center is a patch of land called the green, always presided over by a white Congregational church (the one poking out of Somchai's head). Across from the Congregational church is the Episcopal church, traditionally arch-enemies since the Congregationalists are descendants of the Pilgrims who fled England, and the Episcopalians are Anglicans who largely remained loyal to the mother country, even during the Revolution. A third old building, the Masonic Lodge, also sits on the green, and seems to be neutral in this theological war, since in the thirty years we've lived here I don't think we've ever seen anyone enter or exit the building, and I have no idea what goes on there.



Mom used to be on the Monroe Historical Commission, which had to approve any construction or renovation in the historical district. I believe it was through Mom's hard work that when Walmart decided to tear down the green and smother the whole area in a giant Walmart, they were forced to call it Ye Olde Walmart in keeping with the colonial character of the town center. (the last sentence isn't true, Mom did a very nice job of keeping the historical center intact, helped by the fact that nobody ever wanted to develop anything here.)

104. Monroe, CT

Ah, home sweet home! This is an odd part of the blog, since nobody will ever visit my hometown of Monroe as a tourist, so any casual visitor to the blog will be bored silly, and of course family members are intimately familiar with the place and will certainly learn nothing new here. But since I'm wed to chronology (No, Somchai I'm not calling you a name) we'll plow quickly through Monroe. During the day I showed Somchai some of the town's landmarks, and in the evening we hung around the house, mostly eating, watching movies and playing the family's favorite card game, Crick Crack (not sure if the words have K's at the end or not, so family feel free to correct me.) Mom is at her most frantic during the days leading to Christmas, as she decorates every square inch of the house in festive Christmasness, plus buys about four hundred presents for each of her grandchildren, plus another thousand for Pomme, forgetting that she's no longer a little girl that still believes in Santa. Stoli and I get some socks and the satisfaction of watching everyone else open thousands of gifts.

The temple can be approached by land through a traditional gate, or, more impressively by sea, where the famous torii (gate) surrounded by the sea marks the spiritual boundaries. A very photogenic sight, so we have lots of photos of it, but I'll spare you the others. Miyajima is ranked one of the Big Three Scenic Attractions. In the US, anyone can say anything to create a tourist trap. For example, Monroe, Connecticut may call itself "the prettiest town in northeast Fairfield County" and that goes unchallenged. But in Japan there are hordes of government bureaucrats who measure all these things and dole out the appropriate titles, so the Big Three claim is the official word. Even weirder, Japan has a complicated system of National Treasures, Cultural Treasures etc. and they're numbered, so as you travel, a particular temple, or a vase in a museum or whatever gets a precise title and number, like National Treasure No. 6832. Weirder still, people are often given these titles too, especially famous artists, calligraphers, dancers etc. I'd love to be able to call myself National Treasure No. 354.